The month of April (again) saw my highest level of side income, $58,234.08. Traffic also broke a new milestone crossing 400,000 readers and 500,000 unique sessions in one month. My business has never been better—I have a lot to be grateful for which brings be to an even more exciting announcement…

SHELLY AND I GOT ENGAGED! 🎉🎉🎉

On the personal side of things last month, Shelly and I just getting engaged takes the cake! Words can’t describe the excitement—and we can’t wait to get married next summer. We’re already diving into looking at venues and all the fun that comes with planning a wedding 😉

Now, back to business. Let’s dig into the numbers… last month saw a very slight increase in side income over March, which actually far exceeded my forecast (by more than $10,000)—thanks both to a steady level of affiliate commissions from my guide about how to start a blog and increased sales of my premium blogging course, Built to Blog: How to Get Your First 10,000 Readers and Earn Six-Figures Blogging.

Overall, I generated $58,234.08 in side income revenue during April of 2019.

I kept many of my freelance writers busy last month on top of starting a couple big development projects to keep improving my website layout & page load speeds. Net profit for the month came in at $45,868.77.

The Forecast 🌤: For May, I’m expecting side income to drop a little from this new all-time high, landing somewhere right around $50,000 depending upon how a few other projects go during the month. Expenses should drop a little bit for the month too, as my content pipeline is overflowing with articles that need to be prepped and published. It’s go time.

Now, on to the details of my April side income report…

Side Income in April 2019: $58,234.08

In these monthly reports, I track my total side income every month, including each individual source of that income, and associated expenses with running my side businesses. This is the good and the bad.

Next, I break down the traffic to my blog which heavily impacts my side income, including what’s performing best and how I’m working to drive in more readers. I also cover how many email subscribers I’m at, the number of new subscribers acquired during the month, and what that growth trajectory looks like.

Then I talk about my podcast download numbers for the month, and which episodes performed best.

Finally, I cover updates on any other side projects I’m working on for the month.

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Now, let’s do this.

Side Income Breakdown for April 2019

 

 

Expenses Breakdown

 

Net Profit Breakdown

 

Now, on to my blog, email and podcast-related statistics.

2. Blog Stats for April 2019: 505,471 Sessions and 100,682 Total Email Subscribers

For the fourth month in a row, I’ve hit a new all-time high in blog traffic and am crossed a major milestone of half a million monthly readers. 🎉

I was up in Sessions from March by 4%. On top of the sessions increase, I moved up to 638,943 pageviews.

All of my top articles saw increases in traffic during April—due largely to key steady organic rankings during the month, but in part due to lasting effects of a few upgrades my developer launched in February to decrease page load time on my blog.

Overall, I’m up more than 137% in growth year over year compared to April 2018. That increase is directly correlated with several of my most trafficked posts continuing to rank higher in organic search—coupled with increased activity on Pinterest that’s resulted in more traffic.

Here are my top 15 trafficked posts from April, ranked in descending order of which drove the most readers:

• business ideas
• freelance jobs
• how to start a blog (most attributable revenue for the month)
• make money online
• motivational quotes
• remote job
• business books
• how to freelance
• business advice
• freelance contract
• work from home jobs
• freelance proposals
• best remote jobs websites
• business slang
• how to sell phone cases

April saw another surge of traffic to my 24,000+ word guide, 10 Steps to Start a Blog on the Side—which was steady in the #1 ranking position in searches for competitive terms like how to start a blog, how to blog, and other related terms that get a lot of activity this time of year.

And the best part about that? As more readers land on this post, more are joining my free course, How to Build a Blog in 7 Days and will (soon) be given an offer to join my paid Built to Blog course that’ll help them level up their blogging journey even more.

Also in April, I finally published my truly epic 10,000+ word guide about how to make money blogging. It breaks down the twelve most successful, repeatable sources of income I’ve been able to generate from my blog over the past five years—including exactly how you can get started with each of these monetization channels today.

Continuing throughout 2019, my major focus remains on generating more revenue and publishing more content to diversify my passive income streams.

2. Email Subscribers.

I use ConvertKit to manage my email subscriber community and deliver my emails.

April saw the addition of 8,136 subscribers to my community with my total list size growing to 100,682 subscribers 🎉

This was a record growth month in new email subscribers. So much of my new subscriber growth continues to be fueled by my new free course, Build a Blog in 7 Days which is well-optimized for both affiliate revenue—and for offering my more advanced paid course (Built to Blog).

3. Podcast Downloads for April 2019: 18,670 Downloads

My podcast, The Side Hustle Project is remaining pretty steady with marginal monthly growth.

And with 18,670 downloads, this month was actually steady with March figures, despite a big adjustment in how my podcast analytics platform, Simplecast, calculates download numbers—a tweak they launched last month is leading to more accurate reporting moving forward.

Here are the episodes that went live last month:

• #106: The World’s First Blogger? Rob Palmer on Building an Online Business
• #107: From Dealing Drugs to Building an 8-Figure Nutrition Business with Chris Cavallini
• #108: How to Start, Grow and Sell a Productized Service Business with Alex McClafferty
• #109: How to Escape Your Cubicle and Grow Your Business with Pam Slim

April brought my total download numbers for the show to 261,115 downloads!

If you’re not a listener yet, give it a try right here 🙂

That’s it for my April side income report.

For May, I’m predicting my side income to decrease a bit down to around $50,000. A major focus of mine throughout the next few months is to grow my existing passive income streams (affiliates, course sales, book sales, and otherwise) and set my sights on having a six-figure month by March of 2020.

I have a ton to be grateful for, and I’ve never been more excited to work on growing my blog even further from here. It’s easy to forget sometimes that it’s been an arduous 5 year adventure with ups and downs in order to get here. I’ll keep sharing what I learn along the way.

If you’re looking for some additional reading to help grow your own blog (on the side), I recently launched a 24,000 word free guide to building and scaling a profitable blog right here that I’d love for you to read 😊