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Blog Income Report for August 2020: How I Earned $45,473.20 Blogging (Last Month)

August was another very successful month for my blog and the second highest in terms of revenue generated for this year, which I’m especially grateful for, considering I was on vacation for most of the month. Income came in at $45,473.20 and I brought in 320,767 readers—with a solid 398,916 unique sessions.

Now, digging into the numbers for August… blog income remained at a sustained level, again landing pretty far above my forecast range thanks to increased affiliate commissions from my guide about how to start a blog, and another month of increased enrollments in my comprehensive blogging course, Built to Blog: How to Get Your First 10,000 Readers and Earn Six-Figures Blogging (enrollments are still open if you want to join us 👋).

Overall, I generated $45,473.20 in blog income during August of 2020.

Business expenses remained fairly low again, but I kept my freelance writers stocked up with articles throughout the month, so that my content pipeline remains fully planned out for the next several months still. Profit for August came in at $39,518.74.

The Forecast ☀️For September, I’m expecting blog income to drop a little bit from the highs I’ve been at these past few months, landing somewhere in the range of $34,000 – $38,000. Income is likely to hover in this general range over the coming months as I continue benefiting from relatively steady traffic and spend more time updating up my existing content library. My business-related expenses will also remain steady (possibly lower) as I dedicate more of my resources and time to supporting important causes and organizations that I care deeply about.

Now, on to the details of my August blog income report…

Blog Income in August 2020: $45,473.20

In these monthly reports, I track my total income every month, including each individual source of that income, and associated expenses with running my business. This is the good and the bad.

Next, I break down the traffic to my blog which heavily impacts my income, including what’s performing best and how I’m working to drive in more readers. I also cover how many email subscribers I’m at, the number of new subscribers acquired during the month, and what that growth trajectory looks like.

Finally, I cover updates on any other side projects I’m working on for the month.


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Now, let’s do this.

Blog Income Breakdown for August 2020

Gross Income

$45,473.20

Built to Blog Course Sales

    $2,310.80

Freelance Clients & Sponsorships

    $0.00

Affiliate Earnings

Bluehost
Elementor
Kinsta
Dreamhost
HostGator
Liquid Web
Namecheap
HubSpot
CreativeLive
Amazon (Business Books)
Udemy
Flexjobs
Shopify
SolidGigs
Survey Junkie
ConvertKit
Skillshare
Teachable
Adobe
Bonsai
Stencil
Contena
Food Blogger Pro
OptimizePress
Visme
Wix
WP Rocket
Weebly
Hunter
Automattic (WordPress)
Consumers Advocate
A2 Hosting
SiteGround
GeneratePress
Twinword Ideas
Novashare

$43,597.91

$21,850.00
$306.60
$0.00
$14,497.73
$500.00
$0.00
$134.22
$750.00
$51.27
$152.50
$176.23
$1,864.02
$139.67
$625.70
$0.00
$107.29
$50.00
$0.00
$0.00
$362.13
$0.00
$339.55
$62.80
$198.00
$0.00
$0.00
$7.35
$0.00
$0.00
$243.38
$611.95
$0.00
$0.00
$61.18
$70.83
$0.00

 

Expenses Breakdown

Total Expenses

$5,954.46

Web Services: Hosting and Storage

Kinsta
SmartWP Hosting
RightBlogger Hosting
Dreamhost
Google Drive
Cloudflare

$506.20

$300.00
$25.00
$25.00
$42.93
$9.99
$104.00

Online Tools & Subscriptions

ConvertKit (Pre-Paid Annual)
Teachable
Bluehost (Test Website)
Adobe Creative Cloud
Calendly
Quickbooks
Zoom.us (Video Conferencing)
DeBounce (Email Verification)
Simplecast (Podcast Hosting)
Apple (Storage & Apps)
Frase (Appsumo Deal)

$305.95

$0.00
$99.00
$0.00
$52.99
$10.00
$15.00
$14.99
$0.00
$15.00
$29.97
$69.00

Professional Services

Freelance Writers
Technical Consultant
WordPress Development
Rev (YouTube Transcriptions)
Business Insurance

$4,187.25

$3,100.00
$1,000.00
$0.00
$0.00
$87.25

Travel, Office Supplies & Misc

AT&T Service Plan (iPhone)
Internet (Comcast)
Amazon (Office Supplies)
Health Insurance
Transaction and Processing Fees

$954.34

$116.08
$89.91
$216.98
$400.42
$130.95

 

Net Profit Breakdown

Net Profit

$39,518.74


Now, on to my blog and email-related statistics for August.


2. Blog Stats for August 2020: 398,916 Sessions and 150,264 Total Email Subscribers

Google Analytics Screenshot (August 2020 Traffic) Blog Income Report ryrob

August saw a meaningful decline in traffic from July, due in a large part to constant volatility in search positions (fueled by multiple little Google algorithm updates). Several of my key organic search rankings rode a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs throughout the month, but overall traffic hovered at a lower than usual level. Nothing to be overly concerned about as a measure of volatility is the norm, but I’m pushing out some updates to several of my most important long-form guides over the coming weeks to freshen them up a bit.

A consistently positive signal I’m continuing to see this year though, is that almost all of my long-form, blogging-related content I’ve published over the course of the past couple of years are still continuing to climb higher up the first page of search results for their target keyword phrases (suggesting there’s a lot of strong potential for growth for my blog). I’ll be the very first to tell you that this is a long game… and I’m still investing more than ever into strategic content that’ll lead to stronger future performance around more profitable topics (with less dependance on traffic to a small number of articles).

I was down 14.36% in Sessions from July as traffic declined quite a bit during the month. Pageviews also fell by 15.16%.

While I’m by no means panicked about traffic trends yet, my blog is down 13.55% in traffic year-over-year compared to August of 2019, which was a very strong month that year. Still though, my most read articles continue to deliver healthy traffic from organic search—and my some of my best, newest content pieces (all less than 1 year old) are consistently climbing in organic search rankings. I’m in a positive position considering my key priorities and focus on increased revenue from existing traffic throughout this year.

Here are my top 15 most trafficked posts from August, ranked in descending order of which drove the most readers:

All in all, August saw a downward trend that I’m now working hard to try and course correct with a combination of new content & updates to existing articles—though much of the volatility is from frequent search algorithm updates and isn’t fully in my control. Readers to my 25,000+ word guide, How to Start a Blog and Make Money remained sustained though—which still holds rankings in organic search for competitive terms like how to start a bloghow to blog and such. As usual, when more readers land on that guide… more are joining my free course, How to Build a Blog in 7 Days and they’re offered an opportunity to join my more comprehensive paid Built to Blog course that’ll help level up their blogging skills even more.

Also in August, I published three new long-form articles for my growing audience of bloggers:

The majority of my time spent on content these days is still going towards updating and expanding my most in-depth, high-traffic guides on an ongoing basis—but I’m keeping up a steady rhythm of working on new long-form content with the goal of still releasing at least a few new articles every month. My plan is to keep publishing more in-depth, highly actionable content for bloggers this month, and moving forward into the future.

This is all with the continued mission of signaling to Google that my blog’s niche is clearly focused around blogging and I’m expecting that intense focus to keep delivering more readers looking for tactical blogging advice over the long haul… and I frequently need to remind myself that this is a long-term investment 💪

2. Email Subscribers

ConvertKit Email Subscribers August 2020 ryrob Screenshot

I’ve used ConvertKit to manage my email subscriber community and deliver my emails for several years now and I absolutely love the product.

August saw the addition of 3,266 subscribers to my community with my total email list growing to 150,264 subscribers.

This was a meaningful drop in subscriber growth compared to July, with a few key articles getting less traffic than than they’d received in the past few months (due to the many Google algorithm updates, which send me some fluctuations in organic traffic), so new subscriber growth has taken what looks like will be a short-term dip.

As with previous months, most of my new email subscribers came from the influx of blogging-related content and free downloads I have across my site (like my blog business plan, blogging books, outreach email templates and blog post templates)—which is my ultimate goal to keep focused on, as that’s the niche I’ve doubled down on serving and want to keep providing valuable free tools & resources to my audience.

Much of my new subscriber growth continues to be fueled by my free course, Build a Blog in 7 Days which is well-optimized for both affiliate revenue—and for offering my more advanced paid course (Built to Blog).

That’s it for my August blog income report

I’m embracing my freedom to work a little less these days, and it’s been a welcome (new) mindset that I’ve really enjoyed. That means I’m still on a break from recording new podcast episodes as my attention remains on publishing impactful written content (along with updating my existing content library). Once the time is right though, my goal is to bring the podcast back next year with a fresh focus around providing the most actionable blogging advice out there.

As we covered at the beginning of this report, I’m predicting blog income to drop a bit again in September, landing between $34,000 – $38,000 as I see continued fluctuations in affiliate payouts that are tied closely to the ups & downs in traffic I’ve seen this summer. My main focus still remains on publishing more in-depth blogging content that’ll pay off over the course of the coming months (and years).

If you’re looking for some additional reading to help grow your own blog, I’m always updating my ultimate guide to building and scaling a profitable blog right here that I’d love for you to read 😊

Hi I'm Ryan Robinson

I'm a blogger, but I'm not my blog. I am not my business either. Occasional podcaster and very-much-recovering side project addict. Co-Founder at RightBlogger. Join me here, on ryrob.com to learn how to start a blog and build a purpose-connected business. Be sure to take my free blogging tools for a spin... especially my wildly popular free keyword research tool & AI article writer. They rule. Somehow, I also find time to write for publications like Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Next Web, Business Insider, and more. Let’s chat on Twitter (X?) and YouTube about our feelings (and business, of course).

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12 replies to “Blog Income Report for August 2020: How I Earned $45,473.20 Blogging (Last Month)”

  1. Hey Ryan.

    Thank you for the breakdown. Really mind-blowing that affiliate marketing can be so profitable.

    I think one of the major reasons for your success is the kinds of articles you publish: Long and detailed.

    Between, do you think a beginner should follow this path of long article cause I just finished writing 10,000 words article and that took me 7 whole days to come by or should they focus more on long tail keywords?

    Once again, great achievement. Following and will come back for more.

    Reply
    • Thanks for the kind words! Long and detailed have always been helpful for my site (and the content topics I cover), but I do think it pays off to start with publishing something shorter first if it’s easier for you to get that out… and then committing yourself to returning & making that content more in-depth over the coming weeks, months, years. I’d also recommend pursuing a mixture of long-tail and competitive search terms, because over the longer-term, you’ll want to eventually compete on the bigger search terms, they’ll just take more time to start ranking for.

      Reply
  2. can you please show us how much traffic you got from start of you website.
    and how much visit you got from google all these years.

    Reply
    • Hey Walid! As of right now, 22 Million people have come to my blog since I started out about six and a half years ago. Over half of those readers have been within the last two years though, so the pace is picking up a lot and about 75-80% of my traffic is pretty consistently from Google 🙂

      Reply
  3. Thank you so much !

    I am very inspired by you but I am not able to write such long blogs.
    You explained everything amazingly. I am learning from you.
    Thank You once again.

    Reply
  4. i started a website in 1st of April 2020, this is my all time analytics stats:
    Users: 158,557
    Sessions: 817,263
    Pageviews: 2,496,510
    google/organic: [Users: 125,566, Sessions: 687,354]
    Alexa Rank: 140,281

    is this good?

    Reply
    • Yeah, that’s extremely impressive for results within just your first 5-6 months! Especially since most of your traffic is from organic Google search… those are very quick results. Well done, keep up the great work!

      Reply
  5. Hey Ryan,

    Thanks for another awesome report. I have been able to obtain my first commissions following your advice. It feels AMAZING to receive those email notifications 😉

    I see you recently created a new YouTube video. Do you have any plans for your YouTube channel? What is your opinion between blog posts vs videos for content creators?

    Thanks and keep it up!

    Reply
    • Thanks for the support, Pablo! And really awesome to hear that YOUR work is paying off, I’m super honored to have played a small role in helping you get there—you’re the one that put in the real work. That’s awesome.

      YouTube—yes, absolutely! I plan to keep publishing more videos that go side-by-side with my long-form written content (as I have the time and energy to do it), though I find that creating a video from start to finish is a more draining process for me than publishing a long-form written piece, so I tend to spend most of my time on the blog content first. There’s definitely a benefit to be had by putting out great, useful YouTube videos that go along with your content though… I think it’s a very worthwhile investment, especially if you enjoy doing video!

      Reply
      • “Creating a video from start to finish is a more draining process for me than publishing a long-form written piece.”

        TOTALLY AGREE!

        I have postponed creating videos because I feel I don’t have enough knowledge and have no budget for professional editors. I will begin with the resources and skills I have right now.

        Let’s share experiences in the next weeks!

        Gracias amigo!

        Reply