As someone who appreciates brands that practice radical transparency, it’s only fair that I do the same within my business. Lately, I’ve been loving seeing other bloggers’ income reports, specifically By Sophia Lee’s (she is so freaking transparent). There’s something so encouraging about seeing how much others are making in this space and seeing their growth over the years. I thought, hmm, maybe I should wait until January 2022 for my first income report, but why wait?! Starting now will hopefully help me stay on track of finances and help give you a clear view on how we make money over at Thrifts & Tangles. So let’s dive into the October 2021 Blog Income Report.
Some affiliate links are used in this post denoted by an asterisk*. Click here for full disclaimer.
- Growth Tracking & Review – income reports will help me keep track of my expenses and actually force me to review T&T progress on a month to month basis. It’s so important to look at numbers and data, but sometimes that is a task that gets put on the backburner. This information will help me pivot my growth strategy and cut expenses when needed.
- Transparency – being transparent about the numbers will help our readers understand how we make money and what we spend money on. I hope this will help take the mystery out of how to make money as a content creator
- Inspiration – sharing these numbers will hopefully inspire others to start charging for their content creation
October 2021 Traffic Report
- Blog Pageviews: 730
- Blog Unique Pageviews: 503
- Email Subscribers: 706
- Social Media Followers: 27,138
This is to give an idea of where my current numbers are. You don’t have to have a ton of followers to make money as a content creator.
October 2021 Income
- Sponsored Posts – $4100
- Ad Revenue – $64
- Google Ad Sense (YouTube)
- Digital Product – $50
- Affiliate Revenue – $22
- Flodesk* – $19
- Amazon – $3
Total Income= $4,236
October 2021 Expenses
- Services – $978
- PR Manager – $810
- Video Editor – $168
- Digital Products – $492
- By Sophia Lee Mastering Blogging & Mastering Pinterest Course* – $220
- Starter Legal Page Bundle*- $197
- Lovely Confetti Blog Template – $75
- Software – $400
- Bluehost*- $314
- Typeform (surveying influencer rate calculator customers) – $29
- Kapwing (adding captions to sponsored video)- $20
- Mailchimp – $13
- Wetransfer – $12
- Keywords Everywhere – $10
- Google Workplace – $2
- Adobe Creative Cloud* (paid for by my job $52.99) – $0
Total Expenses= $1870
Net Total – $2,366
October 2021 Review
This was an unusual month for me expense-wise.
- I signed up for some free trials for one-time projects, but completely forgot to cancel before getting charged (Typeform, Kapwing, and WeTransfer).
- Spontanoeus Investments – I invested in some courses, a new blog template, legal templates, and a video editor. These were spontaneous splurges, but so worth it.
- Costly renewal fee – I was hit with the annual renewal fee for Bluehost which isn’t cheap.
My main takeaways are I should limit spontaneous purchases, cancel free trials on time, and be prepared for renewals.
