MARCH INCOME REPORT: How I made $1154 blogging (whilst working full-time)

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What a strange month it’s been!

After making over $1000 on my blog in February, I was ready to hit March with all I had to make sure I had another $1k month under my belt.

And then Corona happened.

I started working my full-time job from home, and had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that a $1k month was NOT happening right now.

Not that the money I make from my blog matters too much currently- I have my health and a full-time stable job that can be done remotely, which I know others are not so fortunate to have. So I’m seriously grateful to be where I am right now.

However, it came to the end of the month and I added up my blogging income…

And whilst areas of my blogging income have taken a hit, I’m thrilled to say I’ve had another month earning over $1000 from my blog!

WHY DO I SHARE MY BLOGGING INCOME?

I do not do this to show off in any way.

I simply hope that by sharing my blogging income, it shows other aspiring bloggers that making money blogging can be done.

As I actually blogged for a long time before (we’re talking over a year) without making any money at all… And it was reading income reports from numerous bloggers which kept me focused on the idea that monetising my blog could happen and would happen.

So when I did earn some income from my blog in July 2019, I was absolutely thrilled!

And I knew I needed to share what I had learned to finally make money blogging.

If you want to read my first ever income report (or how I excited I was to reach a $1k month blogging just 5 months after my first income report!), you can check out all my previous blogging income reports below:

FIRST INCOME REPORT: July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
FIRST $1k MONTH: November 2019: How I made $1,225 whilst working full-time
December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)
January 2020: How I made $828 blogging whilst working 40 hours a week
February 2020: How I made $1,047 blogging (whilst working full-time)

Now as you can see, I’ve only just consistently started making over $800 in the last few months.

So I’m seriously thrilled and thankful to have made over $1000 this month given the circumstances!

And I will share more about how I made this money in a moment.

MY BLOGGING STATS

Before I start my income report, I always share my current blogging stats.

Why?

So new bloggers can see you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money blogging!

Below are my current stats:

PINTEREST STATS

If you’ve read my blog ever, you’ll know Pinterest is my jam!

I literally do not shut up about how great it is for beginner bloggers (or any blogger for that matter) to get traffic.

My Pinterest account is actually the main social media platform I use to get traffic, and in March I reached:

8,493 followers (+474)
1.9 million monthly viewers (no change)

I’m really pleased with my account- it seems to be growing naturally on its own, and I’m consistently getting over 100 followers a week!

I just know I could be getting more blog traffic from it considering my reach… So I want to work on this at some point in the future.

MY BLOG VIEWS

So given my blog traffic soared to over 20k page views in February, I was really disappointed to see the drop in traffic this month:

You can see that the biggest drop is firstly from referral, then followed by organic search.

And if I’m honest, I’m not surprised.

I was pretty certain at the time my referral traffic wasn’t going to last long, and the organic search traffic from Google was because I had a seasonal post rank well (and now that post is no longer relevant).

So I’m a bit disappointed, but not devastated- I still think it’s a good amount of varied traffic for my niche for now!

But I know eventually I want my blog to be much bigger than it is currently, and get way more traffic.

MY EMAIL STATS

So not a great month for email subscribers!

As even though I got 140, I also lost almost half that amount:

However, I’m not mad about the unsubs.

As I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- there’s no use having someone on your email list that doesn’t want to be there.

Because they don’t want to read your emails… So they sure as heck won’t be reading any posts you send, buying any products you recommend, etc!

Basically it’s better to have a small highly engaged email list than a big one where hardly anyone opens your emails.

So I’m not mad about the unsubs… I just want to work on getting more subscribers who really value me and my content!

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for March.

(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).

March 2020 Blogging Income report

Blogging Her Way (affiliates)	$26.40
Bluehost (affiliates)	$170
Advertising income	$113.36
Product sales	$85.77
Services	$759.30

Total	$1154.83

Here’s a closer look at my income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

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

I earned an extra $50 through affiliate marketing this month, which is pretty cool.

But my attitude is the same as last month- that it’s nice to have affiliate income, but I don’t really see it as a secure income currently.

But I know it has the potential to be a big earner, as some people earn a full-time income from it!

So I do want to master my affiliate strategy…

But that’s on my long term to do list.

ADVERTISING INCOME

I literally don’t do anything to earn money from ads; it’s all passive.

But I always get a little frustrated when it fluctuates wildly.

And this month, my advertising income went down by over $30:

There’s not really much I can do about this, unless I work super duper hard and try to get into a better premium ad network (and all the extra traffic would up my income!).

And I hate to give spoilers, but I’m writing this about a week into March… And already I can see my ad income has tanked.

So there’s absolutely no way this is going to be a winning way for me to get decent blogging income any time soon!

(But I’m not completely discounting it: in this blog post where I interviewed bloggers making $1000+ a month, Kristin from TheWaywardHome.com makes around $1500 from ads alone!).

PRODUCT SALES

I said that last month I was unhappy with the income I’d made from my product sales, as I made around $80 this month… but in November I made over $190 in product sales!

So to see this halve has been a disappointment, and this month it’s a similar story:

However, as always I’m trying to look on the bright side;

It’s pretty cool that I can made $85.77 pretty much without doing anything (I haven’t had a sale on my guide in ages!)
If I can earn this amount with just one ebook, I have a few ideas in mind for more… So hopefully as I expand my products, my income will grow too!

And again – no spoilers – but April is looking pretty good for product sales!

So for now, I’m happy 🙂

SERVICES INCOME

Now this form of income is the real breadwinner on my blog.

And it’s something I’m really proud of- I know it can be really tricky to get clients, but I’ve been so fortunate and driven in finding dream clients!

In fact, last month I promised myself I wouldn’t take on any more client work as I took on 3 in one month.

But then a client came along who was literally my dream client…

The potential for their account was undeniable! And there was no way I was turning it down.

So I went for it, and now they’re working with me long term.

This form of income feels the most secure on my blog, and is probably one of my favourite ways to earn money right now.

And I just hope I keep getting new clients!

BLOGGING EXPENSES

Unfortunately, running a blog is low cost but it is NOT free.

So here are my monthly expenses:

Blog Hosting	$34.95 p/m
Tailwind	$19.92 p/m
Mailerlite	$15 p/m (could be $9.53 if paid annually)
SendOwl	$15 p/m
Canva Pro	$12.95 p/m ($9.95 if paid annually)
Gsuite	$6.19 p/m

Total	$104.10 p/m ($95.54 if paid annually)

Now, you can see my expenses have increased slightly compared to before.

Because I have actually been paying for Gsuite since forever (to have my own blog email address), but completely forgot to add it into my blogging expenses!

However the actual new expense I have is Canva Pro.

For those of you who don’t know, Canva is a pretty awesome online design software.

And now that I’m a Pinterest manager, I just really need the extra features Canva Pro has!

Which includes:

More stock photographs to chose from, so I can make pin designs for clients quicker
Multiple folders, so I can organise all my designs into different client folders

Now I was hesitant to add another blogging expense onto the list.

But when I realised that even just one of my client payments covers all my blogging expenses..

And I realised the amount of time I’d save not having to search the internet to find decent images to create gorgeous pins….

Well it really was a no brainer- time is money, and now using the extra features in Canva Pro I’m absolutely positive I made the right choice!

You’ll notice I’ve also split the difference between the things I pay for that are monthly, and how much they could be if they were paid for annually.

Just to show that my expenses (which are very high for a blogger, but crazy low for any other business) could even be lower again!

Just to explain what each expense is:

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 whilst I pay around $100, 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).

And it’s important to remember that whilst I do pay some things monthly, there’s not $100 going out of my account each month (I pay for Tailwind up front for the year).

BLOGGING GOALS

I share my blogging goals to keep me on track.

Plus, it’s nice to look back and see how far you’ve come.

For example when I set up email marketing for my blog, my first goal was just to even get a single subscriber.

And now I get around 100 a month!

So these are my long term blogging goals:

Have consistent ~~$1k~~ $2k months. My long term goal originally was to earn $1k a month consistently…. But now I’ve had a second one in a row, this crazy-far-off-goal I never thought I’d achieve seems to be happening regularly! So now my new goal to push myself is to have $2k months regularly.
Gain 4 more Pinterest clients. My original long term goal was to gain 4 Pinterest clients… And now I have 5! But my long term goal is to gain another 4, as that way I’d be making more than I do in my full-time job working 40 hours a week!
Gain 10k sessions from SEO. This isn’t looking great after this month, but I know the true power of SEO and want to harness that for my blog in the long run.
Reach 50k sessions a month. If I’m making around $1k a month with under 20k page views, I can only imagine what over double that would look like!
Build more of a community and help beginner bloggers. This one is new, but my long term goal always is to remember why I started EBE- to help new bloggers and make blogging easy. I’m honestly thrilled that I’ve gone from not knowing what WordPress is to making $1k a month blogging, and now it’s my mission to help other people do the same!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ve really enjoyed my March blogging income report!

And I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it- I know it’s a very stressful and scary time right now, so I really hope this post has made you feel positive and uplifted (as that’s what I aim to do!).

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!