NOVEMBER INCOME REPORT: How I made $1125 blogging (whilst working full-time)

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BLOGGING INCOME REPORT NOVEMBER

WOW! What a month!

As you know if you regularly read my income reports, I started to make money from my blog in July 2019 after over a year and a half of blogging.

And I decided to share what I earn so I can keep track of my progress and show new bloggers making money blogging CAN be done (I’m not special, and if I can do it you can to!).

You can check out my previous income reports here:

BLOGGING IN NOVEMBER

I was thrilled to have managed to make $559 from my blog in October, as it was also my first month working and I had to put my blog second to working full-time.

But after a month of working AND blogging, I’d realised just how little time I had to focus on my blog alongside my job now.

I was almost certain that I wasn’t going to be able to increase my income at all.

In actual fact I thought I’d be lucky to just maintain the amount I’d earned blogging in previous months, considering how few hours I’d have to blog.

But I’m absolutely over the moon to tell you I made $1125 blogging in November!

This amount of income has blown my expectations out the water, and I’m so proud of myself that I’ve been able to achieve such a rapid growth in such a short space of time.

So here it is- my blogging income report for November.

MY BLOGGING STATS

So before I go into my income, I always cover my blogging stats to give you a rough idea of how many followers I have, subscribers, etc.

Because I think there’s an unrealistic idea that you need to have 10k+ followers on all social media platforms to make any money blogging.

But if you think that, this will surprise you- I only have 6k followers on Pinterest.

And that’s my only social media platform.

I don’t have Instagram, and whilst I have a Facebook group I don’t have a Facebook page for my bog.

So no- you don’t need to be an influencer with thousands of followers to make money blogging!

PINTEREST STATS

My Pinterest account is the only social media account I focus on currently, and it’s continually growing.

In November, I reached:

6,635 (+471)
1.6 million monthly viewers (-0.2 million)

(I’m aware that it says I’ve only gained 377 followers this month, but for some reason Tailwind was only giving me data for the last 24 days of November and not the full month. So I went off the number of Pinterest followers I had by the end of October, which I shared in my last income report!).

Obviously there has been a slight decrease in my Pinterest reach, but this clearly hasn’t impacted the amount of followers I get or the income I earn on my blog (so I’m not too concerned!).

You’ll also know I offer Pinterest management services for other bloggers looking to grow their accounts and get more traffic.

And this month, I got my client some crazy growth- I almost doubled their monthly engaged numbers!

So even if my account reach is dipping slightly, I am still able to get my clients results. Which is really reassuring for me and makes me more confident in marketing my Pinterest strategy skills.

Remember, if you want to learn how you can started with getting traffic to your blog using Pinterest too, you can sign up for my free Pinterest course Easy Pinterest with Emily.

It will teach you how to start using Pinterest to get more blog traffic.

So sign up below!

Otherwise it’s onto my blog views:

MY BLOG VIEWS

It was another frustrating month of my blog views not growing at all (and in fact, they actually dipped):

But again, I’m not mad at this as I’ve actually made a lot of money this month considering how small my blog traffic is.

Plus I’m really happy to see my organic search traffic is still growing!

I know I mentioned in my last income report that I had some ideas to help grow my blog traffic…

Well if you couldn’t tell, I haven’t implemented them yet.

And I probably won’t for a while as I won’t have enough time.

But these growth strategies are still in my mind, and I’m hoping to implement them at some point in the near future!

MY EMAIL STATS

As you’ll know I have a love-hate relationship with email marketing.

Because it does really make me sales, but I find it very time consuming to write the emails to send.

This month I sent a lot more than I did last month because of Black Friday.

And as a result I had a lot of unsubscribes:

That mixed with the fact that I had less people subscribe than normal meant I haven’t really gained a tonne of new subscribers this month.

I was also very worried about my Black Friday emails coming across as sales-y (I ran a discount across all my products and offered a Black Friday Bundle to my subscribers only).

BUT these were the emails that generated me the most income.

And they made me realise unsubscribes aren’t exactly bad, as they just mean the people left subscribed are really interested in what you have to say (and are probably the people that will buy all your products!).

So I’m really not too down on myself about my email marketing strategy right now.

As any growth is positive, and I will try and work to gain more subscribers at a more rapid pace soon!

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: below is my blogging income for November!

(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).

November 2019 Blogging Income report

Blogging Her Way (affiliates)	$30
Bluehost (affiliates)	$455
Tailwind (affiliates)	$18.04
Making sense of affiliate marketing (affiliates)	$120.80
Advertising income	$159.75
Product sales	$194.43
Services	$147.10

Total	$1,125.12

If you’re a regular reader you’ll notice that there are a lot more affiliate products mentioned here, which I will discuss in more detail now!

BLOGGING HER WAY AFFILIATES: $30

I often get questions from my audience about how to make money on just Pinterest. Because some of them are just too busy to try and make money blogging (which I totally get).

And whenever someone asks, I always suggest Get Paid to Pin.

It’s the guide for learning how to make money just pinning on Pinterest. The author Dale really knows her stuff- she makes over $500 a month from Pinterest alone!

I also recommend her second guide Amazon Affiliate Affluence, as it teaches you her best tips for how she makes $1000+ a month through the Amazon affiliate programme.

Dale also gave me a discount code for both her guides, so my readers can get 20% off any of her guides using the code EBE20.

I’m glad to be making this affiliate income from promoting guides that I really think will help my readers…

But I made over $100 from this affiliate programme alone in July, so this is a considerably lower amount when you look at my July income report.

However, after looking at a few months of income reports for my blog I’m starting to realise that one month of making over $100 from promoting Dale’s guides might have just been a fluke.

And whilst I’m glad to be making any money from it and will continue to promote these guides (as I really like them), I am not worried about trying to make more sales.

As it is contributing to my income, but isn’t responsible for the majority of it.

BLUEHOST AFFILIATES: $455

I am so happy with this one!

As in my last income report I mentioned my frustration about not making more affiliate sales for blog hosting (as I have learnt from surveying my readers that a large proportion of them don’t have blogs yet, so this is something they would benefit from purchasing).

But I just could NOT get a decent amount of my readers to purchase blog hosting and start their blogs!

However, I mentioned in my last income report that I had some plans for driving more affiliate sales for this particular affiliate programme.

And whilst this affiliate programme did offer an increase in commission rate for a set amount of time in November which massively increased my income, I also found my test was very successful.

And whilst I’m not making any permanent changes to the way I promote this affiliate programme yet, I will be testing it again and hopefully implementing it as a definite part of my affiliate strategy soon!

As I currently feel like I am leaving money on the table by not making more affiliate sales for blog hosting (seeing as my blog is about starting a blog, ha!).

TAILWIND AFFILIATES: $18.04

(There were also some signup leads I was awarded $0.01 for- with these included it adds up to $18.04)

So the last time I mentioned this affiliate programme was in my July income report.

And if I’m honest, I might have made some affiliate sales for this since that time (I just haven’t been good at checking!).

But as you know, Pinterest is my main traffic source.

And as it’s better to pin consistently throughout the day, I use a scheduler called Tailwind to schedule all my pins at once and then it automatically shares them for me (so I don’t have to be online doing it myself).

I love Tailwind because scheduling pins is especially important for me- I’m a UK blogger and most of my audience is American. So when they are most likely to be visiting my blog after 5pm, I am sleeping.

So it lets me make sure I am pinning even when I am asleep to best engage my audience.

For me, Tailwind is totally worth the money.

It has definitely helped me increase my Pinterest reach to over 1 million, as I am able to share my pins to more places so more pinners see my images and share them (you can read more about my honest Tailwind review here).

But I am not currently making as much as I would like to be with this affiliate programme, considering how much I use it for my blog to be a success.

So I will have to start shouting about my love for it more!

REMEMBER: If you want to try out Tailwind, you can schedule 100 pins for free here before you actually purchase anything!

MAKING SENSE OF AFFILIATE MARKETING: $120.80

Here’s a completely new affiliate programme on my blogging income report.

(Although in actual fact, I’ve been promoting making sense of affiliate marketing for over a year. But it’s only this month I’ve made any sales for it!).

For those of you who don’t know, affiliate marketing is a great way to make passive income.

You can literally make money in your sleep- I recently woke up to an email letting me know I’d made $80 overnight. Whilst I was sleeping!

If you’re new to this idea, you can read more about my affiliate marketing guide for beginners here.

Or even better is investing a course to teach you everything you need to know about it.

Because this is what I did, and it’s the reason I made my first affiliate sale with less than 3000 page views a month and under 30 blog posts published.

And it’s how I made over $600 in affiliate sales this month!

The reason I love this course so much is because the course creator really knows her stuff; Michelle (from Making Sense of Cents) went from making $0 dollars a month on her finance blog to over $50,000 per month.

You read that right; $50,000. Every month.

Crazy right! And that’s just through affiliate marketing.

She makes even more than that on her blog through other income streams!

She now teaches bloggers how to make money with affiliate marketing regardless of what you blog about, with her online course making sense of affiliate marketing.

If you’ve heard other bloggers mention this course before, let me tell you- it’s because it’s the course for affiliate marketing for beginners.

And I do recommend it if you want to master affiliate marketing.

I’m really surprised I made this much from promoting making sense of affiliate marketing this month, as I usually don’t make anything from it.

But I think that’s because it’s a pretty pricey course, and this month there was a Black Friday discount on it.

And presumably people who I had recommended the course to wanted to wait until this discount to invest in this course.

So whilst I’m happy I made affiliate sales for it in November, I’m not placing much expectations on it for December.

AFFILIATE MARKETING: NOTES

So I’m absolutely thrilled with how much I’ve made through affiliate marketing this month, as I never usually make this much.

But I constantly have this feeling with affiliate marketing that it’s beyond my control, and up to my readers if they think the course or product I’m recommending is good enough to buy.

However, it’s been the sole reason my income has doubled from October to this month!

So I can really appreciate the earning potential with affiliate marketing, and I am hoping to gradually improve my strategy over time so I am making a considerable amount with it.

BUT I’m not ever going to solely rely on it for my income, as I don’t feel as secure as when I earn money blogging through services or selling my own product.

AD INCOME: $159.75

I’m MUCH happier with how my ad income has turned out this month!

If you read my last post, you’ll know I only made around $50 last month from ads.

That’s because there was a fault with the file placed on my site (a tech error which wasn’t my fault), and once I notified my ad network they fixed the problem.

So whilst I was only making around $1 a day before, after the problem was fixed I started making around $4- $5 a day, which I am pretty happy with.

I also had some peak days where I made over $7 (one day I made almost $10!).

And these have made me really excited that hopefully in the future I will be making more passive income from ads.

But I know this is a long term goal of mine, and I’m in no rush to make this happen fast.

PRODUCT SALES: $194.43

I’m a mix of being really happy and a bit unhappy with this.

As if you look at the graph, you can see for most days at the beginning of the month I wasn’t making any sales.

And if you read my last income report, you’ll know that’s basically because my site hosting wasn’t fast enough for the traffic I was getting.

So when people were trying to look at my products, the sales pages were taking ages to load (or sometimes you’d even get an internal server error message depending on where in the world you were visiting it from).

Well the annoying this was that I had actually worked this out last month.. But I hadn’t been on the ball, and didn’t get round to transferring my hosting until halfway through November!

Which I know is pretty bad on my behalf, but I was struggling to decide between 2 different hosting companies and how much I should pay for my hosting (whether to pay more for a better plan, or save money and pay less for one that wasn’t as good).

Because understandably I want to keep my blog expenses down as much as possible.

However, I spoke to my mam and she pointed out that I’m making enough for the money I make from my client work to cover the cost of the better hosting plan.

She also pointed out that I’d only need to make 2 sales of my guide to cover the cost of the better hosting plan.

So I went for it, and bought the more expensive hosting.

And I’m so glad I did – you can see in the graph that as soon as I switched hosting companies, my sales started to increase again.

So it was definitely worth it!

I’m just annoyed at myself I didn’t make the change sooner… But now I’m excited to see what sales are like in December.

Also, it was obviously Black Friday this month. So I ran quite a few discounts and offered special bundles to my subscribers only.

And you can see on the Friday I made considerably more income from product sales than I usually do! Which I am really pleased about.

But I’m keeping in mind this was product income was mostly because of Black Friday, and I’m not expecting as many sales next month.

SERVICES: $147.10

Again, I’m really pleased with this one.

Because this is only the second month I have worked with my client.

And now not only have I gotten really good results for my own Pinterest account and my blog, but I’ve also gotten them really good Pinterest results.

In fact this month I:

Got them a viral pin
Increased their Pinterest reach to over 400k
Almost doubled their monthly engaged numbers

(I will be adding these results to my Pinterest services page ASAP).

I’m SO happy that I have achieved this for them, and again the client has told me they’re happy with my results.

So I am hoping that in the future I will be able to achieve this success for more bloggers!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: EXPENSES

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

Blog Hosting	$7.90 p/m
New Blog Hosting	$34.95 p/m
Tailwind	$19.92 p/m
Mailerlite	$15 p/m
SendOwl	$15 p/m

Total	$92.77 p/m

So obviously my new blog hosting is massively expensive compared to how much I was paying for my old one.

But I can already see the benefit in sales, and for me investing that bit more has meant I can earn much more.

It’s a bit frustrating for me that I still have blogs and websites hosted on my old hosting plan, so I can’t get rid of that cost either.

But I think overall paying more for my hosting has been the right move, even if it does mean my expenses are higher.

As sometimes you have to spend money to make money!

It’s also important to keep in mind that:

Some payments are annually, not monthly. I paid for Tailwind upfront for the year.
Not all of these payments are necessary. Most people can start a blog for under $4 a month, but I pay a lot more for multiple sites and this blog to load really fast.

Here’s a closer look at my expenses:

BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, so it’s 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 here.
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, plus it’s free for up to 1000 subscribers. You can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.
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, as I think it will benefit me in the long run. But you can get the basic plan and sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month here.

You’ll also notice if you regularly read my income reports that I don’t have Photoshop as an expense anymore!

As I used to use it for my degree, but after graduating I was barely using it and it was just a waste of money.

So I finally got round to cancelling it this month, and I’m really not regretting it as I haven’t needed it all at!

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT WORKED

So here’s a little overview of what worked for me this month:

I worked smarter, not harder. Now that my time is limited, I can only really do the things that are the top priority for my blogging success. And as such I have not worked all that much, so I am thrilled I have doubled my income!
Affiliate marketing. This was one of my fails last month, but given how much I’ve made this month I’m putting it as a win!
Email marketing. Some months this is a fail and I hate it, and other months it’s the reason I make money. But for sure this month by Black Friday emails drove a lot of my product and affiliate income.
I got even better results for my Pinterest client. This has made me confident in my skills, and that I can do this again for more clients in the future.
Offering discounts and freebies. I offered a half price discount on all my products, a Black Friday bundle of my two products and a freebie for when someone purchased an affiliate product I promote. All three of them drove sales which I am really pleased with, and I will be experimenting with more in the future.
I am just honestly amazed that I have managed to make this money whilst working full-time, and NOT spending every second of my free time blogging!

Lot’s of positive things, but some things didn’t work:

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Getting more traffic. Again, I’m glad I’m getting traffic from different sources but it stresses me out slightly when my traffic dips, even if I’m making more money. I want to keep growing my blog traffic overtime so I can make substantial income from well placed adverts, completely passively.
Tech stuff. My blog having loads of internal server errors negatively impacted my income, and whilst I’m glad I fixed it I really should have done this earlier in the month.
Getting more subscribers. I want to get more loyal subscribers each month, but I keep getting people unsubscribe after they’ve taken my free course! So this is something I will have to work on.

BLOGGING GOALS

These were my blogging goals for November:

Reach 100 members in my Facebook group- FAIL. I’m up to around 75 members now, which is lower than I want but it’s a good start.
Get more active in the FB group (me and the members)- SUCCESS. I hosted a Facebook giveaway for The Viral Pin Guide, which was really fun (even if it didn’t get as much engagement as I’d hoped, the two winners loved it!).
Get 3k sessions through SEO- FAIL. I already knew this was very ambitious, but I’m glad I’ve reached over 2k page views a month through organic traffic!
Share 2 blog posts- FAIL. This is embarrassing to admit considering I’m a blogger… But whilst I wrote 1 really long blog post, I actually shared none! So this is something I should probably work on.
Write 2 emails- SUCCESS. I wrote a lot more than I had expected for Black Friday!

BLOGGING GOALS FOR NEXT MONTH

So here are some things for me to work towards next month:

Reach 100 members in my Facebook group. I’m close to this, so I’m going to keep working towards it!
Get more active in the FB group (me and the members). I loved hosting a giveaway, and I want to do it again next month!
Get 3k sessions through SEO. I keep wanting to work at this!
Share 2 blog posts. I have some plans for December blog posts, so I need to put this down so I will try and write them.
Write 2 emails. I want to keep up contact with my readers over the holiday season.

So my goals are almost exactly the same as the month before.

You can probably tell I’m currently in maintenance mode rather than trying to take on massive plans and growth for my blog (especially over Christmas). As I don’t want to push myself too hard whilst I’m working but also meant to be having time with my family!

BLOGGING GOALS LONG TERM

Just to finish off my blogging income report, these are my long term blogging goals.

I’m writing these down because eventually I want me and my boyfriend to go abroad on a gap year, and I want my blog to help support us when we’re there.

Earn $1k – $2k a month from my blog- DONE. I can’t believe I’ve already achieved this, as I thought it wouldn’t be until next year!
Gain 4 Pinterest clients. I’m really excited to one day be growing Pinterest accounts for bloggers, as this is something I love doing and I’m good at!
Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I want to be getting loads of organic search traffic, so eventually my traffic comes from all sorts of places.
Reach 50k sessions a month. Mediavine (a premium ad network) requires you to have 25k sessions per month before you join, so getting this amount consistently long term will mean decent money from ads too.
Create more ebooks and courses. After the positive feedback I’ve had from my first ebook, I want to create more ebooks and courses to help other bloggers! But this is on my long term to do, as it will take me quite some time.

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope my November blogging income report has been helpful for you.

I’m so proud of myself for having earned this much this month, as it was really unexpected and has filled me with hope for my blogging future!

And whilst I’m not expecting to repeat this success next month, for now I am definitely happy.

As if I’ve done it the once, I know that eventually I can do it again.

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!