Welcome to the first ever monthly income report on Full-Time Blog! Before we get into it, let me give you a little bit of background…
I run a blog called The Modest Man, which serves as my primary source of income right now. I also have a newish website called Manored that’s about interior design for men, but it’s not profitable yet.
Over at The Modest Man, I’ve been publishing quarterly income reports for about a year and a half now. I also post quarterly business updates on the /r/Entrepreneur subreddit.
Every time I post one of these earnings reports or business updates, I get a lot of questions (like hundreds), which is part of the reason I created Full-Time Blog.
I want to teach people what I’ve learned about building and monetizing a blog, especially a fashion blog. I see so many fashion bloggers who have awesome content but can’t seem to make a living from their work.
I want to help them go full-time. That’s why, among other content, I’ll publish a monthly income income report right here on FTB.
Which brings us back to today’s post: an income report for October 2016.
How do fashion bloggers make money?
If you’re totally new to this world, you might want to read this post first to get a sense of how exactly a blogger earns revenue from their website.
This income report won’t go into as much detail about each revenue stream. It’s really just a list of revenue, expenses and profit.
Monthly Income for 2016
I want to give you a sense of the big picture before getting into the details for this month. This chart shows the monthly revenue for 2016 so far:
Heading in the right direction! Let’s dive into October…
October 2016 Revenue by Category
My blogging revenue falls into three categories – ads, affiliate and products. Here’s the total revenue for each (for October):
- Advertising (banner ads and sponsorships) – $5,739
- Affiliate (programs like rStyle and Amazon Associates) – $2,692
- Products (ebooks, etc.) – $497
Now let’s look at each category in more detail…
Advertising – $5,739
- Sponsorships – $3,704
- AdThrive – $1,089
- Direct – $750
- Other – $196
As usual, sponsorships are the biggest portion of advertising revenue. It makes sense because a sponsored blog post or video is way more valuable (and expensive) than a banner ad.
AdThrive is the advertising network that manages the banner ads on my site, other than the space I sell directly.
Affiliate – $2,692
- Amazon – $2,038
- RewardStyle – $368
- Modern Tailor – $164
- ShareASale – $122
Amazon continues to be the best affiliate program for me, by far. It just converts better than any other online shop, and it carries everything, so I end up linking to it often.
Products – $497
- TMM Style Guide – $497
I only have one product right now, which is my Style Guide (a digital “book” or guide about style for shorter men).
It’s not a huge revenue generator, but it is truly passive income. Once you create a valuable asset like a book – especially a digital one – it pretty much works on autopilot.
Total Revenue = $8,928 (down 15% from last month)
So revenue was down a bit from September, simply because September was a record month due to some great sponsorships.
Of course, you can’t just look at revenue. You also have to look at expenses and calculate profit.
Expenses:
- Assistant – $240
- ConvertKit – $149
- Designer – $125
- Phone – $118
- Dropbox – $99
- LeadPages – $67
- Edgar – $49
- Internet – $40
- PayPal Fees – $40
- Postage – $32
- Adobe CC – $21
- Bluehost – $20
- Canva – $12
Total Expenses = $1,012
Many of these expenses are recurring, so unless I have some large, irregular expense (like a plane ticket), my blogging expenses are pretty predictable.
Profit = $7,916 (down 16% from last month)
It’s important to remember that this is pre-tax profit, so I put a portion of this money away for taxes. It’s still enough to live on, but it’s not exactly retirement money (yet).
Right now, I draw cash from the business as needed. But starting next year, I’m going to hire an accountant and put myself on payroll with a reasonable salary.
Got questions?
If you have any questions about being a full-time blogger, leave a comment below, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Thank you for reading!