May 2022 Valerie & Valise Income Report

After a travel-filled April, May was delightfully slow – a few days of travel at the beginning and end of the month bookended a month of home time, catching up on work and with friends. While I am rekindling my love of travel and of being a travel blogger after 2+ long years of slogging it out, it’s nice to be home with J and the kitties, and have my routines to keep me sane (literally – daily workouts are key to my mental health!).

Despite being a “home” month, Valerie & Valise hums along doing its job helping other people plan their trips. As you’ll see, this was a solid month, good for the business and bottom line.

TL;DR:

• Travel: 👌
• Blogging: 😑
• Income: 💰

This month’s photos were taken on the Alaska cruise I took (which started in May!).

Travel in May

After a very busy April, I was quite happy to have almost no travel in the month of May; I returned from TravelCon in the first days of the month and didn’t set out on my next trip until the final day of the month.

• Destinations Visited: 2
  • Memphis, at the end of TravelCon
  • Vancouver, to depart on our Alaska cruise
• Flights Taken: 4
• Days on the Road: 3 out of 31 (10%)

Being home was important for my business and my mental health. I don’t do well traveling all the time – even 50% of the time – since it makes it hard to keep up on my life and relationships at home, as well as my business (which is personally important to me so stresses me out when I’m not able to focus on/doing well at).

Blogging in May

No preamble needed, let me get to the numbers and then debrief after you’ve seen them.

• Pageviews: 189,587 (↑3% from April 2022, ↓16% from May 2021)
• Unique Visitors: 167,312
• Traffic Breakdown:
  • Organic: 81%
  • Direct: 11%
  • Social: 7%
  • Email: <1%
  • Referral: <1%

Most Popular New Post: The 27 Best Things to Do in Anchorage (According to a Local!) (still!)

May 2021 was the best month I ever had on Valerie & Valise, and I’ll be honest: I was really looking forward to some stellar traffic and earnings again this year. Unfortunately, the tempestuous currents of the travel industry are far from settled, and my traffic has grown much more conservatively this year compared to last.

To be honest, this still surprises me: last year the pandemic was still in full force, yet people traveled at unprecedented rates – at least according to my traffic! This year, I expected to go higher still, but traffic has turned out to be lower. It’s especially curious as Alaska is predicted to have it’s highest ever visitation in 2022 – and I’m one of the top resources for Alaska travel content.

I’m not sure what explains this: I’m not ranking lower and more people are going to Alaska. Are they looking for content elsewhere (not Google)? Are they consuming other mediums of information (TikTok, YouTube)? I may never know, but this year has been a reminder to never count your chickens before they hatch; I didn’t overcommit financially last year which has allowed me to grow more slowly this year without financial stress.

New Posts I Published in May

Being home gave me a chance to focus on creating new content, which is important I needed to deliver on a series of sponsored trips (dating back to December!). As such, you’ll see a bit of a theme in these posts – they match destinations I’ve recently visited.

• How to Make the Most of One Day in Death Valley National Park
• A Perfect Death Valley National Park Itinerary: 2 or 3 Days Below Sea Level
• How to Plan an Epic Eastern Cascades Road Trip from Seattle
• 11 Adventurous Outdoor Day Trips from Las Vegas
• Where to Stay in Vegas: 7 Amazing Hotels for Every Budget & Style

The final post on the list is a bit unusual; it is a “re-homing” post from another blogger. To be honest, the content wasn’t great so I ended up almost entirely rewriting it but using her general structure for the foundation. Re-homing is a great way to put content to use if it no longer fits your blogging strategy. (Link about this coming soon!)

Business in May

Despite traffic only growing marginally, this was a good month for the business side of Valerie & Valise; income rose 10% month over month. I’m not sure exactly what explains this but my best guess is that after several months where people were (wisely) not planning trips to Alaska, some very last-minute people have decided to try and squeeze in a trip this summer. For those people, I’m a good resource and they’re booking quickly in their research process, which I’m benefiting from.

May Income Report

• Advertising income: 77%
• Affiliate income: 18%
• Product income: 5%
• Sponsored content/campaigns: 0%

Total income for May 2022: $13,882 (↑10% from April 2022)

tRPM: $73 (↑6% from April 2022) (What is tRPM and why does it matter?)

Months I’ve been blogging on V&V: 104 (no site is an overnight success!)

All in all, May was a very solid month for V&V; it certainly isn’t at the level I saw last year – which I was really looking forward to – but I can’t complain about sitting near the 200k mark at this point in the year. Have any questions about this month’s recap? Let me know in the comments.