$21K April/May/June 2020 Craft Blog Income Report

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In this post, I’m sharing my April, May, and June 2020 blog income report. It was a tough decision to put this sensitive information out here in the public but a lot of people were interested in finding out how blogs make money so I decided to share this anyway in order to help those thinking about starting a new blog to earn an income from home. 

Also, with these income reports, my goal is to break some myths about things like page views, and the number of followers. I’ll talk more about this later.

 

In this report, I decided to combine the stats from the past three months. I had been planning on publishing the report for quite a long but just didn’t get the time. 

 

Here’s a quick summary of my craft blog business income from the past three months.

• April: US$10,710
• May: US$4,980
• June: US$5,290

If you’d like to learn MORE about making an income from craft blogging, feel free to sign up for my blogging tips email list below. 

 

April Summary

Income Breakdown:

• Products: US$ 9,500
• Affiliates: US$ 800
• Ads: US$400
• Etsy: US$10

Total income from both the blogs: US$10,710

Expenses

• Hosting service: US$36
• Mailerlite for email marketing: US$75
• Adobe Stock photos: US$19
• SendOwl checkout app: US$25
• Giveaway app: US$45
• New computer: US$3,000

Total expenses: US$3200

April Goals:

• Make $20,000 from course launch – FAIL as I almost made $10,000
• Grow email list to 15,000 subscribers – FAIL as I was only able to get 13,000
• Double pageviews to 60,000 – FAIL as I had to focus on my course launch.
• Get accepted in an elite ad network – SUCCESS 

April was a huge month as I launched my signature course, SVG SUPERSTAR, this month which doubled my blog income for the month. It was one hell of a crazy month because I was waking up early in the morning almost every day hosting live series for 15 days which took up a lot of energy and time. 

My entire focus for this month was on my course launch so I barely got the time to share new posts on the blog.

However, I did spend time sharing my blog posts on Pinterest and Instagram to keep the traffic above 30K so I could qualify for the elite ad network that I had been wanting to be a part of.

Thankfully, this month I accomplished the goal and got accepted in the ad network. Their minimum requirement for pageviews is 100k however since I was already signed up with them using my previous blog, Sew Some Stuff, I was able to get my new blog in on just 30k pageviews. 

I spent the month of March trying my best to get to the 30k mark and luckily I closed off the month with 30.6K pageviews which qualified me for the ad network membership.

I had been dying to get into the elite ad network for two reasons:

1. I was completely fed-up with Adsense as they kept on penalizing my site whenever there was a surge in pageviews. Secondly, Adsense ads were pretty difficult to manage because I had to manually disable them on certain pages. 
2. Another reason is that the elite ad network pays much better than Adsense. 

I made a HUGE investment in the month of April by upgrading to a powerful Desktop computer.

For the past 5 years, I had been using an HP laptop and it’s speed was driving me nuts. With the money coming in from the course, I took the plunge and immediately bought the new computer and I’m SO GLAD I did because it has made SO MUCH difference to my efficiency. And I feel less frustrated as I don’t have to deal with the lag.

Even though I didn’t make the amount I set the goal for, I’m still happy as this was my FIRST five-figure month just ONE YEAR after starting this new blog. 

May Summary

Pageviews: 

• Cut N Make Crafts: 48,000
• Sew Some Stuff (old blog): 47,000

Income Breakdown:

• Products: US$ 3,500
• Affiliates: US$ 600
• Ads: US$850
• Etsy: US$30

Total income from both the blogs: US$4980 (almost $5000)

Expenses

• Hosting service: US$36
• Mailerlite for email marketing: US$75
• Adobe Stock photos: US$19
• SendOwl checkout app: US$25
• Giveaway app: US$45
• Blog content: $300
• Giveaway prize: $100

Total expenses: US$600

May Goals:

• Take the month off 
• Make US$5,000 by promoting already existing products

I took the month of May off in order to energize after the huge launch in April. Waking up daily early in the morning and hosting the lives really drained me out. Also, in May we had the Holy month of Ramadan (for Muslims) where we fast for 30 days straight and at the end of the month we have a celebration called Eid. So, I took the month off to focus on my spirituality and spend time with the family as well.

But, I wasn’t completely out of office, was popping in every other day to check on the new students that joined the SVG SUPERSTAR course. 

Even though I took the month off, I still made US$4980, HIGHEST compared to all the previous (no-launch) months. This is ONE REASON I LOVE my work. There’s so much room for growth with minimum effort. Like, I barely worked for an hour every day yet made more than what I usually made in the previous months.

If you’d like to learn MORE about making an income from craft blogging, feel free to sign up for my blogging tips email list below. 

June Summary

Pageviews: 

• Cut N Make Crafts: 51,000
• Sew Some Stuff (old blog): 59,000

Income Breakdown:

• Products: US$ 3,800
• Affiliates: US$ 350
• Ads: US$1100
• Etsy: US$40

Total income from both the blogs: US$5290

Expenses

• Hosting service: US$36
• Mailerlite for email marketing: US$75
• Adobe Stock photos: US$19
• SendOwl checkout app: US$25
• Giveaway app: US$45
• Blog content/giveaway prizes/craft supplies: $1300

Total expenses: US$1500

June Goals:

• Double the pageviews to 100k – FAIL
• Publish a new blog post every day – FAIL
• Launch the new e-book “The Ultimate Life-Saver Vinyl Guide for Beginners”- SUCCESS
• Release 50 new SVGs for the Etsy shop – FAIL

I had two major goals for June; one was to publish my new e-book “The Ultimate Life-Saver Vinyl Guide for Beginners” and the other was to increase my pageviews to 100k. Guess what? I did not accomplish any of these goals due to my research paper.

To increase my pageviews to 100k, I tried something new in June. I spent around US$1,000 on content from other bloggers. I wanted to stick to my goal of publishing a new post every day to keep up my traffic while I was working on my research paper. 

However, I couldn’t get much out of this crazy content shopping spree because June is always a slow month in the craft blogging niche as people are busy outside, enjoying summers with their families. 

My Pinterest traffic reduced significantly this month due to summers which also contributed towards the failure of accomplishing the 100k pageviews goal.

I take this as a wake-up call once again, to NOT focus on pageviews as they are the MOST unreliable thing in the world when it comes to making consistent income.

I published 13 new blog posts this month which slightly paid off as I was able to grow my ad income by $300.

Half of this month was spent on doing my research which means I was blogging part-time this month. So, I’m pretty happy to see that by just working part-time I was able to make US$5k+ this month, highest out of all the no-launch months. 

HOW DID I MAKE $20,980 FROM BLOGGING IN THREE MONTHS?

The answer is straightforward and I’m not going to lie. All this is thanks to the one and only Elite Blog Academy. 

I can’t describe in words HOW MUCH this course has helped me for the past couple of years in making my dream to earn an income from home come true. 

Prior to enrolling in this course, I had NO IDEA about HOW to make a sustainable income from blogging.

Honestly speaking, I’m good with techy stuff BUT I suck at developing strategies. I needed a step-by-step plan to guide me in the right direction. Before I enrolled in Elite Blog Academy, I was relying on tips from other bloggers who SEEMED to be doing good in the online world, and guess what, NONE OF THESE TIPS worked for me. 

Once I enrolled in Elite Blog Academy where Ruth Soukup (the founder of EBA) shares HER VERY OWN blogging success masterplan highlighting step by step the things new bloggers NEED to do to earn a sustainable income from their blog, I was able to FULLY understand how this blogging thing works. 

The course taught me the importance of having a STRONG email list and as you can see from my income breakdown above, the sole source of my income was (a) my list of 7k subscribers (b) my Instagram account.

I SOLELY used my Instagram account to grow my list to 18k subscribers in just 14 months. 

But where did I learn about growing my list? Elite Blog Academy. Thanks to this course, I grew my old blog’s list to 25k and now 18k in just a couple of months.

Elite Blog Academy ALSO taught me everything about Pinterest. Thanks to the strategies covered in the course, my OLD blog still makes me around $450 per month with LITERALLY zero efforts.

Elite Blog Academy also helped me change my focus from growing my pageviews to building my OWN products and as you can see from the revenue above, thanks to this mindset, I put all my efforts into creating a product that my audience wanted and it actually paid off. This is proof that you CAN make a full-time income from blogging even if your pageviews are less provided you have a strong social media following. 

GOALS FOR JULY 2020

• Get 5,000 new email subscribers
• Finish Instagram course
• Publish 4 new Instagram articles
• Launch The Ultimate Life-Saver Vinyl Guide for Beginners
• Add 20 new SVGs to the shop
• Double Etsy sales

If you’d like to learn MORE about making an income from craft blogging, feel free to sign up for my blogging tips email list below.