Hi everyone and welcome to February 2018 Traffic and Income Report.

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.

Here is a recap of from that time up to present:

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 February :

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 - $128.54
BlogHer (SheKnows) - $805.35
Youtube - $73.84
Amazon Associates- $20.13
ShareASale - $0
Facebook Ads - $4

Income from Ads: $1,007.72

Income from Affiliates: $20.13

Total Income: $1,027.85

EXPENSES:

Domain Privacy Protection - $12.95
Cloudways - $9.66 (Try their 3-day free trial.)
Boardbooster - $20.00
Monthly Giveaway - $26.00
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: $133.86

NET INCOME: $893.99

TRAFFIC:

These are actual screenshots from Google Analytics:

TRAFFIC SOURCES:

RPM FOR THE MONTH:

$4.08

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 : 4,659(up by 164)

INSTAGRAM : 6,837 (up by 32)

PINTEREST : 5,628 (up by 85)

TWITTER : 3,698 (up by 129)

YOUTUBE : 5,283 (up by 862)

EMAIL : 5,083 (up by 352)

February's page views declined by 1% from 249,222 to 246,735. Note, however, that February has 3 days lesser than January, so it is not really a decrease rather a small increased in daily pageviews.
Income went up by 17%. Which is good and must be a result of bringing up the matter of the recent decline in income with our Ad network (at the time).
The total number of posts for February is 7. Still below the 10-12 monthly target.

What's new:

We are with Mediavine! I mentioned in the last report that we decided to look for another Ad Network partner to work with because of the dismal income we have been receiving. And as luck would have it, our prayers were answered and we got accepted by Mediavine last April 4, 2018. So we have been actually with them for the major part of April and the whole month of May. I have to say, the best decision ever made so far.

The support is great and I can say that they really look after their publishers.

An example of this is the emails I get from time to time where they give suggestions on how to improve your ad visibility and how can you reach the targets set for optimum earnings without sacrificing your site.

I also love their dashboard, where you can see the performance of each Ad Unit as to impressions, CPM, Fill rate, viewability, and revenue, providing a complete transparency that enables you to decide which one to keep and which needs improving.

Mediavine implements this scoring system that enables you to measure your site's performance and how far (or near) you are to the ultimate target which is Teal. Red is bad, yellow is OK and green is good, but Teal is optimal. Improving these scores helps you get better CPM.

They also show the top 10 pages of your site, and by choosing the recent 3 days you can see which pages to improve as this are the ones that influence your site's score.

Another thing I find really great about Mediavine is the Facebook group where you can connect with other bloggers and people from Mediavine themselves. It is also here where you can get tons of tips and updates on all things blog related.

So if you are wondering how good Mediavine is, let us just say that we more than doubled our income (February vs. May) and it is still improving. That is all I will say for now. Just wait for the April and May income report.

What's next :

At this time we are trying to review old contents and updating or even republish some of them. So you will probably see a lot of old recipes in the next weeks or months with new photos or texts or improving the recipes itself.
We left BoardBooster and moved to Tailwind. But since this post has become too long, that will be for next income report plus the new recipe plugin we now use as we mentioned last time.

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.