This ” How I Made $657.17 On My 3rd Month Of Blogging ” is my first ever income report. I am particularly proud of this and will always look back at this month as one of my greatest blogging achievements. I made this one after just 3 months of blogging. This post contains affiliate links/ads. See disclosure policy. 

Hi, everyone!

Welcome to my April 2016 income report, my first ever. This is the one blog post every month that I show you in detail how I made money, how much I made, and my monthly goals. I told myself that I would post my income report once I started earning some money.

Before I detail my earnings for the month of April, let me just give a background on why I decided to blog my income report.

First, I like to see my income progression from month to month. When I say income, I mean income from blogging and anything related to blogging. I don’t count my day job income and whatever I receive from my side hustles in this income report. That’s just an FYI.

I am a very visual person and I like graphs, charts, and tables. I need to see where I was and am at this point. I believe that blogging my report monthly will address that need.

Second, I am a new blogger. I have only been blogging for 3 months now and have had triumphs and hiccups along those 3 months. I never thought that it’s possible to earn money this early but it has happened and I believe it will continue to be better from here (hopefully). I like to be an inspiration to those who are just starting out.

I see and read a lot of bloggers who have not made money or have made a little bit of money even when they’ve been blogging for quite some time. I like to share my income report to show bloggers (new and veteran bloggers) that it’s possible to earn money this early.

Third, I believe in transparency. While I blog just about anything and everything about personal finance and its intertwining, endless relationship with family and life, my blog is also monetary vehicle for me and my family. When you see advertisements on my blog posts (whether texts or banners), those are income-generating ads.

April 2016 Income Report

April 2016 was really good to me professionally, personally, and bloggingly speaking (I know bloggingly is not word but it sounds good). Here are my income and expenses:

Income

Google Adsense: $40.17

Flex Offers: $396.00

Share-A-Sale: $201.00

American Consumer Opinion:  $20.00

Expenses

Bluehost Web Hosting: $0.00 (I didn’t include the Bluehost fee I had to pay back in January)

Net Income: $657.17

Now, I know you will ask me how I was able to earn money even when I have only been blogging for 3 months.

Social media played a big role in helping but it wasn’t just social media that contributed to my earnings. Here are the things I did that made a big difference.

• Follow-up. What I did this last month was I followed up with people who needed help. I joined a couple of groups mostly Facebook groups for bloggers. When someone asked questions, I not only answered their questions but also offered free help. I built relationship in the process. This free assistance translated into sign-ups for products and/or services (through the ads I have in my blog).
• Offline marketing. While I focused most of my time on online marketing or social media, I used the good, old form of marketing. I talked to a couple of friends, co-workers, and family about my blog and what I have in it. Because my blog centers on personal finance, I geared my speech on services related to personal finance (i.e. Motif Investing and Personal Capital). Though I didn’t make money from sign-ups for both Motif Investing and Personal Capital, I saw some interests in them. Who knows they might sign-up this month and I’ll get my commissions. J
• Products/Services testing. Generally speaking, a lot of my friends and acquaintances are not aware that some consumer surveys aren’t scam. This past month, I showed them the money I received from the past couple of months from taking surveys. I convinced them to try taking surveys and now they’re making a few dollars here and there.

Traffic Report

For the month of April, I had 16,960 views. This should be more than that because for some reason my last two days (as you can see on the picture) had zero views. I don’t know what happened in those two days. But that’s fine.

When I first started blogging, a blogger told me that it’s better to have more conversion even when I don’t have a lot of traffic. Now, I am convinced that it’s true but I say it’s true with reservation. I have reservation on his statement because I like to increase my traffic, gain more readers, and share my personal stories and views on personal finance, family, and life. I know I can contribute something of value to the readers. I am not all about money but it’s always nice to get some in return.

Monthly Goals

I always believe in setting goals. As I always say, going through life (in this case, blogging) without a goal is like walking on a long and winding road without a foreseeable end in sight. I know the goals I set for myself this May are both easy and difficult to achieve. But I like to always try and be better at what I do. So, it’s ok for me to set goals that are just difficult but not impossible to achieve.

• Pageviews. I want to see 1,000 views a day, at least. Maybe I’m shooting aimlessly but I will try my best to make this possible. I know it’s hard especially when a lot of my blogger friends are having a hard time hitting 1,000 views even after a couple of months of blogging. Cross fingers, I guess.
• Alexa rank. I like to be ranked under 400,000 (World) and 70,000 (US) by the end of May 2016. It’s probably a stretch but I’ll try it anyways. When I first looked at my Alexa rank, which was back in January 2016, I was unranked. On April 20^th, I checked it again and I ranked 712,462 (World) and 113,853 (US). On April 30^th, I was at 571,419 (World) and 88,728 (US).
• Social Media Presence. I want to increase my Twitter followers to 2,000 by the end of the month. As of today, I stand at 1,116. As with Pinterest, I like to increase my followers and improve my traffic from it. Of course, last but not the least, Facebook. I like to improve my fan page likes to 800 this month. Currently, my fan page likes stand at 337. This really sounds a stretch but it’s better to try.
• Guest post. I like to create more guest posts for this month. I only did 2 or 3 last month and would love to do more. If you guys are looking for guest posts, please let me know and I would be glad to create a post for your blog.
• I would like to double my income for this month. Yes, double the amount it is. It may be hard but I believe it’s doable. I may need to work harder but I am ok with that.
• Posting on bigger platforms. I was accepted to be Huffington Post contributor. I published my first ever post there on May 1^st. My blog post was The Success Of Failure: How Failures Help Me Succeed. I wish to contribute to other platforms such as the CNN Money, Lifehacker, just to name a few. If you have any point of contacts, please let me know.

If you ever want to create your own blog, you may want to visit my blog post on How To Start A Blog In 10 Minutes. Even when you don’t have an idea on how to create a website, my how-to guide will show you step by step how easy it is to create your own blog.