I’ve held off on publishing a blog income report because my traffic and income on my main lifestyle blog is so sporadic and unpredictable that I didn’t want to start showing the money until it settled off.
In fact, it’s so frustrating over there that I started an entirely new blog simply to test my strategies more and it turns out, this girl knows how to blog.
Let’s start at the beginning…
Can you make money blogging?
I know you can make money blogging. I follow many bloggers that make crazy money from blogging. These are bloggers who make from $5000 per month to $160,000 per month.
So yes, you can make a substantial income from blogging a certain way and being persistent with your efforts. There’s no magic pill either, it’s a consistent formula for bloggers who make money.
So, why wasn’t I yet making a fulltime income from my lifestyle blog?
Do you have to blog about blogging to make money blogging?
This is a biggie in the blogging world. It seems as if only bloggers who blog about blogging are making money.
This is a misconception however. You see, bloggers who blog about blogging are the only ones who feel it necessary to prove that they make an income from blogging.
Why would you buy my course on blogging if I can’t show you that yes, I make a fulltime income as a blogger?
That’s one of the main reasons I myself have not yet launched a course on blogging. Because,while I am confident in my strategies, for some reason, my lifestyle blog remained quite stagnant.
I also only wanted to publish blog income reports for my lifestyle blog or some other niche becauseI didn’t wantyou to feel as if you had to sell Siteground hosting and Pinterest eBooks in order to make money blogging. I wanted to show you that it can be done in a more general niche. So, what was going on with my lifestyle blog?
I have a theory.
Following Your Intuition as a Blogger
My lifestyle blog was dormant for a couple of years before I started blogging again in December of 2017. When I went back to it, there were viruses and p*rn websites running from my domain unbeknownst to me.
This took a while for me to clean up and I feared that Google had somehow dinged me for it. I mean, for years there were p*rn related links on my blog. It takes a while for SEO to kick in, this I know. How long does it take for Google to recognise that a domain is all clean again? Well, I’m still waiting.
So I decided to not wait any longer. While I am still working on revamping that blog since it does make me some income from affiliate marketing and it does have a very strong domain authority, I decided to start a brand new blog.
I went against the advice of my blogging mentors and started a whole new lifestyle blog. Nope, not a niche blog, a nice general multi-topic blog. Because I know I can make money from a lifestyle blog. And now, I am.
The only difference between this new blog and my old lifestyle blog is that it isn’t branded as me.
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A Personal Blog vs a Lifestyle Blog
My old lifestyle blog was all me. My stories, from my perspective. I never felt comfortable writing about a topic I didn’t have personal experience with because it just seemed inauthentic to me.
This new blog has my name on it a total of zero places. That means I can research topics and write about them from the perspective of what I’ve learnt. This has been a total game changer. Let me show you what I mean.
Writing About Hot Topics
You already know from this post on the Skyscraper Technique that I believe in writing about topics that are doing well on a blog. Why start from scratch with a topic that I’m unsure of when other bloggers are kind enough to let me know what topics are doing super well for them on their blogs.
Those that aren’t kind enough, there are ways to tell what topics are going crazy on successful blogs. I simply took a bunch of those topics and wrote about them on my new blog and sat back to watch what topics took off.
Then I created a bunch more posts on that topic. I hit it big when one of them took off and brought in over 7000 page views on its own. Thanks to the power of Pinterest. That’s why I always say, SEO your posts from day one but don’t count on it to bring you immediate traffic. That’s what Pinterest is for.
My June 2018 Traffic Report
Here’s the traffic report from my very first month of blogging with this new blog. As you can see, I immediately had a pin go viral and bring in several thousand page views early on. It also brought me a bit of ad income too. Later in the month, I had another little bump from a different post and now the traffic has levelled off to about 200 users per day.
To have a brand new blog hit almost 13000 page views right out the gate is a super achievement for me and I feel very good about these stats and the potential for the blog. This is even better than my old lifestyle blog did last month with over 400 posts!
So let’s get into the income report.
June 2018 Blog Income Report: How I made $142.91 in my first month blogging
The income breaks down as follows:
- Adsense ads: $108.54
- Amazon affiliate income $5.37
- eBook sale $29
Number of email subscribers: 340
Pageviews: 12,941
Number of posts: 40
Some of this is income earned but not yet received. I have not yet received some of these payments based on payout thresholds and payment schedules.
If you have Google ads on your blog, you know how hard it can be to get to that $100 threshold in one month. The fact that I hit the threshold and will receive this payment for a brand new blog is mindblowing.
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What worked and what didn’t
My content strategy definitely worked. I have a total of 40 blog posts on that blog and that’s way more than many new bloggers launch with. It’s even a greater number than what I advise in my blog launch checklist post here. I knew that a robust Pinterest strategy like I teach in my Pinterest eBook would need lots of content to feed the Pinterest monster and that definitely worked in my favour.
Preparing to capture emails right way also worked out well. Imagine starting your brand new blog with over 300 subscribers?! If you took my free email list-building course, you know the money is in the list! If you haven’t taken it yet, sign up below and let me help you to figure out your email strategy!
Jumping on affiliate marketing right way also worked in my favour. I didn’t have many click-throughs because the post that went viral was a post I wanted to make my own product sales on so affiliate income was low but I’m still celebrating making anything at all in my first 30 days.
Amazon kicks you out of their program if you don’t make a sale within a certain time period so I felt good to have secured my spot.
My last monetization method was having my own product ready to go. Many bloggers do not think about a product of their own til way down the line but I was prepped and ready to go. I talk more about how to monetize a blog here.
Having made only one book sale, I’m not sure if this is a win or a meh for the type of traffic that the post has.
I will definitely look into the way the product was marketed. I also know from this case study that sales funnels are not my strength and so will eventually invest in that to land more conversions. From 13000 page views and 340 email subscribers, I should have been able to sell more than 1 book.
This blog does way better than that with book sales and I have way less traffic over here. That is an unfair comparison I know since I am building a community here and on that new blog there’s no face and personality. But that just cements the fact that I need a stronger sales pitch and funnel.
Next Steps
My goal for this new blog is to get it to the required 25000 sessions within a 30 day period to qualify for Mediavine by the end of July. Can I hit such a goal within the second month of launching a new blog? Stay tuned to see!
Google Ads has been great to me but I crave the higher payouts over at Mediavine so my eyes are on the prize. What’s my strategy for getting there?
I’ll be focusing on guest-posting this month to get the SEO traffic up on the blog. Pinterest traffic is great but I know by now not to put all my eggs in one basket. (Here’s what happened when Pinterest suspended my account.)
I will still post new content to the blog but not as aggressively. I will maybe post 20 new posts this month to bring it to 60 posts. The goal is to get 5-10 guest posts published so that is where my energy lays. I’ve already got one published and one to come in August.
To recap, my goals for July 2018 are:
- hit 25,000 sessions in the next 30 days
- publish 5-10 guest posts on other blogs
- publish 20 new posts
If you want to help me hit my goal of publishing 20 posts by submitting a guest post, read on for further details.
The Link to The New Blog
If you got this far, you probably are wondering what the new blog is already! It’s called The Beauticle! It was meant to be a beauty blog but then I’ve always wanted to write about the keto diet because I know it’s a hot topic in the weightloss space right now and I was right!
This post on the keto diet took off and is responsible for most of the traffic to the blog so far. I’ve since written some other posts on the topic that are all performing well. So now I have a blog called The Beauticle that’s mostly about dieting. Dunno how I feel about that.
We’ll see where this goes and if I eventually get around to the beauty side of things but I am having way too much fun on the ride right now. If you’d like to guest post for the blog, check out the submissions page here.
The exciting news is that I am planning to do this all over again very soon. If I can have the same luck or better then I will be ready to sell my secret sauce to earning a fulltime income as a blogger very soon! But for now, if I were you I’d grab my Pinterest eBook since this was all possible thanks to my Pinterest strategy.
Since this was my very first blog income report, I felt like I had a lot of backstories to tell. Hopefully, the next few income reports will be more straightforward and quickly get to the meat of the matter. Please do let me know if you found this helpful in the comments below and I would so love it if you shared it on Pinterest!
You can also check out the video below where I spoke more about the Pinterest strategy that brought me these results and show my Google Ads earnings in a screen share. Please feel free to join my Facebook group where I go live each week and give my best blogging tips to my blogging buddies!
