Updated! (November 3, 2017)

Since I published this report last 27th of October, we received our final figures from Blogher for the month of August and it requires us to update this report to reflect the correct one.

Welcome once again to our monthly income and traffic report!

We decided to do this to give you a glimpse into what is going on ‘behind the posts’ at Foxy Folksy and for us to keep track of the developments on our attempt in making Foxy Folksy an income-generating blog. 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.

Foxy Folksy has been up and running since January 2014 but only as a hobby blog. This means I was just posting articles whenever I was in the mood, like twice in a month or so. We only really started thinking that maybe we could make some earnings from it in early months of 2016. You can see how Foxy Folksy was doing in the months from my first income report.

Another thing worth mentioning, I guess, is that we are not in the United States. We are currently based in Germany 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 August:

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and all of the products listed below are products and services I have personally used or still using.

INCOME:

Adsense - $113.30
BlogHer (SheKnows) - ~~$903.51~~ $1,011.20
Youtube - $66.61
Amazon Associates- $47.60
ShareASale - $0
Hostgator - $0 --> this is from affiliate links on the page: How to create a blog

Total Income: ~~$1,131.02~~ $1,238.71

EXPENSES:

Hostgator - $11.84
Boardbooster - $20.00
Monthly Giveaway - $31.73
Food Blogger Pro - $23.25
Mailchimp - $30.00

Total Expenses: $116.82

NET INCOME: ~~$1,014.20~~ $1,121.89

TRAFFIC:

These are actual screenshots from Google Analytics:

TRAFFIC SOURCES:

RPM FOR THE MONTH:

 $6.54

What is RPM you say? Well simply put, it is how much you earn per 1000 Pageviews and you calculate 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.

RPM FOR THE PAST 12 MONTHS:

FACEBOOK : 3,090(up by 516)

INSTAGRAM : 5,612 (up by 27)

PINTEREST : 4,981 (up by 103)

TWITTER : 2,960 (up by 170)

YOUTUBE : 2,239 (up by 434)

EMAIL : 2,480 (up by 424)

August's page views increased by 5.18% from 180,056 to 189,386. It is not a big bump as last month's, but that is ok.
We had a total of 8 posts for August! I know it is below our monthly target of 10-12 posts but it has been quite a busy month at the personal side of my life. At this time, we only had a month to prepare for our move to the Philippines. And now that we are here for exactly over a month (as of posting date), there are still a lot of things to do. I never thought I would ever complain about shopping. But home appliance and furniture shopping almost every day for a month is just too much and we are not even done yet! There are also some house repairs and adjustments needed to be done. Aarrgghh!!! We need a vacation!!!
Income for the month has gone up by 15% with a slight increase in RPM from $5.46 to $5.97! Last month we reported a decrease in (July's) RPM but after getting an updated data from BlogHer, it turns out we actually had an increase from $5.43 to $5.46.
Youtube Earnings is still growing as we add more video on our Youtube channel. Youtube videos can also be a source of income thru Ads from Adsense. Unfortunately, I was not able to add new videos this month...ooopppsss! Yup, too less time...again!
What's new! As I mentioned above, we are now based in the Philippines. There are a lot of adjustments to do and after a long pause from cooking and blogging and a strange kitchen too plus with all my other blogging props and kitchen stuff still on the way (via sea) I am actually having a hard time getting back to the old routine. But slowly, I am getting there, I only hope that it is sooner than later.
What is next! Starting from scratch! I have to rebuild my food blog studio which consists mainly of one or two cameras and a table with some wooden panels on top as a background. I would like to recreate my distressed white tabletop background that I used back in Germany. I already bought some wood slabs, the cheapest I can find, of course! They are called Palochina. It is the kind of wood used for crates and pallets so it is perfect for this project. Also ordered a sanding machine and it was delivered today! Yippee! I should be able to start soon if everything goes well.
Another thing on the agenda is to transfer our site to Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). I learned from a friend and after some reading that this is now a must for websites now if you want to stay in Google's good graces. Actually, some say it is only for sites that collect sensitive information from the users such as credit card and passwords (which we don't do). But I guess if Google likes secure sites then might as well do it.

That's it for now! Until the next reporting!

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.