Income Report – July, 2020
Every day feels like an uphill struggle, but it’s a massive relief to see our income reports continue to increase revenue. It’s inspiring to see our labor every month on Wallet Squirrel translate to real dollars!
Our income reports have become a monthly ritual to be transparent about what we’re doing on Wallet Squirrel and how much we make. Think of it as a behind the scenes look at what we do. Perhaps a VIP pass into the inner workings of what blogging really looks like.
What We Did In July, 2020
- We wrote a fun article – 37 Amusing Facts About Money To Dominate Trivia Night. Each fun fact was a blast to share and all our friends have loved this article!
- We updated 2 older, but popular posts because the Google Gods love when old posts are updated with new, relevant content. So we updated our TeeSpring Review article (a fun way to make extra money) and our 3 Reasons Why Monthly Stocks Are Better Than Quarterly.
- On the website end, we now made our sidebar “sticky”. Meaning the bottom content of the sidebar will “stick” with the reader as they continue to scroll down the article. This will help with ad revenue, but more importantly, share our popular articles like “Ways To Make Money” with our readers. I’m hoping this helps people consider checking out the article! Do you see it?
- In SEO we added a few more links on other websites (thank you to those added us!) plus we submitted to 10 different sites for a guest post. So far no one has reached back out to take us up on the offer, but we’ll keep trying. In these situations persistence is key!
- Lastly, if you follow us on social media, you may have noticed we’ve been super active lately. No formal reason, we’re just kind of digging social media recently.
How Much Did We Make in July, 2020
The third straight month of our income being in the $200’s. By itself, it’s not incredible, but I personally need to see this increase for my personal motivation. Seeing these income reports consistently go up is a bit of an ego boost and a reminder that people can make money blogging.
I need this and I think most people do in some capacity. We need to know we’re doing something right and I think we are!
If you’re curious about any of these ways to make money, here are past articles we’ve written about each one!
- Google AdSense – make money when people see or click on website banner ads
- Affiliate Marketing (earn a commission if someone buys a product through a link on your website)
- Blue Host Affiliate (website hosting we use, if people use our link we earn a commission)
- Stock Photography – We make money whenever one of our photos sells online.
- Sponsored Link – Companies pay us to link back to their site. If it makes sense, we add it.
- Interest Checking/Saving Account – Making extra money from the money already in my bank account.
- Cash Back Credit Card – I use my credit card all the time (responsibly) and make an average $25 back a month!
- Seeking Alpha – I wrote a couple of articles for Seeking Alpha 2 years ago and continue to make money for each page view
- Lending Club – A Peer-To-Peer Lending Company. I invested in loans and make interest back monthly.
- Dividends – All the money we make on Wallet Squirrel, I invest in dividend stocks. These continue to residual income every month and at some point will fund my retirement if I keep building this up!
How We Spent Our Money In July, 2020?
Earning money is great, but it does cost a small amount to run a blog and our various money experiments. Not much, but here is a full break down of the expenses to run WalletSquirrel.com.
Monthly Expenses – $67 Total = Bluehost [$36], Sitelock [$8], Domain [$2], Bloom [$7], Tailwind [$14]
Every Tuesday Adam and I meet in the morning to discuss money coming in and money going out. We keep it all in a ledger and the above were our expenses. We also go over each charge and ask ourselves “Do We Really Need This?”.
Most items are necessary to keep our website running, but others like Tailwind we could cancel and be virtually unimpacted. However it saves us time, so we continue to look at it to grow our Pinterest traffic.
We’re currently at 35,000 monthly views, that’s up from 5,000 monthly viewers at the beginning of June. A nice increase for sure if you’re ever considering Pinterest for traffic!
What’s Next In August?
I would really like to get a guest post on a website with 40+ Domain Authority. It’s not easy.
I’m also going to continue to build out our Ways To Make Money page until we have more ways than any other website on the internet. It’s a process. Lol
Lastly, we’ve been approved for some fun affiliate links recently, for products we already use. I’m excited to share a bit more about those and see if anyone else is looking for similar tools to help their blog. Let me know!
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!
