This ” How I Made Over $2,950.00 On My 5th Month Of Blogging ” is my 3rd income report. I am proud of my accomplishment this past month. By a stretch, this past month was my best ever in terms of traffic and income. While I managed to pull in some nice dollars, I made several mistakes (mostly because I’m DYIng everything on my own). This post contains affiliate links/ads. See disclosure policy.
Hi, everyone!
Welcome to my June 2016 income report. This is the one post every month where I show you in great detail how I made money, how much I made, what I did and did not do, what my triumphs and mistakes in blogging, and my monthly goals.
I promised myself I would post my income report once I started making money off of my blog. I started earning money back in March 2016, which was my 3rd month of blogging. Here are what I managed to earn in the past couple of months.
- April 2016 Income Report (3rd month of blogging) – $657.17
- May 2016 Income Report (4th month of blogging) – $1,441.87
I credited my traffic and income increases to several posts I published last. I didn’t know that these posts would be seen/read by so many people. Thanks to my fellow blogger, Matt, for telling me this idea. Here are my most read/visited blog posts for the past month:
- Save More Money and Be Richer By $14,000 A Year – 20,023 visits
- How To Feed A Family For $150 A Month – 3,609 visits
- How I Made Over $1,400.00 On My 4th Month Of Blogging – 3,313 visits
- How I Paid $40K Of Debt and Saved $70K In 2.5 Years – 2,692 visits
- How To Travel Free Or Next To Nothing – 2,097 visits
Why Blog My Income Report?
Before I show you my earnings for June 2016, let me give a background on why I wanted to blog my income.
First, I like to see my income progression from month to month. When I say income, I mean income from anything related to blogging. I don’t count my day job income and my earnings from my side hustles.
I am a very visual person. I do want graphs, charts, and tables. I always need to see where I was and I am at this point. Creating this historical information will provide me exactly what I need.
Second, for many, I am still pretty much a new blogger by many people’s standards. I’ve only been blogging for 5 months now and have had triumphs and failures (actually a lot) in those 5 months. Everything I did in my blog is all of my doing. I didn’t know anything about coding or even WordPress before I started blogging. If you visit my blog, you’ll see that it keeps on changing and it has a lot of flaws. I’m still trying to figure out what works best for me and my site. So, please bear with me.
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I truly never thought that it is possible to earn money this early on in my blogging life but it has happened. I know that it will continue to be better from here (hopefully). I like to be an inspiration to those who just started or are just starting with their blogging life. I want to share to the world that earning this early is possible regardless of how long one has been blogging.
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June 2016 Income Report
June 2016 was the best month for me money and traffic wise. My blog income more doubled from May 2016 and it’s only my 5th month of blogging.
For those who have not read my first income report, I stated there that technically, I have been blogging since December of 2015 but did not market or tell anybody about my blog until the 28th of January. I kept it to myself (my very first mistake). So, I consider February as my official blogging start date. Again, it’s just FYI to avoid confusion.
I believe the reasons that I earned this money are both because of my determination and hard work to make blogging work and because of luck. I always put luck in the mix because I am still figuring out which strategy works.
Income by Network
Here are my income and expenses:
Income
Bluehost: $349.00
Flex Offers: $1,883.31
Google Adsense: $85.62
NewsMax: $92.84
Share-A-Sale: $200.00
Smart Asset: $85.56
Sponsored Posts: $255.00
Tailwind: $45.00
Income Total: $2,972.33
Expenses
Expenses: $0.00 (Yes. No expense for this month. Yehey!)
Expense Total: $0.00
Net Income: $2,972.33
Income by Affiliates
A couple of people asked me if I could detail the affiliates that helped me make these fantastic dollars. Of course, I said yes. Here is the breakdown:
American Consumer Opinion: $1,004.00
- My wife and I earn around $175.00 a month just by taking survey. For many, it’s not a lot of money but it does pay a few of our bills.
Sage One: $120.00
- I’ve been looking for a very user-friendly, cheap, and effective accounting software especially for my growing blogging business. I signed up for Sage One for a 30-Day FREE TRIAL with NO CREDIT CARD required. I tell that Sage One is easier than using a spreadsheet (and I am an advanced-to-expert MS Excel user).
Bing Rewards:$136.80
- My wife and I have been using Bing Rewards for almost 2 years now. By using it for just a few minutes every day, we manage to pull in $28ish every month, which is good enough for Hulu, Domino’s pizza, and some more. You can sign up for Bing Rewards for FREE and start making money.
Bluehost: $349.00
- Bluehost is the reason that I have a blog. I didn’t know anything about coding, WordPress, and other things related to blogging. With Bluehost, I was able to create my blog in 10 minutes or less.
Shoeboxed: $132.00
- I have a ton of receipts that just aren’t organized. I really love Shoeboxed because it has digitized all my receipts and are now kept online. This means no more clutters and no more missing receipts. If IRS is knocking for your receipts, this is for you. The best part is I’m using Shoeboxed for FREE for 30 days plus there’s NO CONTRACT with Shoeboxed.
Swagbucks
: $260.40
- Swagbucks is one my new affiliates though I’ve been using it as one of my search engines for some time now. Every month, my wife and I make $70, which is good for gas and some groceries. Receive a FREE $5 when you sign up via this link.
Motif Investing: $51.75
- I like investing but not the fees that comes with doing it. Then, I found Motif Investing. I can buy a Motif (a basket of up to 30 stocks, bonds, and/or ETFs) for just $9.95. That’s cheap than individually buying stocks, bonds, and/or ETFs. Get up to $150 when you start trading at Motif Investing. Click Here to Learn more.
Tailwind: $45.00
- Tailwind is basically the magic behind my budding Pinterest success. Before, I spent hours pinning and scheduling pins with no luck in getting referrers. Now, all I need is less than 30 minutes a day to pin at least 150 pins across boards in my account.
Google Adsense: $85.62
NewsMax: $92.84
Smart Asset: $85.56
Sponsored Posts: $255.00
All Others: $354.36 (Just little knick knacks that when put together made some big bucks)
Total: $2,972.33
What I Did and Didn’t Do
I decided to permanently include this section because I know a lot of my fellow bloggers and those who want to begin blogging would love to see what I did to earn money and increase my traffic as well as the things I didn’t do or failed to succeed on.
Did do
- Sign-ups. This past June, I signed-up for two ad networks. For those who want to use these subscribers, please feel free to use my links here:
- PeerFly and Sovrn– These are two new ad networks I intend to use together with FlexOffers, CJ, and Share-A-Sale. I don’t know what they have just yet but I know I’ll be able to find the products from affiliates that I have been using and love to promote.
What I learned in the past months is that no single ad network houses all your affiliate needs.
- Follow-up. The same thing I have done in the past months, that is, I followed up with people who needed help. When people asked me questions, I not only answered their questions but also offered help. I built relationship as a result. Better yet, this assistance converted into sign-ups for products that are promoted throughout my blog.
- Website re-design. If you look at my blog, you’ll see changes on layout, placement of ads, among others from time to time. Since my blog is new and I’m new at blogging, I like to try what works best and doesn’t work for me. I know there are risks associated with this but I’m willing to try.
- Sponsored Posts/Mentions: While I cannot say I pursued sponsored posts, I can definitely say I entertained sponsored posts or mentions for this past month.
Did not do but should have done
- Last month’s casualty was my Twitter account. My twitter activity and followers moved upwards but not in the pace that I hoped they did. As of May 2016, I had 1,835 followers, which is up by 405 followers.
Traffic
For the month of June, I had 60,753 views, which is a 106.65% increase from last month’s 29,399 views.
I am so thrilled to see my traffic grow month by month. Much of the increase in traffic is due to my Pinterest traffic. I cannot stress enough how Tailwind has helped me achieve this growth is such as short time.
July 2016 Goals
I always believe in setting goals. Going through life, in general, without a goal is like walking on unending road without a foreseeable end in sight. The blogging goals I set for this July are both easy and challenging to achieve.
- Page views. I want to see 3,000 views a day, at least. Maybe it’s impossible to achieve it but I will try my best to make it possible. (June Goal: 1,200/day ; Result: 2,025/day) – Succeed.
- Alexa rank. I like to be ranked under 140,000 (World) and 30,000 (US) by the end of July. This maybe a stretch but hey I like a challenge. (June Goal: 186,420 (World) and 42,055 (US) ; Result: under 150,000 (World) and under 40,000 (US)) – Close enough though, I think.
- Social Media. I aspire to increase my social media connection across all my social media platforms by end of July. If you like to follow me, the links are located below:
- Twitter: 2,000 followers. (June Goal: 2,000 ; Result: 1,835) – Failed. Close though.
- Pinterest: 6,000 followers. (June Goal: 2,500 ; Result: 3,767) – Way too happy.
- Facebook: 1,200 fan page likes. (June Goal: 800 ; Result: 905) – Way too happy.
- Instagram: 500 followers. (June Goal: 500 ; Result: 186) Didn’t even touch it this past month.
- I want to double my income for July. Yes, double the amount it is. (June Goal: Double my May’s income of over $1,400 ; Result: $2,972.33) The income more than doubled.
- Email subscribers. I like to have 500 subscribers by the end of July. (June Goal: 400 ; Result: 212) – Failed but close to the target.
- Posting on bigger platforms. I like to contribute to bigger platforms like the CNN Money. I published one on Huffington Post in April and that’s about it. My post was The Success Of Failure: How Failures Help Me Succeed. (June Goal: more platforms ; Result: Nada) – Failed.
