It’s time for our first income report of the year!

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in January

The theme of this income report will be “growth” and we’ve seen plenty of it across all fronts.   This blog is just over a year-old now and it’s so exciting to be able to reflect back and see how much we’ve grown.

How much exactly?  Last January 2012 this blog had 1,604 visitors.   January of 2013 we had almost 10,000 people visit this blog (9,983 to be exact).

That’s a 522% gain.  How’s that for growth?!

On Good Financial Cents I didn’t have nearly the % gain, but I did have a nice increase.  If you recall, my blog was still feeling the effects of Google’s Panda/Penguin update and I only had 60,000 visits last January.   (I say “only” because I once was over 100k visits per month).

This January I had my highest traffic month ever with over 160,00 visitors coming to the blog.  Bada-bing!

I wish I could take all the credit, but a lot of the traffic was a direct result of Mandy doing her Pinterest magic to some of my blog posts.

You can read more that on our post “How my husband failed at Pinterest“

Either way it’s nice to feel like I’m finally in good graces with the Big G and my traffic is back.

House of Rose is a Power House

Time for a honest confession.   Since my blog has always (now used to) had the most traffic and made the most money, I always felt like the blogging powerhouse in my household.

Well, that is starting to change and perhaps already has.

Mandy has seen some crazy growth with House of Rose over the past year and with some of her current projects she’s working on, I don’t see that letting up anytime soon.

We’re still trying to figure out ways to monetize her blog, but; as you’ll soon see, she’s not doing too bad.

Curious to see how much her blog has grown, I looked at her traffic last January and compared it to present day.  (Click on picture below to see larger view)

In January last year she had 15k visits to her site.   This year she had 232,000.

I normally don’t use the term OMG, but I think it applies here.  OMG!

 I knew her traffic had grown, I just hadn’t realized how much.

So yes, the teacher has now become the student.

FYI, we initially shared the pictures above on our Facebook fanpage.   You are a fan of us, right?  🙂

On to how we did…..

Here’s a look at the numbers for January

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $1,635.84
• Adspeed: $1,423,25
• Commission Junction: $1,009.29
• Flex Offers:$3,686.86
• Direct Advertising: $839.33
• Media Net:  $752.17
• Consumer Track: $462.00
  • Total: $9,808.74

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $43.46
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme): $57.42
  • Total: $100.88

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $124.87
• Flex Offers: $638.18
• Direct Advertising: $535.00
• Media Net:  $65.14
• Main Niche Site Revenue:$3,489.37
  • Total: $4,852.56

• BlogHer Ads: $292.42
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts: $75.00
• Direct Advertising: $290.00
• Adsense: $578.79
• Lijit Media: $27.87
• Content Ads: $266.53
• BlueHost: $1,170.00
  • Total $2,700.61

• Equifax: $300.00
  • Total: $300.00

Total Revenue for January: $17,762.79

Revenue Last Month: $18,572.57

• Difference: –809.78
• January 2012: $6,878.52
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  

What Happened in January

What a way to start off 2013.   While our income went down from December, it was only off $800.   Plus, last month I included part of my book advance which makes this months income level that much more impressive.

Continuing with the “growth” theme for this report, I though it would be neat to show our income report numbers from a year ago to compare how much we’ve grown.  In our January 2012 Income Report, we made $6,878.52.   Almost half of that was some direct advertising deals that paid up front for the entire year.

House of Rose contributed  a whopping $47.76 to that number.   The last time I checked that wouldn’t take care of the bill of the Rose family heading to Chili’s on a Friday night.

Compare that to her total this time of $2,700.   Go baba!  🙂

What’s Next?

Our next post will showcase a new feature that will be doing here on the blog to give back to our readers. Stay tuned for that.

The next BIG thing we’re looking forward to getting off the ground is our podcast. Luckily, Pat Flynn has this awesome post that talks about How To Start a Podcast that I’ve relied heavily on. He and Jaime Tardy from Eventual Millionaire have been helpful in getting me off the ground.

I will say that even with their help, there’s a still a ton of work involved just getting everything setup. I feel like I’m learning how to blog or film a video for the first time again.

I had been talking about starting a podcast since the middle of January, but I hadn’t even bought the equipment yet. Remember the video where I talked about Paralysis by Analysis?

Yeah, I was stuck in the exact place.

Two things helped me:

1. Accountability:  I told Pat and Jaime that I was going to buy the equipment by the end of the week.  They held me to it.
2. I Bought the Stupid Equipment:  I could keep telling people that “I’m going to start a podcast” for months, but nothing was ever going to get done until I went to Amazon, added the stuff to my cart, and hit the “Place My Order” button.

Now the equipment is setup (still need to do a test run) and we have our first interview scheduled for March 19th.   Progress baby!  🙂

Side note:  If you have any bloggers that you want us to interview, just let us know and we’ll do our best to do so.

Thanks again for all your support!