I earned a pretty sweet $4400 in June which was much more than I was expecting. I didn’t have many link renewals lined up for June and I though that would really hurt me. But, as always seems to happen, a few more people came at me out of the blue and propped me up this month.
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense – $590 - This was my best Adsense month so far and, as usual, I haven’t really changed anything. My newer sites that are made pretty much just for Adsense still haven’t started ranking so it’s not that. My London site did remarkably well this month so I guess I just got lucky with some higher paying keywords. I had a couple of $35 days too which was nice.
- Affiliate sales – $688 - Things slumped a bit this month here. I’m still earning decent amounts from three main insurance affiliates and I’m happy with that but I need to diversify a bit more. The problem is that adding affiliates and giving it the attention it needs in order to earn takes a lot of time.
- Advertising – $3066 - Without too many renewals lined up for this month I was expecting the worst but was surprised. I have a couple of really big deals this month along with my usual monthly earnings.
- Ebook Sales – $56 - Eight sales.
Spending Breakdown:
This month I spent $835 which actually took me a bit by surprise when I totaled it all up. I thought I’d spent much less this month than last but turns out it was more. My spendings were spread across a bunch of different types of things so maybe that’s where I lost track. I’m still happy as long as I spend under $1000 a month but still do everything I need to do.
- Content Outsourcing – $265 - I added another couple of Africa country guides and some transportation info.
- Programming Outsourcings – $90 - A bit extra for my Google Maps plugin to be finished as I kept thinking of new features I wanted it to have. Money well spent!
- Theme – $69 - I bought a WordPress theme to use on my charity bike ride site.
- Domain Renewals – $40 - Had to renew some old domain names.
- Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
- Article Outsourcing – $160 - I outsourced some articles to Linkvana and Build My Rank.
- Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
I’ve been a bit lazy since I got back from my travels. I’ve been working a lot on my Kigali life site but that’s really more of a hobby right now than anything else. It doesn’t earn anything (yet) but it’s super useful for people who are coming to live here (or already do) and it’s a great feeling when people know the site and say it’s helped them.
I really need to get my biking site finished and I’ve just volunteered myself to build a website for a street kid’s home here in Kigali so that’ll be time consuming as well. My Africa site is the one that always seems to get pushed to the side but I really need to get onto it. I think the sheer size of that projects is making the whole thing super scary. But I’m slowly gathering info and it’s likely that I’ll take a trip to somewhere soon to write some of my own content as well. I’m thinking Senegal right now but we’ll see what happens.
July has some ad renewals lined up but I also had one of my monthly subscription payments canceled so that’ll be over $200 that I can’t count on anymore. But I keep getting surprised with new emails so we’ll see how things go.
Full control of the economy is very important, both to see where the revenues coming from and where spending goes. You have really management to break down the financial posts to a good control position.
Kristy, do you have any problems with google, running both adsense and paid links. I am doing really well with adsense, but i am kinda scared to run paid links. i do not want to jeopardize my traffic with penalties. also, how are your sites doing, did you get hit by panda? Thanks!!
nice , the adsense earnigs improved after the panda update
Just wanted to say that I love your monthly budget posts. I am a huge econ geek so I enjoy all the figures!
Keep up the great work Kirsty. Again the good karma comes through for you. I don’t know how you do it, but you always seem to land big advertising deals every month.
If you want to get the Africa site going sooner, I think you shouldn’t always limit your spending each month. Think how much an extra $500/month investment into that site would help.
It is great to see these numbers holding up month after month, I can only imagine how sweet it must be to arrive at such a level
I’m slowly getting in to gear and seeing promising results now I have settled on a place to base out of for the foreseeable future “Chiang Rai”
Now all I need to do is work half as hard as you have done
Hey thanks for this post from now on I will also try to keep record of my earnings and spending’s…
thanks for posting and keeping us updated with your monthly earnings
june earnings were the best as panda brought very targeted traffic ..
Hi Kirsty,
I am busy having a site developed (in a completely non-competing niche). would you be able to pass me the details of your plugin developer as I need a google maps plugin built as well.
Dear always hope for best, you did really good earning, only try to find out new ways for your blog promotion and social media participation, i am sure it will be helpful for earning….
Great to see another good month for you Kirsty, these reports always inspire me to keep going and reach your levels!
-Jean
Wah… I really love reading your blog post Kirsty . Especially when you post your monthly earning..
Thanks as usual for posting your monthly earning. It’s definitely good to see you do so well and give us something to aspire to also.
Your breakdowns are always great Kirsty! Do you like Linkvana or just have been using them and found nothing better? I see ads clearly brings in the bucks for you but I remember you wanted to focus more on some affiliate sales on you niche sites, how is that going?