Welcome to my third blogging income report!
My income increased from last month, which I'm super proud of!
In this months blogging income report, you'll learn the following
- How to make money blogging
- A breakdown of the $4,612
- Top affiliate incomes I make income from
- The blogging courses I recommend to become a full-time blogger
- How to start a blog
- What helped my blog improve
- What did NOT help my blog
- and so much more!
A little about me.
I started FITnancials back in 2013 as a hobby blog and to document my 60-pound weight loss. I spent around an hour a week on it and sometimes didn't touch it at all. One year ago, I decided to go full-time on the blog and also quit my day job that was bringing me great income for someone my age.
Now, I'm making a steady $4,000 a month from my blog, and I get to work from home. My income has increased dramatically since October of 2016! I'll be making a post about my earnings for the first full year of full-time blogging soon. 🙂
Apart from blogging, I'm a senior in college with a 6-year background in the special needs community. I have been a Paraprofessional, Behavioral Therapist, an in-home caregiver, and more. I absolutely love this field, but after 6 years, I became incredibly burnt out. I miss working in the field and sometimes think about becoming a special needs teacher. However, I love my blog and the life it gives me too much to give it up.
Are you interested in starting a blog and becoming a full-time blogger?
If so, check out my FREE 7-day course that will tell you everything you need to know, including how to create your own blog from scratch, essential blogging tools successful bloggers use, how to monetize your blog, grow a loyal audience, and so much more!
Previous income reports:
- How I Went From $1,000 to $10,000 Per Month On My Blog In 1 Year
- How I Made $5,047 in August 2017 From Blogging
- How I Made $4,018 In September From Blogging
How much time do you spend on your blog?
I spend around 20-30 hours a week on my blog. When traveling, the hours tend to be all over the place. During Fincon, I only spent maybe 5-10 hours on my blog due to being at the conference all week. I also bought my pass for #Fincon18 in Orlando, which I'm super excited about!!
How to make money blogging
There are many ways you can make money blogging. Some of these are:
- Sponsored posts
- Affiliate income
- Ad revenue
- Creating and selling your own products
How much did you make in October of 2017?
Sponsored posts:Â $2,178
Affiliate Income:Â $859
Virtual Assistant:Â $900
Ad Revenue:Â $675
Top affiliate companies
- Ibotta
- CreateandGo
- The Selling Family
- Pinecone Research
- Raw Till Whenever
- Maxbounty
- FlexJobs
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
- $5 Meal Plan
- Swagbucks
- Ebates
Are you already a blogger? Below are the courses I absolutely LOVE and would recommend to my friends!
1. The Blogging Blueprint is the one course I wish I had when I started blogging. The Blogging Blueprint lays out everything you need to know about blogging in detail, one step at a time. If you have dreams of becoming a full-time blogger, this is the course to take! You can even sign up for a FREE preview of the course. I can't say enough good things about this course!
2. Make Money Blogging is the perfect course for a beginner blogger who does not know how to make money from their blog. The course is incredibly in-depth and will teach you everything you need to know to make your first $1,000 from your blog. The creators of the blog made over 100k their first year blogging, so they know what they're talkin' about!
3. How I Went From 17k to 400k Monthly Page Views in 9 Months – This eBook includes 21+ strategies to use to dramatically increase your page views. If your page views have plateaued, decreased, or you're simply ready to take your blog to the next level, you need to read this eBook!
4. Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. You'll learn absolutely everything you need to know about affiliate marketing from a 7 figure blogger. Find out how to become an affiliate legally without breaking any laws, strategies you must implement to make six figures, and soooo much more! The course also gives you access to a private Facebook group, which in my opinion, is worth the cost of the course alone.
5. Pinterest Traffic Avalanche – Pinterest is an absolute MUST if you're a blogger. Pinterest Traffic Avalanche taught me strategies that actually work. My reach has been 2+ million for the past year and continues to grow. You'll learn how to successfully drive 100,000+ monthly visitors to your blog, which means more readers which equals more money!
6. Six-Figure Blogger – Learn from the pros who started their blog only 2 years ago, and now make $50,000 PER MONTH from their blogs. If you're a blogger who is ready to create a product to sell on your blog, you need to take this course. You'll learn strategies to sell thousands of products successfully. This is another course that I can't say enough good things about!
What worked
- Creating infographics and savings plans have been a game changer for Pinterest. My most seen pin (very different from most clicked on, but regardless, great for my Pinterest profile) is a travel savings plan which has been doing amazing for months.
- Creating a free resource library has increased my email list dramatically. People love free stuff! I add printables to this monthly, and they're also a lot of fun to make.
- I also created a How To Start A Blog free email course, which has done tremendously well, too. This email course is my highest converting opt-in on my blog.
- I also decreased the number of ads that are on my blog. My website has too many ads, and I feel like this is hurting my affiliate income. No idea if this helped, but my ad income almost tripled, which is awesome!
- My Instagram is improving! I am now posting an inspiring quote every 3rd picture, along with my fitness and travel posts. Follow me here!
- I also added a Pinterest sidebar to my blog, which (I believe) has helped me increase my followers! You can follow me on Pinterest here.
What failed
- I've been wasting too much time on Twitter. I've been attempting to gain traction on this platform and it's proving to be useless, haha. I have 4,000 followers, yet my views from Twitter are very little. I think this is because people don't usually go on Twitter to read articles, but instead read tweets.
What I'll be working on next month
- I'm going to shut off my Boardbooster account for a few days to see how I do with manually pinning. This absolutely terrifies me, but I'm getting mixed reviews on manually pinning versus scheduling ahead of time on Boardbooster, so we'll see.
- I also started a free Facebook community. There are currently around 70 members, which is awesome! However, there is very little interaction between readers, and I definitely need to work on this.
- My affiliate marketing strategy needs some work. Though I managed to double my affiliate income this month, I still believe there is a lot of work to do in this area.
- My digital product is finished, and now I need to create a sales page for it. Super excited about this!
- A few of you have been telling me to create a digital product related to scoring sponsored posts. I've been considering this, so I might start working on it!
Blog related posts
- How To Start A Blog – Beginner Edition
- How I Doubled My Pageviews In 1 Month
- How My Sister Went From $0 Affiliate Income to $50,000+ A Month
- Officially A Full-Time Blogger + Tips For You
New posts from FITnancials this month
- 10 Work From Home Jobs Hiring For The Holidays That Pay Up To $70,000 Per Year
- How Melissa Made $133,000 Flipping Items In 2016
- Find Out How Brian Started A Six Figure Business With A Broom
- How To Make $18+ Per Hour As A Freelance Proofreader
- 15+ Finance Bloggers Share Their Top Money Saving Tips
- 10 Tricks And Tips To Save Tons Of Money On Books
- How To Make Over $10,000 Per Year By Selling Your Poop
Future Plans
- Since I started full-time blogging, I made approximately $30,000 in the past 12 months. I'd love to double that income to $60,000 in the next 12 months. I've been making a steady $4-5K the past few months, so I feel good about this!
- Work more. Yep, you heard that right! I need to work on being more productive. I've only been working around 20 hours a week. Although, I dedicate the entire day of Monday to school work and that burns me out pretty hard.
- Stay above 100,000 page views. I just hit 100,000 page views last month, but I know keeping it up is going to be hard!
- Improve my Facebook strategy. I'm stuck at 3,000 likes and would love to increase this and reach more people.
Recap
I hit over 107,000 page views this month, which is soooooo awesome!
I also just got back from Fincon. Fincon is a 4-day conference targeted to online influencers in the personal finance niche. I met so many people that I'm going to miss SO much over the next 11 months!! If you're in the personal finance niche, you MUST go to this conference. I've read that people that aren't in this niche still go to the conference due to how much it can change a person's business.
See you guys next month. Again, thanks for being so supportive. This was a great month for me and I'm loving where the blog is headed. I also feel like I'm in such a good place mentally.
Love you guys!
Below is a photo of me at Fincon with a few ladies that I really look up to! <3 (Oh my gosh, did I really just insert <3?)
– Alexis
Are you interested in starting a blog and becoming a full-time blogger?
If so, check out my FREE 7-day course that will tell you everything you need to know, including how to create your own blog from scratch, essential blogging tools successful bloggers use, how to monetize your blog, grow a loyal audience, and so much more!
What else would you like to see in my next blogging income report?
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How To Start A Profitable Blog - FREE Email Course
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Thank you for this!! I really enjoyed reading what you felt failed and what your future goals are. I have been contemplating exploring Twitter but I don’t feel it would help much with my traffic. Im glad I read that you haven’t had much success with it because now I am confident in not pursuing and learning another social media platform!
Yeah, Twitter absolutely sucks! However, I have read from a few people that they think Twitter is a great platform for getting views. I, however, disagree.
Wow! You’re getting great results. The fact that you’re doing all this while still in college is amazing and should inspire other students to follow your lead. Thanks for sharing.
Budget Kitty recently posted…7 Tips To Keep Your Kids Safe In Crowded Places
Thank you!
Love this! found your blog because it was shared in the making sense of cents community.
Great read! this is very encouraging. Keep up the great work!!!
Looking forward to next months!
xo
Sara
Thank you, Sara!
Congrats on another stellar month and all of your progress. Many great insights here. BTW, I’ve found twitter pretty useless, too (and I’ve been using since 2009). Now, I just basically include at same time as I schedule my other stuff on hootsuite. Now, hootsuite changed, so I may be changing my approach in January. (That’s when it’s time for my next chunk of scheduled updates).
I’m trying to focus more on guest posting (for better SEO) and improving and adding more Amazon affiliate articles. Just read a really good ebook on how to do this and very excited to implement this week.
Amazing that you’ve been able to achieve this in just 20 hrs/week.
Debbie Gartner recently posted…How to paint wood paneled walls
Yeah, I feel like I should be spending my time elsewhere and stop using Twitter.
And thank you!
Way to go! I had a little laugh about your tweet comment.. I have Twitter, but I don’t think I get much business out of it. . I asked to join your Facebook group too!
Right?! It’s useless! Haha.
Thank You, Alexis, for the very informative post! I don’t usually comment but reading your article is something I can relate to.
I am a 51-year-old Mom who just began a food blog back in June! I can relate to Special Needs and your burnout. My teen son has Autism. So I have been there done that. He had ABA Rx for years. But you are inspiring and trying to run a blog while in school? Impressive! I am struggling with visitors to my website. One day at a time I guess. Twitter? Haven’t found it to be useful for social media at all.
Oh wow, that’s so cool! Yes! It has been tough and I can’t wait to graduate so I can totally focus on my blog.
I just recently decided to stop bothering with Twitter (for now). I realized only like 2% of my traffic comes from Twitter and I just don’t have the bandwith to work on it right now.
Yeah, same here.
Twitter is the worst place for conversions but I go on the hang out and waste my time with other blogger friends…so bad ;( I need to start being more serious.
I totally shared this on Twitter for irony by the way 😀
You are too funny! Haha
Congratulations on all success you have had with this blog so far! I love this blog and can’t wait to see more from you! I have thought of doing income reports but I think my blog still may be too new. We shall see. Cheers!
Thank you so much!