May has been a wonderful month here in Halifax, where I decided to spend most of the summer. We’re staying at a beautiful Airbnb located downtown, so we’ve been exploring the city a lot.
Since I’ve been in tourist and chillaxing mode, I haven’t worked on my business as much as I should have this month. Things have been stagnating for a while and I’m at the point where I need to make big decisions in order to grow.
One of those decisions has been to hire an assistant, and May has been the first month where I’ve had outside help. I’ll go into the whole process as part of this post.
May Income Breakdown
- AdThrive: $4,863.15
- Amazon: $4,860.00
- Linkshare: $176.93
- Shareasale: $1216.65
- rStyle: $1,603.12
- Pepperjam: $119.07
- Impact Radius: $63.26
- Other Affiliate Income: $74.46
- Bluehost: $975
- Sponsored: $900
- TOTAL: $14,851.64
May Traffic
After a boost in traffic, my numbers have gone back down again. I noticed the same thing happened at the beginning of last summer and my traffic has been lower during the summer months. I’m going to take a guess and assume it’s a temporary drop somehow related to the seasons, because nothing else changed.
What Happened This Month?
My income has been hovering around the same number for the last 6 months, and although I’m happy with this number, my goal is always to grow. I haven’t been doing anything new and exciting lately, and it’s time.
I have several ideas floating in my head for new projects, some of which are:
- Growing Rosevibe to offer courses and services! I’m currently making $0 in revenue from Rosevibe.
- Start selling physical products (there are several routes I can take for this to happen).
- Working on my second website which is currently bringing around $3500 in revenue, as there’s some growth potential there.
- Starting more websites, which was initially my plan and almost happened a few months ago. I decided to focus on existing sites (including Rosevibe) instead.
- Getting my feet wet when it comes to apps. I’ve been considering outsourcing to have an app built.
I’m a big advocate of working on big and exciting projects that are going to truly have an impact on my business, as opposed to putting in endless hours on maintenance tasks that only serve to keep your head above the water.
What’s holding me back, then?
This is a question I’ve had to keep asking myself this month, and finding an answer isn’t easy. For one, I harbour a lot of self-doubt. My confidence is like a yo-yo, and I’m also somewhat of a perfectionist. These two things combined (self-doubt and perfectionism) lead me to procrastinate in order to avoid trying. I also struggle with the idea of putting myself out there, which is essential to overcome.
I’m going to have to find an answer to this question in order to move forward and get over the hump.
Affiliate Income
Most of my income comes from affiliate marketing. I’m an affiliate for Amazon as well as multiple networks such as Linkshare and ShareASale, and I’m also on Reward Style — if you want to learn more about the networks I use and recommend, click here for a full post!
I’m a big fan of affiliate marketing revenue not only because it’s great passive income, but also because you can integrate it into your content seamlessly. I’m not an affiliate for any brands or products I don’t truly recommend, and my affiliate links are simply a way of monetizing content that would be on the blog regardless. There are no third-party ads involved with affiliate marketing, and I can manage everything myself which is a huge plus.
Ad Revenue
Ad revenue isn’t my favorite way to monetize. Mainly, this is because it slows down my loading time which has a negative effect not only on SEO but also on each user’s experience. Ads also don’t usually mesh with the content and they’re invasive. Since I’m using third-party ads, this means I have no control over the ads themselves. I might not personally support every advertiser for whatever reason, yet I have to tolerate the ads being on my website.
You can see a screenshot of my ad revenue for May as well as for June, which is the current month as I’m writing this income report. My RPM has gone up considerably in June since I added a (pretty invasive) sticky footer ad to my site. According to a poll, my readers don’t mind the ads too much, so I’m hoping this change won’t have a negative impact.
Hiring An Assistant
I’ve definitely reached the point where I need an assistant in order to be able to grow my online business. This has been a hard decision for me because I want to do allll the things myself! This was quickly becoming impossible, and I was starting to work on my business LESS due to it being overwhelming.
I hired a (virtual) assistant through the mailing list of my main site, which is something I recommend. I wanted someone who shared the same passion first and foremost, since I needed an assistant for that specific website.
I made sure to give an accurate job description and included what type of person, skills, and tasks I’m looking for. I received over 350 applications after asking for a cover letter and resume, and narrowing it down to one wasn’t easy.
I’ve worked with my current assistant for 2 months now, and the process has been more time-consuming than I anticipated. In these early stages, there’s a lot of double-checking and things aren’t running completely smoothly yet.
I’ll possibly write an in-depth post about hiring a virtual assistant in the future if there’s interest.
Using My Mailing List
One big goal I’m having with my main blog is using my mailing list more consistently. I’ve acquired over 30,000 email subscribers and I’ve been aiming to form a better community bond with everyone. An email list is a huge asset for multiple reasons. Using your list to monetize your blog is an obvious one, but you can do much more in terms of building a community, which is my main goal.
Right now, I need to do two things:
- Set up an autoresponder for new subscribers (a series of emails every new subscriber will be getting).
- Come up with an email schedule to follow, for example emailing every thursday morning.
Goals For Next Month
All goals will go in my upcoming income report, since I’m posting this at the very end of June.
Hi Suzi,
Thank you for being an inspiration and a mentor for those of us who want to start an online business!
This post motivated me to start my own project that I’ve been postponing for a while now because I’m also a perfectionist and a self-doubter. I spent the last couple of months overthinking my project so much that at some point I felt no desire of doing it anymore. I think it’s because the more you think of the big vision, the more overwhelming it gets.
So I’ve just decided to do it anyway, and start small.
I also have a question for you: I’m currently working on my site’s structure and I’m searching for ways to implement a feature box on my homepage. I like the ones you’ve implemented both on Cruelty Free Kitty and here, on Rosevibe, so would you mind telling me which plugin/app did you use?
Thank you very much!
Hi Elena, thanks for stopping by! 🙂 I’m so glad to hear you’re finally starting your journey after overcoming self-doubt. As a side-note, I started a blog on ethical fashion and lifestyle last year but it’s been since postponed because I have too many things going on! Good luck with everything and let me know if you have any questions.
By featured box, do you mean the boxes where you can sign-up for the e-mail list at the top? Those are custom made by me, and unfortunately I’m not familiar with the plugins available.
Oh I see, thank you for clearing that up!
Ethical fashion & lifestyle is a great topic and it has started to gain traction with the mainstream public. I’ve seen a guide to ethical fashion brands created by a relatively new publisher become viral – it had over 40k shares! So if you do make the time for it again, I’m sure it will be a hit.
Thank you again, Suzi, and best of luck with all your projects. I can see you’ve worked hard to build all this – which is, again, very inspiring!
X
Hi, Suzy!
Welcome back =) I look forward to the day I take a month to travel to an awesome city and explore, woohoo! I bet Halifax was amazing.
Great income and traffic this month. It’s kinda comforting and inspiring to see that so little comes from sponsored posts or sales of your own product…I’m definitely looking to earn on the more passive side of things with a family to look after!
I have the same self-doubt problem sometimes…I remind myself that it’s ok to make a mistake and it’s better to “be published than be perfect”. The time is NOW to do what we want in life! =)
I’m a reader and I don’t mind the ads at all. I’m testing out more ads like that with Adsense lately, too.
Great job hiring an assistant and I’m sure that with your processes/training manuals in place, it will be easier next time!
I love sending my newsletters on Saturday mornings and love it even more when I get a reply. Tried the auto responder thing and I guess I need to go back to the drawing board…I wasn’t feeling it lol.
Looking forward to June’s report!
Hi Lex! I’m glad you agree that passive income is where it’s at. Thanks so much for all the feedback! 😀
Hi Suzi,
I found you doing a search for how much folks are making on rewardstyle. Curious, because I’ve only been on for 2.5 months, but so far, it’s been awesome.
But what’s funny is this post sounds eerily like something I could’ve written about myself. We are at similar stages in our blogging career but I’m a design blogger.
My stats are a little below yours and also fell back from the March high of 560k page views, but are going back up now due to the addition of a new post. It is def seasonal as folks are out and about more.
My primary income source to date are the three digital products I’ve produced and each one has done very well for me.
However, I totally get the procrastination thing. Believe me; I’m the worst. Really, I am. The ONLY thing that works for me is accountability. Like setting a date and then announcing it to my subscription list. That works. :]
The second product had to be postponed a week due to a flu I caught on vacay in Italy. My product was 99% done before I left, but I was so sick, I couldn’t work for more than a few minutes at a time. Otherwise, I kept to my DEADlines. (because when you get there, you’re half dead, for sure!)
And I too, hate ads or as I call them google NONsense lol and for the exact same reasons you stated. And you’re the first one I’ve seen who’s mentioned how they slow sites down. Horrible. Obviously, these people never look at their own sites! Plus you can’t control what folks see. Do I really want my readers to see ads for athletes foot fungus cream sitting right next to a gorgeous interior? Tackeeeeee.
Oh, and I was also turned down twice from RS before they accepted me and yes, they’re finally catching on that it’s not all about social media. Some of us actually have our primary followings on our websites which is where they’re supposed to be! What happens if insta shuts down and ones entire platform is there? That would be a sucktastic day for sure!
Okay, lots of similarities and one huge difference. I’m sure I’m easily old enough to be your mother or maybe even grandmother. haha!
Nice to e-meet you! I need to go and sign up for your blog!
Hahaha I agree so hard about the tacky ads! Disqus was actually displaying those gross clickbaity ads on my site, and that’s when I knew it’s time to change my commenting system.
It’s awesome to hear from someone who’s in the same boat with blogging and I’m really glad to meet you! Is your main traffic source from search as well? Having products and courses is my next big goal, and I’m glad to hear your digital products are doing well. I checked them out just now and they seem like such a great idea.
Definitely keep in touch! 🙂