July 2014 Income Report

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Despite taking a holiday for 12 days in June, it ended up being my profitable month since I started publishing income reports on this blog.

I did not do as much freelancing in July, therefore my freelancing income dropped considerably. However, I am far from disappointed. July represents a major transition in me rebuilding this blog. I am really pleased with how everything went over the last month and I am excited about how the blog is going to progress over the coming months.

As you all know, my income reports detail income generated through this blog. This includes advertising, affiliate income, and freelancing income. It does not include income generated through other websites I own, such as my internet marketing forum Rise Forums.

Let us take a closer look at how KevinMuldoon.com performed in July 2014.

Traffic Statistics

Just like June, traffic to this blog increased in July. Considering my existing traffic levels, which are admittedly quite low, the increase is significant. I received around 125 additional visitors every day, increasing daily unique visitors from around 450 per day to 575 per day. That’s an increase of 27.77%.

July 2014 Traffic

Page views increased too, though I still have a lot of work to do. I need to first break the 100,000 page impressions milestone before I even consider displaying banner advertisements in my blog design. Banner ads would, of course, help me increase the revenue generated through this blog.

  • Sessions (Visits) – 17,846 (+3,859)
  • Users (Unique Visits) – 15,435 (+3,310)
  • Pageviews – 50,916 (+11,040)

Readership & Social Media

The growth of my social media presence was almost identical to the previous month. I was much more active on Twitter in July, however apart from sending automatic updates of new blog posts, I am still fairly inactive on all other social media platforms.

The stats below were taken today (4 August 2014). As you may recall, I stopped tracking RSS subscribers last year as the plugin I was using to track RSS subscribers was inaccurate.

Income & Expenses Details

I travelled back from Colombia on 4th July. Due to jetlag and catching up with many things that I had put off until I returned to Scotland, I ended up falling behind my work by a few days. Ultimately, for one of my regular clients I only published four articles over two weeks instead of eight articles. My income was at least $1,000 lower because of this.

Likewise, at the end of the month I purposely reduced my workload and took a couple of days to relax. As a result, my freelancing income dropped by around $1,750 in July. On the plus side, affiliate income increased considerably and I feel refreshed after taking a break.

In total I earned $5,106.47 in June. I also paid out $134.19 for two guest posts, therefore my total profit was $4,972.28. This represents an decrease of $1,100.98 from May 2014.

Income

  • Freelance Blogging = $4,262.85 (-$1,744.81)
  • Consultation = $0 (-$100)
  • My Books – $143.47 (+$33.59). This includes digital and printed book sales.
  • Affiliate Income = $550.15 (+$337.23)
  • Advertising Revenue = $150 (+$150)

Expenditure

  • Guest Posts = $134.19 (-$222.81)

* Difference in income and expenditure from previous month shown in brackets.

Overview

July was a big month for me. I made a number of small, but significant changes, to my freelancing schedule.

The biggest change was increasing my rates. This brings my pricing more in line with other WordPress writing services, however one of the main reasons I did this was to reduce the number of clients I have.

Coming back from Colombia, I fell behind in my work. This was partly due to taking on two new clients and partly due to being a jet lagged the first few days. I usually manage my workload efficiently, but I had reached a point where I was working seven days a week. There was a very high risk of me burning myself out. I consider myself a hard worker that always strives to provide high quality articles to clients, but I am only human. If my workload is too heavy, either the quality of my work will be reduced or I will have to deliver articles late.

My hope is that by reducing the number of clients I have, I can reduce the days I work for others to around three or four. I can then spend a day or two working on this blog. Over time, this will help me increase my affiliate income through this blog significantly. The goal is to increase this passive income over time so that I can freelance less and work on my own projects more.

Financially, I could quit freelancing today and work full time on my blog, however for the time being, I believe it is in my interests to continue to do freelancing for others. Not only does it bring in a lot of money, the links in my author biography generates a lot of new readers to this blog and a lot of new members to Rise Forums.

I suspect I will look back at July as a turning point. A time when I made a clear decision to focus more attention on this blog and start to make things happen.

My goals for August are fairly simple: I want to increase traffic and income on this blog. It does not concern me if my freelancing income goes down again. If I can generate more affiliate commissions in August, I will consider it a success. Long term, I need to increase this passive income. The problem with freelancing is that it relies on me to work to earn money. If I work less, I make less. However, with passive income, my income is rarely affected by me taking time off.

I hope you have enjoyed this look back at July 2014. Please leave a comment if you have any questions regarding this report :)

Thanks,
Kevin

10 thoughts on “July 2014 Income Report”

  1. Hi Deesha,

    There has been a job board on Rise Forums for a number of weeks now. Check the forum list and you will see it in the marketplace.

    Kevin

  2. Hey Kevin,

    Why can there not be a job listings section within the Rise Forums?

    I can see a job board, but listing freelance writing jobs would be a great treat for a lot of freelancers like me.

    A lot of people will find it very appealing.

    But, maybe, slightly early for this. Don’t know.

  3. haha I really don’t know why my bounce rate is so low. I suspect it is because most of the traffic coming to my blog is targeted i.e. it is from people who have read my articles on other websites and want to learn more about me and check out my articles etc.

    With regards to affiliate income, there are a few reasons for the jump. I have referred affiliate products from many different affiliate programs and services. I don’t actively check all of them because they generate so little income and because it is very time consuming to do so. Therefore, I check the ones that generate significant income every month and then count income from other sources once a payment has been made. An additional payment from one or two other affiliate programs was made, which represented some of the increase.

    The other reason is that I have increased income from a couple of other sources due to product reviews being indexed. And finally, traffic has increased. Affiliate income usually increases in conjunction with that.

    Time will tell if July was a freak month or if my affiliate income is starting to increase over time :)

    Kevin

  4. Hi Kevin,

    Your income reports are very interesting. Keep doing it, I’m sure it inspires lots of people.

    I have 2 questions :

    – How come your bounce rate is only 1.21% !
    – I regularly follow your affiliate income and they’re not so high as I see on other blogs, but this time you jumped over 500$. How do you explain this increase ? ^^

    Thanks,
    Anouar

  6. Thanks for the share. Looks like providing good content and being patient is still a good formula to building traffic. My site went live last month and I guess I’m just a little impatient. =)

    I’m also wondering, do you have an eBook or posts explaining how to land freelance writing gigs, like you have? Are you on a permanent basis with your clients? I’ve looked around and right now, I’ve only found temporary assignments. I’d like to do this long term though. Thanks again.

    Keep inspiring,
    Warren

  7. I am very open about how I build traffic. There is no secret :) I simply write blog posts and try and write good enough articles that others will link to it. I also link to this blog in my author profile in the websites I wrote for. This helps me generate more incoming links to the blog, which in turn should help my search engine traffic. :)

    Kevin

  8. Wow! Those are really impressive numbers for your previous blogs. Well, if you compare it to them, then yes, it’s not at that level yet — but still impressive nonetheless.

    Yeah, I’ve been bouncing back and forth with going paid or staying the free route; speaking of which, would you be kind enough to share your traffic-building methods? If not, I understand. Thanks.

    Keep inspiring,
    Warren

  9. Thanks Warren. Though traffic is low in comparison to what I could be earning. My previous two blogs got close to 3,000 uniques per day. I haven’t been working on this blog as much, which is one reason why traffic is low in comparison.

    I have tried paid advertising methods to build my Facebook page and newsletter, but not for the blog itself. I don’t think I’d get a good return.

    Kevin

  10. Great report Kevin! Personnally, I think your traffic numbers are awesome. I’d be lucky to break 500 a month. But I’m sure you’ve built your audience through time. I was also wondering if you’ve ever used paid traffic methods?

    Keep inspiring,
    Warren

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