Blog Income Report for February 2020: How I Earned $27,173.88 Blogging (Last Month)

This blog income report is coming a couple weeks late again, so I’m keeping it short and sweet as I catch back up on everything. Much of my time has still been going into finishing up my blog redesign and auditing my existing content library for update opportunities. Blog income for February came in at $27,173.88. Traffic took a dip, bringing in 270,705 readers and 337,773 unique sessions.

Now, let’s dig into the numbers for February… blog income rose pretty significantly from the previous month, landing well above my forecast range thanks to increased affiliate commissions from my guide about how to start a blog and another consistent month of sign ups for my comprehensive blogging course, Built to Blog: How to Get Your First 10,000 Readers and Earn Six-Figures Blogging.

Overall, I generated $27,173.88 in blog income during February of 2020.

My expenses were slightly elevated for the month with the final payment to my web developer who’s been implementing my blog redesign. Profit for February came in at $18,874.77.

The Forecast 🌤: For March, I’m anticipating a pretty consistent month as far as blog income—expecting to land in the range of $22,000 – $25,000 again. Income will likely remain somewhat consistent in this range for the next few months as I continue experimenting more with traffic driving strategies, auditing my existing content library for update opportunities and weaving in new affiliate promotions throughout my content. March should again be pretty light on expenses as I focus more on internal content updates and getting less new content from my writers.

Now, on to the details of my February blog income report…

Blog Income in February 2020: $27,173.88

In these monthly reports, I track my total income every month, including each individual source of that income, and associated expenses with running my business. This is the good and the bad.

Next, I break down the traffic to my blog which heavily impacts my income, including what’s performing best and how I’m working to drive in more readers. I also cover how many email subscribers I’m at, the number of new subscribers acquired during the month, and what that growth trajectory looks like.

Finally, I cover updates on any other side projects I’m working on for the month.

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Now, let’s do this.

Blog Income Breakdown for February 2020

Expenses Breakdown

Net Profit Breakdown

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Now, on to my blog and email-related statistics.

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2. Blog Stats for February 2020: 337,773 Sessions and 137,450 Total Email Subscribers

February saw one of my biggest declines in terms of traffic and key organic search rankings that I’ve ever experienced, due to consistent Google algorithm updates. Pretty brutal.

However, one positive signal is that almost all of my long-form blogging-related content and guides that’ve been published over the course of the last year are still continuing to climb the first page of search results for their target keyword phrases (suggesting there’s still strong potential this year).

There’s been a lot of volatility with a few most of my competitive search rankings, especially the ones on keyword phrases that aren’t related to blogging and thus have gotten much less attention from me over the past few months. This is a long game though… and I’m continuing to invest in a more strategic, stronger future performance of my blog that’s centered around more profitable content with less dependance on traffic.

What’s particularly interesting, is that I’m now driving traffic to a MUCH larger number of articles (and revenue sources) on my blog, rather than relying on just a couple of key articles to prop up my business. As we keep moving forward this year, diversification in traffic & revenue remain two of my primary areas of focus.

I was down in Sessions from January by 25.34% as traffic took a pretty big hit (and the month was shorter). Pageviews fell to 453,534.

Overall, I’m down 13.69% in traffic year-over-year compared to February of 2019, which is my first YoY decline ever. Still, my most trafficked posts continued to deliver traffic from organic search and my newest content from the second half of last year is climbing in organic search rankings as well. I’m in a pretty positive position considering my key priorities and I’m very focused on my goals.

Here are my top 15 trafficked posts from February, ranked in descending order of which drove the most readers:

• business ideas
• make money online
• freelance jobs
• how to start a blog
• remote job
• business books
• best remote jobs websites
• how to freelance
• motivational quotes
• free blogging sites
• make money blogging
• amazon affiliate marketing
• blog post ideas
• how to name a blog
• how to pick a blog niche

Despite February experiencing a sizable dip in traffic, readers to my 25,000+ word guide, How to Start a Blog and Make Money actually increased a bit—which still holds rankings in organic search for competitive terms like how to start a blog, how to blog and such.

Plus, as more readers land on that guide, more are joining my free course, How to Build a Blog in 7 Days and are offered an opportunity to join my more comprehensive paid Built to Blog course that’ll help them level up their blogging journey even more.

Also in February, I published two new long-form articles for my growing audience of bloggers:

• What is Shared Hosting? 10 Best Shared Hosting Plans in 2020 (to Blog on a Budget)
• How to Start a Travel Blog (and Make Money Travel Blogging) in 2020

A lot of time last month went to updating and expanding my biggest, most important guides—along with fixing the formatting with a ton of content (as a side effect of my redesign).

My plan is to keep publishing in-depth, highly actionable content for bloggers this month—and moving forward into the future.

This is all with the goal of signaling to Google that my site is primarily about blogging and I’m expecting that to keep delivering me more readers looking for tactical blogging advice over the long haul… but I have to keep reminding myself that this pivot in my content topics is a long-term investment 💪

2. Email Subscribers.

I’ve used ConvertKit to manage my email subscriber community and deliver my emails for several years now.

February saw the addition of 2,776 subscribers to my community with my total email list growing to 137,450 subscribers.

This was a pretty sizable drop in new subscriber growth compared to previous months, largely from a combination of seasonal trends and the resulting effect of a few key articles getting less traffic than usual during February (lots of little Google algorithm updates are still happening right now, which sends me fluctuations in organic traffic).

On top of that, I also saw a dip in new email subscribers as I began using a brand new email subscriber verification tool called DeBounce—which guarantees only real, authentic email addresses are used to sign up for my list… thereby increasing the quality of my email subscribers and ensuring that no fake, spam or questionable email addresses are used to sign up for my community. That tool alone has already caught (and stopped) hundreds of suspicious email addresses from joining my list.

Still, many of my new subscribers came from my influx of blogging-related content and free downloads—which is my ultimate goal to keep focused on. Much of my new subscriber growth continues to be fueled by my free course, Build a Blog in 7 Days which is well-optimized for both affiliate revenue—and for offering my more advanced paid course (Built to Blog).

That’s it for my February blog income report.

I’m still on a break from recording new podcast episodes as my attention goes primarily to producing more standout written content (and auditing & updating my existing content library). Once the time is right, my goal is to bring the show back with a new focus and format around providing the most actionable blogging advice out there. Stay tuned for updates on that!

As we covered at the beginning of this report, I’m predicting blog income to remain relatively flat (or dip slightly) during March, landing between $22,000 – $25,000 as my traffic still hovers at lower than usual levels. My focus remains on publishing in-depth blogging content that’ll pay off over the course of the coming months (and years).

If you’re looking for some additional reading to help grow your own blog, I’m always updating my ultimate guide to building and scaling a profitable blog right here that I’d love for you to read 😊