How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for July 2010

Over the last few months I’ve been sharing a monthly breakdown of where my income comes from in the hope of illustrating some of the methods bloggers might like to look at when making money from blogging (see previous months linked to below).

The month of July was the second month in a row where eBooks were the biggest money maker for me. Here’s a pie chart showing the percentage breakdowns.

Before I say much more let me show you how the different income streams have tracked over the last 4 months (note I’ve expanded ‘speaking’ to be ‘speaking and events’ to include the ProBlogger Training Day (which wasn’t a massive earner as we kept the price down – but because it’s something I’d like to try again). I have also added a ‘total’ line to this chart to track total income.

A few comments:

• Obviously there was a big eBook spike in June as we launched a photography eBook that month. July was down on the launch month but still very healthy – partly because of a few specials that I ran in July (I did a ‘Christmas in July’ special as well as offering a few communities a discount on the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook).
• AdSense was also pretty good last month – there’s no real explanation for this as traffic was steady. I can only guess that some advertisers were involved in a bit of a bidding war on Digital Photography School which drove prices up a little.
• Affiliate programs were quite down – that can be explained simply by me not doing as many promotions in July – mainly because there were not too many product launches in my niches (for some reason they always seem to come out at once).
• Direct Ad Sales are on the rise and you’ll see this continue to grow next month as I’ve been working with a direct ad sales rep who is now selling ads for my sites which has already led to some new clients.
• Over all it was a good month. While not as spectacular as July it was up on the previous two months significantly.
• Continuity Programs – a few people have asked what they are. In short – they’re membership sites – ProBlogger.com and The Third Tribe.

August is shaping up to be an interesting month. Later this week I’ll be launching a product here on ProBlogger (at a fairly inexpensive price point) which will be interesting to track. I’ve also participated in a couple of affiliate launches and have seen some interesting direct ad sales. I’m not quite sure whether it’ll be as good as July but am working toward it.

How was July for you?

If you’re interested in the previous months breakdowns they’re at:

• How I make money blogging: April
• How I make money blogging: May
• How I make money blogging: June