Ever wondered how much money I’m making? This covers July, August, & September of 2017. As I’ve said previously, I really enjoy reading similar reports and figured sharing my own would entertain someone and also keep me accountable to keep track of these things. You can read my previous income reports all here. I am looking at average daily visits, income/expenses, subscriber & follower counts, traffic in/out, & goals.

If you’re a creative blogger yourself, be sure to check out my list of links for affiliate programs, networking opportunities, and places to submit your work!

If you like these income reports, I’d love to hear what you think in a comment or your support shopping through my affiliate links 🙂

{This post contains affiliate links, indicated by an asterisk*. Please refer to ‘legal stuff’ in the top menu for more info.}

Average Daily Visit Count

July: 1,981

August: 1,920

September: 2,038

Following along the same trend as 2016, slowly picking back up at the end of this quarter.

Subscribers

[June 2017 vs October 2017]

Instagram [1723/2500]

Facebook [1643/1655]

Twitter [777/789]

Pinterest [8271/8754]

Newsletter (1838/2051]

So, next year I think I’m going to track things in percentages, but for this year I’m going to keep limping along and just have the numbers. Similar growth patterns, with the exception of Instagram.

I participated in an Instagram “loop giveaway” and tracked the results, as you can see above. I didn’t track specific engagement numbers but I can tell you that I saw a big bump right away after the burst in followers, but now as I write this in December, am getting almost lower engagement than I was back before I started this. Maybe it has something to do with an algorithm, change, I don’t know. Bleh.

Money

Income

As always, a reminder that I record income as it’s received as opposed to when it’s earned! As I share at the bottom in reflection, other life issues prevented me from taking on as many sponsored posts but the good news is that the ad money and affiliate money was ‘passive’ – it kept earning even after I had posted the posts, without any additional work.

Last quarter, I sold over $518 of this product via an Amazon affiliate link*, earning me $41. Second highest earner? This fun set*, from this post.

Expenses

Nothing notable here, just needed supplies and my newsletter fees.

Rough estimates:

Total in: $2915 Total out: = –$274.99 Quarter Overall: $2640

Year to date=$8150 Life to date= $26872(note, none of this takes taxes into account)

Traffic In/ Out

Out

1. imaginegnats. People love my beanie hat post; lots of clicks over to her free pattern!

2. Affiliate window – this is the program I use for Etsy affiliate links; most popular were this paper pieced bear pattern*, this babywearing sweatshirt pattern, and this nursing sweatshirt pattern*.

3. Pinterest, my favorite. Same as q2, people have checked out my cardigan pattern roundup, this board of Swoodson Says patterns, this free hat, & my refashion board most often.

4- Share a sale – the program I use for Craftsy affiliate links; most popular were this pair of socks pattern* that I don’t remember linking anywhere and this monster quilt* (I reviewed it here!).

5- This last one is embarrassing; it was for google drive. I shared the templates for this ornament and this ornament there in a hurry, and never went back to add them to my shop, until recently after 600+ people have downloaded them. What a missed opportunity to get them on my newsletter! Hindsight is 20/20.

In (Referrers)

1. Pinterest — most popular pins were tips for thrifting, the easiest way to transfer an embroidery pattern, 4 free headband tutorials tested, and free headband patterns tested.

2. Search engines

3. Facebook

4. All Free Sewing – most popular including my bag organizer zipper pouches and my serger cover (that has awful pictures, I need to redo that!)

5. Applegreen Cottage, who has linked me in several round up posts like her DIY kids toys post!

Reflection

I shared my 2017 goals in this post; I think I’m doing pretty well so far, hitting all my “keep it up” goals. I’ll say this in q4 as well, but we had some major life upheaval that took up huge chunks of time towards the end of summer and through to the end of the year, involving selling our house, living in temporary living space, and spending what would have been the busiest month of sewing and blogging, packing.

I’m not thrilled that there wasn’t a huge improvement, and even a bit of decline in income from q2, but I guess I should be glad that my blog has chugged along and earned me some of the ‘passive’ income that I’ve always been aiming for, while life got in the way.

Big goals

-Be earning $1000 a month by the end of 2017 (so close!! My monthly average is $880 for this quarter)
~~-Have at least 2 new products/patterns for sale in 2017~~ (done! Christmas Baby Blocks and Hipster Teddy)
-Improve SEO (I started using Moz.com’s free tools to be more strategic about my post titles. I need to go back and work on SEO of old posts still).
-I’d like my monthly traffic to be at 90k a month on average by the end of 2017 – I picked this number following that I had a 74% growth rate for this year, which projected out to about 88k by the end of this year
-hit 10k on Pinterest (Close! Want to follow me? I think this is possible).
-hit 5k on Instagram (there is NO WAY this is going to happen. I have a new strategy in mind, but it is not a priority for me this year to implement.)
~~-Set up an auto responder to welcome people to my newsletter when I hit 2k subscribers on Mailchimp and have automation services. (One message sent out, can improve, but done at least).~~

Medium goals

-Set up a lead magnet to grow my newsletter by June 2017 (Failure. I keep dithering about what to use. New deadline – September).
-Figure out what I’m doing with Craftsy (have a few random free patterns up, haven’t emailed any of those folks who downloaded them in a while) (Not yet.)
-go through all old posts and clean up, add in new relevant links, make sure affiliate links are do not follow, update pinterest pictures (This has happened slowly as I share old content).
-be more intentional with IG posts, – posting DSLR photos more infrequently vs. regular iphone shots that aren’t as nice (More or less, working towards this and trying to share progress pictures on ‘stories’ instead).
-set up more collaborations – both with other bloggers and sponsored posts with fabric shops (Yes! I have a fun blogger week coming up in July and am working on two more sponsored posts soon).

Keep it up goals

-Continue my regular re-pinning and promotion of old content (organized quarterly) (yes! loving my new system)
-Continue weekly newsletters & at least once a week blog posts (yes!)
-Post a minimum of 1 roundup post per month (mmmm nope. I have had several sponsored post opportunities pop up that bumped these down my priority list, but this is a good reminder to change that).

Did anything surprise you? Let me know if there is anything I’ve left out, you know I’m an open book.

2017 Q3 Income and Traffic Report