This is the time of the month when I share my blog’s earnings report as well as other juicy news related to my blogging journey.
Publishing a monthly income and traffic report is a part of our transparency policy here at ShoutMeLoud. We share this information for another reason as well.
Note: The above image was created by Shravan from Digihackers. If you have created anything exclusively for ShoutMeLoud or for the Shouters community, you can mail me at [email protected]
Unlike February which was slow in term of activities, March was full of activities and education. Last month was a terrible month for me where WordPress and hosting issues are concerned. I had to spend a great deal of time breaking free from tech hassles rather than focusing on more important issues, and that is always a source of frustration for busy people running a business.
ShoutMeLoud Hosting Changed – GoodBye Cloudways
One of the biggest problems I faced last month was a hosting issue. I had been using Cloudways hosting for a good four months, when I began to experience the slow WordPress dashboard issue. Things got out of hand, (I couldn’t even post anything!), and increasing my server size was of no help at all.
I had no choice but to move to another source of hosting, and this time I settled on a managed WordPress hosting company called Kinsta.
What surprised me about this hosting plan is that my monthly expenditure for ShoutMeLoud’s hosting decreased to $157 from $206! That’s a clear savings of about $50 a month, which is significant. I will share a detailed review of Kinsta hosting after trying it for few weeks.
On the 19th of March, Jetpack plugin launched an update, and it broke my site. Since my Android app was dependent on the Jetpack plugin, it too stopped working. It was a difficult and challenging time for me, as I received a lot of emails from ShoutMeLoud Android app users regarding the app not working. The issue is now repaired, and the problem was identified as a plugin conflict.
Last month I transitioned ShoutMeLoud from using the Thesis theme to using the Genesis theme. I have wanted to make this transition for a long time, and I’m glad I finally did it. With this change I also moved all of my SEO settings from Theme to a plugin, and I am now using SEO by Yoast here at ShoutMeLoud.
Now let’s have a look at the detailed traffic & income report from last month. I will also share a few important insights, so pay close attention to the information written below!
March Traffic report: Desktop + Mobile
Last month’s transition from the Thesis theme to Genesis’s framework was a smooth transition overall, with one glitch: I missed adding codes to show the last updated posts in the search, and Google again indexed my posts with dates back to 2009. Thanks to this error, my traffic went down by 40% for 6 days. I was later able to recover the traffic by fixing the code. Apart from that traffic dip, overall traffic was consistent for the month.
I have set a goal to reach one million page views per month by the end of this year. Considering my existing traffic stats, the goal is a bit unrealistic, but I remain hopeful that we will reach that target.
March mobile app traffic report:
ShoutMeLoud’s Android app was down for almost 7 days, but even with that very significant issue, my overall traffic on the Android app increased significantly.
Compared to February’s 8400 screen views, in March the app had more than 15,000 screen views. The number of active users and sessions have grown significantly.
You can see February’s app traffic report here, and compare it with the March report.
In the last week of March, ShoutMeLoud’s Android app got an update, and now the application has enabled comments. I also made a few changes in the UI and backend, which will be announced in a separate post. For now, you can download the app from the Google Play store.
Note: You can now order an app for your blog using ShoutMeLoud’s App development service! Since we are in the pilot stage of this offering, the launch pricing is pretty decent.
Last month I made a significant purchase of Leadpages, which is an important blogging tool for gaining email subscriptions. I created a landing page like this in 5 minutes with this tool. You can check out all the features here.
We are already in the month of April, and I’m pretty excited about the coming months. I have learned over the past few months that it is important to invest in the right tools and the right people. The new ShoutMeLoud design is under construction, and I’m spending about $1,000 for a complete re-design. Hopefully, by the end of the month you will see the new design live!
Before I wrap up, here is a video from our Bangalore ShoutUP Workshop:
This concludes my March 2015 blog report!
I would love to hear about your education and achievements for the past month.
Do share this report with others on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, to heighten awareness about blogging as a career option.
Hi Harsh,
I have a doubt regarding your overall site changes. Why do you again showing dates on SERPS search results and what makes you to add date snippet?
@Prakash
When I discovered this trick, I removed dates from the post. Many readers recommended to add the date, as it was giving them bad user-experience. What I did now is, I show last updated post time. I always update my old posts (Like 3-4 posts a day on an average), and that takes care of the SEO part. This trick works better when you write evergreen blog posts.
Wow! those are some great figures
Just published earnings of my 1 year old blog too but working hard to grow it up.
Congratulations buddy
Congrats from Shouter, Yup its going up from the last month. Cheers xD
Kind regards
Thanks Advent.
Chanced upon this site. Awesome Harsh. It is very inspiring. Way to go dude
Thanks .
Dear sir,
Congratulations for this month Earning. i am your old reader also doing blogging from last 1 year and i read your every monthly income report article and i noticed that affiliate marketing are boom so sir i want to start affiliate marketing with flipkart, amazon and web hosting sites affiliate so what can i do for start my work.
@Sohel
Start creating quality niche sites & use your affiliate links. If you want to learn all the tricks, you can buy this Affiliate marketing eBook.
Cool. One thing i want mention. i am fan of your content. the way you write it’s amazing.
♦congratulations♦
I am just wondering which all other blogs/websites do you have Harsha? Are all those microniche sites or authority sites? and how much other sites contribute to earning?how much adsense is contributing to those sites earning… just curious and overwhelmed 🙂
@Ankit
I have about 8+ sites contributing to this revenue. Apart from ShoutMeLoud, other sites are:
Wpfreesetup.com
WPhostingdiscount.com
Cydiaguide.com
Letstalkrelations.com
I have three more micro-niche sites, but they are also an authority site. When I say authority, it means all the content are of high-quality and written to help readers first.
Wow, I love your transparency, I’ve never seen someone to discuss about their earnings and expenses with their readers. This means that you truly want to inspire young bloggers to continue their blogging journey. Thanks for inspiring millions. Hope some day I can earn even 5% of what you are making.
Remember The more you share, The more you get.
Keep it up @HarshAgrawal.
I have small doubt Harsha…Your report having adsense earnings. But your site is not contain any google ads. How did you get money from google adsense…
@Saitej
As I mentioned in the article, this earning is not alone from ShoutMeLoud. My other blogs
ShoutMetech.com
Wphostindiscount.com
WPfreesetup.com
Also contribute towards its earning. I don’t use AdSense on ShoutMeLoud, but I’m using it on other blogs.
Congrats harsha…
Thanks @Raj
Great month Harsh. Keep at it. This is why your blog is popular. Honest, open and willing to take the time to sit in the comments section and interact.
A simple change in utilising the comments section on a blog can make a huge difference.
Also, very few will reveal what they earn and even fewer will reveal where they are earning it from. Gives others inspiration and encouragement. Kudos and hope April is even more fruitful.
Really impressive report. One day i will be 🙂 ;). ha ha..
Keep it up, u keeping alive thousands of blogger like me !
Keep Rocking. You always inspire us and your sites help us a lot. I always like to read your blog and always get something useful from here.
Awesome earnings Harsh. Keep rocking. You are an inspiration for every blogger who is struggling hard to achieve the results. I have had started Affiliate Marketing in different ways and trying to achieve success. Amazon helped me to make $200 in couple of months. Though I guess that was seasonal. Apart from that, InfoLinks generated almost $220 in March 2015.
Why don’t you come and do a worlshop in Srilanka. Any plans to do in Srilanka?
@Kajan
I haven’t thought about Srilanka, and I’m not sure if there are many active readers from Srilanka. One day I would definitely like to organize Workshop outside India.
#Harsh bro I was wondering that Thesis and Genesis are different frameworks with different functionings. Before and After you migrated, I even didn’t got to know about the change except the Favicon. I am exactly talking about your Theme !! I guess its custom developed template. As both the frameworks are different, so how you managed to keep the Front UI almost similar ??
@Shravan
You are right about the theme. I’m using Child theme on Genesis now. Earlier it was Child theme on Thesis. So look can always be the same. The only thing which changes is the backend.
Fantastic Harsh,
You have done a great Job , by inspiring you blogger s will get more Boost up
All the best for better future & Congrats
Thanks Raj & that’s the idea behind publishing this income report. “If I can do it, anyone else can do it too”!
Harsh, Your thinking is really inspiring for many bloggers like me 🙂 Thanks.
Nothing to say! I don’t know you do it, but it’s true that someone can earn big fat money via blogging that’s very inspirational!
I have one question, I have read many affiliate articles, but failed to do it or can’t understand the how to sell such products. Do you have some articles that you want to recommend for a tech niche blog at beginning level, that will be very helpful for me. Thanks in advance.
@Tanmoy
The important thing here is to pick the right products. Which I believe is easy, and you can use these techniques to promote those product: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-promote-affiliate-products-on-your-blog.html
@Harsh I want to know which WordPress theme you are using
@Akash
Right now I’m using Genesis Theme & custom developer skin for it.
Wow Harsh.. This is so great.. You are a total inspiration dude.. U r not normal human being 😉 You are living in India and you are earning 6 lakhs in a month with just a blog…!! Truly shows your hard work..
I have a doubt. Which gives more income? Blogging or social website. I Think social website is better. But, many are earning via blogging. Please say me which is fastest and best way to earn money!