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

We are so late with these reports and we hoping to catch up somehow with the most current month so this monthly report  (and probably the next ones) will be shorter than usual and we would only be giving you the numbers and stats and some inside tidbits.

Expect also that we will be posting the next ones in the following weeks until we catch up and become up-to-date with the latest month. 🙂

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 March :

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 - $135.00
• BlogHer  (SheKnows) - $943.08
• Youtube - $84.49
• Amazon Associates- $33.30
• ShareASale - $0

Income from Ads:             $1,162.57

Income from Affiliates:        $33.30

Total Income:                     $1,195.87

EXPENSES:

• Cloudways - $24.50 (Try their 3-day free trial.)
• Boardbooster - $20.00
• Monthly Giveaway - $23.00
• Total Theme (one-time fee) -  $61.00
• 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
• WP Recipe Maker Plugin annual fee)- $49

Total Expenses:                       $242.75

NET INCOME:                         $953.12

TRAFFIC:

These are actual screenshots from Google Analytics:

TRAFFIC SOURCES:

RPM FOR THE MONTH:

$3.84

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 : 4,837 (up by 178)

INSTAGRAM : 6,598 (down by 239)

PINTEREST : 5,740 (up by 112)

TWITTER : 3,308 (up by 105)

YOUTUBE : 5,818 (up by 535)

EMAIL : 5,350 (up by 267)

• We've passed the 300K-Pageview milestone in the month of March!  The traffic increased by a whopping 22.74% from 246,735 to 302,832. The said increase is brought about by the Holy Week and Easter season.
• Income went up by 16%. However, this is mainly the effect corresponding to the increase in traffic. Our RPM actually went down from $4.08 to $3.84 which is rather disappointing especially since we had a $4.68 RPM for the same month the previous year with a different Ad Network. This was actually the push (or more of a punch) that woke us up and made us decide that it was time to look for a better partner.
• The total number of posts for March is only 6. Yikes!

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.