Travel Blog Income Report February 2024 – $5,900

Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on March 4, 2024.

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Welcome to the 109th entry into our monthly income and traffic report!

In this monthly update we share our traffic, earning, and spending figures for our blogs from the previous month so you can get a glimpse inside the business of blogging. In addition to sharing these for your use, by publishing our information we are also able to stay on track with our own goals for our business.

Prior to reading, it is worth noting that we feature two blogs in this report (one global travel and one local travel) and our income is based on the combined total of the two. We break down the traffic for each in this report for additional information.

Note: In July 2023, Google switched from Universal Analytics to GA4 reporting. We use custom templates to ensure we are still reporting on page views as our traffic metric; however, it is possible this figure is different slightly from the past.

February 2024 Travel Blog Traffic Report

Travel Blog Traffic Report

Our traffic on Living the Dream for the month of February was roughly 25,500 page views. This was a decrease of 7.7% on a per day basis from January and a decrease of 35% from February 2023.

It looks the Q1 traffic jump we hoped for (and historically always have seen) has turned into a Q1 traffic slump, as sad as it is to say. Traffic for February had a decent drop both month-over-month and year-over-year.

That said, considering the even higher volatility that is out there in the blogging world right now (both in search and social traffic), my drop seems fairly modest all around. The stories of bloggers who are down way more is a whole lot worse.

That said, traffic seems to have picked up slightly towards the end of the month, which if it holds (and I'm seriously not holding my breath anymore), we would be a big closer to the traffic levels we were seeing late last year.

Local Blog Traffic Report

On the Discover the Burgh front, our traffic in February was approximately 113,300 page views- more or less on par with January on a per day basis and a decrease of 25% from February 2023.

Locally, traffic was a bit better, despite a drop year-over-year.

Our local blog has weathered the variability a lot better than most, and although February has always been our worst month (and then some) due to the weather and an overall apathy in the city for going out, this year was seemingly a bit lower than we are used to seeing.

Will this rebound or is this a new normal as algorithms change? We're not sure. But as always all we can do is continue to put forward the best content out there and deal with the ebbs and flows of the industry.

February 2024 Travel Blog Income Report

Travel Blog Income Report

Our booked income for February was approximately $5,900- up approximately 41% on a per-day basis from January and a decrease of 25% from February 2023. This income was approximately 80% from our local blog and 20% from our travel blog.

The breakdown includes the approximate following:

*CPM Ads: $2,890
*Affiliates: $1,400
*Facebook Bonus: $110
*Sponsored Advertising: $1,500

February was a bit of a hit-or-miss month for us income-wise.

We are up a decent bit this month thanks to a sponsored advertising buy and strong affiliate sales which put us on par with most February's in the past few years (last year excluded).

The biggest reason our income is down is almost purely based on advertising. As our traffic is down 25%-35% year-over-year with still rather low advertising rates, we had a decent hit here (to the tune of about $1,000 lost).

While I am confident that adveritising rates will pickup as we come out of the recession (independent of traffic), the surpressed earnings from the last year or so on the advertising front has me continuing to look to reduce my reliance on them moving forward.

February 2024 Expenses

Travel Blog Expense Report

Our dedicated blog expenses* for the month of January were roughly $600 with the following breakdown:

*Advertising: $310
*Programs: $110
*Drone Certification/Registration: $180

This month's spending was quite low overall except for one overall exception- I finally took (and passed) my FAA licensing exam to fly my drone!

Despite buying my drone in November, I was really procrastinating to get the licensing done. But this month I finally buckled down and got the license, and had a bit of an expense to go along with it.

Time to fly- for free!

*We do not share our travel/local expenses in this report. This can be anywhere from $100-$3,000+ per month extra, but your mileage may vary as the costs to generate content can vary wildly from blog to blog. We strive to only share true blog operating expenses here.

March 2024 Goals

I have to admit, February is the first month where I felt uneasy about the future.

I know that advertising will return as we come out of the recession (whether you can officially call it that or not) and things will stabilize on that end at a date TBD, but everything feels a bit odd right now. Between the changes in AI, shifts in influencer marketing, and the future of search all coming into question at perhaps the worst possible time.

A good example of the influencer one here is that we lost a decent sponsorship last month for advertising on our website because a half dozen or so “influencers” in our city took the work for, what we assume at least, was either free or less than what we charge for a robust campaign on many channels (any paid relationship was not disclosed, so we can only assume there). Fun!

This made me feel like I am falling a bit behind in growing my social media and am leaving (potentially) money on the table.

As such, I have three main goals for March.

First, More Reels/TikTok content on our social media to try and pursue faster growth on those channels. This will include overhauling the style to be a bit more… you know, but also to share a great deal of drone content now that I am FAA licensed.

There is simply far too much advertising/social bonus money on the table on these channels that I really should be tapping into despite my reluctance. I do not want to go overboard on any partnerships here, but one or two more a month wouldn't hurt for breathing room income-wise.

Second, I am on track to complete the first draft of my book that I've been working on for the past few months. I would ideally like to get into the formatting stages by the end fo the month.

Finally, I have been studying for one more undisclosed certification that I hope to sit for the exam for by the end of the month as well. I am not 100% certain I'll get there, but I really need to move it to be fuly certified there by summer as the potential income could make everything else irrelevant if it works.

Oh, and of course there is publishing all of the usual blog posts and social content as usual. That never ends.

Time to buckle up for some busy months and focusing on some things that I have, quite admittedly, tried to avoid for as long as possible!

Looking For Past Reports?

Unlike other websites that host an article series on this topic, we only have one article for our travel blog income and traffic reports.

We do this for a number of reasons, but it is mostly because we do not want dozens upon dozens of posts on our site on this one specific topic. Over time, the monthly details become irrelevant and trends are the only thing that matters.

To compensate for this, we update this article every month based on our current data and publish a graphical summary of previous months as well. If you have any questions about data from a specific month we are happy to share more details via email if you contact us.

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