7 Ways Revealing Your Income Can Negatively Impact Your Career.

This post examines how having monthly income and statistic reports can impact on your blog.

It can affect your credibility.

Many bloggers in the making money online niche detail their income in painstaking detail. This can affect your credibility.

If you are trying to make money online and a product launch or experiment fails, you will have a permanent reminder of exactly how much money and time was lost on that project. This can lessen your authority in that niche.

Everyone make mistakes. Usually, one can use the error as an opportunity to learn more and move on. Your fans and supporters will accept this and support you. Others within the niche can use this as an opportunity to attack you.

It can make the reader feel like a statistic instead of a reader

I hate it when my purchase, that has resulted in an affiliate payment, shows up in a monthly report. Even though my name isn’t specified, I feel like I am being used. This sentiment is echoed throughout the make money online niche.

I have no problem supporting a blogger by purchasing through their link. I dislike being made into a statistic.

It can alienate those at the start of their journey.

If you are talking about large figures, this can alienate those who are at the beginning of their blogging journey. This is a real problem, as the majority of bloggers earn less than $1000 a month.

This was seen in Darrens recent letter to the Amazon Associates program. Despite his situation being a real problem, a number of commenters just told him to stop complaining and being grateful of the income earned.

On the other hand, it can encourage those at the start of their blogging journey of what you can acheive through hard work.

The key is to be prudent when revealing your blogging income. Emphasis the effort involved in reaching those income goals and the time it took to do so.

It can lower your chance of freelance work.

People will be less likely to hire you to work on their blog, if your know the project will be analyzed and reported for the public masses to see. They may also doubt your authority on a topic based on the income earned from writing about it.

You could get around this by excluding freelance income from your statistics page.

It can reveal competitive secrets

Revealing your top posts, and how they correlate to your income, can give away secrets for other bloggers to steal. There are enough problems with content theives without giving them extra incentive.

Additionally, if you discuss how you intend to improve income you may inadvertently give your competitors incentive to modify your ideas for their own use.

It can make readers feel like they are being sold to

Readers hate feeling like they are being sold to, just like they hate feeling like a statistic. They are aware that you will be reimbursed for their purchase, as long as there is no pressure in the interaction.

Avoid affiliate links in the statistic pages. Link to the post of the review instead.

It can create expectations you are unable to meet

If you reiterate the same goals month after month, but make no progress, people will start to doubt your ability as a blogger. They will be less likely to purchase through your link or buy a product you have released.

So, should you report statistics?

Using your own blog as a case study can be really effective – especially if you are discussing a new or innovative blogging concept.

Rather than do a statistic post, use a specific aspect your success and create pillar content on how people can replicate it.