January 10, 2016 Career December’s Numbers WOW! I just realized I completely forgot about these posts in the craziness of last year. Sorry about that! I’m hoping to be more regular about these this year, so today I’m sharing my November-December growth and my income report from December. Traffic dropped off a bit in December, but November’s was really high. I also was sort of lazy after Christmas because I was spending time enjoying my family and relaxing. My lack of posts and social media probably attributed to the drop off. Plus, I think most people are hiding out between Christmas and New Year’s and not doing much work or looking online as much. So, without further ado, the December income report … AFFILIATE LINKS — 38% Affilate links made up a good chunk of my income this month. This is what I got paid out this month, not what I earned this month. I’m guessing that in about 3 months, this will be higher due to holiday shopping affiliate payments coming through. • Bluehost • RewardStyle • VigLink AD NETWORKS – 2% Ads continue to be one of those things that continue to bring in a little bit of income, but nothing major. Lijit is working best for me and I don’t have to do anything special, just drop in codes! I also use Mode, but have seen little to no money come in from that which is a bummer. Maybe I shouldn’t have switched… • Lijit • Mode Media SPONSORED CONTENT & COLLABORATIONS — 52% I got paid for several collaborations this month and also completed a bunch of last minute collaborations around the holidays. For me, this type of content still brings in the most money. This also includes social media sponsorships! • Collectively • Pop Pays • RewardStyle • Direct Collaborations PRODUCT SALES — 0% My minted sales only pay out quarterly and I got paid in November, so nothing new here this month. • Minted PRE-FAB SALES — 8% This was a low month for pre-fabs, but I bet this month is higher with the New Year starting. TRAFFIC My traffic in November was really high. I launched my holiday gift guide and a bunch of gift guides that month. There were also Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales which helped to drive a lot of traffic to the site. My traffic was still higher in December than it was in October, but November’s inflated numbers made for a decrease in pageviews and uniques from the previous month. Overall, traffic is growing steadily and that’s good! Pageviews: -16% decrease Uniques Visitors: -15% decrease Referral Traffic: Pinterest & Facebook SOCIAL MEDIA Instagram is my biggest and fastest growing social platform and drives a lot of sales via LikeToKnow.It. Pinterest is still by far my biggest driver of traffic, so I’m always happy to see that growing! Also, these stats will be inflated because the last time I wrote down my social media numbers was in September (eek!). I’ll try to be better about this in the new year! Instagram: 42% increase Pinterest: 10.5% increase Twitter: 3.5% increase Facebook: 10% increase Bloglovin: 10.5% increase Newsletter Subscribers: 10.5% increase GOALS FOR NEXT MONTH • Get Ahead! I’m taking some time off from designing and with my extra time, I’m getting ahead on scheduling blog posts. The biggest benefit is that I can look forward to what’s coming next month and plan my content early enough! • Increase Blog Income: Part of my designing break is to see what else I can do to grow my blog’s income. I know it won’t happen in a month, but I’m looking for ways to increase this in my spare time!
