January 2021 Mediavine Blog Income Report

I have debated for a while about writing this blog income report. At first, I wasn’t going to but seeing other bloggers’ income reports is one of the things that kept me motivated to keep blogging over the years.

I started this blog almost 6 years ago and for years I didn’t make any money from the blog. Then I finally got so that the blog was paying for its own hosting and other expenses.

And now it is actually starting to feel like all the hard work is paying off.

Why I’m Writing this Income Report

After getting accepted into Mediavine last year I decided I wanted to do an income report each month of my first full year in Mediavine.

I want to write this monthly income report as a way for me to track my progress as well as encourage others who are trying to make money blogging.

A few things to know

Before getting into my goals and income for January let me just clarify a few things.

#1 I will only be sharing my income from Mediavine. (Remember this is only 1 of the income streams I have for this blog)

#2 The income amount I share is the income before I take out expenses or pay taxes.

#3 Each blog will make a different amount of money with ads even if they have similar topics and traffic.

January Goals

First off lets talk goals I had for January. I had several goals including number of sessions I wanted to hit, amount of ad income I wanted to make and tasks I wanted to complete.

Traffic Goal

My goal was to hit 10,000 sessions in January. Which might not seem like that many sessions or it might seem like a lot depending on where you’re at in your blogging journey.

I picked this specific goal for a couple of reasons. The first quarter of the year is the slowest time on my blog followed by the third quarter. I get the most views during the summer (2nd quarter) followed by the holiday season (4th quarter).

When planning goals it’s good to know the seasonality of your blog so you aren’t comparing high traffic months with low traffic months. Because trust me it’s hard to go from really high traffic to low traffic, especially when you’re comparing.

Last year (2020) in January I only had 7,466 sessions so hitting 10,000 sessions seemed like a realistic goal for me since I don’t have a lot of content based on things people typically search for in January. (hoping to fix that by next year.)

Goal Met? YES

My goal was 10,000 sessions and I got 14,420 sessions, which is almost double the number of sessions I had last year in January.

Content Goals

There are a lot of different types of content for a blog including: blog posts, Pinterest graphics and videos.

In January I only set goals for blog posts, I didn’t have a goal for creating videos or new pins.

New Posts

My goal was to write and publish 8 blog posts in January. I only got 6 posts published and one of those was a post from years ago that I updated and republished.

Goal Met? No

January Income

As a reminder for this January Income report, I’m only sharing the income I made with Mediavine ads. You can read about all the different ways I make money on this blog here.

Income Goal

Ok, I’m going, to be honest, I didn’t have a set income goal for my ads. Last year in January I made $10.53 from AdSense. So this was my first January with Mediavine and I had no idea what to expect from the first quarter. I was just hoping to make at least $100.

Meet Goal? YES

Goal $100 from ads and I made $222.14 from ads with Mediavine.

February 2021 Goals

For February, these are my goals:

Publish 8 new blog posts
Send 4 emails to my email list
Get 20,000 Sessions
Income over $200 (I think it’s a safe bet since I was over $200 in January)

That’s pretty much it, I have other goals for other areas of my business (like Instagram) but we won’t get into those today.