If you caught my Blog Income Report from last month then you'll know that I've decided to start sharing monthly income reports - this was something I spoke about on Instagram stories and decided to do after a lot of people said they would find this sort of thing helpful.
As I said last month, I am very aware that these posts may come across as braggy but please understand that this is not my intention - I am sharing them because I know that many bloggers struggle to know what to charge for their time, how much they can earn, and so on - these are posts that I would have found helpful myself when I first started out, and so that is the only reason I am publishing them!
Again, at the end of this post I will share some of my personal tips for how to increase your earnings from your blog and if you have any questions or there is anything you would like advice on, please leave me a comment and I'll do my best to address it in a future post.
In my last post I was asked to share some information on rate cards and fees, and I will be doing this in an upcoming post.
So...how did I do earnings-wise in July?
Follower numbers
I keep a record of these in a notebook for my own personal use, but I think it's helpful to include them in an income report too -
Twitter - 11,800 (up 200 from last month)
Instagram - 15,800 (up 500 from last month)
Facebook - 4,092 (up 10 from last month)
YouTube - 1,832 (up 67 from last month)
I don't currently use Pinterest or Snapchat properly.
Most Popular Posts This Month
1) Our Last Minute Escape To Cornwall
2) The Best Nostalgic Movies On Netflix
3) Over The Rainbow: How A Hair style Helped My Self Esteem
4) Blog Income Report: June 2017
5) The Ordinary Moments: Strawberry Fields Forever
I think it's important to look at which posts have done well each month as the amount of traffic you get can be helpful when it comes to increasing your earnings as brands will always want a good amount of bang for their buck - I personally feel that it's important to keep track of the kind of content that your readers enjoy seeing from you so that you can provide more along those lines in the future to keep them entertained and keep them subscribed.
From looking at my most popular posts last month, I realize that people enjoy recommendation posts and so I will probably aim to do some more Netflix or TV/Movie recommendations in the future.
3 of my 5 posts were photo-heavy personal ones, which is something I usually try to stay away from as in the past these sorts of personal or family focused posts of mine haven't done too well but this shows me that maybe I should try to do more of them.
And the fact that my Blog income report post was read so much shows me that this a topic of interest - so here I am doing another one! My Earnings For July 2017 Were:
Blog Campaigns - £2,975
Instagram Collaborations - £500
YouTube Campaigns - £3,625
Other Social Media Campaigns/Ambassadorships/Other Work - £0
Total for the month:£7100.00
My highest payment was: £3500 for a campaign including a YouTube video & Instagram posts
My lowest payment was: £100 for a repeat client (I will not usually go below £200, but I do get a lot of work from this client)
Total number of jobs this month: 14
I was surprised to see my earnings reach this figure as this is the highest amount I've earned from my blog in one month. I didn't expect to top last months £4520.00 earnings at all, so I'm really pleased that I have although it has been a very intense month with a LOT of work to do....although there is a lot of money to be made from this business, I do have to say that it really isn't easy and can be very time consuming and quite stressful!
My Top Tips For July
1) If Your Emails Go Quiet, Pitch For Work
This is the one that probably makes the biggest difference to my earnings - around £1700 of my earnings this month came from me pitching to companies.
There are many ways you can do this - personally I share contacts with fellow bloggers that I know and trust, whenever I have worked with a brand that is relevant to them I pass on the contact details to my friends and they do the same for me in return. I then email those contacts with my pitch email - a lot of bloggers say this isn't the right way to do things but I disagree, the proof is in the pudding and I credit 50% of my earnings over the years to this method!
If you don't have any bloggers to share with, then don't worry - you can see which brands are working with bloggers by taking a quick look at some blogs or bloggers Instagram accounts. You can then google that company with the words "XX Brand Press Release" - that press release will usually have a contact email address on, and that's who you to pitch to.
Would a sample pitch email be helpful? Let me know, and I'll do this in a future post.
2) Do What You Can To Build Up Your DA & Follower Numbers
In order for brands to want to work with you, you must have something valuable to offer them. Of course DA score and follower numbers are not everything and you will get some nice opps without them - if you have great photography skills or you're a brilliant writer that's great and I'm sure you'll do fine...but to really start earning well, you do need to be able to prove your influence and what your blog is worth.
To build your DA score - try to join in with blog linkies regularly, and do some guest posting for bloggers with a higher DA score than yours. There is a lot more to DA than this but its a good place to start.
To increase your social media followers, make sure you're using hashtags correctly, joining in with Twitter chats and posting interesting and shareable content on Facebook.
3)Don't Be Afraid To Ask
Sometimes you'll have an email whereby the brand is offering you less money than you think a job is worth. This month, that job I got that paid me £3500? They started out offering me £600. Now I'm not at all in a position to turn down £600 but I knew that what that brand were asking for was worth more than that amount - so I went back to them, told them "No thank you, I'll have to pass. I'd be looking for at least £3500 for what you're asking"...and within half an hour, they responded saying they'd be happy to meet me at £3500.
Of course this is not a very common occurrence, but it taught me to know my worth and not settle for any less.
I hope that you've found this post interesting or helpful, please do let me know if its something you'd like to see again next month in the comments below...And if you're interested in more blogging tips or brand work posts or tips from me then don't be afraid to let me know what you'd like to see in the comments below.
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