June was an amazing month for Andrew and me! First off, we traveled together out to Maine to visit our best friend Tristan. Tristan surprised us with a sailboat trip! What fun that was!

Secondly, we had the best month, income-wise, ever! In June, Wallet Squirrel brought in over $1,200! How amazing is that?!?!

Our monthly income reports are an opportunity to share exactly what it’s like to run Wallet Squirrel. These are a transparent look at what we make, all the struggles/successes, and perhaps most importantly, how we build from an audience of zero to 17,000 this last month.

If you’re curious about our progress, we share these income reports every month.

What We Accomplished in June

• Andrew finished the make-over on our Affiliate Website which makes it more Amazon Affiliate.
• Adam started the execution of a new social media campaign through Instagram (more about this soon).
• We worked with many great partners to continue syndicating amazing new content on Wallet Squirrel.
• We worked on several projects that will help gain wider brand exposure for Wallet Squirrel.

Our June Website Traffic

It is still a little crazy we share our website statistics, but we sincerely hope those reading get an idea of what it’s really like to run a blog. It’s very tough, but incredibly rewarding when we see people appreciating our content.

A majority of our traffic comes organically from Google. Strong SEO tied with the perfect keyword really does work! Here’s what the month’s traffic looked like!

Our June Website Income

Sorry, I already spoiled the good news. I still can’t believe we jumped to over $1,200 in income this month! Our switch to Ezoic for Website Ads continues to prove to be a winner. This move has almost tripled our ad revenue. We tend to take this money, immediately reinvesting in us and Wallet Squirrel.

A big contributor to our high income is our How To Start A Blog page which continues to be one of the best on the internet (in terms of design). These affiliates are great, but we hope that our website ads and additional affiliates will become bigger contributors as we grow!

Plus two awesome high-quality sponsored posts brought in some nice income! That’s the “Additional Income” tab.

Every month we continue to try different ways to make money, and these passive income experiments continue to boost our potential income. Every day these grow and will eventually replace our entire income through blogging. Cool Right!

• 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.
• 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 dividends from the stocks we own.

Monthly Expenses for Wallet Squirrel

While it’s great to talk about the money we make. We also spend money to help our blog grow. Here is how much money we spent in June.

Monthly Expenses – $293

• 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.
• Grammarly ($12) – A necessity for any writer/blogger
• Noun Project ($4)  – Unlimited Icon Downloads. It’s been great for graphics and social media.
• Ezoic Premium ($58) – Ezoic is our advertising network and offers a premium service, but completely worth it.
• Money Mix Insiders ($166) – Great mastermind group for finance & travel bloggers + Ahrefs Membership

In addition to our monthly blogging expenses, I did purchase a few dividend stocks to add to my stock portfolio. I purchased a few shares of Microsoft and Verizon. These purchases will continue to boost my monthly dividend income!

What’s Next For July

We look forward to continuing on pushing to new heights in July. June’s income report and a nice vacation have really rejuvenated our spirit. Adam will continue to build on top of a solid start to the social media campaign. Andrew plans on creating lots of new evergreen content. We also might be participating as guests in our first podcast appearance (the details are still in the works).

Overall, we are very proud of what June provided. We look forward to what July has in store for us.

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!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

March was a weird, productive, and milestone month!

First, if you’re new to Wallet Squirrel, this isn’t a normal post. It’s normal for us to share a peek behind the curtain every month with exact revenue and expenses for this website. It’s not normal for every blogger to provide this amount of detail to their readers.

Here is a recap of everything in March, including behind the scenes, revenue, and expenses.

What Happened In March?

• We transferred from Google AdSense over to Ezoic to handle our website ads. Honestly, it’s been a rough transition. Their team kindly offered to set up all the ads on our site, which was nice. However, they went WAY overboard, and I’ve spent much of the month cutting back on the number of ads. More important than anything, I want people to have an enjoyable time on this site.
• Filed taxes for Wallet Squirrel. We are an LLC, so it was super easy to do through TurboTax.
• We created an entire media kit & pricing page. It’s helpful for sponsors and media inquiries to get a sense of the scale of Wallet Squirrel. Plus, it saves my sanity from emails asking for our media kit all the time.
• Andrew was quoted on MSN for 12 Tricky Job Interview Questions & How To Answer Them (see #3)
• Adam and Andrew both created some hilarious finance jokes we’ll be sharing with you very shortly. Be sure to join our Instagram to see them first.
• Andrew wrote a guest post on Your Money Geek about making money on Facebook. Guest Posting continues to be vital in growing a blog and getting our name out there! If you want to guest post on Wallet Squirrel, let us know!
• We published some excellent posts last month!
  • February 2021 Income Report
  • When is the Best Time to Buy a TV
  • How To Get Out of a Timeshare: 5 Proven Ways
  • 108+ Best Affiliate Programs To Make Money in 2021 (Great for Beginners)
  • 7 Ways on How to Save Money on Groceries
  • Seven Items to Consider When Creating an Investment Portfolio
  • Bitcoin’s Double Spending Problem
  • How To Start A Blog in 2021 That Makes Money Day 1 (yes, I republished this for 2021)

What Our Traffic Looked Like In March

We’ve hit a weird traffic plateau that comes right before another bump in website traffic. Much like improving at a sport, you practice hard while not noticing a difference, then WHAM something clicks, and you’re next level!

That’s us.

Because we show our actual Google Analytics data, we need to address a weird drop in traffic at the beginning of the month. As we mentioned before, we moved over to a new ad platform (Ezoic). During that transition, someone *cough* Ezoic *cough* blocked data to Google Analytics. Ezoic fixed the problem in a few days, but it left a weird drop I felt needed explaining.

March 2021 Income Report

We bring in revenue from 13 different sources that continually provide impressive income for this site.

This month we’re at $441.89, which doesn’t break our ideal $500 mark, BUT you’ll notice that our biggest revenue generator for the first time is our website ads through our new Ezoic partners.

This revenue will come down a bit as we’re reducing the excessive ads Ezoic automatically added to the site. Still, the RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) has gone up dramatically. Meaning we get paid drastically more for ad viewed.

For us, this is a new milestone. We no longer need to suggest affiliate products to make money (although we love the affiliates we offer). From this point on, Wallet Squirrel makes enough money through website ads alone to perpetually support itself!

Every month we share our revenue sources from our ways to make money, and these passive income experiments continue to boost our potential income. Every day these grow and will eventually replace our entire income through blogging. Cool Right!

• 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.
• 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 dividends from the stocks we own.

What Does This Money Go?

It’s great to make money, but we also have several expenses in running a finance blog.

First, the money from my Personal Accounts goes directly back to me (Andrew). The interest in my savings and checking accounts stay there. Same for credit cards. I use my credit card 100% of the time, so I return the 2% cashback into my bank account.

Second, the dividends from my stock portfolio reinvest into additional dividend stocks. These produce a snowball effect that continues to generate more money over time.

Third, the Wallet Squirrel income is what we’ve tracked through our analytics. It may be weeks or months till the money hits our bank account. Then we use that money for website expenses and marketing initiatives because it takes money (marketing) to make money (growth).

Monthly Expenses – $231

• • 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.
  • Grammarly ($12) – The premium version helps elevate our writing to the next level!
  • Money Mix Insiders ($166) – Great mastermind group for finance bloggers + Ahrefs Membership

What’s Next For Wallet Squirrel in April

In the next month, we have some excellent posts coming out, we have some great posts by fellow bloggers, and we’re going to create some fun finance comics for everyone to enjoy. Did I mention I’m excited about the finance comics?

P.S. If you’re a blogger, let us know if you have a great guest post idea! We only accept guest posts from other bloggers.

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!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

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!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

We’re thankful for this blog and everything we have accomplished in 2020!

We’ll start with that, and dive into our favorite monthly posts, Income Reports! These are a chance for us to be transparent about the income we make from blogging as well as recap over everything we do as cool bloggers!

The highlight of November was definitely Andrew walking in the cold to get groceries in sandals. Committed to saving that gas money.

What We Accomplished in November

• Adam created some epic plans to build a basement climbing wall for the kids. Hopefully, we’ll see photos on social media in the future!
• We a fully plugged into the Money Mix Insiders mastermind group for finance bloggers. It’s a great group and we continue to learn more about blogging!
• We created our first press release for Wallet Squirrel in time for the holidays. It built some great backlinks. That was exciting!
• We did a guest post for the huge blog “Your Money Geek” about high dividend stocks.
• Wrote a great post on “How Does Bail Work and Do You Get Bail Money Back“.
• Got a 92 out of 100 (that’s fast) from google for site speed. Google likes fast blogs. Check your site speed here.
• Other miscellaneous stuff includes updating plugins, wrote guest posts not published yet, creating backlinks, creating new Pinterest templates, and more!

What Our Website Traffic Looks Like

We continue to share our actual blog traffic. Hardly any other bloggers do this, but we want you to see a real example of a growing blog.

November was a great month because it was continuous traffic. That’s honestly most of our months here at Wallet Squirrel with slow steady growth. We’re super happy with that.

How Much Money We Made in November

It’s crazy we had another $500+ month. It’s a great “heck yeah!” that all our efforts continue to help build our traffic, our blog income, our side hustles, and more.

Especially when you consider that we do all this extra work in addition to our actual jobs. Meaning we do our normal 8-5 job, then continue working to build this blog. Many long nights and weekends building a brand the internet is accepting as an authority on personal finance. A brand that has made $511.42 in November!

We have an extensive section on ways to make money where we’ve written in-depth about everything we try, but here are the highlights from income we made in November.

• 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.
• 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.
• Lending Club – we earn interest from peer-to-peer lending.
• Dividends – we earn dividends from the stocks we own.

Monthly Expenses for November

Starting a blog is actually really cheap. The costs only start to build when you begin to pay for marketing services to help grow your blog. As we earn more money from blogging, we spend more money on marketing services to help us further grow.

Here is what it costs to run Wallet Squirrel this month. Our biggest cost was our membership to the mastermind group Money Mix Insiders, but it’s worth it. We learn about new link opportunities, free press releases you can try, and a wealth of knowledge from other experienced bloggers sharing lessons learned.

Monthly Expenses – $235

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

We continue to make more blogging than our overall costs. Anything extra we put away in our investment portfolio we share with all of you. You literally get to see the entire money process from how we make money to how it’s invested. We hope you enjoy the transparency on Wallet Squirrel!

What’s Next In December

Wow, it’s weird to type December. This year has been insane, but it still feels odd to say that it’s nearly over.

In December we’re hoping to do LOTS more guest posts. So let us know if you want a free guest post or do an interview series. We’re game!

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!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

Last month’s Income Report was such a success that we decided to do another one!

Just kidding, we’ve been sharing these Income Reports since 2015 as a way to share how easy (or hard) it is to earn extra money online and what it’s really like starting a blog. Overall, it’s been a blast and a great hobby as we build up our savings for retirement!

What We Accomplished in September

We are flying on Wallet Squirrel lately and I think it largely has to do with the free coffee machine in my new apartment lobby. We have been building links, building content, building relationships, and everything to grow Wallet Squirrel.

We’re doing really well!

• Last month, we’ve been featured on MSN Money, Fit My Money, Making Sense of Cents, and the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton!
• Contributed to a round-up on Dr. Wealth – How to Invest Post COVID.
• Finally finished our Ways To Make Money Page. It’s pretty epic!
• Reduced image sizes on our pages to increase website speed. Google LOVES fast websites.
• Reached out to 10 places for a guest post, but I guess guest posting just isn’t that popular anymore.
• Became “Content Certified” on CJ Affiliate so we now have hundreds more affiliate opportunities. A lot of them we use already, so we’ve replaced those regular links, with affiliate links.
• Joined the blog directories on Campfire Finance, Bloglovin and Personal Finance Blogs. Two great links if you’re wanting more visibility in the PF community.
• Invested in some fun Twitter tools that helped us boost our followers from 781 to 1,041 in 2 weeks. We’re hoping to share more in an upcoming post!
• Updated some great articles including “8 Personal Finance Moves I Wish I Knew Before Turning 30“, “How I Made $1.88 Selling Stock Photography in 10 Days” and “How To Start A Blog“. The last one we did a complete reformat to what that page looks like and we’ve heard it’s significantly helping our readers!

What Our Website Traffic Looks Like

In addition to what we do and how much we earn, we want to be transparent about our website traffic. Honestly, it’s something a little scary to show and most bloggers don’t share this info.

However, we’re doing it because we want to give you a realistic view of what it’s really like blogging.

September was probably our best month ever! We had 2 days of incredibly high traffic entirely because we were featured on MSN. We were blown away by all the visitors and amazed at all the people still flowing in from the news site. Take a look!

How Much Money We Made September, 2020

Additionally, this was one of the best months ever on Wallet Squirrel in terms of income!

The first part is that our article on MSN sent an incredible amount of web traffic that increased our website ad revenue. We don’t have a lot of ads, so it’s incredible that we made $121.37 in ad revenue! Especially since we use Google AdSense, the lowest paying ad service.

The second part that’s amazing is a couple of Bluehost affiliate commissions just days after we revamped our How To Start A Blog post. This was extremely gratifying after the week we poured into making this page cleaner, and more helpful.

Here’s what one of our best Income Reports looks like, nearly hitting $600!

If you’re curious about any of these income streams, we’ve touched on each one before.

• 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 our website
• Blue Host Affiliate –  an affiliate link for website hosting we use.
• 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 by companies we rigorously review and approve.
• 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 September, 2020

Starting and running a blog is relatively inexpensive, but there are LOTS of tools and services out there that help you speed up the growth of your blog.

The more traffic to your blog, there is more revenue potential. So that’s why we test out different products/services and share our experiences with you. You get the benefit of seeing what works and we have fun experimenting. Then as always, our extra money is invested in our portfolio here.

Here is everything we paid for last month.

Monthly Expenses – $216

• 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.
• Twitter ($50) – This is for a tool we’re testing out.
• SEMrush ($99) – This has helped us with link building and keyword research.

What’s Next in October!

Now that we met last month’s goals by updating our Ways To Make Money and How To Start A Blog pages, we can focus on more new content and growth.

New content, will be easy as we have some awesome ideas for some upcoming posts.

I may be a little more excited about our upcoming growth spurt. We are looking at joining a fun personal finance mastermind group, Money Mix Insiders. I’ve been wanting to join one for so long and collaborate with other personal finance bloggers! I joined one mastermind group 3 years ago with a wide range of entrepreneurs and it was a blast, but having more focused PF bloggers will be epic! We’re thrilled to see Wallet Squirrel continue to grow!

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!

www.walletsquirrel.com/