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Blog Income Report June 2017

June 2017 was an AMAZING month for our blog. We hit a new level with our income that we have been pushing hard for, and it reinforces our goals to take it even further.

Some people think we’re a little crazy for sharing our income reports publicly. It sounds a little strange, I know…

Here are the reasons why we are publishing our income reports for the world to see:

• We are hoping that these reports will motivate other bloggers, both new and established, and help them attain their own income goals.
• This is an easy way to motivate ourselves and keep us accountable for our own business goals
• I have recently started working on the blog full time (beginning of 2017.) Since I am more of a business and numbers guy, this is the exact type of project that I love.
• Reading other blogger income reports over the years have really inspired us, so I guess it is our turn to pitch in. We hope others will find inspiration and tips from reading ours too.

Blogging can be a great way to earn an income, and the lifestyle associated with it is simply amazing.

If you are new to the blog, here is a little bit about us and what we do:

It’s A Lovely Life is a lifestyle and travel blog.  We love to share about products and services that make life better and easier. We love to travel and we do so 150+ days a year as a family, featuring resorts and many family friendly destinations.

Heather is the main writer for the blog, and she has been blogging for over 10 years now. She started writing about budgeting and saving money and gradually transitioned to writing about our lifestyle and travel. She has built this blog to what it is, and she loves every second of it.

I have been a licensed real estate broker for the past 10 years, owning our own successful brokerage. At the beginning of 2017, we made the decision that I would work on the blog full-time because the income potential is so great. I was also not enjoying real estate as much as I used to and we both believe that happiness is important for our family. I learned so much in the real estate world that directly benefits our blogging business, so this was a natural transition.

Just 5 years ago, the climate in the blogging world was much different than it is right now. At that time, there were very limited opportunities for bloggers to make money unless you had an enormous following.

Things in 2017 are completely different. Brands are very excited to work with bloggers to feature their products and services in the form of sponsored posts. Sponsored posts are essentially advertisements, but are crafted in a natural way that is much more effective than standard print and online ads.

For the past 4 years, the majority of our blog income was derived from sponsored content. Each year our blog income has increased dramatically and it shows no signs of slowing down.  As our following and traffic grew, we were able to increase our sponsored post rate and stay very selective in what brands we choose to work with.

Our income has risen to the level that Heather and I can work together, and we absolutely love it! There is no more commuting to work for me (unless we are traveling for a story) and we are able to spend much more time together as a family. When it really comes down to it, that is the most important thing of all!

A few years ago, we started to get involved more with travel blogging, and we are so glad we did! Last year we traveled 150 days out of the year to Cancun (twice), Hawaii, A 19 Day Tour of Florida, A Dude Ranch in Tucson, Aruba, Jamaica, Virginia, Maryland, Austin, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin Dells, Colorado Springs, Park City Utah, all over California, and more.  We were hosted on these trips, and in most locations, we received VIP treatment!

So far this year we have been to Cabo San Lucas, Lake Tahoe, Rapid City South Dakota, The Cayman Islands, and Miami (just me and Ashley). We were slowed down earlier this year because Heather broke her foot, but she is back now!  So, we have some BIG trips planned for the near future that we will be able to share about soon.

While the travel blogging does not contribute to the majority of our income, it is increasing. We feel the travel blogging market is still in its infancy as many resorts and destinations are now beginning to offer payment in exchange for sponsored coverage.

We also have gotten heavily involved in video over the last year.  We film some standard vlogs, travel vlogs, room and resort tours, as well as some short funny videos. We have been hired to do numerous sponsored video content projects over the past year for lifestyle and travel. According to all the research, video will become increasingly important, and we want to be poised to take advantage of that.

Want To Add Video To Your Blog? Here Is Your Complete Guide

Starting in March 2017, we added a major aspect to our business. We began to help other bloggers on a formal basis to increase their income and incorporate travel blogging into what they do. Heather has always had a passion for helping new and fellow bloggers in any way that she can. We decided it was time to organize her knowledge and we introduced the following two free email courses this past March:

• Start A Money Making Blog – Free 5-day Email Crash Course (click the link to signup) – This course was designed for new bloggers to help them start a money-making blog the right way
• Start A Travel Blog – Free 5-day Email Crash Course (click the link to signup) – This course is designed for new bloggers or established bloggers that are interested in the world of travel blogging

So far, the results have been amazing.  Over 14,000 people have signed up since mid-March, and we plan on expanding our marketing considerably in the coming weeks and months. 

The big development for June was the launch of our new premium course, the 30 Day Blogging Fast Track. This is an intensive course that we designed to provide bloggers with exact money-making systems, the steps to dramatically increase their social accounts, and also provide a defined system to drive lots of traffic to their blogs.

The course is structured in a unique way. Each day a new lesson is presented and there is a corresponding assignment/activity that is provided for those that wish to participate. The course comes with a lot of bonuses including access to the VIP Blogging Fast Track Facebook group and those that take the course will also be able to resell the course as affiliates and earn $100 per sale.

To read all about the 30 Day Blogging Fast Track course, click HERE. The curriculum is what we are most proud of. We provide a lot of information in this course, and I really recommend scrolling down the page and reading through the whole curriculum so you can see what is included.

The course is closed now, but we will be opening a new class on the 1st of every month. Sign-ups for the August class will be happening the third week of July. We would love to have you be a part of the August class!

Sign Up HERE to be notified when the August course will be opened for signups

Most of the signups for our free courses come from spending money on Facebook ads and from our site visitors. In the past, we have resisted spending on Facebook ads because we love free traffic (who doesn’t). But, in order to reliably increase signups, we knew that we needed to spend a considerable amount on ads to make this happen.

Facebook ads are a difficult thing to master, but after some trial and error, a LOT of research, and a considerable amount of money spent, we have been able to gradually decrease the cost per new subscriber. We know we need to dramatically increase our email subscriber list in order to hit our future income goals.

Another big addition to our business has been the popularity of our Facebook groups. These groups are quickly becoming vibrant communities that are supportive and loaded with tremendous information.

The Start A Money Making Blog Facebook group now has over 6,500 Members and is growing rapidly. We are running a free 10k Traffic Challenge starting on July 5th that provides daily information to the group on techniques to increase blog traffic. We did a similar challenge in May and have revamped it a little for the July challenge. The main difference is that it is 10 consecutive days of material and tasks as opposed to 30 days (Mon-Fri) in May. We consolidated the information this time around to improve the challenge and the experience for everyone.

The details of the challenge are HERE. By the way, no matter what stage you are in with YOUR blog, I’m confident that you could benefit by joining along in the challenge.

This challenge is run out of the Start A Money Making Blog Facebook group. So, if you are not a member of that yet, you will need to be in order to participate.

In June we continued our progress into the world of affiliate marketing.

We have resisted this area in the past, and for the past few years, we have solely focused on income from sponsored content. 

While we still plan that sponsored content will be a major portion of our blogging income, we realized that we were leaving a considerable amount of income on the table without affiliate marketing added into the mix.

We will continue to increase our affiliate marketing efforts for those products and services we use and find beneficial. This will increase our income as well as help our readers get matched up with things that we know they will love too!

Before we get into the numbers, I want to make it clear that everything we have done can be duplicated by you. Blogging is not rocket science!  You just need some knowledge and persistence and YOU too can duplicate or surpass our results.

So, without further delay, let’s get to the fun stuff.  

Here are our income figures for June 2017:

Sponsored Content Income: $31,848.00

This includes: Sponsored blog posts, sponsored social content for It’s A Lovely Life, paid travel (not just comped), and sponsored content written for other websites

Affiliate Income: $21,857.94

Affiliate income was generated by our participation in the following programs:

• Tailwind
• Picmonkey
• Fiverr 
• Amazon
• Bluehost
• Warfare Plugins
• Grammarly
• Constant Contact
• SEMRush

Course Sales: $44,496.54 (after Paypal and credit card processing fees)

The course sales for June were entirely from the 30 Day Blogging Fast Track – July 2017 class. In total, we had 218 course sales. 168 of these course sales were a payment of $199 upfront (before PayPal & stripe fees.) 50 Students chose to opt for the payment plan which was 3 payments of $85 (before fees.)

The 30 Day Blogging Fast Track October Class is Enrolling NOW until 9/26/17 at Midnight. CLICK HERE to read all about the course.

Check out the information page (it will open in a new tab so you won’t lose your place here) and make sure to scroll all the way down to see the full curriculum. I think you’ll be blown away!

This was our first premium course, so we are very pleased with our first launch. Our goal before we created the course was to provide something of such value that it would be a “no brainer” for those interested in progressing their blogging careers. I’m confident we accomplished that task by providing such an extensive curriculum and also providing some great bonuses.

We priced the course very inexpensively because it was our first group of students. The regular price for the course will be $349+. We will also offer a payment plan for the coming months, but the pricing for that will increase as well.

Total Income June 2017: $98,202.78

***Please note that much of the income listed above has not been received yet. These figures are based on projects committed or contracted during June. Some of the projects have been completed already, and some have not. For the purposes of these income reports, we will recognize the income in the month in which the work is committed or contracted. It also includes affiliate income generated. In both cases, there is sometimes a lengthy delay between these steps and when the funds are actually received. For course sales, some of the courses were purchased using a payment plan. We have not received all those payments yet, but the amount above reflects the amount we project to fully receive. We have left out individual names of sponsors for their privacy.

Here is our Year To Date Information:

January 2017 Blog Income: $28,346.00

February 2017 Income: $29,220.00

March 2017 Income: $37,809.75

April 2017 Income: $26,938.69

May 2017 Income: $36,010.20

June 2017 Income: $98,202.78

Year to Date Income (Jan, Feb, Mar, April, May, June): $256,527.49

Expenses & Blogging Tools that we pay for:

• ConvertKit – Email list service for our courses.
• Facebook Ads – Used to drive signups for our free email courses and build our email list. We spent $9,321.85 in June 2017.
• Tailwind – Pinterest Scheduling
• Revive Social 
• Bluehost – Web Hosting
• Grammarly Premium – helps us with our Grammar!
• Social Warfare Plugin – A premium plugin that makes posts easily shareable
• PicMonkey – Premium version. We use it for video thumbnail editing, Pinterest images, and various graphic design projects for the blog
• Canva and stock images – Paid version
• Video Editing – We have most of our video content edited for us
• Themeforest 
• Pretty Link Pro
• Fiverr – mostly miscellaneous graphic design work
• Google Apps for Business – Gmail, Google Drive, calendar, etc.
• Namecheap & Godaddy – domain registrations
• Virtual Assistants
• Adobe Creative Cloud – We edit some photos here

***For now, we will not detail our exact expenses aside from providing a list of tools that we use to run the blogging business. Please note that we have many additional expenses not reflected in this report that relates to our overall business operations, and are not specific to the blog. Since we have our own company, we are responsible for many other expenses and taxes (health insurance, retirement plans, tax preparation, legal fees, etc) that would be too extensive to document in this report.

From the list above, you can see that our expenses for the blog are extensive. However, many of these tools and expenses are things that helped us get to where we are today.  Over the years we have tried out many additional services and tools that did not work out, but the above list of items is crucial to our success.

We also get asked all the time how we have our business set up. We use an S Corp for all business operations. If you are interested in setting up your own S Corp, C Corp, LLC, or LP we recommend IncFile because they have the best prices around and they are quick and efficient.

We are VERY happy with our June 2017 income of $98,202.78.  Our year to date income of $256,527.42 is an average of $42,754.57 per month.  We plan to increase all these numbers substantially. It would have been nice to finally hit that $100,000 barrier, but we are confident we will hit it soon.

One thing I would like to note is that we turned down numerous sponsored opportunities that were not a great fit for the site this month that would have increased our income even more. At this point in our development, it is very important for us to only work with brands that align closely with our vision. We have learned that even though this may hurt our short-term income, it really helps to increase our revenue in the long run. 

As for sponsored travel blogging in June, we took 2 amazing trips as a family. First, we went to Rapid City, South Dakota, and spent 4 nights there exploring attractions like Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, and much more. Then, we took another amazing trip to the Cayman Islands and stayed in Grand Cayman. Both these assignments were amazing yet so different. We really can’t wait to go back to both of these places.

Here is some of our coverage from these trips:

Rapid City, South Dakota HERE, HERE, HERE, Vlog 1, Vlog 2

Cayman Islands, Grand Cayman HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE

Here are our top blog goals and priorities for July 2017:

• Continue increasing our sponsored post income. We love working with brands to tell their stories to our readers and are really looking forward to some really great summertime posts.
• Grow our email list by 7,000 subscribers this month
• Increase our affiliate income substantially. Since we just started working on affiliate income in March, we are still making improvements every day.
• Launch the August 30 Day Blogging Fast Track Course in the 3rd week of July. The October course is now open for enrollments until 9/26/17 at midnight. 
• If you want to sign up to be notified when the August course will be open for signups, you can add your email here and we will keep you updated on the release by email.
• Book additional sponsored family travel destinations for 2017
• Substantially grow our Facebook groups: Start A Money Making Blog (those interested in starting a blog) and  Start A Travel Blog (those interested in starting a travel blog or adding travel to their existing sites) 

Our blog is our business… a business that produces a substantial income for us and allows us to travel the world to some incredible destinations.  It also provides us access to amazing events that are simply not available to the general public.

As you might have guessed, this makes us big fans of blogging. The best part about it all is that it is a business that requires very little investment to start (only $59/yr or less with our recommended host), no inventory to buy, and can be done either full or part-time on your own schedule.

The sky is the limit for blogging and we would love to help you on your own journey!  There is great information in these free email courses and we urge you to click the links to signup:

Start A Money Making Blog – 5-day Email Crash Course – this free course was designed for new bloggers to help them start a money-making blog the right way

Start A Travel Blog – 5-day Email Crash Course – this free course is designed for new bloggers or established bloggers that are interested in the world of travel blogging

Also, we would love for you to join our Facebook groups.  These are private groups, so click the links to request access:

Start A Money Making Blog – for those interested in starting a blog

Start A Travel Blog – for those interested in starting a travel blog or adding travel to their existing sites

So that’s a wrap for the June 2017 Blog income report.  Follow along each month as we detail our money-making efforts on the blog.  

Remember, this is something that you can duplicate too.  You just need to have a plan in place and the persistence to pull it off. 

We’d love to hear about YOUR blogging journey in the comments below.