QUICK JUMP
A hair over three years ago, I started up this thing called a blog.It was so foreign to me and I had absolutely no experience running a blog what-so-ever. I didn’t even really know the magnitude of what people could make blogging. I just wanted to help people, specifically, helping moms be able to stay home with their kids and quit the 9 to 5.
Seven years ago, I was homeless. I had $5 to my name and I simply wanted to show women how I did it and how they could too!
For me, it wasn’t about money, it was about changing lives, showing women they have a choice and sharing my “from poverty to wealth” stories with them for inspiration. It just so happens that I make great money doing what I love. If you want to get your message out and change the world, keep reading…
From Poverty to Wealth ($18k/year to $130k/year)
As the sole provider of my family, I can understand the extreme diligence that men and women alike, put forth trying to make money from home. It seems like something that only dreams are made of…not something real and tangible. But, the truth is, that you CAN make money from home (I’ve been doing that for over 18 years) and one of the best ways to make money online from home, in my opinion, is blogging.
Yes, it’s a lot of hard work. No, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, but yes, it IS real. For years, I lived on $18,000/year. Last year, I made $130,626.72.
In fact, within my first year, I was already making $10k/month.How? Blogging!
If blogging is something you’ve been thinking about, you’ll want to check out my free ebook (no sign up required), Everything You Should Know About Starting a Mom Blog.
Now, I bet you’re wondering just how DOES a single mom raise a family on her own and make such a killer income from home. Let me show you how I do. 🙂
Network marketing – $4,258.71
First, right off the bat, I am a part of a network marketing company in which I quite literally do absolutely NOTHING in it all year long. That’s right, no sales, nothing. But, because I’ve been a part of the company for over 6 years now, they pay me some good money for my doing nothing (I did originally work it for a couple years).
Private coaching (blog critique) – $195
In 2015, I used to do private coaching and kept extremely busy doing so. Beginning in 2016, I had to stop and this was my last coaching session, which was a blog critique.
Affiliates – $89,885.41
Love me some affiliate income! Yes, please!!!
Amazon– $6,047.07
BlueHost – $63,900.00
Share A Sale– $6,337.59
Ebates– $5,967.10
OfferJuice(barely started with them in November) – $357.05
ShopHer– $1,292.23
Misc. affiliate income – $5,984.37
Having trouble finding affiliate programs to join? I hear ya! You can spend weeks searching for different affiliate products to recommend to make money on OR you can click here to get my free eBook, Huge Affiliate Products Resource List for Lifestyle Bloggers, which details TONS of affiliates to join (sorted by topic so you can find what fits your brand super easy)!
Ebook Sales – $4,102.70
I have a few books on Amazon that do very well for me and have hit Amazon’s #1 Best Sellers list.
My most popular books are:
- How to Turn Your Blog Into a Six-Figure Money Making Machine
- How to Become Financially Free (available in my Financial Freedom Bundle)
Ads – $21,124.68
On February 2 of this year, I took ads completely off my site, but all of last year (for which I’m sharing this income report), I was earning ads income.
I used these two ad networks:
- Google AdSense– Find the two ads that do best on your site and keep them. Delete the ones that don’t do as well. There’s no point in showing an ad that doesn’t make you GOOD money!
- Media.net– What I love about Media.net is that you can put the ads where you want them. I like to put them in some of my more popular posts. You can customize the ad colors any way you want and Media.net will automatically A/B split test them to get you maximum results.
Sponsors – $0
I don’t do sponsored posts. I feel they don’t line up withmy brand.
Misc. income – $11,060.22
Miscellaneous income came in at over $10,000 this year.
Total income – $130,626.72
The one thing that you’ll notice, is that outside of the one blog critique session, ALL my income is PASSIVE! This frees up my time drastically and allows me to be able to work on projects that are more in-depth and helpful to my audience.
Expenses – $18,294
It costs a lot of money to run a blog. Some of those expenses include
- hiring out projects
- having a personal assistant (Katie, who is AH-mazing!)
- advertising
- hosting
- email services
- technical support
- office supplies
- photography supplies
- stock photo website memberships
- healthcare insurance
- training memberships
- …and many other things.
Taxes – $31,179
Good ol’ Uncle Sam.
Total Profit – $81,153.72
Not bad for a single mom who gets to stay home with her kids all day, eh?! 🙂
Traffic – 7,399,111
My traffic is somewhat all over the place. It’s never been stable since I started blogging. Just when it starts to settle out, I’ll get featured or something will go viral or blow up and it’ll go up and get crazy again. It’s always ebb and flow with my blog.
If you’re thinking about blogging, you definitely should start a blog! You never know where it can lead you!!! I started my humble blog as a simple way to help my friends. It was password protected, not even open to the public. They just kept sharing that password with like…everyone! lol. I went live and it quickly snowballed from there. My first month of going live, my site had 10,319 pageviews.
My top 10 posts of the year(in order of views):
- Top 5 Habits to Create a Better Life(747,254 views)
- 5 Things People Who Are Debt-Free Don’t Do(324,191 views)
- One Simple Trick Saves Me $125/month in Groceries(285,840 views)
- 2016 Calendars (279,154 views)
- The Perfect Tuna Melt (261,568 views)
- 40+ Things to Sell Right Now to Make Money (240,449 views)
- How to Make $10,000/month Online(226,164 views)
- Why You Should Never Shop Walmart or Dollar Stores(214,307 views)
- 5 Real Ways to Add $500/month Steady Income(198,339 views)
- Top 50 Essential Oil DIY Recipes (186,589 views)
What I’ve changed up this year:
- I was pretty steadily getting 1.5+ million pageviews and making about $23,000/month in my last income report. But here’s the thing…I started getting super prideful about it (boasting, trying to impress people). It was also pretty stressful for me, because I have an advocate personality type, which means I’m not really big on attention. I like to help in the background, but BECAUSE my personality is an advocate, people are always drawn to me. It’s super counter-intuitive I know, and believe it or not, less than 1% of the population has this personality type! But because I saw my attitude was getting bad, I prayed God would take it all away. He did. I started getting lower pageviews and making less money and you know what, I’M GLAD! I’d rather not have as much than to be a jerk!
- I got completely off Facebook. WA-HOOO! Seriously. I’ve always hated Facebook and finally, I got completely off and dropped 40 hours of my work week along with it. It’s amazing how much time I was spending on Facebook, that was NOT helping me grow my blog. Until I got off, I didn’t even see it! 40 hours a week is a LOT!
- Got ON Twitter. I really like Twitter so far. Every day I post a super inspirational quote that will encourage and inspire my followers. Twitter has become my new “baby” project and I’m working hard to work up the platform. Although I’m only seeing few results in NEW followers, I know that I’m building and it takes time! I started building Pinterest and a couple years later, I’m already at over 200,000 followers, so it’ll come in time with Twitter. I just have to be patient, which I’m NOT good at. 🙂
- Redesigned the blog to make it more modern and user friendly. I changed up my fonts to make it easier to read.
- Removed all ads from my site! It’s a HUGE money income loss, but I felt convicted by God for a long time to do this and I finally took the leap of faith and took them off. No looking back!
- Started going with Leadpages and am IN LOVE with them. My newsletter is up FOUR times the amount of subscribers. I’ve discovered some tricks to bump that up and it’s actually doing quite well. I’m very impressed.
- Deleted over 20,000 newsletter subscribers. Listen, if they don’t open up my emails at least once in the last six months, I’m not going to pay to keep them. Plain and simple. I know this idea is super controversial and may not be right for everyone, but I delete.
- Speaking of newsletters, I’m currently in the process of switching from Madmimi to ConvertKit. I’ve been with Madmimi for all of my blogging career, but wanted a more modern approach, as well as to implement some ideas I have about growing and nurturing my list, but Madmimi doesn’t have those capabilities and I’m not seeing them grow and upgrade their services.
- Started doing more of what I personally love to do, which is printables and graphic design! Three binders hit my blog and they are doing FAN-tastic, traffic-wise. Gosh, I love binders. I’m already hard at work on three more! 🙂 Coming soon to a blog near you! lol.
- Wrote a free 7-day e-course on How to Easily Start a Blog with No Fear. It is my best email list. Not that it has the most sign ups, but that my sign ups have a 99%-100% open rate on ALL newsletters and I’ve only had 3 people unsubscribe from the list this entire time! So, they are signing up, being engaged, and staying on it. This makes it THE most successful in my mind.
What I’m still doing this year:
- Producing quality content, althoughI’m starting to post less each month. This allows me to focus on creating more in-depth content my audience will LOVE and is begging for! Hint: I’m already starting to work on a course! I get SOOOO many emails every day asking me for a course. Okay! Your wish is my command. 🙂
- Taking one platform or program at a time and learning it fully before moving on. So far in my blogging career I’ve learned monetization of ads, rocking Pinterest, how to slay affiliate sales, creating eBooks, and have dabbled in a few free courses.
- Investing in women’s lives. Answering emails personally, and showing God’s grace and love to others. Not only taking the time to help others, but also genuinely caring about them and truly wanting to serve.
- Talking about God. To some, it’s seen as a downside, but I believe this gives me a unique edge. I’m able to live out and show my passion of God to others. It’s what I do in my personal life. It’s what I do in my blogging life. Being a Christian is who I am and I’m proud of that fact (my son wants to be a Pastor; has since he was 3 and he’s 9 now!)
- Providing that inspiration and encouragement that we ALL need DAILY!
- Continuing to NOT focus on money, traffic, or stats, but in my use-ability to my audience (how helpful I am to them).
What my goals are for the next year:
- Create two courses….eventually three. I have everything all mapped out in my head and ready to begin working on the first course. I’m SOOOO excited about it!
- Get to the $30,000/month mark by next Dec 2017. Since I’m doing very well on my blog now, once I add in products I create, I think I’ll do A LOT better.
- Stop being so shy in person and take more initiative to be a leader by speaking publicly or creating videos (yikes!)
- Create more binders (I’m obsessed) and perhaps even sell my graphic designs and/or printables.
Have you ever considered how much blogging income you can bring in? Has this post helped show you what’s possible? How does it inspire you in your blogging journey?
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