March Income Report

Welcome to my second monthly income report! A little over a month ago, I decided to document my journey from zero to business by making monthly income observations, and dishing out all the numbers in these income report posts. I know money is such a loaded topic and my aim is not to boast about sales or anything like that (not that I have anything to boast about just yet), but to shed some light onto the mysterious art of making money with a blog or an online business. Also, it's a way for me to hold myself accountable. So, if you missed last months post, you can find it here.

First, I'd like to give you a little review of what's happened over the last month in my business. March was definitely a turning point for me, although that doesn't manifest itself financially just yet. The turn happened more in my own mindset. After realizing the effect my attitude had on my blog traffic, I was ready to see this more as a business. The biggest game changer last month was joining B-School. I'm sure that a lot of you would want to bitch slap me after you see the numbers below and might not understand my decision to basically go into debt and invest in B-School. All I can say is that I had a very strong gut instinct about joining B-School and I was at a point where I knew I needed massive reinvention in my business. That just seemed the right step at the time, and even though it's put me in an even tighter spot financially at this point, I feel I'm finally on track with building a profitable business out of this blog. So far, I have not regretted that decision.

The biggest mind shift that's grown out of B-school so far is realizing that the blog is NOT my business. What I mean by that is that if I rely on monetizing my blog for my income (sponsored content, advertising, affiliates), I might never make it, because those streams of income rely on heavy traffic. That kind of traffic, however, takes a long long time to build up. So, I've looked long and hard at my strengths and passions and thought about how I could build my business around them. The blog is not going anywhere, but I'm finding ways to compliment the blog with offers that would interest and help you.

I'm very much in an experimentation phase with my business right now. I'm trying to take everything as a lesson, even the failures that occur. I have some very exciting things in the works right now which I'll talk about soon on the blog, but for now, let's talk numbers!

Blog stats in March:

Pageviews (3/1 until 3/31): 61 866 (slight decrease compared to February)

Unique visitors (how many different people visited the site): 17 120 (slight increase compared to February)

Money made:

1. Etsy shop - 237.14€

2. Sovrn ad network - 3.63€

3. Adsense (sidebar ads) - 17.74€

4. Article for Mood - 45€

5. Amazon.com affiliate program - 0€

6. Blog sponsors - 32.22€

7. Hanna's Little Book of Nesting e-book - 9€

8. Embroidered leather watch (sold on blog) - 36.72€

Total: 381.45€

Money spent:

1. Etsy fees - 57.38€

2. Shipping fees - 15.8€

3. Material for e-book - 72.91€

4. Materials for projects - 9.9€

5. eJunkie (shopping cart system for the book) - 4.59€

6. Bluehost (web hosting) - 9.3€

7. Paypal fees - 7.48€

8. B-school tuiton fee - 498.63€

9. Charity donation from e-book - 4.5€

Total: 680.49€

Bottom line: -299.04

Yes, I spent way more than I earned last month. I could've just leave out the B-school investment, but since it is a business investment, I still wanted to include it. Building a business takes time and investments, and I felt that I was lacking a lot of knowledge about doing business online (I'm the worst salesperson for example), and I needed to make some changes in that department. Sure, there are other more affordable programs out there, but you have to go with what you believe in, because the trust in the system is half the battle. So, I chose B-School and am happy with the decision despite it's initial blow to my bottom line.

I spent quite a bit of time over the last month figuring out the best ad networks a craft blogger could use. Turns out there are a lot of publishing networks where bloggers can find sponsored work. However, those are almost exclusively open to US residents only. So, being a blogger in Europe leaves me out of that possible income stream. 

I experimented with Sovrn ad network, and although the cost per thousand impressions (pageviews) is much bigger than in Adsense, it's fill rate (meaning how many impressions actually get served ads) is so low, that I only made under 4€ in the entire month. I don't even know what to think about that. Since Adsense covers the rest of the impressions, I think I'm going to leave it up for another month or two and see if it improves or not.

My Adsense revenue has gone down compared to February due to removing one of the ad units from the sidebar. To be honest, I don't really like serving ad network ads. I'd much rather work with small businesses and blogs that have the same target audience as I do - that would be so much more beneficial to both sides. I did put together a new ad program for the blog, so if you have a small business or a blog, do check it out. In March, Josephine Yarns (Ana and her Mom sell quality, eco-friendly yarns) joined as a sponsor, for example. 

Now, let's get to the biggest disappointment of the month. My DIY home decor e-book. Honestly, I don't even know where to begin. I'm not going to lie, this was a painful blow to take. I didn't invest millions of euros into it, sure, but I was still hoping to make some profit. I put a looot of women-hours into it, and truly tried to make it something worth  the money. Somehow, though, it seems that you are not that interested in it. I talked to a few of you about this subject, and got the feedback that they would see more value in it, if it was an e-course. This was such an interesting thought for me. Would it have sold more, if I had put all the same material onto a members-only site and named it an e-course? For me, the difference between an e-book and e-course is not the depth of content - there are e-courses that cover less than some e-books. It's more about what material fits what format. I thought getting a PDF with all the projects to your computer would be easier for this type of content than for you to log-in to a site every time you want to reference a project. 

Creating the e-book gave me a lot of food for thought, though. Of course, there are more reasons behind the fail than just the format. The take-away for me is to think more about what you would actually be willing to pay money for before I make a product.

On the bright side - I learned how to make an e-book.

Last, but not least, if you've been following the blog over the past month, you know I closed down my Etsy shop for good at the end of the month. I feel very good about that, actually. It's freed up so much mental space for new ideas. I should have let it go sooner, but, I guess I needed the extra time to be ok with this decision.

Whew! I guess that's all I have to say about last months earnings. You're a real champ (or just really curious) if you've made it this far. 

Thank you for sticking around, and let's hope I have a more cheerful income report for you in just a month!

xo. Hanna

February Income Report & Big News

Today marks the beginning of a whole new chapter for me. Remember how I posted about my scholarship video to B-School, Marie Forleo's epic online business school for modern entrepreneurs? Well, I didn't get the scholarship, but my gut told me to sign up, so I had a heart to heart with my husband, and my parents, and decided to make the biggest investment in myself I've ever made. It's a wonderfully scary feeling, but I promised myself I was going to be courageous this year, and that fear wasn't going to stop me. 

So, it's my first day in B-school today. Alumni of the program have said that there's life before, and life after B-school. I'm not quite sure where this journey will take me, but I'm very sure of one thing. I want a life and business I love! I want to enjoy waking up in the morning. I want to be passionate about the work I do. I want the family I've always dreamed of. And the only way I'm going to get there is if I start taking myself seriously, and take action. 

One of the things I've thought a lot about lately is how mysterious making a living off of blogging seems to be. I mean, there aren't many bloggers who are really open about where the money comes from. Well, yes there's advertising, and yes there are affiliate links, and then sponsorships, but how does it all work? Which programs to join, which ad-networks to use, where to get sponsors, how much to charge them, how to grow the audience (besides the "make good content"), and more importantly, how to leverage that audience, what products sell etc etc etc? I want to demystify this for myself, and for you. So, I've decided to start sharing monthly income reports. It's a really scary step, but also a means for me to hold myself accountable, and motivate myself to work even harder to beat last months bottom line.

Now, I know money is a sore topic for some people. And, that for some, making money with blogging seems scammy. The thing is though, if I want to read quality blog content, someone has to create it. And, if someone is putting a lot of effort and time into creating amazing content, then I think it's more than ok if they make a decent living from it. We should ditch the preconceived notion, that a job is when you do something you don't really like in an office. I'd love to see more and more people create a job for themselves using the passions and skills they have. Wouldn't that be a much happier world? So, i hope you'll look at this as a sort of experiment to create a dream life, and you'll cheer me on as I try to figure it out. 

Readership stats in February

Since advertising rates are dependent on the size of the readership, I'm also going to share an overview of how many pageviews and unique readers I've had for the past month.

Pageviews (February 1st - 28th): 64 310

Unique Visitors: 16 259

Money made

1. My Etsy shop - 51.65€

2. Love watercolor art - 17.09€

3. Adsense (sidebar ads) - 23.33€

4. Article for Mood - 45€

5. Amazon.com affiliate program - 0€

6. Modcloth affiliate program - 0€

Total: 137.07€

Money spent

1. Etsy fees + shipping fees - 19.34€

2. Shipping for art - 7.05€

3. Material for art - 6.98€

4. Shipping supplies (wholesale) - 29.96€

5. Clothing labels - 30.82€

6. Supplies for projects - 30.8€

Total: 124.95€

Note: As you see, I invested practically everything back into the business. Buys I regret though are the shipping supplies, which I won't need after I close shop. But, maybe they'll come in handy at a future time.

Net total: 12.12€

Thoughts and future plans

As you can see, my blog is far from profitable at the moment. Something I'm more than eager to change. As you probably notice as well, affiliate programs are not working for me at the moment. I've had the Modcloth banner up for months, and made 0€ through it, so I've dropped it with the new design, and am planning to drop the whole program. It's just not a good fit for the content I create.

I'm still fairly new to Amazon, but at this point not convinced. I've sent people over (I've got close to 90 click-throughs), but no buys which means no money. I'm going to try it out for a few more months and then make my final decision. I've seen it work for others, so maybe I should just tweak the way I use it.

My goal for the coming month is to find new affiliate programs that would better suit the craft blogging niche. After all, I do want all the links I share to be relevant to my content. Do you feel affiliate marketing to be sleazy? Does it bother you when a blogger uses affiliate links?

As for ad networks, thus far I've stuck with Google Adsense, but I'm looking at other opportunities. I just started with Sovrn, so we'll see how that goes.

I've had no interest in my sidebar ads, and haven't actively looked for sponsors either. Sponsorships is something I'm really interested in exploring further, though. I have an ongoing collaboration with PandaHall, but it's free products in exchange for exposure kind of deal, so I'm not making any money with that. What I'm hoping to do is actively seek out sponsors and pitch them myself, rather than waiting for them to come to me. 

My Etsy shop has been a heart-ache for many months now. On the one hand, I'm in love with the idea of designing and creating collections of things and selling them. On the other hand, my business model for my shop is just not profitable. I couldn't make enough money even if I spent all day every day creating and listing new stuff, and all that stuff sold out immediately. That would also mean I wouldn't be able to blog. So, at this point, I'm thinking about calling it quits. There's no point in dragging along something that isn't working, putting my energy and efforts into it when the return-of-investment is slim to non. So, look out for a clearance sale some time in the next few weeks.

A new venture I'm taking on is expanding my blog into e-products, more specifically e-books, and e-courses further down the line. I have a series of books planned for the next few months, and the first one will come out at the end of this week. I'm officially done with all the projects, so all I need to do know is finish editing all the material.

I will be sharing a free project from the up-coming ebook and some behind the scenes peaks with my mailing list tomorrow. So, if you want in on the fun, join the mailing list by clicking on the button below the post, or by filling out the form in the sidebar.

Now, I'd love to hear from you. Did you find this post interesting? Would you love to follow my business story, as I go through B-School and try to make this a real, profitable business? 

If you have any thoughts or insights to share, I'd love to hear them in the comments!

xo. Hanna