We’ve been having pretty bad months lately – this one was only just over half of our goal income 🙁

It seems like, what’s the point? However, there are a few reasons we’re continuing to do a monthly income report anyway:

• it’s #reallife, and we don’t want to sugarcoat it
• we’re still making progress, even if it’s not always reflecting well in the numbers right away
• we want to have this record to look back on
• we committed to do it for the year
• we hope it can still be helpful to you in some way!

In June, over 34.5K people visited the site for nearly 65K pageviews.

David informs me that this follows seasonal patterns of other years, though it’s still a bit sad 🙁

What’s still working… or not:

Can I confess something? We’ve accomplished some of the things that were in our way coming home from being gone for the winter, and I know it’s time to buckle down and get professional with analytics and stuff, but I really don’t want to…

This is the part of working from home that relies on you – acting like an adult without your mom or boss telling you what to do, haha.

The truth is, my priorities have shifted in the past year. While I still want to do a good job and succeed with content creation, I have way more desire to study the Bible and focus on living out my relationship with God and finding ways to bless others. There is probably a good way to sort of combine things, but we haven’t found our sweet spot yet.

New stuff we tried in June:

The biggest and main thing we did in June was tackle moving the content to a new design and system. It’s still very much a work in progress, but it feels less cluttered, which is something that was bugging me for a long time.

We got rid of the sidebar, in part because you don’t really use them in mobile and it makes sense to us to design a more cohesive experience. The other aspect is that it does look cleaner.

It definitely felt like a risk because the sidebar was a prime space for ads and potential clicks on other posts and stuff, but we don’t want to use it as a crutch for a more intentionally designed reader experience.

When our pageviews were down I was concerned it had something to do with that, but David thinks we should give it time and get a more complete assessment. I also reeeeaaally didn’t want to allow in-post ads, but because of the removal of the sidebar we agreed to try it for the time being. I’m really not a fan of how they look and how they break up the flow 🙁

Earnings Breakdown:

(As might be expected in a post about money online, some of these may be affiliate links, which means that at no cost to you, we earn a small percentage if you choose to purchase something. We don’t bother being affiliates of things we don’t like, that would just be lame.)

1. Sales – $0.00

This is an area we’ve really been dragging our feet. Paralysis by analysis and procrastinating on decisions… ugh.

2. Affiliate – $65.70

Most of this is Amazon, though a bit of it was from a quarterly product. There’s been a snafu with one of our affiliate payments for some reason, but we’re told it’s been doing well, so we’re expecting payment soon. I’m not sure if we’ll come back and update these posts where it’s missing, or just include it in the month where things are corrected.

3. YouTube – $314.17

We’ve continued posting vlogs about once a week. It’s probably time for us to make some decisions about what direction we want to go with the channel and get back in the routine of posting more.

Just like Telling Kids They’re Getting Shots views seemed to randomly be down in April and May, suddenly it shot up again in June. I think part of this might be if it gets embedded in a site that sends a new wave of views, but it might just be that YouTube starts suggesting it to a different audience or something.

In June, How to Shop Like a Minimalist and How to Get Rid of Clothes were our next top earners. It continues to be a reminder that content is a living thing and very worth putting time into.

4. Sponsored Content – $35.oo

We actually did some other sponsored content, but we don’t count it until we get paid, and that is generally 30-90 days out.

5. Blog Ads – $416.03

This was definitely a low. We’re not sure yet if it’s related solely to the traffic low, or if it’s also negatively impacted by sidebar removal/site design changes.

Expenses – $99.00

• Hosting was normal since we had lower traffic.
• I purchased a couple things to try out, but wasn’t really happy with either, so I’m in the process of getting refunds.

What we did well:

We were very happy to finally transition the site to the new design! Even though it’s nowhere close to done, we now have a lot more flexibility with how we format content and will be slowly improving things all around.

What we want to do better:

• Plan out content about a month in advance so we can take time to develop it well.
• Do more promoting of content and developing community on social media… again, my heart is just not in it, so I’m not sure if I should force myself or what.

Takeaways:

Sometimes you just have to keep moving forward with something based on your commitment…

Want to make money online, too?

If we can do it, so can you! Seriously.