Hello again fellow bloggers, for those of you who are new to our site, I’m Sean and I handle the tech and marketing side of I Heart Arts n Crafts.
In our monthly income reports you can expect an overview of our different income sources along with traffic and referral details. I also get a chance to explain what I have planned for the future along with what I’m currently working on. Hopefully you can gain some helpful information or even some inspiration from our Income Reports to start your own craft blog. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you have any questions!
This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy.
Income
Adsense – $113.59
BlogHer – $108.98
Amazon Associates – $11.93
ShareASale – $1.82
Total Income – $236.32
Expenses
Aweber – $30.00
Total Expenses – $30.00
Total Revenue – $206.32
Income Breakdown
For September we saw another drop in our total revenue, from $553.56 in August down to $206.32 for September. Like I stated though in August’s Income Report, this site is still in its infancy and we’re currently in the process of trying out different ad networks to see what ones work best with I Heart Arts n Crafts. The income source that had the biggest drop in revenue was Adsense, which was due to I Heart Arts n Crafts getting accepted into BlogHer. Sadly the revenue we were getting from BlogHer isn’t what we had anticipated, so we may look into switching networks in the near future. You may have noticed too that we had recently tried out a mobile footer sticky ad that we had hoped would increase our revenue, but we noticed it wasn’t really performing well and had some other negative affects on our site. Our affiliate revenue is still pretty low so not much change there, but we should start noticing an increase starting in October.
Traffic Report
Traffic Overview
Referrals Overview
Traffic Breakdown
Compared to August’s traffic, September preformed a little worse but they are still great numbers to see. We also took two weeks off from blogging so to see our numbers stay on average was great. The main reason for the drop was because we didn’t get as much traffic from Facebook, which brought in a little over 21,000 views in August. We already started to hit this nail on the head in October by utilizing Facebook Share days to our advantage. Facebook Share Days are a great and easy way to increase your traffic from social media. Facebook Share Days are just specific days that other blogs allow you to share some of your own posts on their blogs Facebook wall. Sometimes if they like your content they may even pin it or share it later on in the week. Which is a simple way to bring in some extra traffic without much effort.
The main thing that concerned me with this traffic report was how the average session duration had dropped from what it was in August. The main reason for the drop in the Average Session duration was due to the mobile footer sticky ad, that I had mentioned earlier. Our visitors weren’t a fan and I don’t really blame them, those sticky ads can be annoying. So we decided to take the ad out, which will hopefully increase our average session duration for October.
Plans, Closing Remarks, and Some Rambling…
Overall in October we’re hoping to see a bigger increase in our traffic due to utilizing Facebook Share Days everyday. We are also participating in more Linky Parties everyday. Using Linky Parties besides giving you a few extra visitors, can give you the chance to be featured on other blogs which can be great for a nice boost to your traffic.
I also wanted to mention real quick about what we’ve been planning to do in regards to increasing our affiliate sales. We spent a lot of September going through each post and trying to find ways to add affiliate links even if it was just a link to an amazon product. This already seems to be effective as we are seeing an increase in our affiliate sales for October. I also had the chance to put together a couple more articles which will help increase our affiliate sales like our How To Start A Craft Blog post.
Don’t forget to leave a comment if you have any questions or even some advice, I’m always looking for some pointers!
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Nice report. Good job