06 Nov
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Last month I made my first $1,000 a month blogging, which is my biggest month so far!
So I want to do a bit of an income report and break down how I made that money through different income streams and show you how you can make extra money with your blog as well!
Making money with your blog isn’t an easy task and a lot of new bloggers struggle with making sales, getting clients, and bringing in income each month.
I have been full-time with my blog and business for over two years now and have been working hard during that time to learn the ins and outs of making money so I can teach others how to do the same.
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How I Made My First $1,000 A Month Blogging!
First, let’s talk about the different income streams I have and why it’s important to have more than one.
I’m currently making money through ads, affiliate marketing, client work, and digital products.
I didn’t start out with all of these income streams though, I originally just had ads and affiliate marketing because those are the best two to get started with in my opinion. I later added on digital products, and then client work.
If you are just getting started, like within the first 3 months of your business, you should mostly focus on building up one income stream at a time. Because while it is important to have more than one, you don’t want to start a bunch of things you can’t keep up with.
But eventually, it is good to branch out to more income sources for more reliable income.
(P.S: If you don’t have a blog at all right now, Siteground is the best place to find hosting! Check them out below.)
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Sadly, when it comes to blogging and business, your income will be pretty random at first. And it’s always entirely up to how good you are at making money and how much you’re working.
So, with fluctuating income, if one month fewer people buy from your affiliate links, hopefully, you can pick up the slack of income with your client work. Or whatever the case may be!
That way, once you can build up a few different income streams, you’ll have a slightly better chance of not dipping in income significantly because you’ll have more than one source.
Let’s talk about where I make my money!
1. Ads Revenue
This first income source actually comes from my YouTube channel, not my blog.
I was able to get my YouTube channel monetized last year so I could make money off the ads played on my videos. And the way you can be eligible for that is you need to have either 4,000 watch hours of content in the last 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days, plus 1,000 subscribers.
If you’re interested in starting on YouTube and want to learn how you can make money, I talk about it here!
There are other ways to monetize now, but when I got monetized you needed 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers.
Not to mention, you also need to make $100 to actually cash out. I’m not currently making $100 a month, so my September payout was from July and August.
But in total I made $130.84 in ad revenue:
I also have ads on my blog, but it’s pretty much next to nothing at the moment. So I don’t really get paid out from it quite often.
2. Digital Products
The next way I made my first $1,000 a month blogging was through digital products. This isn’t an income source I have relied on or worried about too heavily in the past, but it’s something I want to really work on in the future.
This is a great way to make money because you create the product once, and it sells many times over and over again without too much extra work on your part.
I like this a lot better than selling physical products because you have to create them, package them, and send them off to the post office and there is just a lot more work involved.
With digital products, all you need to do is market the product, mention it around the web, and drive traffic to your offer, which isn’t hard to do, and it can sell when you’re sleeping!
Which is something I do frequently!
For this month, I made $62.44 from digital products! I ended up selling some Pin templates and one copy of my new ebook: The Ultimate Guide for Monetizing a Small Audience, which you can check out below!
Here’s the screenshot for the Gumroad sale, the other sale was deposited directly into my bank account, so I can’t show that!
3. Affiliate sales
Affiliate income is my second-highest-paying revenue source for this month, and it’s another great way to make passive income.
All you have to do is create content around an affiliate product and sell it! You can do that by creating good content, promoting your blog post, or whatever type of content you make, and anyone who buys the product gives you a commission.
There is a lot more that goes into successfully implementing affiliate marketing strategies into your business, and the best way I learned how to do that is with a course. It’s called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.
This is a highly-rated course by many bloggers and for a good reason!
I actually bought it a while ago off of another blogger’s recommendation and it was an excellent purchase to make! It’s always important to invest back into your business, and one of the best investments to make is one that will help you make more money!
You can check out the course right here.
But for this month, I made a total of $208.01 with affiliate marketing.
I don’t have every single screenshot from the month (Because affiliate income comes from so many different places) But this is what I do have!
4. Client work
And my last, and best, income source to make my first $1,000 a month blogging comes from client work!
I’ve been working with clients since 2020 and have done a range of things over the years like blog coaching, Pinterest management and other services, blog audits, and more!
Client work is by no means my passion, but it is what’s paying the bills right now and makes up the biggest chunk of my income.
This month I made $776.33 with client work!
(The one covered is an affiliate sale and names are also covered for privacy!)
The Total I Made My First $1,000 A Month Blogging!
So with that broken down, the total amount that I made in September 2023 was $1,177.62!
I’m honestly so happy to finally have my first $1,000 a month blogging. It just goes to show you that it is in fact possible to do and everyone has to start somewhere!
I’m also happy to tell you that the hard work and payoff have continued into the current months! I’m actually writing this in November (Oops! Life got busy… what can you do?) and in both October and November, I have made over $1,000 a month blogging as well!
I hope this income report was helpful for you and encouraging that no matter how long it takes you to get where you want to go, you never give up in the process of getting there!
And check out more blog posts below!
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