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.<\/p>\n
The Holiday Season<\/h3>\n
The fourth quarter is often the best time of the year for business, especially if you’re involved in B2C retail or consumer goods (home decor, fashion, beauty, etc.).<\/p>\n
It’s the holiday season, which seems to get bigger every year – for better or worse. We have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Hanukah, Christmas and more.<\/p>\n Every store does everything they an to get their best deals of the year in front of potential customers. And their efforts trickle down to anyone who has an audience online, like bloggers.<\/p>\n During the holiday season, fashion bloggers can expect:<\/p>\n I’m never sure what to expect in November and December, but I know these will be great months for business. January and February are usually good too, since most affiliate networks pay out at least 30-90 days after transactions.<\/p>\n This November was solid, although I did experience one setback that definitely had an impact on traffic and revenue…<\/p>\n Due to a hardware malfunction, my site was completely down for over 24 hours – the day after Black Friday. By my estimates, I lost about $350 revenue and 7,000 visits.<\/p>\n My hosting company is 100% to blame, and I’m still waiting on them to contact me about compensation (they said upper management is looking into it since it affected so many websites).<\/p>\n Needless to say, I was pretty upset about this. But I did learn a valuable lesson, and I immediate action to prevent future downtime (more on that in a separate post).<\/p>\n With that in mind, let’s look at the numbers…<\/p>\n Just to give you a big picture view before get into the details for November, here’s a monthly revenue chart for 2016:<\/p>\n Still trending upwards, which is great. I’m hoping December will be a record-breaker!<\/p>\n My blogging revenue falls into three categories – ads, affiliate and products. Here’s the total revenue for each (for November):<\/p>\n Now let’s look at each category in more detail…<\/p>\n Advertising – $6,080<\/strong><\/p>\n Sponsorships, as always, are a big part of my business. I usually do a couple of sponsored posts and\/or videos each month.<\/p>\n AdThrive is the network that manages my non-direct banner ads. They produced a $7 RPM in November, which is a record high for the site.<\/p>\n Affiliate – $2,604<\/strong><\/p>\n This was a pretty average month for affiliate revenue. But remember: affiliate networks tend to pay out 30-90 days after transactions are made.<\/p>\n So even though November was a great month for earned<\/em> affiliate revenue, those commissions won’t be paid out until January and February (after the purchases can be verified and any returns are made).<\/p>\n Also, it’s easy to see the direct impact of both holidays and website downtime on affiliate earnings:<\/p>\n Looking at a chart like this, it’s obvious why website downtime is so painful!<\/p>\n Products – $464<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"rStyle](\"https:\/\/brockmcgoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rStyle-2015-monthly.jpg\")
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Hosting Issues<\/h3>\n
![\"Website](\"https:\/\/brockmcgoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Website-downtime.jpg\")
<\/a>Monthly Income for 2016<\/h3>\n
![\"TMM](\"https:\/\/brockmcgoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/TMM-monthly-revenue.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNovember 2016 Revenue by Category<\/h3>\n
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![\"TMM](\"https:\/\/brockmcgoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/TMM-Amazon-November.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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