June 2020 Income Report

Curious about how bloggers make money online? Read this to find out. Welcome to my June 2020 income report!

Hi friends! My name is Chantal and I’m the owner of this blog, Ironwild Fitness!

I’m a mom of two, a certified personal trainer, and I LOVE making money online.

Before we jump into how much money I made with my blog this month (and how), take a look at these resources and posts I’ve put together for people who want to learn more:

Alright, back to the blogger income report!

PSSST. If you’re looking for a solid Mediavine Income Report, I’d encourage you to read a newer one, like this one!

Why share my income report?

If this is your first time here, you should know why I post these income reports. (If you’ve been following along skip to the breakdown!)

Firstly, these income reports are what got me started.

I started my very first blog about six years ago after reading about ways to make money online. I had just become a stay at home mom at the age of 22, and my husband was only just beginning his career. (AKA – we were poor!)

I had already tried other online side hustles (like consumer surveys) and it just wasn’t making me enough money.

When I found out that I could start my own blog for less than $150 and could make money writing, I was hooked! I love to write!

I was inspired by other online business owners and used one of my favorite bloggers’ tutorials to start my own blog!

Then I stayed motivated by continuous reading income reports throughout my journey.

Now that I am making a very solid but also consistent amount of money (though still humble) blogging, I have set up to encourage other new bloggers!

I aim to be pretty darn transparent about my journey – from what works to what hasn’t – and I think that’s super valuable for other bloggers.

Not only this, but sharing my blogger income report also keeps me accountable.

My only real goal as a blogger has been to improve continuously. I dont set any crazy income or traffic goals each month because I am the type of person that gets overwhelmed and burnt out living that way, so I just look at the small wins each month. ?

The only thing I want is more traffic and more money year over year…

I don’t need to make millions per year – I just need to make enough to justify my blogging journey and supplement my husband’s income. (Though millions would be nice!)

So!

Keeping track of exactly what went well (or didn’t) month over month is helpful in keeping my momentum.

I pay close attention to each little revenue stream, each traffic source, and many other small metrics.

This way, if I don’t see a “win” in one area, I can not only aim to improve, I can also still celebrate wins in other areas.

Anyway – my hope is that if you’re a new blogger or you’re thinking about blogging, these details will help you!

What’s New This Month?

As you know if you read my last income report, my revenue has gone up quite a bit over the last three months or so.

That’s due in part to finally getting into an elite ad network called Mediavine. (So this is basically a Mediavine income report, if that’s what you came for!)

I worked long and hard to get into this ad network because I knew that they pay much better than networks like Adsense or Media.net. (Trust me, I’ve tried them all.)

And while I was originally against ads on my blog, I knew so many bloggers making $500-5,000/ month with ad revenue alone.

And specifically with Mediavine!

I thought to myself, “Honestly, there are way worse ways to make money!”

My blog supports me and my kids, not some corporation or sketchy business! It’s not like I’m selling drugs either!?

Plus, most of the internet has ads, so it’s not like a big change for anyone. Readers are used to it!

But honestly, getting into Mediavine is pretty hard. It took me about one full year of learning and focusing on traffic and content.

It was actually such a long journey that I wrote a big, long, super-detailed post on it. (Find it here.)

But anyway, my income from ads has only gone up month-over-month, which is huge for me!

I was making literally less than $200/month foreverrrr. So I’m happy!

*Sad news for bloggers that were close to that 25,000 session requirement for MediaVine. They just announced that they are increasing the minimum monthly session count to 50,000!

Now that my ad income is solid with an average of just 30,000 monthly page views, I wanted to add another potential revenue stream.

If there’s anything I’ve learned about blogging, it’s that diversification is everything.

Diversification of traffic sources, income sources, and everything in between.

So this month, in an attempt to create a whole new income stream, I joined ZYIA Active.

If you’re not sure what that is, you can read all about why I joined ZYIA Active and see why it aligns with my whole vibe. (Fitness for moms!)

Otherwise, things are pretty much the same.

I tried to post at least six long posts this month. (My theory is that Google rewards posting a LOT.)

I also continued to test various Pinterest strategies (like I always have). But it seems like no matter what I did, things remained consistent as far as traffic.

I guess that’s better than going down!

However, despite having similar traffic compared to last month, my ad revenue actually went up again. Yey!

(You can see the breakdown below. For now, let’s look at traffic.)

Traffic For June 2020

In all of my blogger income reports, I share my traffic for the month. (Traffic refers to the amount of people who visit my blog each month.)

But I have also been focusing on getting more traffic specifically from Google, so I’m tracking my organic clicks BIG-TIME.

This is how I know if what I’m doing is working, yo! Especially since I just started using a new tool (Keysearch) to pick what I writ about.

Here’s the overall traffic snapshot:

I actually had a couple thousand less page views in June compared to May. (I had about 35k last month.)

That’s probably because I broke my site for a few days while trying to improve my page speed. Lol.

And my son broke my computer so I had a few days troubleshooting and feeling sorry for myself.

No, really. My computer is dead and I can’t buy a new one just yet because we’re in the middle of buying a house and I’m not supposed to make any “big” purchases right now.

Writing blog posts on my phone is hard lol!

Anyway, despite my traffic, income is still up again! But first, the SEO update…

Here are my month-over-month results from my SEO efforts:

As you can see, I had a littttle more Google traffic this month over last month. Even though my rankings have fallen a bit along with my “Click Through Rate,” I still got more clicks.

This is because more of my posts are ranking decently vs. just a few ranking really well.

You can see the evidence of that in my impressions! (Google showed my links to users 116,000 times this month – wow!) I really need to improve my CTR! There’s a lot of potential there!

Anyway, from looking at this, I know for a FACT that Pinterest is where my stats fell.

I’m actually feeling a bit stumped on their new algorithm and it’s annoying! I used to get “viral” pins every once in a while and have up to 5,000 page views from them in one day.

Now I consistently get about 800-1000, but I want more! Lol.

I have experienced that every few months, my Pinterest visibility will drop and take a week or two to go back up. (Add that to a broken site.)

I think that’s what I’m experiencing right now, but it is already creeping back up, so that’s good!

I’m just happy it didn’t negatively affect my income!

June 2020 Income Breakdown

This is what you came for…

(? let’s be friends if that reminds you of a Rihanna song ?)

Ebooks / Workout Programs – $50.97

ShareASale – ? – Since my computer is busted, I can’t remember my account info. Waiting on their customer service team to help me!

Inbox Dollars – $4.90

Amazon Affiliate Program – $53.50

Ads / Mediavine – $645.09

Total: $754.46 (+$102.18)

Unfortunately I didn’t have any Etsy store sales or Siteground commissions this month. I love those! Lol. But that’s ok because as you can see, I still made more money this month than last. I’m loving my first Mediavine income report!

Note this is before taxes.

HECK YEAH DAD!

Looking Forward To July!

I’ll admit I’m a bit skeptical about being able to beat this number.

There is one more day in July but there’s also a big holiday – and people tend to be online a lot less on holidays. Plus, our house is supposed to “close” mid-July and we should be busy moving. We’ll see what happens!

I know that since I’ll be going at least a couple more weeks without a computer, I need to focus on other things in order to make it work. Here’s what I’m thinking I can do:

Continue to make new Pins for old posts
Focus on other social media platforms
Maybe get a keyboard for my husband’s iPad? Lol
Book parties and invite people to ZYIA

That’s it! Thanks for reading!