Today, I am sharing my last income report for 2017.
What a remarkable year it has been! This is my second year of blogging, and it has been a year of learning, testing, and most importantly, connecting with all of you.
Thank you for making my journey incredible last year, and I hope to serve you better this year.
Last month was full of ups and downs for traffic and income, but most importantly, it was a month of HUGE learning. I am still a newbie when it comes to email marketing, but I intend to focus more on it in the coming months. Considering how frequently Pinterest makes changes, I will be learning something new every day!
The one thing I am very thankful for is the income I am generating from my blog.
I earned over $45,000 in 2017. I am super happy about this.
Blogging is still a side hustle for me (hopefully that changes soon) and earning a full-time income from a side hustle is something I never imagined.
If you are on the fence about blogging, DO IT!
It is the best decision I’ve ever made, and it’s about more than just the income; blogging has given me a creative outlet that allows me to help others and get to know some amazing people.
There are two reasons I share my blog update and income report: first, to be accountable, and second, to show you no matter how young your blog is, you can make money from it.
If I did it, you can too.
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Let’s see what happened in December:
TRAFFIC
Page views were quite low at the start of the month but increased steadily. The traffic seems to be picking up slowly now; mainly due to Pinterest referrals, which are up since last month. Though it seems the page views are stuck at 100K, I am happy they are at least steady.
Keeping the page views at a steady rate is mainly because of my manual pinning. I have experimented with scheduling tools, but as more and more bloggers advocate manual pinning, I am sure it’s the best way to do it.
Last month, I also saw a slight increase in my organic traffic, which means that the little things that I am implementing to grow search engine traffic are working.
I published a post last month for which I did quite a bit of keyword research and tried some SEO tips.
What’s the result?
Besides driving HUGE traffic from Pinterest, it ranked on the first page of Google for my keyword (1st result).
Big win!
This is one of the big reminders for me to work more on SEO this year.
If you are new to my blog, here are some of my past months’ income updates:
How I Earned $3,331.67 Blogging from Home in One Month
How I Earned $3,278.32 in One Month Working from Home
How I Earned $5,898.73 Blogging from Home in August
SUBSCRIBERS
I am totally stoked about the growth of my subscribers. My list has over 4,000 people now. It keeps growing every day, though I wish I had started working on this sooner.
If you are struggling with email marketing, then creating freebies for your readers goes a long way. Solving a reader’s problem with your opt-ins is a great way to grow your subscribers.
The free checklist that I offered to my audience last month was a HUGE success, and I am still getting emails about how useful it is. Thank you so much for all those emails.
I am also learning A LOT about how to craft super helpful emails for my subscribers.
It is interesting to see how Pinterest works. It’s been the best traffic source for me, but when it goes down, it affects everything. Nonetheless, I like to work on anything related to Pinterest. I believe in working more on social media, which gets me more traffic than other methods.
One thing I do every month for my posts is create new pins. I am also experimenting with smaller pin sizes (now that very long pins are not showing in the feed).
I am at a good place with Facebook. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am running Facebook ads at least once a month to increase my likes, which might also push some traffic to my blog.
I know it is not easy to get a good cost per like through Facebook ads, but I am still experimenting with a Facebook strategies course. One thing I have understood is, direct affiliate promotions don’t perform well on Facebook. It’s better to direct the traffic to an affiliate post.
I am still slow with Twitter and hope to do better on this social media channel in the coming months.
As you all know, I love Instagram. My follower growth has been quite steady on this social media channel, and I think it is mainly because of sharing useful content and posting consistently.
Instagram works differently than other social channels, and it requires a lot of involvement to grow on Insta.
Now for the income update:
Last month, my blog income was $3,421.45 before expenses.
INCOME REPORT
Affiliate Income
Bluehost – $720
30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success – $555.60
Survey Affiliates (iGain, MaxBounty, Panthera Network) – $499.50
Bookkeeper Launch – $231
Pinteresting Strategies – $76.80
Instamazing: Passion and Profits – $46.56
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – $42
Transcribe Anywhere – $25.40
Rakuten – $25
Pinterest VA – $15.20
BookScouter – $7.45
Amazon – $4.90
Grammarly – $0.20
Ads –$1,171.84
EXPENSES
BoardBooster – $15
Courses & eBooks – $179
Technical Assistance – $47
NET INCOME – $3,180.45
Did you notice that my traffic was lower than the previous month, but my income increased? This was because I worked more on the offers that were converting well for me. I pushed the content that was already working well for me, instead of focusing on new content.
One thing about affiliate marketing is not all affiliates convert equally for everyone. The key is to find what is already working for you rather than promoting popular offers.
Things I Did
I am exploring more side hustles this year. Many of my readers are doing some amazing side gigs, and I intend to focus more on writing about those gigs.
I am writing my content in advance so that I can focus more on promotion. Content is essential, but if you are not promoting, then there is no way you can get any traffic even to a brilliant post.
I also joined a blog club last month. The club is managed by a blogger who has started many blogs successfully and generates good income from them. I am quite excited to learn more from the bundle of courses that this club offers.
What I Learned
If you are a new blogger, it’s very easy to get sucked into the traffic game. Though I believe traffic is very important, there are other areas of blogging that can increase your income overall like your email list. So my focus will be a lot on growing my list in the new year.
Learning is a very vital part of blogging. I believe every blogger should invest some time and money in learning new things if they want to grow their business.
Taking time off is very important if you want to come up with new ideas. So a quick run or some time spent with your kids can be rejuvenating and can give you a chance to come up with fresh ideas. I want to see how things go with the blog as I will be off on a short trip in January.
What’s Next
I am super excited for next year. I am looking forward to creating more side hustle interviews and exploring more money-making ideas for my readers.
I am also planning to work more on my blog this year and focus on the areas that I didn’t have time to focus on last year. This means I will be spending a reasonable amount of time on Twitter.
Having goals can be a huge motivator, so I am going to work toward reaching 200K page views this year and pushing my income to around 10K per month.
Here’s to New Year’s resolutions!
Update: All the below resources have helped me immensely to reach this point. I highly recommend them, and they can be quite helpful to all of you—no matter what stage of blogging you are at. I am happy to answer any questions you may have about these resources.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – This is by far the best course I have ever taken, and it has helped me with many aspects of affiliate marketing. This course is a must for anyone who is serious about making money from a blog.
Pinteresting Strategies – Carly’s Pinterest strategies helped me grow my traffic exponentially and, in turn, my income. I have tested them, and they work.
Facebook GPS – Tracie is a pro when it comes to Facebook strategies, and her course is a complete guide to growing your Facebook followers. My reach is increasing every day as I keep implementing tips from this course.
Traffic Transformation – I love Lena’s eBook for the fact that she dives into getting traffic from other social media platforms.
Strategies Worth Sharing – This is an eBook I bought even before starting my blog, and it helped me to reach 700+ likes on Facebook. With Facebook being the second biggest referral for traffic for many bloggers, you need to invest in this resource to grow your traffic.
How did your blog do this month? Please share in the comments.
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I thought it was so interesting to read that it is more about the subscribers than the page views. That puts everything into a new focus for me. I hope you will tell more about how to get subscribers, or maybe you have already?
Hi Amy,
Growing your email list is something very imporant for every blogger, because they are your loyal tribe. You can grow your list/subscribers by offering freebies, resource libraries, free printables etc. If you want to know about about email marketing, I suggest visint Meerakothand’s blog (meerakothad.com). She has very detailed and useful posts on email marketing.