Blog Income Report for August 2020: How I Made $82,866 This Month

Here is my August 2020 Blog Income Report for my blog that I launched 20 months ago in January 2019.

First, if you’re looking to launch a blog and follow my strategies, you can check out my full guide on how to start a blog and launch your blog with Bluehost for just $2.95/month.

Get started with Bluehost. 

Disclaimer: The two Bluehost links above are affiliate links which provide a small commission to me at no cost to you. These links track your purchase and credit it to this website. Affiliate links are a primary way that I make money from this blog and Bluehost is the best web hosting option for new bloggers. You can read full affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

Let’s dive into my blog income report.

1. Blog Income in August 2020: $82,866

I decided I’m not going to publish blog income reports every single month, but only where there are interesting updates or new strategies I implemented.

One of those new strategies I put into effect last month was adding Mediavine ads to my blog. 

Mediavine is an ad network that lets you place their mobile and desktop ad inventory on your website. Much like other ad networks like Ezoic and AdThrive, Mediavine is an upgrade from ad networks like Google AdSense and can help you earn more from your ad views. 

I really like them so far and I’ve outlined some details on this revenue stream below. I’ve also decided to keep them on this post so that you can see what they look like. 

Overall, August brought new highs for my blog in terms of traffic and revenue.

Website traffic increased from 412,848 sessions in July to 484,246 sessions in August. 

Let’s move on to my blog’s income streams. 

Affiliate Marketing Programs:

Overall, I brought in $62,825 from 67 different affiliate programs.

This is a 450% increase compared to August of last year (when affiliate revenue was $11,423).

Advertising Revenue (New)

I joined Mediavine on July 23, 2020, and August is my first full month using them.

So far, I love their platform for a number of reasons:

• You can disable ads on individual posts/pages. For example, on my affiliate revenue-generating posts, I don’t want to potentially lower conversion rates with ads, so I turned them off on select posts. 
• The RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) is much higher than Google AdSense. 
• Their onboarding team was very helpful and friendly. 
• The Mediavine dashboard is very easy to use and you can tweak ad settings with just a few clicks. 

Overall, adding Mediavine ads to my blog brought in $11,550 in August. This is an extra $372 per day for doing no extra work. 

My RPMs are increasing in September, as I hit their 5 million impressions per month loyalty bonus to increase my revenue share from 75% to 80%. 

I recommend that new bloggers join an ad network like Mediavine as soon as they hit the traffic requirements. While this revenue can’t match my affiliate revenue, it brings diversity and consistency to my revenue streams. 

Other Revenue Sources:

• Digital Product Sales: $1,691
• SEO Consulting for 3 B2B Clients: $6,800

Total revenue in August: $82,866

Expenses in August 2020: $9,342

Besides my fixed expenses, I spent some extra money and paid for a Story Clarity Intensive Session with Celinne da Costa.

Celinne helped me write my Forbes article this month and has been teaching me the importance of storytelling when it comes to media exposure and brand recognition. I highly recommend you check out her site.

Here are my expenses for August 2020:

• Guest Post Content $2,700
• Story Clarity Intensive Session $1,250
• Freelance Assistant $1,400
• Blog Content $1,354
• CS Software $350
• WP Engine $318
• Development $300
• Facebook Ads $300
• CPA $260
• ConvertKit $259
• BrandStrong $259
• Ahrefs $179
• Outbrain $120
• BigCommerce $64
• Adobe CC + Stock $62
• Quuu $50
• HARO $49
• G Suite $38
• Cloudflare $30

Total expenses in August: $9,342

Profit: $73,524 (88.7% Gross Profit Margin)

Now, onto some traffic stats and an August recap.

2. Traffic for August 2020: 484,246 Sessions (+17.3%)

Overall in August 2020 compared to July 2020, I increased my blog traffic from 412,848 sessions to 484,246 sessions

Compared to last year (August 2019), sessions increased by 355%.

Here is the monthly breakdown by sessions:

2019

• January: 1,147
• February: 2,055
• March: 7,672
• April: 16,920
• May: 34,261
• June: 46,355
• July: 76,926
• August: 105,056
• September: 133,391
• October: 141,348
• November: 143,705
• December: 178,021

2020

• January: 248,910
• February: 231,524
• March: 303,960
• April: 414,389
• May: 444,461
• June: 383,863
• July: 412,848
• August: 484,246

Ever since I launched my blog last year, traffic has steadily increased, but I hit two “walls” that I had to overcome. The first one was in February 2020 where traffic dipped and then picked back up. The second was near the end of May 2020, when traffic decreased by 10-15% and then picked back up.

I believe that these were due to two Google Core Algorithm updates. It’s always hard to read into these updates and understand what can be done to mitigate their effects. I continuously try to update my old posts and publish better content that matches search intent.

While my blog is still very new, the age of my blog and lower authority than some established marketing sites could have contributed to the two traffic decreases after the algorithm updates. Overall, it’s good to see that traffic has continually pushed through those boundaries.

4. Email Subscribers for August 2020: +2,045

As of August 2020, I have over 35k subscribers on my email list. This is a decrease from my typical monthly numbers. I get over 90% of these from my exit-intent pop-ups and I’m currently testing an affiliate offer on those pop-ups instead.

I’m promoting the BigCommerce Make It Big Conference and am getting paid on a CPL deal. That said (lol), feel free to sign up for the conference via my affiliate link above as it’s 100% free and features videos and talks from some great marketing leaders. Thanks!

5. Tasks Completed in August:

• My blog was featured in Forbes.
• My blog was also featured in Entrepreneur and Business Insider.
• Published guest posts on Chat Fuel, Point Visible, Smart Bloggers, and Form Assembly.
• Published six new articles on my blog.
• Put work into my online course for new bloggers.

That’s it for my Blog Income Report for August 2020.

The purpose of these new blog income reports is to showcase that with the right strategies, it doesn’t take years to make a substantial income.

Thank you so much for reading – I’m very grateful you found your way here.

If you’re looking to launch a blog and use my tactics, you can check out my full guide on how to start a blog and launch your blog with Bluehost for just $2.95/month.

Get started with Bluehost. 

Disclaimer: The two Bluehost links above are affiliate links which provide a small commission to me at no cost to you. These links track your purchase and credit it to this website. Affiliate links are a primary way that I make money from this blog and Bluehost is the best web hosting option for new bloggers. You can read full affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

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