This ” How I Made Over $1,400.00 On My 4th Month Of Blogging ” is my 2nd ever income report. I am proud of what I accomplished this past month, which is a lot given that I have a full-time day job and have a family to take care and come home to. This post contains affiliate links/ads. See disclosure policy.
Just a disclaimer before I do my monthly spill, I didn’t put the exact figure I earned last month because I’m still waiting for one or two advertisers that haven’t given me my revenue figures yet. I will update the content (not the title) to reflect the total earning after I receive the information.
Here we go….
Hi, everyone!
Welcome to my May 2016 income report. This is the one post every month that I show you in great detail how I made money, how much I made, what I did and didn’t do, and my monthly goals. I told myself I would post my income report every month once I started earning some money.
Before I show you my earnings for May 2016, let me give a background on why I decided to blog my income.
First, I like to see my income journey from month to month. When I say income, I mean income from anything related to blogging. I do not count my day job income and the money I receive from my side hustles. That is just an FYI to avoid confusion.
I am a very visual person. I want graphs, charts, and tables. I need to see where I was and where I am at this point. I believe blogging my report regularly addresses such need.
Second, I’m still pretty much a new blogger by many people’s definition. I have only been blogging for 4 months now and have had triumphs and hiccups (actually a lot) along those 4 months. I never thought that it is possible to earn money this early on in my blogging life but it has happened. I believe it will continue to be better from here (hopefully). I like to be an inspiration to those who just started or are just starting out.
I have seen and heard lot of bloggers who haven’t made money or have made some money even when they have been blogging for quite some time. I want to share my report to show other bloggers or would-be bloggers that it’s possible to earn money regardless of how long one has been blogging.
Third, I believe in transparency. While I blog about everything under the realm of personal finance and its intertwining relationship with family and life, my blog is also monetary vehicle for my family. When you see advertisements on my blog posts, those are income-generating ads.
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May 2016 Income Report
May 2016 was the best month for me, that is, money and traffic wise. My blog income more doubled from last month and it’s only my 4th month of blogging. For those who haven’t read my first income report, I stated there that technically, I have been blogging since December 2015 but didn’t market or tell anybody about my blog until the 28th of January. So, I consider February as my official blogging start date. Again, it’s just an FYI to avoid confusion.
I believe the reasons I earned this money are both because of my determination and hard work to make blogging, well, work (for the lack of a better work) and because of luck. I always put luck in the mix because up to now I am still figuring out which strategy works.
Here are my income and expenses:
Income
Google Adsense: $70.54
Flex Offers: $568.00
Share-A-Sale: $242.00
Smart Asset: $121.33 (April income I forgot to report last month. I’m still waiting for the May report).
Bluehost: $300.00
Sponsored Posts: $140.00
Income Total: $1,441.87
Expenses
Tailwind: $119.98
Expense Total: $119.98
Net Income: $1,321.99
A couple of people have asked me if I could detail my income per marketing affiliate and here is the breakout of the $1,441.87 for the month of May:
American Consumer Opinion: $280.00
Bluehost: $588.00 (Affiliate link through Flex Offers and direct link from Bluehost)
Google Adsense: $70.54
Sponsored Posts/Mentions: $140.00
WP Engine: $200.00 
Total: $1,441.87
What I Did and Didn’t Do
Now, I know you will ask how I was able to earn money even when I’ve only been blogging for 4 months. In my last income report, I did explain the things I did to make money and increase my page views, Alexa rankings, etc. Now, I am including what I didn’t do last month that I should have done.
Did do
- Sign-ups. This past May, I signed-up for two advertisers. For those who want to use these subscribers, please feel free to use my links I here:
- IZEA – If you want to get sponsored by big brands, this may be just your ticket. According to the site, it connects content creators with the world's biggest brands.
- NewsMax – It's the widget you see on the sidebar with the “Take A Look” section header. If you see some spammy news, I was told that it takes a couple of days before the code crawls in the site and gets the relevant data.
- Follow-up. The same thing I’ve done in the past couple of months, that is, I followed up with people who needed help. I am a part of a couple of Facebook groups for bloggers. When someone asked me questions, I not only answered the questions but also offered help. I built relationship as a result. This free assistance translated into sign-ups for products (through ads I have in my blog).
- Offline marketing. While I focused my time on social media (for the most part), I still used the good, old form of marketing. I talked to friends, co-workers, and family regarding my blog. Since my blog centers on personal finance, I geared my speech almost always on services related to personal finance (i.e. Bluehost, WP Engine, Motif Investing and Personal Capital). Remember, a small talk can make a big difference.
- Products/Services testing.There are a lot of surveys that turned out to be scam. But not all of them. I used myself and my wife as examples on how we were able to make money through surveys. I convinced them to try the surveys. Now, they’re making enough money to pay for groceries, gas, etc. I didn’t include what I earned by doing surveys here. What I included in my income report are the referral fees I got from those who signed up through my link.
- Sponsored Posts/Mentions: While I can’t say that I pursued sponsored posts, I can say that I entertained a couple of sponsored posts or mentions for this month.
Did not do but should have done
- The major casualty of the past month was my Twitter account. My twitter activity and followers moved but not in the pace that I hoped they did. As of May 2016, I had 1,430 followers, which is up by 314 followers. As for my Twitter visitors from my site, the number of visitors was almost the same as that of the last month.
May 2016 Greatest Achievement (i.e. Pinterest)
My greatest, biggest, and whatever ‘est’ accomplishment in the past month was Pinterest. I focused on growing my Pinterest audience in May. All of my efforts paid off.
Here are my stats for May:
- Followers count: 217 followers in April; 1,134 followers (total) in May. (522.58% increase)
- Unique visitors (not views): 110 visitors (average) in April; 9,830 visitors in May. (8,836.36% increase)
- Open board: I created the “Bloggers’ Portal – No Posting Limit” in May. It’s a board created to provide an avenue for new board seekers to pin their materials. In the past month, I requested to join a ton of boards and only a few approved my requests. I felt bad because I did put a lot of effort in searching and crafting my request piece but a lot of board owners never responded to me. I knew I wasn’t alone and so, I decided to create this board.
- Open board (continuation). The board only has one restriction (i.e. not to add pins of vulgarity, nudity, and offensive stuff by nature). For those of you who want to join my board, please visit the board’s link above. Follow the board, follow my Pinterest account, and message me (on Pinterest) the email attached to your Pinterest account.
- Tailwind: Tailwind is my magic tool behind my success with Pinterest. I used to spend hours pinning and scheduling pins with no luck in generating viewers. Now, all I need is an hour a day to pin at least 250 pins across boards in my account.
Some of the features of Tailwind include:
- Schedule Pins (Optimize pinning schedule based on your audience’s engagement)
- Saves you time (by allowing you to do multi-board pinning, bulk upload, and others)
- Discover Content from Pinterest
- Measure Results (see which pins are working and which aren’t)
- Has Pinterest Management, Analytics, and Marketing Tools for your benefit
- Try it For FREE. I recommend you opt for a year subscription for only $9.99/month with unlimited pinning ($119.98/year) versus monthly subscription of $15.00/month with 400 schedule pin limit per month.
I have to tell you that I saved at least 100 hours this past month managing my Pinterest using Tailwind with better results. I opted for yearly subscription than monthly subscription because: (1) it’s cheaper on a yearly basis and (2) I scheduled at least 250 pins everyday across all my boards. Had I opted for monthly subscription, I would have consumed my limit by day 2.
Traffic
For the month of May, I had 29,399 views, which is a 73.34% increase from last month’s 16,960 views. I didn’t put my Google Analytics because, apparently, I turned off my analytics and I only I got traffic numbers for the last week of May. So, I decided to place the analytics I have in my WordPress.
I am so happy to see my traffic grow month by month. A big portion of the increase in traffic is due to my Pinterest traffic. I can’t stress enough how Tailwind has helped me achieve a stellar traffic increase for May.
I don’t know how to calculate the traffic by % and so, I can’t tell how big Pinterest’s contribution was to my substantial traffic increase. If you guys know, please let me know.
June 2016 Goals
I believe in setting goals. Going through life (e.g. blogging life) without a goal is like walking on never-ending road without a foreseeable end in sight. The goals I set for myself this June are both easy and challenging to achieve. I like to always try and be better at whatever I do.
- Page views. I want to see 1,200 views a day, at least. Maybe I’m shooting aimlessly but I will try my best to make this possible. (May Goal: 1,000/day ; Result: 949/day) – Failed. Close enough but I didn’t achieve it.
- Alexa rank.I like to be ranked under 150,000 (World) and 40,000 (US) by the end of June. This is just a stretch. I’ve seen popular and established blogs that are in this range but they’ve been blogging for a long time. I’ve only been blogging for 5 months so this may be light years away. (May Goal: 400,000 (World) and 70,000 (US) ; Result: under 271,000 (World) and under 53,000 (US)) – Succeed. I totally killed and nailed this goal.
- Social Media Presence.I want to increase my social media connection across all my platforms by end of the month. If you like to follow me, the links are located below:
- Twitter: 2,000 followers. (May Goal: 2,000 ; Result: 1,430) – Failed. Not too close but nice try.
- Pinterest: 2,500 followers. (May Goal: Not defined ; Result: 1,330) – Succeed. Way too happy.
- Facebook: 800 fan page likes. (May Goal: 800 ; Result: 540) – Failed. Nice try though.
- Instagram: 500 followers. (May Goal: Non-existent ; Result: 110) Succeed. I didn’t have Instagram but now I do.
- Guest post.I want to create more guest posts for this month. If you guys are looking for guest posts, please let me know and I would be glad to create a post for your blog. (May Goal: More than the usual 2-3 per month ; Result: 3 guest posts). Failed. I didn’t pursue this goal at all.
- I would want to double my income for June. Yes, double the amount it is. (May Goal: Double my April’s $657.17 income ; Result: $1,400+) Succeed. The income more than doubled considering I’m still waiting for one or two advertisers to tell me the final figure for May.
- Email subscribers. I like to have 400 subscribers by the end of June. As of this writing, I have 113 email subscribers. In April, I only had 45 subscribers. If you want to get new posts from The Practical Saver directly to your inbox, please subscribe using the floating bar on top of my blog.
- Posting on bigger platforms.I would like to contribute to bigger platforms like the CNN Money. I have one published to Huffington Post in April and that’s about it. My blog post was The Success Of Failure: How Failures Help Me Succeed. (May Goal: more platforms ; Result: Nada) – Failed. This one is a total failure. I didn’t even make any effort to contact any big websites.
Allan –
Looks like you rocked it. Congratulations on another great month.
Lookng forward to seeing your progress continue.
Thank you, Dave.
Way to go, Allan! You are setting the bar high for yourself and fellow blogger friends.
I am going to follow your lead and develop a Pinterest presence. The traffic boost you achieved is all the convincing I need!
Congratulations!
Yes, Tailwind is like the magic tool for great Pinterest traffic. I’ve only had it for a month now and it’s helping me increase my traffic.
Great work!! Saved for later!
Thank you.
I would love for you to guest post on our blog Million Ways to Mother. Please email if you are willing.
I surely will email you. Thanks for the opportunity.
Congratulations on all of your success so far, this is awesome news!! Good luck with your June news!
Thank you so much.
Way to go, Allan! Your growth is amazing! I signed up for Tailwind on the 1st and I’m loving it so far. This month I’m focusing solely on Pinterest because the traffic has been amazing!
Yes, Tailwind is the genius behind my traffic this past month. I will continue on learning Tailwind this month or until I have learned everything about it.
Way to go! We’ve been blogging about the same amount of time, and this really inspires me. Thank you for being so transparent about how you made money, and your statistics. It was nice to see your social media numbers. This shows me what I need to work on. Great post!
Thank you. I’m trying to be transparent so people can see where I am successful at and where I failed miserably. 🙂
Nice job Allan! Do you mind sharing how many pins you are scheduling per day? I’m using Tailwind and have seen a big increase, but I’m thinking of upping my daily pins. Congrats on these numbers!
Hi Chantal,
I started with 50 a day. Then, I upped my scheduled pins after a week to 100 a day. Now, I am scheduling around 200-250 pins a day to go out to my boards and the boards that I am a contributor of. It generally takes me an hour or less to do it. Of course, there’s a learning curve. When I first scheduled the 200-250, it took me 2 or 2.5 hours just because I was all over the place and didn’t plan things out. But now, it’s more like an hour or less than that.
But of course, I always tend to go to the stretch. So, may be I’m doing it too much. But that’s just me and it works for me. 🙂
And thank you.
Awesome work Allan! It is great to see your hard work is paying off.
Your June goals are each doable, but I wish ya the best in accomplishing each one. I think your approach is right, seek to do better in each discipline you are tackling, and don’t beat yourself up if you hit an 8/10 instead of a 10/10. Keep up the great work!
Thanks, man. One step at a time is what I’m living by for now. I can’t be doing so many things and get half of good results. I thought about doing it. But then again, I realized I’ve got all the time in the world to do that. So, I’m taking things slowly.
I need your help. How do you get people to read what you write? I mean you are where some blogs only hope to be in 1 to 2 years. My friend and I started our blog and we are struggling. Honestly I would be happy if you looked at our blog and told me everything I am doing wrong. How do you get the share a sale and flex offers? I signed up for them but not sure how to use them for my benefit. You could seriously get paid to be a coach! I would love some advice. Thank you!
Message me so I won’t forget to review your blog. I will try my best to provide you what I think and give you positive feedback. My email is [email protected].
As far as with shareasale and flexoffers, I generally apply on affiliates that are closely within my niche. Once approved, I do a couple of placement testing and see how the clicks and sign ups go. It’s more like trial and error. I’m still learning. If you see all my blog posts, the placement of text ads are just about everywhere. That is because I’m trying different ways and trying to see which ones work and which ones don’t
But please email me. I can provide you feedback, if you like. Thanks.
Great results! I like your curiousity and persistence to reach goals! An inspiration to try the same with my blog!
Thanks. I like to try reaching goals that may seem impossible. For me, the worst thing that could happen is not achieve the goals and still move on to try achieving them again.
Wow, Pretty good movement month over month.
Thank you
This is amazing! You put a lot of work into your blog, so this income is clearly well deserved. You inspired us to monetize our blog on day! – Mrs. FE
Thank you. I really never thought that I would be making as much as money this early. It goes to say that anything is possible.
Awesome job! You should be so proud that is a great income for only 4 months of blogging. It’s so exciting to track growth and see what works and what doesn’t work. Glad to have stumbled upon you and your blog in the Inspired Bloggers Network and on Pinterest!
Thanks for stopping by. I’m still learning a whole lot and learning what works and what doesn’t. There are still a lot of things to learn from blogging and I can’t wait to learn all those things.
Fantastic facts and figures, Allan. Thanks for being so open. Now if only I could get myself into gear . . .
lol. We can all start from somewhere. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog content.
Hey Allan! Thank you so much for sharing your income/traffic details with us! I am thinking about doing my own really soon. I’ve been seeing a ton of bloggers make money from their affiliate products. I’ve also seen how popular these income reports are and how they can be an amazing way to promote those products. I also use Tailwind and it has been amazing for me! Thanks again for sharing.
You are so welcome. Thank you for stopping by.
This is so helpful! I love getting to see your goals and what your going to do to achieve them. Keep these posts coming! I love using them for inspiration and love seeing your site taking off!
Thank you.
This is super impressive growth. Thanks for sharing what you are doing right and wrong.
Thank you. I like sharing both my successes and my failures because I believe that people can learn a lot of from these.
Nice work Alan! Thanks for the detailed break down and recommendations!
Thank you.
Another impressive month Allan!
Great tips as well. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Graham.
Wow, this is wonderful! I am definitely going to implement your ideas!
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing, Allan! Great month! Your Pinterest experience is interesting. I haven’t started pinning there yet, as it’s a learning curve for me, but need to just dive in and give it a shot.
Yeah, you just need to dive in. That’s what I did. I agree with you. There’s a ton of learning curve in understanding Pinterest and the result doesn’t come right away. But be patient and you’ll get the result that you want. Pls let me know if you need any help. I’m no expert but I can share you what I learned so far.
Congrats Allan! I am incredibly impressed with your progress so far! I have been blogging for almost a year and no where near your level. This is motivating to me to start putting I’m a lot more effort. Thanks for the tip on Tailwind. I will have to check it out!
Thank you, Thias. I think my perseverance, dedication, patience, and a lot of luck helped me achieve what I have achieved so far. If you have any questions regarding Pinterest and Tailwind, please let me know. I’m no expert but I can share you what I learned and what has worked for me.
This is amazing! Congratulations 🙂 I’ve only been blogging a month-ish now & I haven’t even started trying to monetise. You have inspired me 🙂 I will follow you on Pinterest.
Thank you. If you need any help of any sort regarding blogging, please don’t hesitate to email me. I’d like to help and share my knowledge on blogging even though I’m no expert on that side.
Great work man! Everybody wants financial success, and everybody is willing to work for it. Stay positive and look forward to every new challenge. It can be difficult and frustrating at times but remember if it were always nice and easy, you wouldn’t have an incentive to accomplish more and reach the goals you have set for yourself.
Awesome breakdown of your income. I feel you’re really good at affiliate marketing and you gave me a great clue about how to make yourself more trustworthy online. Help people!
Thank you.
Wow – congrats! I haven’t made that much since I got started LOL. I clearly have to start looking at pinterest & IZEA…
XO
http://www.lehoarder.com/
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my income in may, $0.69. I use adsense alone and I think I love reading your success
Keep hanging on and things will get better. My first two months had zero in adsense.
TailWind is great! We use it at YAM and it’s definitely a timesaver.
It truly is.
You are killing it, Allan! I’m learning a lot from these posts. Thanks for being so open and honest about your income!
You are so welcome, Tim.
Looks like you doing very well with marketing side. Whish marketing funels do you use mostly to receive such traffic in 4 months only?Which platforms and tactics? Social media, groups?Paid advertisements? Seo link bulding/social bookmarking? Black seo? Just interesting, coz you doing perfect. I read a lot of blogs…and 90% of them struggeling to get traffic first year! So you diing just great!
For affiliate, I use flexoffers and shareasale for the most part. As with social media, I started and heavily use Pinterest. I haven’t gone to paid advertisements but I am thinking of going there.
You are killing it Allan. Way to go! Those are some ambitious goals but you are making great progress.
Thank you. I may be shooting for the stars but I will try to reach them. 🙂
I just discovered your blog and I have to tell you that I am very impressed. Some other blogs recommend that to start monetizing after a year or so. I started my blog 3 months ago and I have been a little hesitant to start the process.
Thanks. I think it’s both hard work and luck but mostly luck, I guess. I recommend to just dive in and try it. I was in your position before but I realized that I got nothing else to lose. So, I tried it.
Those results are amazing for only your fourth month of blogging. Keep up the good work dude!
Thank you.
Awesome post. Learned many things that what should i do with my blog next. Thank you allan
You are welcome.
Great job Allan! $1400 in just 4 months is amazing. Thanks for sharing so many details. I’m a new blogger too and this article has given me many things to think about. I can’t wait to see your June report.
Thank you. I never thought that I would make money this early but I did. I owe it to both hard work and a lot of luck. 🙂
Hi Allan, you are truly inspirational. I have just started my fourth month blogging and I am so encouraged. I have been thinking of starting to use tailwind, but I will wait no more; your success has given me all the push that I needed. I planned to monetize my blog in October, but looks like it may be sooner. Thanks for being so open and encouraging us all in the process. I will follow you to keep myself motivated. Congratulations!
Thank you. If you ever need help with Tailwind, please feel free to contact me. I’ll help you go through the hoops of Tailwind.
Great income report, Allan! Your blog speaks for itself. You are thorough and the income report breakdown should be very helpful for new bloggers who are looking to monetize their blogs.
Thanks. I try to be as detailed as possible. This way new bloggers see what I did correctly and incorrectly.
You are a rock star Allan. Way to go on such great success. You are killing it. That’s pretty awesome. Glad to see such great success in such a short period of time.
Thanks, Pam. I believe the success is both due to hard work and luck.
Hi Allan! I just found your blog and am so inspired. I was wondering how you make money with smart asset and where you sign up. I’ve been having a hard time knowing what affiliates to work with in my niche. I write a lot about personal finance and your report has given me an idea of the direction I should be going. Thanks!
From what I’ve been told, you make money when people interact with the smart asset (e.g. when they click the ads in there or play around with the smart asset). I will PM you my POC for Smart Asset that way he can explain it better how the money-making strategy works. Thanks for stopping by.
Wow, $1400 in 4 months? That’s amazing. Congrats
It’s 1,400 on my 4th month. 🙂