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Welcome to my February 2018 Income Report, where I share how I made money online with my blog. February was another great month for FinanceSuperhero, and I’m excited to share the stats with you.
If you’re new to my site, you might be wondering why I share income reports in the first place. I’ll admit, it’s kind of weird, but stay with me – I do have a reason! Here’s the backstory:
I started FinanceSuperhero in April 2016 during a dark time in my life. My day job was frustrating and unfulfilling, I was often bored in my spare time, and I felt like many of my skills and passions were being wasted. For years, my wife and encouraged me to start a blog, so I finally listened.
Despite having very limited technical knowledge of blogging, I bought my domain and hosting with Bluehost and dove in head first. I figured I had very little to lose ($3.95/month, it turned out) and maybe a whole lot to gain.
For months and months, I struggled to gain traction with this site despite publishing 3-4 posts per week for over 6 months. On a good day, the blog hit 100 page views. And if I was lucky, I managed to earn a few bucks here and there from Google Adsense.
I was about ready to throw in the towel completely when my traffic tanked in January 2017, but then I learned about a course that offered step-by-step instructions to grow my blog from scratch into a revenue earning business.
I’ll admit, it was a last ditch effort – but I pushed all of my chips to the center of the table and signed-up for Elite Blog Academy.
Two months later (and one year into my blogging journey), I boosted my traffic from 2,000 page views per month to 50,000 page views and had my first $1,000+ month in earnings. This was all thanks to what I had learned in Elite Blog Academy (EBA).
From that point on, I knew I had developed an online business with great potential. And despite having very limited time most months to develop it, this site has continued to grow.
FinanceSuperhero earned $2,200 in December and $3,000 in January. And if I had given up like I wanted to a year ago, none of this would have happened.
So why do I share income reports? I talk to people all the time who want to start blogging, but never get past the first hurdle: getting it set up!
They’re either: A) too busy B) too scared or C) not sure where to start.
For many true beginners, these are insurmountable hurdles.
This might even describe you.
If so, you’ve probably wished there was someone out there who could just show you, step-by-step, exactly what you need to do to set up a blog – from scratch.
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When you sign up, you’ll get:
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You can sign up to get the free training HERE.
Now, onto the details of my monthly income report!
February 2018 Monthly Income Report: Stats At-a-Glance
February was another great month personally and professionally. My wife and I welcomed our first child into the world, my real estate business continues to do well, and this blog earned a new record high in profits.
Here is a look at the income trends over time:
And here is a look at the key statistics for January 2018 (i.e. what you really want to know):
Total Revenue – $3,026.19
Page Views – 64,648
Revenue Per Page View – $0.047
Total Expenses – $367.62
Convertkit– $49
Boardbooster– $30
Facebook ads- $288.62 (More on this below)
What Worked (And Didn’t) This Month
January is typically a great traffic month for personal finance blogs like this one, so I knew February traffic would naturally take a dip.
However, I didn’t want to just give up and accept that revenue would decline as well. So I brainstormed ideas during the first week of February and created a two-step action plan to boost revenue with fewer page views:
1. Run a series of targeted Facebook ads to drive more traffic to posts with higher affiliate conversion rates.
2. Improve my communication with my email list by adding more value for readers and improve affiliate income.
Generally-speaking, both of these plans were a relative success — though next month, I want to try to do a better job of tracking just how effective these plans are using affiliate sub-IDs.
Driving Clicks, Likes, and Conversions with Facebook Ads
I’m going to be 100% vulernable: I am far from an expert when it comes to running Facebook ads.
That said, I’m going to share two important rules that will help you make sure you’re not just flushing money down the drain on your ads.
1. Don’t boost posts. It’s just a way for Facebook to take your money.
2. Always start slowly with your campaigns and increase your ad spend little by little based upon performance.
By following these two principles, I was able to run a total of six Facebook ad campaigns in February. Here are the details:
. . . and campaigns 4-6. . .
I know the results at the bottom of the graphic above show a total of 7 campaigns, but I’m excluding one campaign from the results because it didn’t go live until late in the day on February 28.
In total, I spent $288.52 on Facebook ads at an average of $0.10 per click. This isn’t a great average, but it is significantly skewed by a few poor performing campaigns – which I turned off once I noticed significant weaknesses in the ad copy.
On the positive side, my two best-performing campaigns, as seen in the upper of the two graphics above, averaged $0.07 and $0.08 per click, respectively.
As I said earlier, pinpointing the exact revenue generated due to these campaigns is a bit tricky. However, here is my best approximation:
Advertising revenue for all campaigns: $56.92
Affiliate revenue for all campaigns: $170.00
Total revenue for all campaigns: $226.92
Total ad spend for all campaigns: $288.52
Total clicks: 2,996
Total revenue per click: $.07
New Facebook Likes: 94
The TL;DR version: if I hadn’t had 4 out of 6 campaigns above essentially bomb, I would have increased my Facebook page links at 9,300% at close to no cost.
I’m looking forward to seeing the relationship between Facebook ad spending and revenue in March.
Connecting With My Email List
A few months ago, I moved my email list over to Convertkit. My goals were to create better automated sequences and improve open rates.
So far, both goals have been successful. As mentioned earlier, I need to do a better job of tracking specific affiliate conversions which arise directly from my email campaigns.
That said, the tracking abilities I DO have available to me showed that I earned a minimum of $1,100 in affiliate revenue directly from email campaigns.
I can honestly say that I’m thrilled to see this improvement – and I hope I can sustain it moving forward!
Review of Goals for February
Things really start to change when you view a blog as a business. For me, I realized that my business needs to evolve with the times. Hanging my hat on what got me this far with FinanceSuperhero isn’t going to work long-term.
Here’s what I aimed to accomplish in February
1.) Grow the FinanceSuperhero Facebook page.
PASS.
As mentioned earlier, the FinanceSuperhero Facebook page received 94 new likes. Shameless plug: follow us on Facebook!
2.) Finish a few more modules in Financial Foundations.
PASS.
Working on this course is a love-hate experience, but I just need to keep grinding and get it done. It’ll all be worth it when it launches later this spring.
3.) Bring in $3,000 in revenue for the second straight month.
PASS.
The goal was to continue to improve conversion percentages, get better at tracking conversions in the first place, and use my email list to generate more revenue without turning off my subscribers.
Goals for March
My blog-related goals for March will remain the same as February’s goals. I have my doubts about being able to sustain this level of performance with such limited time available to devote to blogging (and now that our son was born last week, I find myself with even less time!).
Final Thoughts
Looking back, I’m amazed to see how far this once little blog has come. This website has truly become my pride and joy, and I hope this report can help you build your site into the online business of your dreams, too.
If there is one thing I learned from Elite Blog Academy, it’s that great things can happen to your online business if you do the right things with your time. You can’t do all the things, that’s for sure — so make a plan and follow it day by day and watch the results unfold.
Thank you so much for reading, and don’t forget to sign-up right away for the Build Your Blog Bootcamp and the Elite Blog Academy wait list. You won’t regret it!
Questions: How was your blog income this month? What are you most frustrated with as a blogger?
