Blog Income Report: February 2016

Hello my dears!

I am continuing to do my monthly blog income report, as well as reports of all my expenses and I must say that since I have started to do that I’ve become more organized and my income is constantly growing. So here are some  figures for the past month:

Income: 2351$

• Sponsored posts: 730$
• Brand Ambassadorship: 500$
• L’Essenziale Boutique: 700$
• Affiliates: 140$
• Google Ads: 65$
• Media.Net: 16.48$
• E-design: 200$

So as you can see from the report, great part of my income is now brand ambassadorship. This is something which I have started to do during this month: I have partnered with one brand and I have started to constantly promote them with my blog posts and through my Social Media channels. The difference between such collaboration and usual sponsored posts, that this partnership has a long-term basis and is more effective for the brand. The downside of this income leg, is that I am spending tons of time on promoting somebody’s else brand, rather than on focusing on growing mine and selling my own products, such as E-design and items from my boutique.

Second thing I’ve tried past month was signing up with Media.net – you can see now their banner on the right sidebar of my blog. Since it is based on impressions basis, I don’t expect so much income from it, as my blog still doesn’t have enormous traffic. But I think it will be a good addition to Google Adsense – It has nice and clean layout and is based on the relevant to my blog keywords.

I have done one E-design project in February and I am still keen to get more out of it. I think one of the reasons why it is not really working now, is that potential clients are not really sure on how it will work. So this month I will focus more on explaining how it is functioning step-by-step.

I continue to work as an affiliate with Interior Design Software company, which offers exclusive discount on their software for my readers ( you can see their banner on the sidebar), as well as participate in Amazon affiliate program. Affiliate program for Bluehost brought zero income to my blog, so I am seriously thinking of getting rid of their banners.

The traffic remained on the level of January:

I’ve got 32K pageviews and 18K unique visitors.

The most popular posts written in February were:

10 Unconventional Ways to Use Paint at Home

6 Great Schools to Study Interior Design Online

E-design page

Some simple tips on how to monetize your interior design blog.

1. Network as much as you can (half of my partnerships happen after personal networking). Attend industry exhibitions, always carry with you your business cards, visit showrooms of the brands you want to work with and discuss potential collaboration).
2. Prepare your pitch and send emails. Make a habit to invest at least 30 minutes every day into marketing and promoting your blog. Whenever I connect with somebody on LinkedIn or Twitter I send a follow up email exploring the possibility of collaboration and providing the link to my blog.
3.  Respect what you do and perceive your blog as a serious business. If you have a mentality “I have this little blog where I share my inspirations, but it is still very very small”, you will never be able to make a serious income out of it. Believe that you are a serious and respected blogger. Know your value and make others know it too. If you are just starting- “fake it until you make it”.
4. Visualize your goal. If you want to receive a certain amount of money out of your blog, write it on a piece of paper. What I also do, whenever I receive Western Union payments, I keep the checks and draw an extra zero next to the amount I’ve got – I don’t know how but it is really working (my payments trippled over the last several months).

I am wishing you good luck with blogging, don’t give up and don’t be discouraged. Only those who are consistent and persistent become successful in this field. If you have any thoughts or questions, please share them in the comments below.