Making Sense of Cents: A Record $179,139 in the Month With the Fewest Pageviews

Blog revenue is a function of pageviews, Making Sense of Cents contains a month that breaks that assumption.

In the income report Michelle Schroeder-Gardner published in March 2018, February’s income came to $179,139.02, the highest since she started the blog. Yet in that same post she writes that February was one of her lowest pageview months. The actual figure was around 400,000. Her best revenue month and her weakest traffic month were the same month.

She started the blog in August 2011, aged 22, alongside her job as an analyst. How did it arrive at this revenue shape? Below, the breakdown she published, and the decision a year later to stop publishing the numbers at all.

The February 2018 Breakdown

The affiliate line is itemised too. The largest piece was participating in the Work-At-Home School launch: $48,751.90. She notes she won both the opt-in contest and the sales contest for that affiliate launch. Next came hosting referrals (Bluehost) at $40,880.00, survey companies at $6,095.00 and miscellaneous at $2,823.00.

Costs are modest. Virtual assistants, the Teachable course platform, technical help, ConvertKit for email and payment processing fees came to roughly $5,000 combined. On top of that she paid $7,550.80 in affiliate commissions on her own course. Net was $166,588.22 before tax. A 7% expense ratio is what a one-person operation with contractors looks like.

Why the Lowest-Traffic Month Was the Best-Revenue Month

82% of the month’s income came from affiliate commissions and her own course. That is, from products with a large value per transaction. Display advertising was $2,138, just 1.2% of the total.

That is the crux. Display revenue scales roughly with pageviews; high-ticket affiliate and course revenue is determined not by how many people read but by who acted, when, and how decisively. What happened in February was that she joined an external course launch as an affiliate and sold hard into her own email list, producing $48,751.90 from a single campaign. Her readership did not grow.

The mirror image is a blog drawing 3.5 million monthly pageviews that still earned only ¥200,000–300,000 a month, where an ad rate of ¥0.5–0.7 per pageview set the ceiling. Competing on pageviews and competing on transaction value are different games, and the second is decided by depth of relationship with readers. The closest Japanese analogue, Sanzo, who reached ¥100M cumulative across seven sites, got there by spreading across properties, whereas Making Sense of Cents reached this scale by concentrating on one.

Six Years of Growth

In her January 2019 post she lists the annual figures.

Revenue tripled between 2015 and 2016. That jump coincides with her own course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, becoming a pillar of the business. Moving from the $100K-a-year level to the $1M-a-year level came from a change in what she sold, not from a tripling of traffic.

Note that the 2018 figure is stated as a total through November rather than a full-year number, the one line in that table with a different basis.

When Dependence Concentrates

The structure has an obvious weak point. Of February’s $102,277.02 in affiliate income, two items ($48,751.90 and $40,880.00) account for 87%. Half the month’s total revenue hangs on one external launch and one hosting referral programme.

If those programmes change terms or end, or if search rankings shift, the structure narrows fast. A conversation among three top Japanese bloggers, where Kiguchi describes annual income swinging from ¥30M to ¥100M and back to ¥30M, shows the same fragility from another angle. A single-month record should not be read as a stable run rate.

Her stated working hours vary by period, too. In the February 2018 post she says she wants to keep it under ten hours a week through spring and summer. In January 2019 she writes that she is working about 50% less than usual and aiming to stay under forty hours a week. Either way, it runs on less time than conventional employment.

The Decision to Stop Publishing Numbers

In January 2019 she announced she would remove the dollar figures from her reports. Not the series itself: she would keep writing “Business Reports” about how the business is doing and what her goals are. The only change is that the numbers come out.

She gives four reasons. Her figures now look unattainable to readers. She would rather focus attention on the actions taken than the amounts. Living on a boat raises safety concerns around location data. And privacy.

Ending disclosure once the figures have peaked echoes Pinch of Yum, which stopped after six years and 66 reports. Publishing income earns trust and traffic early on, but as the numbers grow it turns into a device that widens the distance from readers. “Unattainable” is exactly that side effect, named.

What Generalises, and What Doesn’t

What generalises is that your choice of revenue source sets your traffic requirement. Lean on display ads and pageviews become everything. Sell high-value products and 400,000 pageviews can support $179,139. Put the other way: low traffic does not cap revenue. What matters is how much of that 400,000 sits close to a purchase decision.

What doesn’t generalise is the position she occupies. Her blog is about money, side income and personal finance, so readers arrive already looking for ways to earn or for how to start a blog. Hosting referrals and an affiliate-marketing course sell because the topic and the product are continuous with each other. Reproducing that value-per-transaction in an unrelated niche is hard.

And one more thing. This is a month inflated by participation in an external launch. Annually the business was flat ($1,536,732 in 2017 against $1,510,040 through November 2018) so $179,139 is not a normal month. A record month is best read as the output of a campaign, not as the underlying strength of the business.