March 2016 Online Income Report – $5,041.85

It’s time to review my online income report from last month. This report only includes income I received from the month of March. If the money isn’t in my bank account, I don’t put it in this income report. This is the best way for me to track how much money I am making on a monthly basis.

March was my fifth month freelancing full time. I still can’t believe I quit my job, moved across the country and now work for myself. It’s a great feeling!

I recently posted a recap of my blog goals from last year versus where I am today. A year ago, my goal was to get 5,000 monthly page views and reported my first blog income report of $61.83. It’s INSANE how much has changed!

To recap, I’ve been blogging for about 15 months now. When I started this blog, I had no idea what I was doing! But I worked really hard to make this blog a business and a launching pad for my freelance career. In under 10 months, I was able to grow my blog from 1,000 page views to 160,000 page views a month, with over 90% of my traffic coming directly from Pinterest each month.

I only spend an hour a week planning my Pinterest strategy. If you want to grow your traffic or start utilizing Pinterest, my Pinterest Presence course details EXACTLY how I’ve grown my traffic.

Here’s a recap of some of my online income reports:

• June 2015 online income report $66.10
• July 2015 online income report $515
• September 2015 online income report $1530.94
• October 2015 online income report $3634.28
• December 2015 online income report  $4238.99

 

HERE IS THE BREAKDOWN OF MY ONLINE INCOME REPORT FOR MARCH

• $585.16 Ad revenue

• $800 Partnerships/Sponsorships

• $476.69 Affiliate Income

• $312 Side Hustle Book  

• $2,868 Freelancing

If you want to keep track of your online income (which I highly recommend) check out Freshbooks! It’s what I’ve used to track business income, expenses, invoice clients, and more. Click here to learn more about Freshbooks.

GRAND TOTAL: $5,041.85

This amount is the grand total before I deduct taxes. Right now I am putting away 30% of each paycheck I receive. My favorite part of this income breakdown is that my freelancing income is roughly a little over 56% of my income. Up until a couple of months ago, freelancing was around 90% of my income. I love working with clients, but I really like working for myself on my own products and brand.

AD Revenue

These payments are from income earned in February. Payments are paid out the following month. No surprise, Media net brought in over $350 in revenue, followed by Adsense and then Numus Digital. 

Partnerships/Sponsorships

I chose not to do any sponsorships my first year of blogging. I wanted to focus on writing good content and establishing myself. This year I have opened the door to this area of revenue. What’s most surprising is that I have found it much easier to reach out to brands directly than use a third party platform. 

Affiliate Income

This is one of the most rewarding areas, but most frustrating, ha! Affiliate income continues to increase from multiple streams, but it can take anywhere from 30-90 days to get paid. This income is from January and February. 

Side Hustle Book

At the end of January, I launched my book about side hustling. I’m really excited about this! Aside from the first week of February, I have done very little promotion of this book and still got sales. I got a small boost at the end of the March when Gumroad promoted my guide. This is truly a passive income and makes me so happy! 

I get a healthy amount of emails from readers about how they want tips to make extra money on the side, so make sure you sign up for my FREE 7-day course on side hustling. 

Freelancing

I provide Pinterest management and image services to clients. This niche is keeping me busy and it’s been really growing the past couple of months. I took on a couple of big projects and hired a VA to help me with some of the smaller tasks. 

I do zero advertising and rely on word of mouth. It’s hard to complain when I get to spend my days on Pinterest or creating images for blogs and businesses.

I also launched my Pinterest Presence course. I share exactly how I run my Pinterest management services, but allows students to go at their own pace. I’m sharing exactly how I went from 1,000 page views a month to 160,000 page views a month and how Pinterest drives in 90% of my traffic each month. If you want a sneak peak, check out my FREE 4 day mini course.

Consulting

This income report does NOT include any consulting income that I make that is related to my career niche outside of this blog. Even though this income is made online, it’s not really related to the blog, so I don’t share the income.

MONTHLY EXPENSES

These are my March expenses:

• $5 Google Apps

• $75 Coaching sessions

• $260 VA work

• $39.95 Computer program

• $54.08 PayPal fees

• $38 Affiliate payout

• $49 ConvertKit

TOTAL EXPENSES: $521.03

My expenses were a little over 10% of my budget. I’m still a DIY blogger for the most part, so I’m pretty budget conscious with my expenses. This was an expensive month for me, mostly because I needed some help on the back end of my website and brought on a VA to help me with my Pinterest company.

I recently switched from Mailchimp to ConvertKit and it’s been amazing. I’ve created some really great newsletters, course sequences and sign up forms. The stats that ConvertKit provides is insane compared to Mailchimp and it’s been totally worth it.

*Please note, I don’t include Tailwind or Bluehost in these expenses as I have prepaid for the year. Tailwind is the scheduler I use when I do all my pinning on Pinterest.

If you are thinking about starting a blog, this tutorial will help you start a blog today. You’ll also get a FREE domain name for a year! I was able to quit my job and blog full time, all within my first year of blogging. I am really glad I took a chance and started a blog! I invested around $140 to start my blog using Bluehost, and I made $13,000 in 6 months of blogging. That’s the best return of investment ever!

Pinterest course

I am most excited about my brand new Pinterest course. It’s a 3 part course that is geared towards bloggers that are interested in learning how to create better images, effectively use Pinterest and learning how to schedule pins in under an hour a week.

 

I created this course for a few different reasons.

First, some clients can afford my services and some can’t. I always feel bad when I’m out of someone’s budget and can’t help them.

I totally get that some bloggers are on a tighter budget than others. Creating a course at an affordable price is a great option for my more budget conscious bloggers.

Second, I’ve noticed that helping bloggers with one-on-one chat sessions on the phone are super helpful, but they still like to see tutorials. This bundle has a lot of tutorials!

Finally, there are a lot of DIY bloggers that want to learn how to do everything, but want to do it at their own pace and on their own.

This course can help bloggers with step-by-step instructions on creating images, how to maximize exposure on Pinterest and how to use Tailwind, my favorite scheduling tool.

If you want to learn more, visit my Pinterest Presence page or sign up for my FREE 4-day mini-course. 

{Resource: 10 Ways Your Blog and Business Can Benefit from Pinterest}

How is you April? Are you doing anything major with your blog for spring?

Kristin, is the creator behind Believe In A Budget. She teaches others how to start a blog and how to side hustle. Her course, Pinterest Presence, helps bloggers + businesses drive traffic to increase their website’s profitability. Click here to learn more! 
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