Another month has gone by and if you’ve been following our sustainable business journey, I bet you’re wondering how we performed.
No need to wait any longer, let the transparency reporting begin…
Website Traffic for August 2017
The snapshot of our Google Analytics ‘Audience Overview’ for August:
The data breakdown from the above Google Analytics screen shot is as follows:
- Sessions: 37,619
- Users: 30,095 (unique visitors)
- Page Views: 55,794
- Avg. Session Duration: 00:01:24
- Bounce Rate: 78.56%
Traffic Analysis
Our website traffic increased from 24,000 in July to almost 31,000 individuals visiting our site in August. This is a wonderful result which can only be attributed to two factors:
- Firstly, if you recall in the July Transparency Report, we hired more writers last month so that we could achieve the goal of publishing at least one sustainably-focussed article per day. We were able to almost execute this strategy of publishing daily throughout August which helped attract more readers.
- Secondly, we launched our 7th birthday giveaway (which was in fact our biggest yet in terms of prize value and participants) which attracted 3,000 entrants.
Now although giveaways are a good way to attract new readers to the site, its biggest downside is that it also attracts individuals who only care about winning prizes and couldn’t care less about sustainability. So when we run a giveaway, we inevitably find that participants entering the contest rarely stick around to read our other content which then decreases the average session duration. As you can see from our analytics data, it dropped from 1:35 to just 1:24. This ultimately means people are spending less time on the site which is not ideal especially when we’re trying to transform the world through media that matters.
Now that that giant of a giveaway is over, it should improve.
Income
Anyway, moving on to the part most people are keen to know – how much EWP earned in August ($AUD):
- Google Adsense: $39.94
- Amazon Associates: $126.80
- Skimlinks: $57.61
- Linkshare: $0.00
- Share-A-Sale: $18.22
- Other Affiliate Programs: $0.00
- Sponsored Post/Paid Guest Posts: $1450.00
- Patreon Pledges/Reader Donations: $302.52
Total Income: $1,995.08
Please note: There may be exchange rate discrepancies when I convert USD to AUD as I calculate what has been earned in the month rather than what has been paid in the month. Also, exchange rates used by each platform may vary.
Expenses
Here are the business expenses and costs* we incurred for August:
- Software: $244.80
- People: $1,418.57
- Advertising: $80.00
Total Expenses: $1,743.37
*Note: Rough estimates as the operating costs are divided between our other businesses as well.
Income Analysis
So our net income in August was $251.71. As I outlined in last month’s report, I am not worrying myself too much about making profit for the moment. That we are making about $2k revenue is a great sign we’re heading in the right direction. I think this early on, breaking even each month is a satisfactory outcome. When you compare our current performance to the same month last year (where we earned a horrifying $2.49) we’re already way ahead.
My main priority at this point is not monetisation but to ensure that we have the right team and systems in place so that we can continue to publish high quality pieces that our readers value.
Thankfully the income we receive is just enough to cover the outgoings (thanks again to our loyal Patreon supporters!). Although I pay our employees and contract writers, I am not paying myself a wage yet. I am confident the business will flourish so I’m happy to delay gratification for now.
Besides, I know many business people, and many fashion entrepreneurs, who only started making profits in their 5th, 6th, 7th years in business. Since I committed to making EWP a sustainable business just last year, I think it’s doing extremely well in comparison.
Email Subscriber Stats
Our email subscribers shot up in August due to the birthday giveaway:
- New Subscribers: 2,106
- Existing Subscribers: 5,135
- Total Subscribers: 7,241
A great result I won’t deny it but again, I am suss on some of the subscribers. After every giveaway our click rates, open rates and unsubscribe rates take a hit because the subscribers who join after entering a giveaway aren’t in the same league as our true fans. Nevertheless some do stick around and I’m grateful when they do. We work hard to create content that will help people become smarter and make better, more sustainable choices and we want people to open our emails.
I’ll monitor the email newsletter performance and manually remove subscribers if I have to.
Overall thoughts
I am satisfied with our 2017 performance thus far. As we edge closer to the end of the year, executing business strategy will continue to be my top priority as well as securing strong business partnerships, advertisers and sponsors.
I also want to make sure that the editorial process is lean and effective before we take the next crucial business step. I still seem to be the bottleneck in the business (where all decisions need my sign-off) and I need for me not to be. If I want to free up time to really focus on important matters like business growth, I have to train the team, streamline processes (particularly admin!) and ensure each team member and writer is empowered to do what they do best.
In addition, I now have a business mentor (a straight-talking bestie who also happens to be a highly-skilled business analyst and adviser) who is helping me lay the foundations for EWP. She is encouraging me to prioritise my valuable time and is guiding me in areas of focus so that I’m not wasting time on the trivial or even frivolous business matters (and hence my noticeable absence from social media conversations).
With a strong work ethic, uncompromising vision, great team, wonderful business partner and a trusted mentor, I am quietly confident the latter part of this year will bring significant opportunities that will help solidify our media brand.
Wish us luck and make sure to subscribe if you’re keen to follow our journey!
If you value our work perhaps you can spare US$1 a month to support us in our mission to be the change and spread the sustainability message far and wide? We also have some rad rewards for our pledgees. Head to our Patreon page for more details.
Click here for a running tally of our gross income.
Now over to you: Have you just launched a sustainable startup? Or have you been running an ethical business for some time? Would love to hear your entrepreneurial stories so feel free to share away and let’s build a stronger sustainable business community!
If you’re a newbie ethical fashion or green blogger looking for more blogging tips, you’ll love our blogger resources. You can access them here.
