November 2017 Blog Transparency Report: $2,238 Gross Income - Do You Even Blog (2024)

If you’re new here, you should know I do not approve of most bloggers’ monthly income reports. Especially those that are only used for marketing purposes, and don’t actually provide value to their audience. This is why I’ve labeled my income reports as “transparency reports.” It helps keep me accountable for adding value through authenticity and transparency. You can find all my old reports here.

Howdy Tribe!

Let’s start out by re-visiting my goals from last month, November 2017.

• Email list – 750 (main focus) WIN – 940(!)
• Traffic – 4,000 WIN – 5,393 (348 from Facebook Ads)
• Revenues – $2,000 WIN – $2,238

Before we go any further, this is the FIRST month I reach 3/3 goals set for Do You Even Blog. Woot!

November 2017 – What happened?

November was spent making up for October, which was a total lackluster month for DYEB.

This month, I hustled. Notably,

• I tried out Facebook ads again (this time after taking Monica’s course)
• I set-up the pre-launch for Online Impact and made $900. Not too shabby.
• I ran a MASSIVE giveaway that literally doubled my email list. Seriously.

Other than those things, it was blogging and business as usual. In fact, I have over a dozen podcast interviews pre-recorded now. It’ll still take a lot of work to publish them, but it’s nice to know they’re there.

In fact, I have enough to quit for a while.

As in, I’m taking the rest of December off (and possibly January) from conducting interviews….to focus on two things going forward:

1. Blogger U – building out content, making it awesome, lining up affiliates for the affiliate launch in Feb 2018
2. Producing blog and YouTube content (yay!)

November 2017 Do You Even Blog Monthly Income Report

Revenue breakdown

I held a Black Friday pre-sale for Online Impact my upcoming Flagship product. I offered the deal to my email list and Twitter at $199…50% off launch price of $399 (I’m hoping this will rise to roughly $600-700 for the 2nd launch in June 2018).

I. am. stoked.

B.U. is going to be incredible, and I’m delighted to have 25 students already lined up (most of these were grandfathered in from the 30-day Challenge for free.) If you’re interested in learning more about this launch, I wrote a detailed post on that here.

So…how about that affiliate income?

Not bad for month 6 (7?) of this blog. I’m thrilled. Also, MAYBE $30-40 of that came from a Facebook ad campaign (which we’ll talk about in a second), but the rest was organic 🙂 🙂 🙂

To round out income, I picked up another temporary writing client. I can’t release the name, but they’re a really cool startup that reached out via LinkedIn after finding DYEB somehow, and asked me to produce some blog posts for $200 each, which is about where I’m valuing my time as of late.

Is this too high? Too low?

Let me know in the comments? (see time breakdown below as well)

Expense breakdown

Wanna be a huge successful blogger? Those people spend money to make money. They just do.

I picked up a Teachable plan for Blogger U, but it’s already paid for itself and then some lol. Worth it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Some expenses are missing related to the giveaway, because I haven’t spent the cash yet. I’m not sure how much it’ll run, but those will be included on December’s report. However, I can tell you I negotiated most of the giveaway prizes for free 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Want to see how my Facebook Ads went down this month? Keep reading. Details below.

Time breakdown

I’m a full-time blogger and businessman right now. I work roughly 35 hours a week on Do You Even Blog.

If I had to guess (I don’t specifically track right now), my workweek might break down into this:

• Blogging – 18%
• Podcasting (including the interviews) – 18%
• Managing my social media – 4% (hahahahahaha I love SmarterQueue)
• Building out Blogger U – 15%
• Emailing and engaging on Social Media – 20% (ugh)
• Client work – 15%
• Researching and learning – 10%

I spend entirely too much time in Gmail right now. While most of this time is interacting with readers, other bloggers, etc, it’s still not helping me be prolific, and therefore it has to go.

Re: producing content vs marketing content…

I definitely spend 10x more time producing content than I do marketing. I spend little time managing social media, and I do almost ZERO cold outreach. DYEB would probably experience a bit more growth if I spent more time with this…but I’m not sure I want to.

I want to be prolific.

Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments?

What worked in November?

1 – The giveaway

My email list jumped from roughly 420 to 990 in a few days. That’s insane. (Roughly 30-40 have unsubscribed once they found out they didn’t win lol)

Would you like a short-ish case study on this?

The giveaway was a major success in my eyes, especially due to the fact that it cost me very little cash. I’m not sure this report is the best place to write 2k words on it, but if people would find it valuable, I could make the case study this month.

2 – Facebook ads

FB ads are quickly becoming my favorite paid tool. I’m halfway through Monica’s Flourish w/ Facebook Ads course (Enter PETE20 at checkout for $20 off her course by the way). If one actually does the work in the course, it does take a while…so that’s why I’m only halfway through.

I ran two campaigns this month:

1. An ad promoting the giveaway (to get more email subs)
2. An ad promoting an affiliate-linked blog post (to make affiliate revenues)

Here are the results of the first campaign:

The first 2 ads in the campaign failed miserably. Like, I got ZERO subscribers from that $45.

The 2nd two ads kicked tail. Why?

I joined the “hotseat” in a group coaching call with Monica (available to everyone who takes her course). Wetotallychanged up my copy, and it made a huge, huge difference.

Those ads were bringing in subscribers at around $0.73 per sub, which is apparently really good. Even with my crappy 1st two ads, the cost per sub was hovering around $1.25, which is still great.

The results for 2nd campaign (to make affiliate income) aren’t in yet, but it might be chalked up to a fail. Will report back on this.

Blogger U origins.

This also worked.

After 8 months of dreaming, scheming, brainstorming, etc, this project has finally….started.

Domain bought. Teachable plan selected. Initial curriculum drafted (I’ve actually already had this for a while, it was just a matter of putting words onto the page).

However, my lack of concrete planning reared it’s ugly head…

In early November, I had the brilliant idea (lol) of releasing a quick Black Friday deal at a discount. The thought was this would be additional proof of concept, as well as frontloading funds to build out the entire program.

Well, skipping ahead, it worked.

A few folks signed up at a 50% discount (which was still $200. It has always been a super-premium product in my head), but the entire deal was put together last minute. It could’ve gone better and likely gotten a few more sales.

*sighs

Oh well. The important thing is I’ve begun to build out the program, a few trusting souls have already came on, and now the hard (but exciting) part lays ahead: Building a world-class blogging product thatliterally changes peoples’ lives.

🙂 🙂 I am stoked.

Published this month:

• How a Seasoned Startup Founder Approaches Blog Growth – Erica Amatori from Rize
• BONUS: Round 2 Check-in with Chris at Keep Thrifty!
• 22 Christmas Gift Ideas for Bloggers (and Side-Hustlers!)
• The blogging strategies Deacon Hayes is using to make $1,000,000 in 2018
• Spotlight: Linda from Mad About Genealogy – Why ignorance is a huge asset.
• Is the Hustle Worth it?– Amazing contributor post from Araminta Robertson
• A step-by-step Facebook ads system for bloggers – Monica Louie

What DIDN’T work?

Podcast downloads.

Granted, I haven’t focused on this at all since I started the dang podcast…but still. I figured download growth would continue to grow exponentially along with the other metrics. Traffic, email list, etc.

But it hasn’t the past two months.

The question: How important is this to my business, and how can I actively grow subscribers and downloads? How can I reach more people?

I do not have answers…yet.

But I will. The podcast seems to be my “one thing” thus far…something that sets me apart (hopefully in a positive way) from other meta-blogger influencers. So I need to set aside time to specifically plan for podcast growth. Any ideas? Let me know in the comments?

What are the goals and theme for December?

The theme for December is Blogger U.

This month is a bit different. I don’t want to focus on revenue, emails, or traffic, or even downloads. I want to set the stage for 2018 to be the year of Do You Even Blog and Blogger U.

I plan on spending December…

• building out the curriculum
• brainstorming additional ways to add EXTRA value and really “wow” students
• improving sales copy and launch funnels
• setting up affiliate swipe files, and planning for the Feb 2018 affiliate launch
• Make 3-5 sales over Christmas

Therefore, the metrics to follow-up in the December monthly income report are…

• Revenues – $2,000 (freelance blogging stuff, plus 3-5 additional Blogger U sales)
• Email subs – 950 (Not doing anything here, and might even clean my list a bit before jumping up to the 1,000 mark)
• Traffic – 3k (not expecting a lot in Dec)

LET’S DO THIS. #Christmas #BU

Answer these in the comments:

1. Would you enjoy seeing a case study about the giveaway that doubled my email list?
2. Should I be placing more emphasis on podcast downloads?
3. What are some ways I can try to grow my podcast downloads?
4. Should I be spending more timemarketingvs producing?