Hi All, and welcome to our income report for the month of April. This month is very exciting for us as we see a very huge improvement in our earnings. Read more below for the details.
Why do we do this?
This is a way for us to keep a record on the growth and development of Foxy Folksy, a blog that has become a source of income. In these reports, we not only share the financial side of blogging but also the ins and outs of blogging itself. Hopefully, sharing this will also help others who are interested in creating their own blog or those who are also trying to find their way in making money from their existing blog by learning from our mistakes and successes.
I started Foxy Folksy in January 2014 but only as a hobby blog. Not until late in 2016 did we decide to do it full-time and see if we could make some earnings from it.
Another thing worth mentioning is that we are not in the United States. We moved to the Philippines from Germany in 2017 but most of our traffic is coming from the US and then, second, from the Philippines. Why do I have to mention this? Simply because I am starting to learn that the opportunities for US-based bloggers are different for bloggers in my situation. I am also following some food bloggers who publish their monthly income reports but all I was able to find so far are US-based bloggers. It is a good way to get ideas where they get their income, sure, but some of their sources or advice are not applicable to me, a Non-US-based blogger. So I am trying to share the things that are working for me and those that did not.
Below are the numbers for the month of April :
Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and all of the products listed below are the products and services I have personally used or still using.
INCOME:
- Adsense - $22.23
- Mediavine - $1,359.00
- Youtube - $77.06
- Amazon Associates
- $26.44
- ShareASale - $0.00
- Hostgator - $94.00 –> this is from affiliate links on the page: How to create a blog
- $26.44Income from Ads: $1,481.13
Income from Affiliates: $120.44
Total Income: $1,601.57
EXPENSES:
- Cloudways - $24.50 (Try their 3-day free trial.)
- Boardbooster - $20.00
- Monthly Giveaway - $27.00
- Food Blogger Pro - $23.25
- MailerLite- $35.00 (Click the link to get 20% credit when you sign-up)
- MS Office 365 Home subscription - $7
Total Expenses: $136.75
NET INCOME: $1,464.82
TRAFFIC:
These are actual screenshots from Google Analytics:
TRAFFIC SOURCES:
RPM FOR THE MONTH:
$5.73
What is RPM you say? Well simply put, it is how much you earn per 1000 Pageviews and you calculate it with this formula:
(revenue / pageviews) x 1000
Why is it important? Well, it is a simple way of tracking how the blog is performing from month to month when it comes to generating income. With this, you are also able to compare your own performance to other bloggers who are also publishing their income reports. The goal is, of course, to get this number to increase or in the least stable. A decrease in RPM means some improvement in your income strategy is needed.
Our RPM computation only includes revenue from Ads as these are the income that is directly associated with the number of page views. Commissions from affiliates are excluded as these are earnings from a sale which has nothing to do with the increase or decrease in page views.
RPM FOR THE PAST 12 MONTHS:
FACEBOOK : 5,024 (up by 187)
INSTAGRAM : 6,492 (down by 106)
PINTEREST : 5,792 (up by 52)
TWITTER : 3,841 (up by 38)
YOUTUBE : 6,282 (up by 464)
EMAIL : 5,614 (up by 264)
- The traffic decreased by 14.66% from 302,832 to 258,428. I guess the peak brought about by the Holy Week and Easter season is over.
- But on a positive note, our income went up by 34%. This is the result of moving to a different (and better) Ad Partner, the Mediavine. This is actually not for the whole month of April, four days are missing in this income report since we joined them on the 5th of the month. RPM went up from $3.84 to $5.73. and it still gets better since, as with any Ad Network, RPM in the initial 2-3 weeks still fluctuates and the Ad placements are still being analyzed for optimization. I also get regular emails from them on how I can improve my site to drive more income from ads. They are really great!
- The total number of posts for April is only 6. Disappointing I know. We promise to do better next time to reach the 10-12 post per month target.
- As you know, we also derive some earning from our Youtube channel. Youtube videos can also be a source of income thru Ads from Adsense. Here is our latest video (click image to watch):
That is it for now!
Thinking of starting your own blog, you may want to visit my blog post on How To Start A Blog with a checklist of the things you should know before actually creating one and How to create a Blog for the step-by-step procedures on building your blog. You may also want to check out my Resource Page for the tools you need for your blog.
Miko says
Hi Bebs, thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with us. It is really insightful. I have a food blog that has about 110k monthly sessions, with most traffic from Singapore and Malaysia. I have been using Adsense since the beginning but the ad income is really not that great, hence decided to search for other ad partners. Recently I applied to MediaVine and was not accepted due to my site's traffic source being mostly from Asia (US traffic is only about 7k sessions). Do you have any advice for ad networks / monetisation for a site like mine? Thank you. 🙂
Bebs says
Hi Miko, try Monumetric, I was with them before I got accepted by Mediavine and they are better than Adsense. You can also ask/tell Mediavine that you are willing to accept lower than usual (US blogger) RPM considering the audience you have are not from US and maybe you could compensate it by having some banner ads from other networks with a non-exclusive contract. There is no harm in trying to ask and maybe they will agree 😉😉😉
Dottie says
Hi Bebs, my name is Dottie, born in Pinas but currently based in New Zealand. Me and my husband have a food blog which I recently built.
I've never heard of Mediavine until I read your blog. All i know is Google Adsense. May I know what's the pros and cons of Google adsense and mediavine?
and why did you move to Mediavine.
I've been learning a lot from you, thank you for inspiring us <3
Bebs says
Hi Dottie, Mediavine is an exclusive Ad partner that will take care of filling your site with ad slots and they work with different brands. You do have a say how many ads you want them to place on your site. Mediavine and Adthrive are one of the best (if not the best) Ad partners out there but they do require certain numbers (monthly pageviews/sessions)for you to be able to work with them. But it is all worth it...
Saif says
Hi Bebs
I find your blog very inspiring. I have a food blog based in the Philippines and I am trying to get substantial traffic. I agreed that it is difficult for Non US blogger to gain additional income since most advertisers prefer US based traffic.
If I may ask, how many months or years it took for you to gain huge traffics? I will love to hear from you. Thank you
Bebs says
Hi Saif, I started in 2014 but it was only a hobby blog then. That means I was not posting as often. We reached 20K+ PV in January 2016 then 125K in November same year. That is when we decided I will do it full-time. With that number, we applied to ad networks and got accepted by Monumetric we earned from $300-600.Sept. 2017 we hit the 200K mark and moved to Blogher earning were from $600-1500. Shortly we got accepted by Mediavine at 250K+ PV then in July 2018 we hit the 300K mark and moved to Adthrive.
Ibby says
So you mind sharing how you were accepted by Mediavine? I was rejected the same reason as you earlier. Would love to know 🙂
Bebs says
Hi Ibby, I just kept on trying until they cannot refuse me anymore ;-). When I applied and got accepted I've got over 67,000 sessions of US traffic, which is more than the required 25,000 and I pointed this out. Of course, I was warned that the RPM might not be that high because of my high Philippine traffic but I told them I am willing to take the risk. In the end it was all worth it as they were still able to give me really great RPM.