First Monthly Income Report - October 2016 (The Beginning)

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I love talking about Personal Finance and how I manage our budget and savings. Two months ago we cleared all of our credit card that we used for our wedding expenses and some gadgets that we bought for our online business. Now, we’re back to being debt-free and we're back to focusing on saving for the future. 

Every month I’ll give you an update on my Lifestyle Blog and Youtube channel to show you how it’s progressing and how much I'm earning from it!

Why Publicize My Income Report?

I’ve been wanting to write an income report series on our travel blog but that wouldn't really be relevant or appropriate on a travel blog, so now that I have my own personal blog / lifestyle blog then I’d love to share with you how much I’m spending every month to keep it and how much I will be earning from sponsors, advertisers and affiliates.

Here are three very good reasons for publishing an income report on the website:

1. I want to be able to document the growth of Mr and Mrs Howe.

2. I want our readers to see that it is possible to make money from blogging and how they can do it too!

3. Setting goals and recording your progress and achievements is an important key to being successful.

EXPENSES FOR OCTOBER 2016

Here’s a breakdown on how much money I have invested to start the Mr and Mrs Howe Lifestyle Blog and Youtube Channel: (Everything is either in British Pounds or US Dollars)

  • Squarespace Hosting Platform - $241 for 1 year

I’ve chose to start this lifestyle blog on a Squarespace platform instead of wordpress.org. This costs me $18 per month for the business account as I’m planning to start focusing more on my online shop where I will collect and buy unique items from all our travels and sell them online to our readers. It’s only $216 per year but I had to pay $25 for UK VAT. Squarespace might be an expensive option if you're new to blogging so I suggest getting a self-hosted Wordpress site which you can even pay as little as $3/ month for (more details here).

  • Domain Name - Free on 1st year (20$/ year renewal)

  • Email Address - Free on 1st year ($60/ year renewal)

  • Camera Gear for Vlogging - $ 2,312.71

With our travel blog, I was only using my iPhone6s Plus for everything while Mr Howe has his own DSLR. Now that this is my personal blog, I wanted to start taking my own photos so I’ve decided to invest money in my gears!

Future monthly expenses: 

  • I’ve just hired one full time Virtual Assistant who will help me run my Youtube channel and the vlog. If I were creative enough to edit my videos and design graphics I would do it myself, but I think I’m much better off having someone else do it for me! I also have another one training with me who I hope to eventually hire full time to handle all of the other work for this blog and my other travel blog- Two Monkeys Travel. (We have 4 semi-full time team members on our other blog aside from other writers/contributors)

  • I will be needing a budget to promote and boost my posts on Facebook so more people will see it!

INCOME FOR OCTOBER 2016: 

Nothing yet to declare this month but below are the ways on how I’m planning to monetize (earn money) from my personal blog. 

1. Affiliate Income - I still can’t join a lot of companies' programs because this blog is new and most of them won’t accept me until I reach a decent amount of traffic or maybe after a few months of blogging and vlogging! I will be talking more about fashion and learning how to put make up on for newbies so it will be completely different affiliate marketing campaign to our travel blog. Below are the platforms that I’m planning to join to earn more in the next few months:

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 own 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. Video Advertisers - we plan to do a daily Facebook LIVE VIDEO and get at least one sponsor for each show, just like how TV shows or Podcasts have their “commercial break” advertisers. I just joined the following platform to get me started:

3. Sponsored Blog Campaigns - let’s see how it goes as I need to write more blog articles and my Domain Authority is still nothing. Also unlike our travel blog, I’m not planning to have any other regular writers here!

GOALS FOR NOVEMBER 2016

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.

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 matters the most especially if you want to monetize your website. Below are my current followers:

I love having very specific goals which is 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.

  • Twitter: I love Twitter, especially for networking with fellow bloggers and vloggers! My target for November is to get around 5,000 followers/friends.

  • Facebook: Our travel blog already has 145,000 followers but since this is an entirely different concept, I really hope to get at least 10,000 followers on our Facebook page in our first month.

  • 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!

  • 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!

  • 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!

Ha! A photo of me before I finish writing this article entry!

Ha! A photo of me before I finish writing this article entry!

This is going to be a new thing for me which is different from our travel blog so I hope to document and share all of my experiences with you guys!

Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions for improving this monthly income report or let me know if there is anything you would like me to expand on.

Monthly Income ReportKach Umandap36 Comments