My Very FIRST Blog Income Report - $483.31 - and it took me 6 months! (2024)

This is my first blog income report – FINALLY – 6 months into blogging

UPDATE: Although this report is a few years old now, it is still very relevant. However, if you would like to see more current income reports, I do still share them with my mailing list. I recognize that they’re an awesome learning tool, so I don’t want to stop sharing them completely. If you want to receive my income reports, get access here:

Part of me can’t believe I’m doing this… writing this first blog income report, I mean.

Not because I have any qualms about sharing my blog income – I’ve worked so. freaking. hard. for. it. (And prayed hard for it!) I want to tell the WHOLE WORLD that I have a blog income. ( I might feel differently if this were my main source of income.)

No, I can’t believe I’m doing this because I can’t believe that I have a blog income to report. I started this blog 6 months ago… and I said if I made 10 dollars by Christmas I would keep going.

(THIS POST PROBABLY CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. OUR FULL DISCLOSURE POLICY IS REALLY BORING, BUT YOU CAN FIND IT HERE.)

I want this blog to be successful so badly, I hardly think of anything else right now. (I’m having a baby in December, and I want to stay home with this baby. I want to give it the kind of childhoodI had – one with a mommy who is around while it’s growing up. I know what a blessing that was to me. My mom worked from home, and to this day we have an awesome relationship. I want that for my baby..)

And now, for the first time – this monthit feels like a possibility. I haven’t earned enough blogging yet to say that I’ve replaced my income, but for in this first blog income report, I can say that I’m well on my way. In just 6 months.

UPDATE – September 2016 income report is posted! Read it here.

I’m going to spare you the “why I’m sharing my blog income” spiel that you’ve come to expect when you open ablog income reportand just tell you that If I can do it, you can do it.

Related:How to Start a Blog for Profit and Work From Home

If I can write my thoughts here online and put them out there and make money, so can you. I didn’t take a single computer class in high school and 6 months ago I literally did not know the first thing about blogging. You just have to want it bad enough, and be willing to put the time, effort, and money into it.

If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, stop thinking. Start doing…

If I had started this blog 6 years ago, when I originally started thinking about it, by now I could be earning full time income – or more.

To see what sort of income I’ve managed to pull down just 6 months after learning what a “WordPress theme” is – and how I’ve done it – then read on 🙂

August2016 Blog Income Report (& Traffic)

(I am only reporting income actually received in August, which is money that was earned in June / July.To date, I have earned nearly $2000.00, but most of the programs pay out 60 – 90 days after earning the money. So from here on out, I shouldsee consistent paychecks.)

Total August Blog Income: $483.31

Adsense Ads – $421.65
Travel Hacking book affiliate program– $56.66
BestMark affiliate program – $5.00

August Traffic: 123,214 users & 157,794 page views

If you’venoticed that the page views I’m reporting here don’t match the google analytics page views in the photo – yup, you’re right.

I had a glitch in my google analytics – which was totally my fault – from the 1st to the 12th of Aug, which caused analytics to record each page view twice (just the page views, not the sessions/users). So to find my total page views for the month, I have divided page views recorded from the 1st to the 12th in half and subtracted that number from the total.

(UPDATE: You should be watchful for this yourself. This is a COMMON mistake made by new bloggers. See how the bounce rate was basically nothing and then SKYROCKETED on the 12th when the mistake was fixed? If you have a very LOW bounce rate, you NEED to check for a double installation of Google Analytics.)

You might think it’s disappointing to have to report nearly 60,000 page views less than what analytics shows, but on the contrary – over 150,000 (real) page views for a blog that is 6 months in is more FREAKING AWESOME than I ever imagined possible. I could not be more excited about this number if I tried.

You also might wonder if an income of $483.31 is low for a blog with 150,000 page views, and I’d have to say yes – I think it is. You’d think that I could explain that away by saying that since this money was earned in July it’s more in keeping with the kind of traffic I had in July… but that wouldn’t be true either. I had over 150,000page views in July as well.

So why the low blog income for page views?

Because I am so new at this that the blog literally ran me over.

I was totally unprepared. I had adsense ads installed, but not on every post. I had sort of dabbled with affiliates, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I hadn’t even considered applying to some of the larger networks, because I thought they would laugh at me – or at best send me away and tell me to come back when I was a grown-up blog.

BUT, I am still so excited to write this income report, because mistakes and all, I have never worked harder for anything in my life or felt as proud of the success of anything in my life. And, in hindsight, making the mistakes has been literally the only way to learn these lessons.

Blogging is a learning curve, and I can’t possibly have expected to grow a profitable blog without doing some… learning. And learning is awesome, because I know what to do differently going forward.

So nowI have a plan.

I know, without a doubt, that I can make money blogging if I do it right. (And so can you!)

So here’s my plan to grow my blog & my income in the coming months – based on what I have learned so far

I am going to keep doingEXACTLY what I am doing with Pinterest.Why mess with a good thing?

I am actually working on a tutorial right now (it’s coming soon!!) that will tell you, step by step, how I have gown this blog to over 150,000 page views in it’s 6th month with Pinterest ONLY.Unlike every other tutorial out there that recommends that you purchase a Pinterest scheduler, doing it my way is free (and, I believe, will get better results). UPDATE: If you are interested in learning more about how I achieved this sorta traffic in this short amount of time the ebook is ready! Two years later, I STILL use this pinterest strategey, and now I get 300k pageviews per month!

I am going to sit back and enjoythe income boost from Adthrive.

I started working with them a few weeks ago, and the average increase in income is 249% oncethey get their ads running on your site. I am so excited to see what happens! (You need a minimum of 100,000 page views per month to get your application on their waiting list.) UPDATE: In October I earned over $2000 with Adthrive alone. ummm.. WOW. Read October’s Income Report Here.

I am going to seriously up my affiliate marketing game.With 150,000 page views per month, making money with affiliate sales should NOT be hard for me. I learned this in Michelle Schroeder’s new course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. Michelle makes over $50,000 / month with affiliate marketing, and there is NO reason that I shouldn’t be able to implement what she teaches and make some money for myself. (If you are struggling to make a profit from your blog, I STRONGLY recommend this course. It will not take you long to make your money back.)

I am going to be more diligent about content creation.After traffic started to pick up, it was easy to let writing fall by the way side as I scrambled around trying to find ways to monetize what I already had written. (If I had taken Making Sense of Affiliate Marketingalready, I wouldn’t have been in this pickle). I’ve noticed that it takes a couple months for a blog post to gain really good traction, and so if you have a month where you haven’t written much, then you are jeopardizing FUTURE months of traffic. I will be posting at least twice per week from now on.

I am going to stress a little less about EVERYTHING.I couldn’t tell you the number of nightsI have gone to bed after a full day at work and then a loonnngggevening on my computer, totally stressing out over the money I have spent on the blog, wondering if I’ve thrown it awayit or if I’ll be able to make it back or if I’m just wasting my time. And then had nightmares about themes and ads and pinterest. Seriously. But between receiving the first $483.31 of my blog income and getting approved with AdThrive, (and truly ENJOYING blogging), I can see now that the money I spent was an investment, and a totally worthwhile one at that.

I can’t wait to share my next income report with you. And I’d love to see how your blogging journey is going – If you’ve published a blog income report for July or August – leave a link in the comments 🙂 Or if you’re just finally convincing yourself it’s time to START your blog – well – get going! Follow this easy tutorial on How to Start a Blog, and never look back.