FEBRUARY INCOME REPORT: How I made $1047 blogging (whilst working full-time)

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I’m so excited to share this income report with you!

As you’ll know if you read my income reports regularly, since I started sharing my income reports in July 2019 I’d had one $1000 month.

But since then, I’d been earning around $800 a month since.

If you’ve missed my previous blogging income reports, you can check them out below:

Now, it’s my long term goal to consistently earn at least $1000 a month from my blog.

And once I had done it the once, I knew that eventually I’d be able to do it again… It was just a case of when.

Well I’ll pleased to say that this month, I achieved that goal.

I made over $1000 blogging this month!

Read on to find out how…

MY BLOGGING STATS

I always start with my blogging stats to show other bloggers you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money.

PINTEREST STATS

My Pinterest account is the main social media platform I use to get traffic.

In February, I reached:

8,019 followers (+488)
1.9 million monthly viewers (+0.2 million)

I’m super happy with this, as I’ve reached over 8k followers!

And my reach just keeps on climbing.

Plus, if I’m honest, I don’t really give my account as much love as I should (I’m too busy growing other people’s accounts…more on this to come).

So I’m very pleased with this.

MY BLOG VIEWS

My traffic increased massively this month:

I actually had over 20k pageviews!

But if I’m honest, I’m not sure how much of this increase is real traffic.

As I had a tonne of new traffic from referral, but when I looked into it it didn’t seem like it was from a legit website.

However, on the days I got surges in referral traffic, I did see more new subscribers than I usually get in a day.

So I’m presuming some of them must have been real.

And I’m certainly not complaining!

ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC INCREASE

I’m also really happy because not all of this increase was due to referral.

A lot of my traffic increase was thanks to organic search traffic.

I was averaging between 80-100 views a day (from organic search traffic), but then I began to notice one post was picking up on Google.

And this was a post on Valentine’s Day.

It was actually really interesting because I hadn’t even made any recent changes to this post in order for it to be seen as worthy by Google. (In fact I’m sure the last time I had made an update was last year).

But Google still thought it was good, and towards Valentine’s Day my traffic started to increase drastically.

At one point I actually had over 400 sessions in a single day from Google alone!

So it has definitely shown me the potential for organic search traffic, and it’s on my never ending to do list to make Google traffic a thing for my blog.

As I know it will benefit me in the long run.

MY EMAIL STATS

I’m not mad about this, but not thrilled either.

Because It’s pretty great that I’m gaining around 100 subscribers a month (without doing much to get them).

I just think it would be better if I could get more!

So gaining subscribers at a faster rate is definitely on my to do list.

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for February!

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

February 2020 Blogging Income report

Blogging Her Way (affiliates)	$58.00
Bluehost (affiliates)	$85
Advertising income	$145.27
Product sales	$81.26
Services	$678.46

Total	$1045.46

Here’s a closer look at each of my 4 income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Below are all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings for the month:

As ever, it’s nice to have affiliate income, but I don’t really see it as a secure source of my money from blogging right now.

However, I know it has the potential to be a big earner for me (some people earn their whole blogging income from it!).

So I’m not saying I will never focus on affiliate income.

It’s just not my main focus right now.

ADVERTISING INCOME

I love making money from adverts because because as long as people read my blog, I make money.

And it’s good to see this income has stayed consistent:

HOWEVER, I’m frustrated AGAIN that my traffic has increased (by quite a lot this time), and my income has only increased by… $10.

So I’m hoping that I can keep growing my traffic… As I can feel I’m close to getting enough traffic to apply for MediaVine (and hopefully make more money from ads!).

PRODUCT SALES

I’m majorly gutted with this one.

Because a few months ago I was making sales daily with subscribers entering my sales funnel.

But now, it seems to have stopped making me sales.

And I haven’t changed anything!

But:

I think this is because I had a viral pin driving a lot of traffic to one post, and then people were entering the sales funnel from there. So there’s a lot less people entering it now (or if they are, it’s not from a place where they’re ready to buy).
It’s really good to see I am making full price sales!

I love love love selling my own products.

And I know I will be creating more products in the future.

I’m just really struggling with my time management right now to get something started!

SERVICES INCOME

I’m really happy with this one!

(I’m aware this is more than the total income I listed, but PayPal takes a fee each time so it is less than the total in the images).

As you’ll know if you read my last income report, last month I managed to sign on 3 new clients for my Pinterest management services.

And I’ve loved earning income this way as it feels very secure and I do actually enjoy managing people’s Pinterest accounts.

However, it’s a lot more work than I expected!!

As most of the income I’ve earned before now has been passive.

So creating work for clients each week is a lot more work than I’m used to.

However, I’m happy to work hard for clients right now as it should mean I have a secure source of income in the future.

But now that I have 4 clients, I really don’t have the time to take on any more!

So I’ve raised my rates, and will only be taking clients on that I feel are a perfect fit.

But for now, I am very happy with this income stream.

BLOGGING EXPENSES

I always hate this bit, but here are my monthly expenses:

Blog Hosting	$34.95 p/m
Tailwind	$19.92 p/m
Mailerlite	$15 p/m
SendOwl	$15 p/m

Total	$84.87 p/m

So these are quite high expenses for a blogger.

And whilst some things I absolutely need, others I pay extra for.

These include:

BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I recently paid for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, which has helped to increase my reach. But you don’t need to spend almost $20 a month on it- you can schedule 100 pins for free.
SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. Whilst I pay for mine, it’s actually free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.

So realistically if you were looking at expenses for a new blogger, whilst I pay almost $85 new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (as Tailwind isn’t even a necessity! And you would only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product).

Plus some payments are annually, not monthly (I pay for Tailwind up front for the year for example).

BLOGGING GOALS

I like sharing my long term blogging goals, so one day I can look back and hopefully see how far I’ve come!

Have consistent $1k – $2k months. I still can’t believe I’ve had another month earning over $1k! I’m just hoping this can be a long term thing.
Gain 4 Pinterest clients. In the beginning it was my long term goal originally to gain 4 Pinterest clients, which I’ve now done. And as making money through Pinterest management is one of my favourite ways to make money as it really feels secure, growing my client base would really make sense.
Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I’m getting close to this now, especially after having a post gain a lot of organic traffic thanks to seasonality.
Reach 50k sessions a month. I just really love the idea of making money passively from ads, and this amount would mean a good chunk of passive income.
Become THE website for blogging ebooks, courses and resources. I’m already making plans for this, and it’s really exciting!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you enjoyed my February blogging income report!

As they do take me a while to write, so I hope they are proving useful for those who read them.

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!