January was an excellent month with earnings coming in at $4898. It’s a great start to the year and an improvement on what was already an excellent December so I’m excited to see if this trend of plus $4000 months continues. January has always been a good month for me for whatever reason so it was nice to see that trend continue.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense – $517 – Yay! I’ve finally cleared the $500 mark with Adsense after months and months of frustration. Unfortunately I don’t think it was because of anything I did… I think it was because people were paying more per click for ads relevant to my sites which led to higher earnings. My click through rate and number of visitors were largely the same as always.
- Affiliate sales – $777 – Travel insurance comes through again. It’s been a pretty steady earner for me but I’d like to push things above the $1000 mark steadily. I’ve got no plan up my sleeve to achieve this but it’s on my mind.
- Advertising – $3566 – I had a bunch of renewals this month and a flurry of new ads towards the end of the month. I’ve got a lot of different advertisers and SEO companies on board now and many seem to come back to me with new partners they need to find ad spots for, which is pretty great for me! I guess as time rolls on, this will continue to grow which means lots of contacts which is good for business.
- Ebook Sales – $35 – Blah.
Spending Breakdown:
I spent $1168 this month, mainly on outsourcing for articles with a hefty chunk thrown in for content for my Africa site that’s on the horizon. This site will start to become something I spend more regularly on as I start to get things going. I also outsourced a custom install for a forum which was money well spent.
- Domain Renewal – $7 – Just what it says.
- Content Outsourcing – $300 – I’m starting to pull together country guides for my Africa site which will be a costly but, hopefully, rewarding investment.
- Link Building Services – $206 – These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using.
- Article Outsourcing – $430 – All of this money went towards articles for link building.
- Coding Outsourcing – $220 – I had the guy who designed the miniBB message board install and customise it on my Kigali website. I decided to go this route to save me time and to get things exactly how I want them. It makes sense also because I’ll have him install it to my Africa site when that’s ready but, since I’ve had all the tweaks done for the Kigali site, the next install will cost a lot less but will still be exactly what I want.
- Ebook – $5 – Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
I’m really pleased with January coming in at almost $5000. It was a surprise for sure but I, once again, had advertisers coming at me out of nowhere. I spent a lot this month but will tone things down in February, I think. I can’t keep spending so much if I want to pad my savings a bit. I have a lot of expensive plans in my future including short trips to Haiti and Norway. Unfortunately, as much as I love Kigali, it’s not the cheapest place in the world to fly from!
February doesn’t have many link renewals lined up so I’m nervous of what the month could have in store for me. I’ll try to keep my spending on website stuff to under $700 and hopefully February will surprise me.
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