The new year brings new quarter reports! Are you interested how well we did in the first quarter of 2018? Let’s take a look!

I hope you’ve enjoyed following my previous reports in 2016 & 2017, I love sharing my growth with you all and I hope it can give you a better idea of what goes behind the scenes of my business. 

I truly believe that sharing is caring. Reading income + brand reports by other bloggers inspired me a lot to keep improving my business. For this reason, I decided to share my own Blog + Business reports. I also want my customers & readers to get a better idea of the behind the scenes of Kotryna Bass Blog + Design.

By sharing these reports,  I want to show you guys that making a living online is legit and if you still have doubts about starting a blog, I really hope these reports will inspire you to at least give it a go.

Are you ready? Let’s dive in!

Income

This quarter has its ups and downs, but I’m thrilled to say we have exceeded Q1 of last year by 30%. I’d say it’s pretty significant growth, but I can honestly say that we’ve worked our butts off. Every January seems to be one of the busiest months for us and we’re happy to see our stats growing every year!

If you’re wondering how the heck I made money from my blog + biz during Q1, here are all of my sources:

Design Shop– 58%
ETSY + Creative Market– 2%
Affiliate Income- 28%
Blog Consulting– 6%
Other- 6%

Total passive income: 88%

My affiliate income this quarter, compared to 2017, grew by almost three times which I’m so, so proud of. It all really took a turn once I took Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course. The course was created by Michelle who currently earns over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing, and she shares all of the best tips in this course. In this course, there are 6 modules, over 30 lessons, over 20 worksheets, bonuses, an extremely helpful exclusive Facebook group, and more, and she goes through everything when it comes to affiliate marketing. It really helped me create a strategy for my affiliate earnings and I’m so excited to see the results!

My passive income this quarter was 88% which is AMAZING. As you guys know, love working on my Custom Blog Design projects or Blog Consulting, but by the end of the day, I feel like I can do so much more and create better content if I make income through passive ways. Selling premade blog designs & selling digital goods is what I’m really interested in and I hope to bring even more digital products to you guys this year!

Overall, it was a great start of the year & I can not wait to see where the next 9 months are going to take us!

Expenses

Q1 of the year always ends up to be a bit pricey as that’s when I pay for the majority of my yearly services. Thus, this quarter I had to cover my web hosting fees as well as pay for Zendesk & Leadpages. I wish to sign up for more paid e-courses in Q2 and start investing more into my growth. I did end up listening to quite a few new audiobooks tho, some of my favourites including:

• You’re A Badass At Making Money
• Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too
• Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype

If you want to get any of the above books for free- Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks today.

Traffic + Social Media

January was crazy in traffic! Seriously, I almost doubled my usual monthly stats. I experience this jump in January every single year, so it wasn’t the biggest surprise for me, yet I was really excited to see my February and March traffic has been growing steadily too. I’ve been posting a lot in this past couple of months and had a few guest posting/interview opportunities which really helped me improve my quarterly traffic.

Newsletter

I was pretty consistent with my newsletter in this quarter and I’m so thrilled to see over 5k of business-minded individuals on my list. I’m now sharing at least one motivational type of post during a week and do kind of a round-up post on Fridays which you guys seem to love. If you want to be the first to know all of the news: JOIN TODAY!

I wish to improve my newsletter even further this year. I know it can become a really powerful funnel for bringing more traffic/customers to my website and I really want to create a proper strategy around it.

Am I Satisfied?

I have huge goals for 2018, so it was very relieving to see that my business is growing. This quarter more than ever I felt huge support from you guys and I really wish to keep this connection for the rest of the year. I also got to take a few trips this quarter and still managed to run my businesses smoothly while travelling. This is why I love blogging so much- I don’t need to postpone my dreams to work on my business, it really works well alongside my actual lifestyle.

Are you planning to start a blog this season? Or perhaps you wish to start sharing your blog reports with us too? Make sure to leave your links in the comments!