Have you ever thought about writing blog income reports for your website?

Some bloggers write these posts as a way to check up on their income and expenses for the month. They share their income statements with their readers in the interest of transparency for their businesses and to help educate readers about the business of blogging.

We read a lot of income reports from Mediavine publishers — it excites us every time one of them comes across email or social media. It is our great honor to help content creators build sustainable businesses with programmatic advertising and so much more.

What should you include in a blog income report?

Typically an income report will start out with an introduction about what the publisher has been up to in the last month.

The writing tone can be all business or more personal. They might include recent posts, trips, big business decisions, life changes (weddings, houses and babies, oh my!) and more.

Next, the website’s traffic for the month is usually assessed.

What are your top posts? What were your total sessions and pageviews? Did you grow from the previous month? What changes did you make to your content strategy? All of these questions are ones to consider when writing your blog income report.

Lastly, publishers will typically talk about their monthly expenses and income from the last month.

Expenses

Here are some common expenses to include in a blog income report:

• Hosting
• Domains
• Legal costs
• Freelancers and contract work
• Web design
• Apps, software and plugins
• Office space
• Utilities
• Accountant services or software
• Courses, education and training materials
• Supplies like groceries or materials for creating blog posts
• Equipment like photography gear, a printer or new computer
• Office expenses like light bulbs and printer paper
• Travel expenses (when this is a thing again…)
• Conference and event tickets
• Mileage

Income

Here comes the fun one! Next you get to talk about all the ways you made money.

These are some of the types of earnings publishers often report in their blogging income statements:

• Digital advertising earnings (like Mediavine!)*
• Affiliate marketing earnings
• Revenue from sponsored posts
• Digital product sales
• Physical product sales
• Course sales
• Freelance/contract work

*If you report your earnings from Mediavine or another ad partner, keep in mind that comparing your Mediavine RPM to that of another site is not something we recommend.

No two sites have the exact same audience. Nor do they have the exact same site setup.

To conclude your income report, you can assess all the data you’ve presented and talk about your goals for the months ahead.

Then it’s time to hit publish! (But don’t forget to have someone proofread your post first!)

If you mention Mediavine in your blog income report, please share it with us because we’d love to see it! Don’t hesitate to send it to socialmedia@mediavine.com.