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 just moved to the Philippines from 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 September:

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 - $165.53
BlogHer (SheKnows) - $1,068.75
Youtube - $76.35
Amazon Associates- $18.92
ShareASale - $0
Hostgator - $0 --> this is from affiliate links on the page: How to create a blog

Total Income: $1,329.55

EXPENSES:

Hostgator - $11.84
Boardbooster - $20.00
Monthly Giveaway - $0
Food Blogger Pro - $23.25
Mailchimp - $50.00

Total Expenses: $105.09

NET INCOME: $1,224.46

TRAFFIC:

These are actual screenshots from Google Analytics:

TRAFFIC SOURCES:

RPM FOR THE MONTH:

 $6.18

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.

RPM FOR THE PAST 12 MONTHS:

FACEBOOK : 3,351(up by 261)

INSTAGRAM : 5,601 (down by 11)

PINTEREST : 5,104 (up by 123)

TWITTER : 3,017 (up by 57)

YOUTUBE : 2,669 (up by 430)

EMAIL : 3,003 (up by 523)

September's page views increased by 13.54% from 189,386 to 215,028. Another milestone achieved, getting over the 200K mark!!!
We had a total of 9 posts for August! Still below our monthly target of 10-12 posts! I know I am running out of excuses and it is not getting better...(*sigh*) It is actually taking me a lot longer to adjust as I thought it would now that we moved to the Philippines. Plus there are more distractions now like family events, occasions and invites and not to mention a lot of housework to be done.
Income for the month has gone up by 7% but with a very slight decrease in RPM from $6.54 to $6.18! The increase in income obviously came from the increase in traffic but it seems the Ads/brands were not paying that well for this month, thus the decrease in RPM.
Youtube Earnings: As mentioned in the past one of our income sources is our Youtube channel thru Ads from Adsense. To think that we only created only 11 video recipes since we decided to really earn income from it.
What's new! Well, I have my table studio done but my kitchen stuff is still not here! We had to buy some baking pans and sheets just so I can practice with baking with my new gas oven. All my previous ovens were electric. I had to admit that the first time I used it to make the coconut macaroons, I burned the bottoms of the first batch but as I get to know how my gas oven works, I think I am actually starting to like it. I already baked two birthday cakes for my nephews with it and they turned out great- even and moist.
What is next! No HTTPS yet for Foxy Folksy, but we are anyway considering moving to a new host and we might as well get one that offers the transfer to HTTPS for free. Killing two birds with one stone as they say. But we are still looking for a good one that is able to handle our current and future traffic that still affordable.
- We are still targetting to get in with Adthrive. But we do not have the numbers they require to get accepted. They require at least 100k US pageviews and although we have more than 200k PV now, our US traffic is still lower than the requirement. So we are really hoping to increase our page views so we could reach the mark. Another option is to increase the US traffic %. A dear friend gave us the idea of joining Facebook groups that are dedicated to sharing each other's post to their various social media. Armin is doing that now and we will see if it will work for us. We will keep you updated in the following months...

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.