Back in November 2018, Taylor and I decided to take the blog more seriously and started to treat it like a business. We invested in a blogging course, called Elite Blog Academy which helped us take several actionable items to keep us accountable on growing Mathers on the Map. 14 months later, our blog is starting to generate momentum and I think it’s a good time to share our first ever blog income report broken down into 3 main buckets: ad revenue income, affiliate income, and course sales.
Disclosure: This is post contains affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. While clicking these links won’t cost you any extra money, they will help us keep this site up and running! Thank you for your support!
Why am I writing an income report?
The goal of this income report is not to brag in any way shape or form. In fact, I think you’ll quickly learn that there isn’t much to brag about at the moment.
The amount of time Taylor and I dedicate to the blog compared to the income generated at the moment is a terrible rate of return. Hopefully one day that will change as we continue to grow. However, let me explain why I want to write our income reports.
I spend a lot of time reading other successful blogs to see what kind of content they share to generate ideas for our own. One of the things I find so interesting and inspiring on other blogs are income reports. I love the idea of looking back and seeing the growth over the course of a given time frame and seeing the historical track record of a blog’s growth. This intrigued me to one day start doing this for Mathers on the Map because I believe we will grow this into something bigger and want to inspire others to do the same.
At the end of the day we want to make a full-time income from doing something we love and it would be amazing if our blog could be one of the main tools to create that income. We also hope that through the use of these income reports, it will inspire you to tackle your dreams no matter how big.
Prior to January 2020
During our first 14 months of “taking the blog seriously”, Mathers on the Map didn’t make much money other than the course sales from our Travel Hacking course, teaching others how to travel for free.
Other than the course income, we generated maybe $7 in ad revenue from Google Adsense in November 2018, ending with $31 in December 2019.
In terms of traffic, we grew the site from 709 monthly users in November 2018 to 5,000 monthly users in December 2019.
Then rolling into the new year we started to see more and more growth, due to consistent publishing.
January 2020 Income Report
Like I mentioned earlier I am breaking the income report into 3 main buckets, ad revenue, affiliate income, and course sales. But before we get into the income, let’s discuss the traffic for the month of January in 2020.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the blog has grown tremendously from December 2019 to January 2020. We had 9,066 monthly users to our site and well over 10,000 page views (13,454)! Achieving over 10,000 page views in a month makes us eligible for the Ezoic ad program. This is a big step up from Google AdSense hopefully increasing our ad revenue by 300%.
Unfortunately, I didn’t apply for Ezoic until the tail end of the month but I am excited to see what Ezoic brings in in terms of revenue for the February 2020.
1. Ad Revenue Income – January 2020
+ $46.94
Below is a screenshot of our Ad revenue from Google Adsense for the Month of January.
We made $34.08 before taxes from Google Adsense. You may notice in the screenshot above that after January 28th, we barely made any money. This was due to switching over to Ezoic which took a few days. However, once it turned on we made $12.86 between January 29th to January 31st, not too bad when compared with Google Adsense!
So in total we made $46.94 from ad revenue on mathersonthemap.com averaging about $1.51 a day. Yep you read that right! After 14 months of blogging consistently we made about $1.51 a day in January from our traffic through ad revenue alone and if it wasn’t for making the switch to Ezoic we likely would have earned less!
2. Affiliate Income – January 2020
+ $62.36
The second way we make an income from Mathers on the Map is through our affiliate income. Affiliate income is a great way to make additional income from your blog, youtube channel or whatever other social platforms you use and it’s quite simple. For example, we recommend the products we use in our van build episodes on YouTube and insert our affiliate link in the description of the video. If someone clicks on the link, it brings them to the product page on Amazon.com and if they make a purchase within 24 hours of clicking our link, we earn a commission from that sale at no cost to the individual making the purchase. So, it’s a win-win for the reader and the content creator!
At the moment, we use three affiliate programs, including Amazon, Clickfunnels and Booking.com.
1. Amazon Affiliate Program
+ $23.56
Below is a screenshot from our Amazon affiliate report. You can see our readers/viewers clicked on our links 340 times, purchasing 13 products totaling $484.12. We made $23.56 off the orders (totaling $484.12) earning us a commission around 5%.
2. Clickfunnels Affiliate Program
+$38.80
Clickfunnels is a drag and drop website builder specializing in marketing funnels helping entrepreneurs build successful businesses. We use Clickfunnels to build and manage our travel hacking course.
We also earn an affiliate income from Clickfunnels. Similar to Amazon, if someone clicks on our referral link and signs up for Clickfunnels through our link, we earn a commission. Again, it’s at no cost to the user clicking on our links and helps us out tremendously!
If you’re interested in learning more about Clickfunnels, I’d appreciate it if you check it out with our referral link! I recommend starting out with the One Funnel Away – 30-day challenge to kick start your business or if you want to become an affiliate of clickfunnels you can start here!
3. Booking.com Affiliate Program ($0)
We did not earn any commission of Booking.com’s affiliate program during the month of January 2020. I anticipate this being a relatively low-income generator since we do not usually post hotel recommendations on the blog and if we do, we recommend using points and miles to save money while traveling!
In total, we earned a $62.36 in affiliate income for the month of January, 2020.
3. Travel Hacking Course Sales
During the month of January, we did not make any income from the course since we had no new members sign up. If you’re interested in how we travel for nearly free, you can check out the course here.
January 2020 Expenses
To keep Mathers on the Map growing we need to invest back into the business. To do so we have a few monthly expenses including:
- Adobe Premiere Pro – $19.99 – for video editing
- Clickfunnels – $97.00 – to maintain our travel hacking course
- Siteground – $10-12 our website hosting
In total we are spending about $129 a month to .
Total Income Generated
From the categories listed above, we earned a total income of $109.30 before taxes. However…
WE LOST MONEY!
As you can see we have a long way to go in order to earn a full-time income from Mathers on the Map, since we’re currently losing money…
Income – Expenses: 109.30 – 129 = – $20
However, it doesn’t mean we’re giving up!
The beauty about this business model is that it has the ability to scale! I truly believe consistency will prevail and we just have to keep at it and continue to provide valuable content to you, our readers.
What we learned since November 2018, is that blogging is not a sprint it’s a marathon and some grow more quickly than others. At the end of the day if you’re passionate about creating content and provide value to your readers you will enjoy the process and the work required.
So cheers to our first blog income report, please let me know what you think in the comments below!
If you’re interested in starting a blog, youtube channel, or any other business I recommend starting asap. The sooner you start the sooner you will achieve your goals and the happier you’ll be!
