Welcome to the eighth entry in our monthly income and traffic report!
In this series we are planning on sharing our traffic, earning, and spending figures each month so you can get a glimpse inside the business of travel blogging. In addition to sharing these for your use, by publishing our information we are also able to stay on track with our own goals for our business.
Last month we shared our targets from July, and now that August has ended, it is time to share those figures too! So how'd we do? Read on to find out!
Living the Dream's August 2015 Traffic
Our traffic for August 2015 was just under 31,750 page views.
When compared to our traffic in July, our August traffic was up by 5.5% on a per day basis. Likewise, when comparing August 2015 to August 2014, our traffic was up by 87%.
This is yet another new record traffic month for Living the Dream, and we have been seeing continued growth on a per day basis ever since migrating to WordPress in December and performing our SEO overhaul in early January. This is also the first month where we've averaged over 1,000 page views per day over the entire month. Hooray!
The best part is that, unlike July where we had a huge surge in visitors from a name drop in the NY Times (in addition to organic growth), our views in August had very little traffic from the NY Times at all (about 100 views max). This means that we grew to cover the difference in that surge organically, but it increased by another 6% on top of that. It does appear that our growth is trailing off if the last week of August is any indication, but as with most seasonal traffic patterns we tend to have the lowest traffic when the weather is nice and everyone goes outside.
Good thing winter is coming.Living the Dream's August 2015 Income
Our booked income for August 2015 was approximately $850.
I am sad to report that the big purchase from July that I pointed out may fall through did in fact go away, but our booked income for August picked up and was roughly on the same order of what we expected in July (and this time we're actually getting paid, hooray!).
Our earning dollar amount includes the following breakdown:
Direct Advertising: $800
Book Sales: $6
Amazon Affiliates: $33
Adsense: $10
I'm still waiting to hear back on a few large opportunities in the pipeline, but at this point I'm not sure when, or if, they'll ever amount to anything. Fingers crossed!
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Living the Dream's August 2015 Expenses
Our spending for the month of August included the following:
Social Media Advertising: $150
Staff Payments: $100
Business Cards: $50
Total: $300
We kept our spending low this month and ended up not making a few of the large purchases that we are considering. Part of this was because of a few rumors we've heard about getting the items for free via other channels, so we're holding off until those ideas develop further.
No point in wasting money when you can get the items for free, right?
Goals for September 2015
Overall, September is going to be a rather large month for us because we will be expanding our coverage on our city blog, Discover the Burgh, and expanding our new shopping features here on Living the Dream. This expansion is going to require a lot of work, so I am not certain if we'll finish it by the end of September, but when we do it will provide an interesting assessment on the limits we can push this site on the e-commerce side of the spectrum.
Check back at the end of September to see how we did!
