Welcome to the second quarterly traffic and income report for Q2 2016( April, May and June) . Make sure you check out previous quarter report or go thought the income report archives starting 2014.
If you are new here - I have been collecting and sharing data for my online success or failures since January 2014, back then my blog was 3 month old and I decided to start online experiment - can someone actually make money through blogging? Now, I know it for sure - yes, you can, but it takes a time and determination. These online income reports helps me to track my success or failures, and hopefully can inspire you as well.
Blog Traffic Q2 2016
Blog traffic for the past quarter has been pretty steady. By now each month my blog gets about 45,000 monthly users, compared with previous quarter it is a small dip by -3.09%.
Blog traffic Q2 2016
I wouldn't say that I'm satisfied getting more than 130,000 users to blog in three months right now, as it is well bellow my overall goals for 2016. In my 2015 year review I did set a goal to attract in total 650,000 users to my blog. Which would be about 162,000 users quarterly. Thus the gap is not huge, it still makes me concerned- will I be able to manage my goal. On average it will ask about 190,000 quarterly users for the next two quarters. Of course, there might be larger traffic gains in following quarters (What I'm looking to have), but a much worst scenario could happen and traffic might drop. Because of that - I'm not completely satisfied with 133,000 users, thus I'm thankful and grateful for having them.
On the other hand, this blog has experienced 118% user growth (that's more than double) during last 12 months, if compared Q2 2015 vs Q2 2016
Blog traffic Q2 2015 vs Q2 2016
From 60,000 users at second quarter of 2015 to 132,000 users in 2016. I would say that's a decent year-to-year growth.
Income Q2 2016
I believe most of the readers are more interested in actual income rather traffic stats, but let me remind you, in online business (If we can call it so) income is dependent on traffic. It might differ niche from niche - there are niches where a lot more money is made from traffic I have. And this is another interesting thing I would love to talk about.
You already know the numbers from the title, but let me cover some details.
Q2 made me a nice revenue of $3,182.23.
Combined RPM from different revenue channels stands at $17.03 for Q2 2016, what is up from $13.01 at Q1 2016. . RPM - stands for earnings for 1000 page views/impression - Reach per Mile.
Q2 RPM 2016
What does it means in short? I received on average $17.03 per every 1000 page views. Since I had about 185,000 page views it totals up in a nice sum of about $3,000. RPM rates are not stable for my blog, they fluctuate month after month, but speaking of Q2 I feel a bit surprised after seeing RPM close to $20. Higher RPM rates means more income. I hope I will be able to keep such RPM rate in future.
Income streams for blog
Q2 I had an affiliate marketing (Amazon Associates, Booking.com) and display ads (Google AdSense). The most money is made with Amazon Associates, then Google AdSense and then Booking.com
Affiliate Marketing:
- Amazon Associates: $2,968,8 (+$596.56)
- Booking: $59.01 (- $16.98)
Display ads:
- Google AdSense:$155.41 (+ $27.31)
Total: $3,183.22
My top performing channel for almost two years already is Amazon Associates. Pretty much of the earnings come from older posts back from 2015 and even 2014. I'm using separate tracking ID's for each year. At Q2 of 2016 I stopped promoting Amazon products in May and June, and they turned out to be one of the most successful months in terms of income. I had a free time to focus on other issues and it still helped me to earn almost 3K from Amazon Associates.
Booking - it's the toughest affiliate I ever have done - 59 dollars are not much, I know, but it' s decent.
Google AdSense performs pretty good, again 155 dollars are not much either, but I call it a free money - which comes pretty easy (slowly but easy), observing a small gains in AdSense is nice.
Expenses
This quarter I spent money on hosting and Facebook Ads.
- Linode: $127.5
- Facebook Ads: $19.97
Total: $147.47
At the start of my blogging career I set up a goal - to break even my hosting expenses by reaching with Google AdSense at least $40/mo, now I can say for sure Google AdSense breaks even not only hosting expenses but also covers expenses on Facebook Ads.
Other Stats:
Twitter: 6,642 followers
Facebook: 1,787 likes (+346)
Flickr: 120 followers (+3)
Email subscriptions: 51
Alexa global rank: 198,448 (-2693)
Goals for Q3 2016
Before digging in for the upcoming goals, let's see did I completed my previous goal for this quarter:
My goals for second quarter (April, May, June) of 2016 - Traffic combined should be at least 120,000...
Income - aggressive goal is to crack $3,000 at the end of second quarter....But, anything above $2,000 and I will be satisfied.
In fact I did complete both of my goals, traffic at the end of Q2 were more than 130,000 users, and I cracked my aggressive income goal and reached $3,000 milestone. I'm pretty pleased.
Now, speaking about goals for the third quarter (July, August, September) of 2016 - Traffic combined should be at least 150,000. Speaking of Income - I will stick with a modest $3,500 goal. It is tempting to set a higher milestone, but in fact $3,500 goal for now seems a bit too high, so I'm always humble in money things. $3,500 would be ideal to crack, but anything above $3,000 and it will be a good result.
