Income Report - January, 2021

I know the new year and 2021 is an arbitrary date, but I really am looking forward to this new year! Especially when we just had the best January ever in terms of Income.

I’ll cover that in a bit, but if you’re new to Wallet Squirrel you’ll learn that we share everything we do, learn and accomplish in these Income Reports. It’s our chance to be transparent about what it’s really like discovering new side hustles and show how to build an entire stock portfolio simply from your side-gig profits.

What We Accomplished In January

We saved some costs by canceling our social media tool subscriptions. Social media is great for interacting with people but terrible for bringing visitors to our site. Our goal is to get to 100,000 page views, so social media is getting sidelined until we hit that goal. We’ll still manually be on social media, just not paying for expensive tools.
Andrew had car trouble and was marooned at his family’s house after the holidays an extra month. Being out of sync with normal and way from his usual office, his blogging abilities were diminished. He’s luckily back in Denver and gearing up some awesome posts.
Also updated lots of backend website stuff, so we’re ready to hit 2021!

Here is Andrew’s temporary workstation while I was stuck at my family’s house most of January. He’s crafty.

What Our Website Traffic Looks Like

In 2021, we’re still excited to share our actual website traffic with our readers and it still continues to be a vulnerable thing! It’s scary sharing something that most bloggers hide, but it’ll help give you a good idea of how a blog really grows.

We are amazed that more and more people visit Wallet Squirrel than ever before. All our effort in the past and present continue to impress people and we’re so thankful people keep coming back. Have 30,000 page views is pretty awesome!

How Much Money We Made In December

We had our best January ever! The big income areas were some affiliate sales, a sponsored post and we had a big jump in revenue from 3 Seeking Alpha articles Andrew wrote a couple of years ago (yay residual income)! Overall the total came out around $581.66.

That amount is great, but I want to beat $600 so bad!

We have an extensive section on ways to make money (that’s close to #1 right now on Google) where we’ve written in-depth about everything we try, but here are the highlights from income we made in December.

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.
Sponsored Link – we are paid to add a link to companies we rigorously review and like.
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 dividends from the stocks we own.

Monthly Expenses for January

We always talk about how little it takes to run a blog. Furthermore, this month we cut out some social media and link building fees, so it’s even cheaper to own a blog. Here is a breakdown of our costs to run Wallet Squirrel.

Monthly Expenses – $219

- 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.
- Money Mix Insiders ($166) – Great mastermind group for finance bloggers + Moz Membership

All of the profit we make on Wallet Squirrel is added to our stock portfolio we share with everyone online. Our goal is to build our stock portfolio with enough dividend stocks, that the dividends will eventually replace our entire income. It’s a concept we’ve had since the very beginning days of Wallet Squirrel and every day we get a little closer!

What’s Next For February

Now that Andrew is back in Denver, and sitting at his home office again, we’re hitting the ground running. We’re planning on sharing some new cool posts, some upcoming partnerships, and an entirely new game plan that will help us share more cool articles than ever before. Be excited!

Wallet Squirrel

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!