Online Blog Income Reports

Early in 2016, I decided to finally publish my online income that I make from my blog as well as other online endeavors. Although I started blogging in 2010, it took me a few years to even realize that I could make money with a blog. I started dabbling in different forms of advertising and at first I was making pennies. After a few years of trial and error, I am pleased to say that I am making over a grand per month!

Below is a list of the monthly online income reports:

  • February 2016 – $940.41 – First month of reporting my online income.
  • March 2016 – $1,175.48 – Ad revenue from Media.net and Adsense were up a decent amount.
  • April 2016 – $1,533.50 – I got my first native advertising opportunity and a huge increase in Pinterest traffic.
  • May 2016 –  $937.58 – My CJ income was up from a Godaddy affiliate commission for hosting.
  • June 2016 – $869.97 – I made some adjustments to my Pinterest account which caused a major decrease in the traffic to my blog.
  • July 2016 – $1,330.87 – I made much more than I usually on the two other sites that I own.
  • August 2016 – $1,270.60 – Affiliate Income up significantly, income from other two sites was down.
  • September 2016 – $1,985.73 – I had my first native advertising opportunity in a while.
  • October 2016 – $1,689.94 – I got a book deal but not in income report.
  • November 2016 – $3,542.61 – Second highest income report ever!
  • December 2016 – $4,479.01 – Started implementing a Facebook Ads strategy. If you want help when it comes to Facebook Ads, definitely check out Monica’s course, Flourish with Facebook Ads because you could potentially double your income 🙂

2017

  • January: $6,089.48 – Highest month of income ever online!
  • February: $3,199 – Switched the way I did accounting, now report actual income received not invoiced.
  • March: $5,327
  • April: $7,034
  • May: $8,583
  • June: $7,513
  • July: $14,444
  • August: $17,714
  • September: TBD

Note: I have stopped publishing income reports as of September 2017. I initially started these reports to encourage others that it is possible to make a living online. I still make a full-time income from blogging and am much happier than when I worked a traditional 9 to 5 job.

How I got into blogging:

I initially created this blog as a way to document our journey of paying off $52,000 in consumer debt. When my wife and I got married, it became evident that we both came from two different financial backgrounds, so we need to get on the same page with money. We decided to set a goal of paying off all of that debt in 18 months and then created a financial game plan to make that happen.

We sold my upside down car to get rid of my car payment and bought two used reliable beaters. We canceled unused memberships and even cut out eating out for a season. We even sold stuff online that we no longer wanted because our desire to be debt free far surpassed our desire to own stuff. Toward the end, I picked up a part time job delivering pizzas just because I knew the extra income would help us achieve our goal. Well, after 18 months of hard work and sacrifice, I am happy to say that we demolished ALL $52,000 of that debt!

Getting rid of that debt has given us so much freedom. We have been able to travel the world, to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, and London. I was able to quit my job to work for myself full time in 2013 which is such an incredible blessing to us.

How I Actually Make Money Online

I have multiple streams of revenue when it comes to making money online. Here is a brief synopses of each of these income streams and how it works.

Ad Networks

Ever wonder how google has billions of dollars and is extremely successful? It is because they serve ads for other businesses on search results as well as on sites like Well Kept Wallet using an ad network which is called Adsense.

I have strategically placed ads within my content so that it is not overwhelming and blends in with the site. The goal is that people will click on the ad only when really interested in it and I get paid per click. I recently switched from Adsense to MediaVine as the RPM is much higher and I have been very pleased with them.

Affiliates

There are different affiliate brokers out there and here a few that I use:

  • CJ
  • Shareasale
  • Flexoffers
  • Impact Radius

These “brokers” make it easy to find affiliates that line up with your brand as they each have hundreds if not thousands of companies that they have partnered with that you can apply to.

This is definitely a great way to go when you get started, but as you get more establish you may want to look into working directly with the companies that you want to be an affiliate of. The reason being that these brokers take a cut which will ultimately reduce the amount of income you receive. I have started establishing more direct relationships with companies now that I have a decent amount of traffic and respectable blog metrics.

Native Advertising

I don’t do this as much but have started doing it more in 2016. This is where big brands will pay to be featured on your site for a fee. The links are deemed “nofollow” links to make sure not to upset Google and other search engines.

Courses

After much thought, I decided to take my knowledge and experience paying off debt to create two different courses. The first one is called How to Save $250/month where I share practical tips on how anyone can save up to $3,000 per year. Many of these tips we implemented while paying off our consumer debt and found it extremely helpful.

The other course that I created is called Debt Free in 18 months. This course is designed to help people who are in debt, develop a plan to pay it off quickly in a specified time frame. It doesn’t have to be 18 months, it can be whatever goal you find realistic. The point is to set a deadline and then figure out how to hit that deadline.

How I Improve My Income Each Month

I am a huge advocate of studying what successful people do and then imitating them. I am NOT talking about copying what they do, however, I am saying that I use the techniques that they use to become successful. For instance, my friend Michelle from Making Sense of Cents, makes over $100,000 per month from blogging. Yep, that is right. There are no extra zeros in there.

She has figured out how to do affiliate marketing well, so much so that she created a course called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I decided to purchase the course in July of 2016 after I made less than $1,000 in June. As of December 2016, I am making over $4,000 per month and this course was instrumental in getting to this level. Click here to find out more about the course.

Why I Publish My Online Income Reports

The income that I post here is exclusively online income. I actually own three different businesses that clear $10,000 per month, however, I am fascinated with making money online and I am especially interested in making passive income. It is my hope that my passive income will surpass my other business income in the coming years. I post my income as a way to track my progress towards this goal and hopefully it will encourage others as they pursue they online business ventures.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!

Deacon