Income Report: How I Made $1600.11 Blogging Last Month

Welcome to my Income Report for January 2019!

It’s my blog’s one-year anniversary! 

I can’t believe it’s been a year blogging and I earned $1600.11 in my 12th month! Although my income dipped for January, I am still very happy that I was able to earn $1600 blogging part-time last month, which is more than how much I truly hoped for when I started. A year ago, I did not even think I could earn $500 a month through this blog and that I would still be here today past the year mark.

I learned a lot last year and I also made a lot of mistakes. In fact, I made ONE BIG MISTAKE that I believe is going to affect my revenues in the next few weeks or months (more details down below.)

So, today, let me do a recap on my wins and failures and how I earned $1600.11 last month!

UPDATE: I now make a full-time income blogging. I wrote a more detailed post here about how I went from earning $0 to $10,000+ per month blogging as a beginner. If you want to start a blog and make money, make sure to read that post!

Pin this! Or follow me on Pinterest!

But first, why I publish my blogging income?

For those who are new here, you might be wondering why I publish my blogging income each month or so.

These Income Reports started out as Goals and Progress Update where I wrote about my monthly progress towards my life goals, which is is the reason why this blog was born. At that time, I documented my side hustles income and my monthly progress into minimalism.

In September though, I decided to only write about blogging income for the following reasons:

1. Most of my readers are interested in the idea of making money through blogging. So, these Income Reports have become an avenue for me to share my thoughts on blogging and share my experiences—good or bad. I know that’s cliche but I really love writing about my blogging progress.
2. I want to show you as well how it is possible to make money through a blog. I know that many of you think that this whole blogging thing is not real. So, in these Income Reports, I am sharing every month the ways I make money through this small blog.
3. As I want to earn a full-time income through this blog, I want to challenge or motivate myself to keep going and document my blogging progress each month, reflect on my mistakes and learn from them.

Don’t have a blog and want to give blogging a shot?  You can start your own blog for cheap,for $2.75 a month only through this link. This site is hosted by this same hosting company which I’ve been with since I started blogging. They can also help you set up your own blog in less than 15 minutes.

What Happened Last Month?

Here are some of the exciting things that happened last month!

Wins

1.I reached 100k page views!

As I mentioned in my December 2018 Income Report, one of my blogging goals for this year is to reach 100k pageviews. I am happy that I was able to reach this goal in January with 101,410 pageviews!

2. My affiliate earnings increased a bit.

A slight increase in my affiliate earnings is still a win because I really want to diversity my blogging income.

Thanks to this course, I’ve been able to increase my affiliate earnings every month since taking the course!

3. Pinterest views remained at 1.0 m in January.

Overall, the stats looked great for only working part-time in January. I hit one of my goals for this year and I am happy!

I INVESTED IN THESE BLOGGING RESOURCES

How did I get here? I invested in a few resources to grow this blog. And I want to say this again: don’t get scared of investing in the right resources. They will help you save time and take the guesswork out of blogging.

I bought a few blogging products but these ones below are the only products I can highly recommend for now and that have truly helped me grow my blog from $0 to now over $1k per month.

Pinterest eBook

This product helped me grow my Pinterest monthly viewers from 200k to now 1 million and it is so affordable at $35!

Only four days after implementing the strategies I learned from this eBook, my Pinterest viewers went up and so was my traffic.

You can read more about this product in my September Income Report:How I Made 596 Blogging and Tripled my Traffic.

I recommend this eBook if:

• You are new to Pinterest and have no idea how to use it to drive traffic to your blog.
• And you’ve been using Pinterest for some time now but your efforts are not generating results. FYI, when I bought this eBook, I had 200k Pinterest monthly viewers down from 700k, so I was not new at all. I bought this product because my previous Pinterest strategies were no longer working after the Pinterest algorithm change in 2018. I knew most of the stuff in the eBook but there were really some valuable strategies that this eBook teaches that I did not know and helped me grow my Pinterest traffic..

Affiliate Marketing Course

I decided to take this affiliate marketing course in October to improve my affiliate income of $37 (September 2018). I’ve read a lot of great reviews about this course as it was created by a successful blogger who consistently makes $50k a month through affiliate marketing and in this course, she shared all her strategies.

After taking the course, my affiliate income increased from $37 in September to:

• $65.13 in October 2018 – more details at October 2018Income Report
• $262.65 in November 2018 – more details at November 2018Income Report.
• $397.41 in December 2018- more details atDecember 2018 Income Report
• $627.81 in January 2018

The course itself is short and easy to go through. And while it only took me a few hours to finish it, the strategies that the course teaches take a lot of time to implement. So, I did not expect immediate results from this course, but I was really surprised that even if I was only able to implement a few tips, my affiliate income increased one month after taking this Affiliate Marketing course.

If you are interested in affiliate marketing as an income source for your blog, I really highly recommend checking out this course. For a limited time, the course creator offers a lot of bonuses if you purchase this course today, such as:

• Access to the private Facebook Mastermind group ($250+ value!)
• How To Drive Thousands of Visitors To Your Blog With Pinterest
• Free Group Coaching Sessions ($100+ value!)
• How to Always Get Approved To An Affiliate Program
• Tips on Increasing Your Page Views
• Maximizing Your Reach, Your Impact, and Your Revenue with Facebook Ads
• My Affiliate Products And Services

Tailwind

This was the first investment I made for this blog because who has the time to pin all day, right? Automating your pinning allows you to focus on other more important aspects of your blog such as creating pins and content.

Grab your free $15 Tailwind credit  when you sign up here.

Blog by Number

I recommend this course if you have no idea how to start a blog.

If you are still planning to start a blog, Suzi is an amazing instructor that can help you set up your blog, launch it successfully, build list and more! If you also purchase this course today, you’ll get FREE 500+ stock photos to use for your blog as a bonus!

Mistake

Now, here’s the not-so-exciting and scary news!

I changed my blog’s permalink structure!!!

When I started this blog, I pretty much had no idea about the technical side of blogging and of course, I had no idea what a permalink is!

I noticed some months back that other blogs’ URLs do not contain dates. Mine had dates and looked like this:

www.thismamablogs.com/2/2/2019/post-title

Then, I found that with this type of permalink structure, I could not update and republish old posts without causing errors and broken links. If I republish a post with a new post date, the URL would change, thus creating broken links and 301 errors

This is a mom/personal finance blog and I realized I have evergreen posts that I could just update and recycle from time to time instead of writing new posts. So, I was really obsessing over changing my permalink structure for a long time.

And finally, towards the end of January, I made the change.

If you have the same issue and want to do this change,make sure that you are aware of the fallout. Once the permalink structure is changed, all the URLs will change, thus resulting inbroken links.

You need to setup a so-called 301 redirect to avoid that.

Here’s what happened

I decided to change mine because I didn’t want to deal with it when my site gets bigger with more posts. And with only 70 posts , it did not take a lot of work to setup a redirect but here’s what happened…

TWO DAYS after the change, my traffic still dropped by 50%!  

I’ve been told that it will take weeks for my site to recover. That said, I am expecting a drop in my earnings in February.

Here’s the major takeaway here: start your blog the right way. The permalink structure is one of the most important things you should look into and decide on as you start. Make sure that you select the right structure so that you will not have to change it later on.

It was a necessary change for my blog so I am just going to stick to the change and wait out until the site recovers. I sure will give you an update on this in the next Income Report!

Income Breakdown

Now, let’s head over to the part you are here for: my blogging income in January 2019. Here’s the breakdown.

Ads (Mediavine) – $ 972.30

Amazon – $241.41

$5 Meal Plan –  $108.3

Ibotta-  $80

Awin – $33

Flexoffers $7.50

Igain –  $8.50

Proofread Anywhere-  $149.10

Gross Income: $1600.11

Note: This is income before expenses and since Mediavine’s payment cycle is NET 65,  I won’t get paid for my January ads earnings until April. Also, my income is in US dollars.

Proofs

Income Analysis

Last month wasn’t my best month. My best month ever is still November 2018 when I earned $1937.65!

You might be wondering… why did my ads earnings drop when my traffic improved? As explained in this post, I’ve learned that RPMs are expected to be low near the end of December and into the first quarter as advertisers are still figuring out their budget. This explains why my ads earnings for November is almost twice my earnings in January even with improved traffic last month.

But since my affiliate earnings increased some, my overall income only dropped by $145.49 for the month.

Honestly, I am scared about my earnings in February. With the setbacks mentioned above, I am expecting a drop in my earnings unless I can increase my affiliate conversion.

So let’s see if I’ll be able to manage to maintain my income in February. I hope you’ll come back for updates!

Don’t have a blog yet? Why not? If fear is what’s keeping you from getting started, my advice is to JUST DO IT!

You can start your own blog for cheap, for $2.75/ month only through this link. This site is hosted by this same hosting company which I’ve been with since I started blogging. They can also help you set up your own blog in less than 15 minutes.