1 month of Lifestyle Blogging -- My November 2016 Income Report!
Disclosure: Some links below are our affiliate links.
Hello, guys! What's up? As promised, here's my 2nd monthly income report!
"I'm very goal-driven but I know how to accept failure... learn from it then move on!"
If you didn't read my first one, you can check it out here on why I'm publicizing my income report for this website (MrandMrsHowe.com). If you are following, Two Monkeys Travel, please note that the income report below is only for MrandMrsHowe and excluding our travel blog! Also, excuse my English, my husband who usually edits my articles is not involved in my personal blog. It's just me but finally I purchased Grammarly to proofread and help me with my grammar! HAHA!
GOOD NEWS: 1 month of blogging and I already have 29,004 page views and 14,609 of unique visitors! woohoo! Though most of the views were only at the beginning when I published my first 3 articles then I hibernated and stopped writing because of the work on the other blog (press trip, articles, campaigns etc.)
I know there's huge potential for me to monetize the site if I write more content in the future! What more when I finally do something with our youtube channel!
Hope you'll enjoy my monthly reports and I'm also planning to share more personal finance tips in the next few weeks!
GOALS LAST MONTH - QUICK RECAP! SUCCESS or FAILED?
I wanted to do MORE work on this blog but I FAILED to do it because of visa applications, running errands for our trip and trips arranged before we left the UK again to continue our around the world trip! I hope I can put more effort on this marriage blog soon but I'm brewing more content and videos.
I was also supposed to have 2 full-time employees working for me on this site and my youtube channel but again, it didn't happen and I ended up just keeping my initially part-time social media manager (she's doing full time this December onwards!) and asking for some team members of our blog to part time here (design, research, social media). My Social Media Manager supposed to do my video editing but uploading the file in the UK on my dropbox then sending them to the Philippines (where she is located) then downloading all the clips to uploading them again for my approval just takes ages! IT WASN'T FEASIBLE! The only way I can do my youtube vlogging is for me to edit my videos (I don't know how! HUHU!) or hire someone from Europe or United States.
NOVEMBER GOAL: My main goal this month is to create at least 30 Youtube Shows and start the LIVE VIDEO series on Facebook! Also, we’re hoping that we’ll earn at least a few hundred dollars in our first month with our channels but my main focus for this month is to have more content and get more of our followers from the other blog to join me on my personal vlog. Aside from that, I’m planning to start writing more articles on this website and hopefully write a guest post to at least 15 articles on different websites.
Youtube + Facebook LIVE - 30 videos for November - FAILED! I was only able to upload 3 videos from our Facebook account to youtube.. wait for it! I will get there and I'll do it consistently!
Youtube Subscribers: 0 --> up to 245 subscribers in 1 month! Though I did nothing on it! Hopefully 2017!
Blog Articles - Write 15 personal articles - FAILED, I only wrote 6 ARTICLES.
Guest Post + Pitch - Write 15 articles to different websites - FAILED, I was only able to pitch to one website - POPSUGAR. Yep, I was on a Fashion website (much better if I reach my weight loss goal when I get featured again! Here's my weight loss journey article!)
Statistics Goals - Let’s talk about numbers:
As I told you above, I love numbers (I have a degree in Economics!) and I know basing your success on numbers is not everything, but in the online world, statistics and followers matter the most especially if you want to monetize your website. Below are my current followers and the follower count AFTER 1 MONTH:
Twitter: 158 --> 1,799 Followers. Every night I just started following the followers of our travel blog!
Facebook: 540 --> 6,255 Likes!
Facebook is my favorite social media and I put a lot of effort engaging with our friends, readers and followers! The only problem with it is not how many followers you have but how much engagement and the facebook algorithm is horrible with that! My followers don't usually see it if I post on our page so I had to pay FB to boost my posts since it's their algorithm! I spent around 50GBP for this month boosting our introduction video. Below is our analytics for November!
Our love story video that we boosted on Facebook for November.. it already has 311,316 views / 3,724 shares / 9,700+ Likes and 987 comments! It's our true story but if you won't pay Facebook to boost then not a lot of people would see it.. they have millions of users!
Instagram: 111 --> 430 followers.. we were mostly in London in November until we left on November 23 to start our trip! I think, we now have more photos to share of our brand new married life!
Pinterest: 0 --> 817 Followers and 11 Boards aside from 238! Thanks to my lovely Yvette who is handling this!
SUMMARY OF DETAILS: I love having very specific goals which are the reason why I will be talking more about my law of attraction practice on my upcoming video series so below are my statistics goals:
Lifestyle Blog Page Views – Since it’s my first month of blogging/vlogging, I would like to get at least 15,000 page views. Also, hoping to increase our Domain Authority on the next update, we're currently ZERO. - SUCCESS!!!
Twitter: I love Twitter, especially for networking with fellow bloggers and vloggers! My target for November is to get around 5,000 followers/friends. - FAILED!!
Facebook: Our travel blog already has 145,000 followers, but since this is an entirely different concept, I hope to get at least 10,000 followers on our Facebook page in our first month. FAILED!!
Instagram: Photography is not my strong point, but I just purchased all the gear for me to improve, so hoping to get around 2,000 Instagram followers this November! - FAILED, still not my strong point! Wait until I lose weight, and I will be able to wear a bikini on my photos! HAHA!
Youtube: If we get 1,000 subscribers in our first month then I’ll be the happiest! I’m hoping to get at least 20,000 video views in our first month! - FAILED!! I was lucky to have followers because I didn't upload my vlogging videos as planned. Huhu!
Pinterest: My new VA is helping me design more Pinterest photos, but since I don’t have many blog articles yet, I just wanted to start creating more boards! -- SUCCESS! My VA is amazing!
So, I failed MOST of my NOVEMBER 2016 goals that I set when I started my website. Well, it's either I overestimated my time-management skills and underestimated the workload to handle this site. Though I already have experience with our travel blog, having a youtube channel and another personal blog is equally hard!
Below, I'll list down my goals for December 2016. I will take it easy this time!
BLOGGING EXPENSES FOR NOVEMBER 2016
Here’s a breakdown on how much money I have invested for this month on the Mr&MrsHowe Lifestyle Blog and Youtube Channel. Everything is either in British Pounds or US Dollars. I hope not to spend that much next time because I've already invested a lot of money just for this site! Please note that this is only for this website and I'm not adding the expenses on our other websites, cost of living nor our travel expenses.
629 GBP - DJI Osmo+ for my short video clips and Facebook Live streaming! New video gear again, a fellow blogger and friend made a correct statement when he told me that I kept buying gears but the funny part is that I dont even know how to use them.. he's right, I should learn new skills but it's already late! haha!
114 GBP - Grammarly (yearly payment), Jonathan is getting upset whenever I ask him non-stop to edit my English grammar! It sucks, I'm still having a hard time writing so thank God, there's Grammarly! HAHA!
50 GBP - Facebook Boosting
350 GBP - Virtual Assistant Fees (Social Media Team, content researcher for my future articles )
100 GBP - Making Sense of Affiliate Course, now that I'm moving to lifestyle blogging then I'd want to know how these bloggers are earning (different than travel blogging) so I signed up to Michelle's course, she's popular and making $50,000 / month (yep, per month on her website.) I just got a discount because of the CyberFriday whatsoever!
TOTAL EXPENSES FOR NOVEMBER 2016: 1,243GBP or 1,565 USD
FUTURE EXPENSES would involve:
To hiring a Video Editor from USA or UK where internet connection is better which means higher hourly rate!
I think I already bought and have all the camera gears I wanted for my youtube channel so hoping that in next few months, the expenses would be lower than the last 2 months! You can now also check here how much I spent last month on the blog.
INCOME FOR NOVEMBER 2016:
I was initially hoping to earn few hundred bucks from this blog but it didn't happen because I wasn't able to publish contents needed to properly monetize it!
1. AFFILIATE INCOME
I was only able to join Affiliate Window last month because my traffic is still low, my Domain Authority is still nothing and I only have less than 10 articles on the blog. So that was the only way I could monetize my site. The good news, on my first month and with the above-mentioned situation, I earned:
Affiliate Window - $30 (USD)
I need to have more content so I can monetize the site, it's not as easy like what everyone says.. you can start a blog and passive income will happen! It will take a lot of hard work - creating content, getting your Domain Authority higher and better quality of photos to get the blog earning! It's not also based on how many people are visiting your blog but the quality of your audience. I know you guys are cool!
If you're a new blogger, you always have to declare your affiliate links, like my Disclosure Policy here. Our Travel blog is registered as a Business entity in the UK with our Accountant which means we are paying taxes in the UK. I hope that eventually, I can do that as well with my personal lifestyle blog.
2. ADSENSE
I don't usually like having adverts on our site but everyone is doing it, and it's just another way to have a passive income. This month, I was able to earn 16.97 USD from the three banners you can find on this site!
TOTAL INCOME FOR NOVEMBER 2016: 37.30 GBP or 46.97 USD
Not much but I know we will get there! I just have to fix my focus and a proper time-management! I've learned my lesson last month!
GOALS FOR DECEMBER 2016
We will be away most of the time in December! We're off on a 16-Day Expedition Cruise to Patagonia de Chile and Antarctica from December 06 to 21! We will be out of internet, but my full-time Website Manager already knows what to do with my social media channels and will be sharing our old travel photos and articles that we've written!
What I'm planning to do while we're away is to focus on learning how to edit videos for my youtube channel. I've been filming a lot since I started this marriage blog! We have loads of videos and daily vlogs, but my only issue is editing...we will get there!
Watch out for 2017, for now, let us go on our dream Honeymoon trip!
