The only way to grow, is knowing your blog stats and creating an income report. I absolutely LOVE watching and learning from others when it comes to starting up my blog and seeing the stats that are a part of growing it. So I wanted to be transparent and share with others from the beginning of my journey. With starting up my blog to see how my own stat numbers grow or change. So, let’s create our first post within the first month creating our blog and see what/how numbers grow with our very first blogging income report!

This feels so vulnerable to share my numbers, but it’s reality and those who are starting from nothing should feel encouraged to just jump in. I’m not doing blogging/social media specifically to earn money, but that is a main focus on building the content. I absolutely love being a creator! After ten years in photography business I needed an outlet to get creative. I blogged over ten years ago on an old blog, so the world of blogging/content isn’t new to me. But now the technology and opportunities to earn money while sharing the products you love is awesome so why not take advantage of it!

I’m not totally sold I’ll stay consistent sharing these monthly blog income report. Eventually I’d love to just share quarterly numbers. For now, I think sharing my blog and income stats monthly will help motivate me to get moving and start sharing more often during my slow season with photography.

*For a quick disclaimer, I’ve been an Amazon Affiliate for almost two years, a lot of the current traffic is running from my photography website where I have a post that’s been going viral for six plus months so I am showing a significant number or increases from there. Also, I created the Curated By Kelsey | Amazon Finds & Favorites Facebook group last year so the numbers that I’m starting with do look huge but this is something I’ve worked on building.

What is a Blogging Income Report?

A blogging income report is where bloggers/influencers break down how much money they made for the month, how much traffic they got along with goals for the next month. I will be creating my reports at the beginning of the following month so I have as current of numbers as possible to base things off of.

Curated By Kelsey December 2022 Blog Stats

December 2022 Blog Stats;
Email Subscribers | 0
Page Views | 0
Sessions | 0

December 2022 Social Media Stats;
Pinterest Monthly Views & Followers | 1.6k monthly views / 1 follower
Facebook Group | 2,912 members
Instagram Followers | 892 followers
LTK Followers | 20 followers / 38 likes
Etsy Sales & Listings | 171 sales / 11 Listings

December 2022 Top Posts;
Hello Besties!
Best Beauty Products From Amazon 2023
Top American Eagle Outfits For Winter 2023
Abercrombie & Fitch Winter Wardrobe Capsule
StoryWorth Review (Custom Gift For Your Family Members)

Things I’ve Learned This Month

*I wanted to give a quick tip of advice if you’re looking for your own stats. This part was a little confusing to find but if you’re using ShowIt/Wordpress download the plug-in Monster Insights to help you find the pageviews and sessions.

This month I saw a drastic jump in monthly views because my account was brand new in December! For Pinterest, I’m doing a combo of pinning both organic content from my website, pinning Amazon favorites from past content that I’ve already created. As well as circulating pins from other pinners that have content that aligns with what boards I’ve created. I have a love/hate with Pinterest only allowing you to schedule out up to two weeks so what I choose to do was schedule every few days to start so I can stay consistent and will build more in as I can.

The Facebook group gained a large amount throughout the past few months because of holiday deals and posts. This is probably something that will flatten out once people aren’t looking at gift guides after the beginning of the year.

I activated my old personal Instagram account so I’m sure these numbers will grow with time. My biggest struggle is finding a balance of which account to be active on. I cut my personal account cold turkey and focused solely on the DRP Instagram account so now flipping between the two will be a balance. If you’ve done this yourself I’d love to hear tips!

So basically, we’re chalking the month of December up as my official start-up month. Nothing major but it’s a simple way to get launched with some basic stats to see if/how/when I grow. I’m confident I can grow my content and be successful if I stay consistent with things throughout the next few months.

Blog Income & Expense Numbers for January 2023

(Keep in mind, the income I am reporting on has been earned and deposited into my bank account during the current month. Most of this income was made prior to this current month but takes time to be deposited. This month’s income will not be deposited into my bank account until 60-90 days later.)

December 2022 Income Report;
Amazon Associates | $-118.46
Etsy Store | $5.00
AdSense Ads | $0
Total: $-113.46

December 2022 Expense Report;
ShowIt Hosting | $19.50
Etsy Fees & Marketing | $22.52
Total: $42.02

Total Money Earned In December 2022: $-155.48

Things I’ve Learned This Month

As noted earlier, Amazon Associates is about a month behind typically. So I can give you the previous month’s income for that portion of our stats but reality, these numbers take 2+ months to actually deposit. So, for this example, in November I made $681.46 (shipped revenue of $9,056). A lot of returns happened after Black Friday sales purchases so December’s income was actually shipped 194 items but with all those past months returns it made my actual balance negative. This is why they withhold things for 60-90 days to ensure you don’t have to pay back anything. In 2022, I made almost $6k in income, so this is a bad launching point but it’s reality and people need to know these things!

The Etsy store is my main goal to build up for 2023. I’ve had this store for several years but it’s been on the back burner and never really optimized to make a profit. It’s been on my to-do list for a year, I love creating printables and educational things for my photography business. I’m at the beginning of a revamp and will soon hope to watch numbers grow.

January 2023 Social Media & Blog Goals

List 5+ Etsy items in the shop
Clean up Etsy headers and shop information
Continue growing Pinterest account followers on my CBK account
Write one blog post each week to go live
Create three style guides for LTK
Schedule 3+ posts in the CBK Facebook group weekly
Share 10+ LTK links
Set Up Email Subscriber System

This is a fantastic launching point and I cannot wait to see what the year of 2023 brings! I’ve got my eyes set of building my Curated By Kelsey brand up. I feel like there’s a fine line of bogging down my photography clients with my personal favorite items and advice. This will be a great outlet to let me find a hobby outside of my regular “job” and also create tons of content for followers along the way.