Blog Income Report for October 2019: How I Earned $21,200.09 Blogging (This Month)

October was another strong month for my blog in terms of content productivity. I published 9 new long-form articles on blogging-related topics and updated several of my top-performers. Blog income for the month came in at $21,200.09. Traffic was up significantly again, bringing me 459,996 readers and  561,732 unique sessions.

On the personal side, Shelly and I helped out a good deal with my (future) brother-in-law’s wedding here in the Bay Area last weekend, and we got to spend a lot of time with both our families this month. We’ve been keeping ourselves extremely busy with work and family time, so aside from making more time to get together with friends and hit some afternoon runs through Golden Gate Park, I’ve had my hands full. We’re looking forward to a little downtime before slipping into the holidays.

Now, let’s dig into the numbers… I saw another slight drop in blog income last month, but I landed right in the middle of my forecast range. I still saw solid affiliate commissions from my guide about how to start a blog and another consistent month of sales for my comprehensive blogging course, Built to Blog: How to Get Your First 10,000 Readers and Earn Six-Figures Blogging.

Overall, I generated $21,200.09 in blog income during October of 2019.

I published a TON of content this month, which meant more freelance writers helping me out—and I also kicked off a complete website redesign project (running behind-the-scenes right now), so expenses were up quite a bit. Profit for October came in at $11,367.47.

The Forecast 🌤: For November, I’m anticipating another small drop in blog income as my search traffic still continues to recover from this summer’s volatility. I’m expecting to land in the range of $18,000 – $22,000. As I’ve said in income reports for the past few months, I’m expecting to hover in this general range of blog income as I keep investing heavily in driving up my organic search rankings for a few key guides. Next month’s expenses will also be slightly elevated above normal as I continue my website redesign and keep my best writers busy.

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

Blog Income in October 2019: $21,200.09

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 October 2019

Gross Income

$21,200.09

Built to Blog Course Sales

    $1,587.34

Freelance Clients & Sponsorships

    $0.00

$19,076.08

$13,630.00
$156.40
$0.00
$500.00
$500.00
$181.31
$115.09
$191.93
$2,300.97
$87.00
$0.00
$234.00
$124.92
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$502.62
$0.00
$0.00
$551.84
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00

Carbon Ads

$536.67

 

Expenses Breakdown

Total Expenses

$9,832.62

Web Services – Hosting and Storage

Kinsta
OptimizePress (Renewal)
MoneyTalk Hosting
SmartWP Hosting
The Blogger Source Hosting
Dreamhost
Google Drive
Amazon Web Services
Cloudflare

$661.46

$300.00
$0.00
$10.00
$10.00
$10.00
$43.87
$9.99
$0.00
$277.60

Online Tools & Subscriptions

ConvertKit (Pre-Paid Annual)
Teachable
Bluehost (Test Website)
Adobe Creative Cloud
Calendly
Quickbooks
Zoom.us (Video Conferencing)
Apple (Storage & Apps)
Rev Video Transcriptions (YouTube)

$276.10

$38.16
$99.00
$0.00
$52.99
$10.00
$20.00
$14.99
$30.97
$0.00

Professional Services

Freelance Writers
Wordpress Optimizations
Web Redesign Project
Virtual Assistant
Business Insurance

$8,035.16

$4,147.99
$1,000.00
$2,800.00
$0.00
$87.17

Advertising

Quuu Promote (Pre-Paid Annual)

$126.00

$0.00

Travel, Office Supplies & Misc

iPhone X Payment Plan
AT&T Service Plan (iPhone)
Internet (Comcast)
Health Insurance
Transaction Fees
Office Supplies
Uber and Lyft 🚖

$869.89

$56.16
$105.53
$86.46
$396.34
$40.00
$162.38
$23.02

 

Net Profit Breakdown

Net Profit

$11,367.47

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

2. Blog Stats for October 2019: 561,732 Sessions and 126,042 Total Email Subscribers

Blog Income Report October 2019 Ryan Robinson ryrob GA

After last month’s traffic began to signal a recovery—October really picked up the pace. I’m back over the half a million monthly reader mark I was at earlier this year (indicating I’m starting to recover from the organic traffic dip I experienced over the summer). There’s been consistent volatility with most of my highly competitive search rankings, but meaningful growth still seems to be picking up pace. Much of my traffic growth is due to working hard on publishing a lot of in-depth blogging guides and generating more of my traffic from a higher number of articles—rather than relaying solely on a small number of content pieces to bring in new readers.

I was up in Sessions over September by 15.27%, as my traffic continues to hover at similar figures heading into November. Pageviews increased to 720,705.

Every single one of my most important articles were up in traffic this month (most by double digits)—a direct effect of how much work I’ve been putting into publishing a lot of long-form content related to blogging… the niche I’m choosing to focus my blog on.

Overall, I’m up more than 57% in growth year over year compared to October of 2018. That increase is tied to my most trafficked posts still continuing to deliver strong traffic from organic search and the publishing of more new content that’s climbing the organic search rankings as well. I feel that I’m in a pretty good position heading into 2020.

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

October saw more significant growth in traffic to my 25,000+ word guide, How to Start a Blog and Make Money—which is still holding onto decent rankings in organic search for competitive terms like how to start a bloghow to blog, and other related terms.

Still, as more readers land on this post, more are joining my free course, How to Build a Blog in 7 Days and are offered an opportunity to join my more comprehensive paid Built to Blog course that’ll help them level up their blogging journey even more.

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

I also continued updating some of my most successful blogging-related guides—in order to keep them fresh, up-to-date and as impactful as possible:

My plan is to (again) keep publishing a high volume of in-depth content for bloggers throughout the rest of this year, with the goal of clearly signaling to Google that my site is primarily about blogging and expecting that to keep delivering me more readers looking for tactical blogging advice.

2. Email Subscribers.

Blog Income Report October 2019 Ryan Robinson ryrob ConvertKit

I use ConvertKit to manage my email subscriber community and deliver my emails.

October saw the addition of 6,663 subscribers to my community with my total email list growing to 126,042 subscribers 🎉

This was a big resurgence in new subscribers compared to September, and many of my new subscribers came from my influx of blogging-related content and free downloads—which is my ultimate goal to keep growing. 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 October blog income report.

For November, I’m predicting blog income to dip slightly again, landing around $18,000 – $22,000 as my traffic still rebounds (and the accompanying revenue uptick is often a lagging indicator that’ll show in the next couple of months). I’m seeing more positive signals that my search rankings and traffic are both still swinging back around—and with the introduction of TONS of new blogging-related articles, that traffic will be increasingly landing on better-optimized content.

Another goal for this month is to continue with updating the content in my comprehensive Built to Blog course with brand new lessons, refreshed videos & written lectures and even more interviews. After the updates are complete, I’ll be doing a relaunch of the course and increasing the price as the value is going up dramatically.

If you’re looking for some additional reading to help grow your own blog (on the side), I recently updated my 25,000 word free guide to building and scaling a profitable blog right here that I’d love for you to read 😊

Hi I'm Ryan Robinson

Blogger, podcaster and recovering side project addict. Head of Content at Close. Join me here, on ryrob.com to learn how to start a blog, make money blogging and grow a profitable side business. Be sure to try my popular free keyword research tool & AI article writer tool, as well. 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 and YouTube about our feelings (and blogging, of course).

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30 replies to “Blog Income Report for October 2019: How I Earned $21,200.09 Blogging (This Month)”

  1. Thanks for an insanely bold read! Huge fan of your way of writing things! Keep going!

    Vh Andreas

    Reply
  2. Straightforward! Thanks. I’m always looking forward to three emails- yours, Jon Morrow, and Adam. Keep up with the good work.

    Best,
    Antony

    Reply
  3. These updates are fantastic, Ryan. Thanks for being super transparent and letting us in on all the nitty-gritty—super cool to see exactly how you’re creating consistent success. 🙌

    Reply
  4. Great update once again!
    I’m more than sure the money you spend on content will be multiplied in just few months and you will see an increase in blog income.

    Reply
  5. Hey Ryan!

    I know you increased a LOT your content frequency. I suppose this represents more time, effort and money.

    Have you noticed a considerable increase in traffic or sales? What is the main purpose of this shift?

    Thanks.

    Reply
    • Yes, yes and yes 😂

      There are actually several reasons for the shift (most of them with a long-term growth focus).

      The biggest though, is that I’ve decided to very clearly niche down to only covering just one general topic area on my blog for the foreseeable future (blogging). This is intentional, so that over the course of the next year, all of the new content I’ve been publishing about blogging related topics—as they all slowly rise in organic search rankings and bring me more readers—will translate into having an audience that’s almost entirely “bloggers” and people who want to grow their websites. I’ve got products already built for that audience that I’m updating behind the scenes too, so over the course of months to come… revenue should begin ticking up as a result of my audience (1) growing because of a wider net of “blogging” content out there online bringing more people to my site and (2) that audience being more heavily concentrated with bloggers.

      That’s the working assumption I’m going on 🙂

      Reply
      • Hey Ryan!

        Thanks for your detailed answer as always.

        Maybe for a future blog post, it would be great to know your diffusion (sharing) process of your posts without being spammy.

        Have a great day and keep it up!

        Reply
  6. Always enjoy reading these deep dives, Ryan. Thanks for letting us take a peek behind the curtain (and for churning out all that awesome content!).

    Reply
  7. WOW impressive income.

    i only made about 60 EUR in October 2019.
    I released a new report on my blog.

    Reply
  8. I love how transparent you are about both earnings and expenses. My blog is still at the beginning and you are motivating me to work even more on it. Thanks for all the great advice.

    Reply
  9. I found a few ways to grow my monthly revenue.
    Could you please write a post on “Affiliate Marketing Platforms” that pay for free signup?

    Thanks in advance, Ryan 🙂

    Reply
    • Hey Shahin! Start by checking out my list of the top affiliate programs for bloggers here: https://www.ryrob.com/affiliate-programs-bloggers/

      Not all of them pay for free sign ups (that’s somewhat rare actually), but a couple of them do on that list—CreativeLive being one that has traditionally paid a very small payout ($1 I believe) for free account sign ups, but that may not last forever either. Most affiliate programs rightly pay only when you refer new customers.

      Reply
  10. Thank you for the encouragement. I haven’t reached where you are but I’m sure stuff like this is what keeps me going. Thanks.

    Reply
  11. Great work Ryan, you the man! I think you have the best ‘how to blog’ site out there.

    I have not started my blog, but have anticipated the amount of writing required will be completely OVERWHELMING!

    Can I ask, what do your freelance writers help you to do exactly in your business? Do they write the blogs? Comments? Emails?

    Thanks so much,
    Jay

    Reply
    • Thanks so much, Jay! Appreciate the kind words.

      Writers—with the amount of content I publish on my blog today, it’s more than I can personally write. So I use a small handful of talented writers to work with me on outlining the articles I want to publish (I do all the keyword research) and then they’ll also tackle a first draft. Usually that gets me back an article somewhere in the ~3,000 word range. From there, I’ll typically take over for doing edits, adding in some more content based on my own personal experience, upload useful screenshots/videos/GIFs to complement the written content and generally build out the post into a full guide. At the end of the day, I publish something more in the 5,000 to 6,000 word range with most of the topics I’m covering these days, so a lot of work still goes into an article after I get a first draft back from a writer!

      It’s important to note though, that I didn’t start with this process… for the first few years, everything was written 100% by me from start to finish. That’s a lot of work for sure. It took longer to get new posts published, but that’s ok… don’t let the prospect of writing new content overwhelm you. Find a pace that works well for you, don’t put undue pressure on yourself and work hard at creating a regular writing habit where you sit down each week for a set amount of time to work on your content. It’ll take more time in the beginning as you find your voice and become more comfortable, but will pick up speed as time goes on.

      Reply
  12. Hi Ryan
    I am interested in affiliate marketing and blogging, please assist to participate.
    I have no experience but willing to learn new skills and technology.
    I am a beginner and side hustler, looking for business growth.
    Thank you.

    Reply