Income Report – August, 2020
For 5 years now, we’ve been sharing these monthly income reports to show how we actually earn money online and it’s easier than you think. We break down how much we earn and where that money comes from.
We love this transparency, and we’ve learned you guys appreciate it as well!
What’s New With Wallet Squirrel!
First, let’s start off with all the new things we’ve been up to in August. Most of the time, these Income Reports are read by other personal finance bloggers or people considering starting their own blog.
There are lots of things that go into making a successful blog and Wallet Squirrel is definitely a successful blog due to all the work we put into it every day. Here are some of the projects we’ve been up to!
- We joined some new affiliate programs! These allow us to earn more commissions off products we’re already recommending. The new programs are Skimlinks (great affiliate network), ConvertKit (we’re moving over to this email service), and Kinsta (we’re moving website hosting companies).
- We joined a blog syndication network! Basically we signed an agreement that allows us to submit articles we choose for syndication, meaning they can show up on websites like MSN Personal Finance and Inc Magazine. We submitted some great posts, we’ll see if any of these are picked up on these worldwide networks!
- Discovered links to Wallet Squirrel on some incredible websites like PodcastInsights.com! We are so thrilled! If you link to us, we’ll give you a huge shoutout!
- We wrote a new post – How To Become An Amazon Affiliate since we’re asked about this all the time! We added lots of screenshots of the sign-up process, so we expect this post to do well!
- We updated some great posts – 4 Reasons You Don’t Really Own Digital Movies You Buy On Amazon and our Robinhood App Review for investing in the stock market.
- Added to our increasingly popular Ways To Make Money page! Pretty soon we’ll have the most comprehensive (and helpful) list on the internet!
What Our Website Traffic Looks Like!
Since we talk a lot about how Adam has been crushing it with our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) we wanted to show what this looks like. More specifically what our own personal website traffic looks like.
It’s a bit scary because it’s like sharing how many friends you have.
Most bloggers boast they’re super popular but when you use tools like SEMrush, you can the true number of their website visitors.
So here are our true traffic visitors. We’ve been SUPER lucky the last 5 years to have quality articles and build a really large audience. We’re proud to say we have over 22,000 monthly page views and our efforts keep this number growing!
We’re excited about this new part of these Income Reports. Let us know what you think!
How Much Money We Made in August, 2020
Another month of just under $300 is pretty great because this is the fourth month in a row! It may not seem like much, but the consistency is awesome!
A big part of this month was our largest Google AdSense ad revenue. In the past, our average ad revenue was $4 and it’s increased to over $53 in the last 2 months.
Our ad revenue increased simply because we updated our Google AdSense tracking code. It made the world of difference. A nice reminder to annually audit all your income streams for improvements!
Here is what all our monthly income looks like for August, 2020!
If you’re curious about any of these revenue streams, we’ve written about each one in-depth and how we set it up for passive income!
- Google AdSense – we make money when people see or click (extra money) on website banner ads
- Affiliate Marketing – we earn a commission if someone buys a product through a link on your website
- Blue Host Affiliate – an affiliate link for website hosting we use.
- Robinhood – stock market broker we use awards 1 free share of random stock to us and whoever signs up.
- Online Surveys – we earn money from participating in online surveys like Swagbucks.
- Stock Photography – we earn money whenever one of our photos sells online.
- Interest Checking/Saving Account – we earn interest on the money in our checking and savings accounts.
- Cash Back Credit Card – we earn extra money via 2% cashback from using our credit card.
- Seeking Alpha – we earn recurring ad revenue from SeekingAlpha.com for some articles we wrote years ago.
- Lending Club – we earn interest from peer-to-peer lending.
- Dividends – we earn extra money from the stock market in the form of dividends due to the companies we’re invested in.
Monthly Expenses for August, 2020
Earning money is great, but they say it takes money to earn money. Luckily our expenses are pretty low to run a website. We primarily pay for website hosting and a few minor tools to help us with marketing.
Monthly Expenses – $67 (not much considering how much we made!)
- Bluehost ($36) – hosting service
- Sitelock ($8) – extra security add-on from Bluehost
- Domain Name ($2) – so we can reserve the domain name WalletSquirrel.com.
- Bloom ($7) – our creative email signup forms.
- Tailwind ($14) – our super awesome Pinterest marketing tool.
What’s Next In September!
We’re going to continue to build out our Ways To Make Money page, and hopefully finish it in September! It’s funny, we have this ever-increasing To-Do list I keep in OneNote and it never seems to go down. HA HA HA
What do you think about us adding our new SEO feature to this monthly income report? Does it help? Anything to make it more helpful? Anything else you want to see?
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Wallet Squirrel –
I think it definitely helps. I would love to hear and read more about what you’re doing to increase and improve SEO/page views, etc.. I look forward to reading!
-Lanny
Will do! We’ll add more these SEO featurettes into the Monthly Income Reports!
Thanks for the comment!
Andrew
Good website.
For some reason I’m finding it hard to believe that this website is making $283 per month. I think the website’s income is lagging vs the value it’s providing if that makes any sense.
Hey Chris! I appreciate the kind words. Monetization is something we’re always looking at. Any ideas?
Great job guys…your blog improvements are paying off and I am a huge fan. I use your blog as an inspiration for what I am doing with Shake the Money Tree as we see the world through common lenses..I also really like how you layout your income reports, pushing me to improve my monthly net worth tracking…Thanks and keep up the great work
As always I really like your visualizations! Keep up the great work guys.
Thanks! I think nice graphics just help people stay engaged. =)
-Andrew
Awesome! I’m glad it helps! We all need to push ourselves to do better. =)
-Andrew
Thanks again guys for the inspiration….published my version of the monthly Shake the Money tree income report and wanted to say thanks once again..
Nice! I just got a chance to check it out. You embraced my old friend, outer glow on the text. lol
I like that you have it as a PDF where you can click on the links. That was a clever way to build upon the infographic idea to the Income Report! Well done!
-Andrew
I love the honesty of this report. It’s a breath of fresh air to see someone posting their actual pageviews. I think 22K views is great. I have a feeling that the page views and the income will continue to grow for you.
Thanks Jason! We’re definitely trying a new thing with the pageviews. We’ll see if it helps!
-Andrew