OCTOBER INCOME REPORT: How I made $559 blogging part-time

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BLOGGING INCOME REPORT OCTOBER

Another month done!

As you’ll know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, I’ve started sharing blogging income reports.

Mainly because I want to show new bloggers you can make money blogging.

But also to keep track of progress for myself!

If you missed my previous income reports, I’ve linked them below:

Otherwise, onto the report!

BLOGGING IN OCTOBER

I was really happy with how much money I made blogging in September (it was my highest month yet), but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to match it.

Especially because…I started my first full-time job since graduating!

So for those of you who aren’t subscribed to my emails, I graduated university in May and had been working solely on my blog up until now.

I was ill over summer (I had gastritis), and was very thankful to be able to make some money from home as I wasn’t really in a position where I could work.

But I’m much better now, and I knew I wanted to start working so I could stop blogging like a maniac 24/7 to try and earn more money (it’s a very different vibe blogging if you desparately need the income from it, and I was quite stressed really).

So this month I finally got my first full-time job since graduating!

Which I am really enjoying, and I’m looking forward to being able to invest some of my income into my blog.

BLOGGING WHILST WORKING FULL-TIME

So obviously if I’m working 40 hours a week, I have way less time to spend on my blog.

And sometimes it’s really hard to get motivated to actually work on my blog after working a long shift.

BUT, on the plus side I am finding I am improving my time management and productivity skills massively.

I’m only doing tasks that are going to move me closer to my blogging goals now (growing my blog and making money from it).

And when I’m doing them, I’m much more focused than when I was working on my blog all day.

Plus… I’m pleased to say that even though I only worked part-time hours, I made more than I made from my blog last month!

MY BLOGGING STATS

So before I look into my blogging income, here are my blogging stats:

PINTEREST STATS

My Pinterest account is going from strength to strength.

In October, I reached:

6,164 followers (+ 426)
1.8 million monthly viewers (+0.4 million)

I can’t believe how much my account is growing!

And I’m really pleased because I’ve started offering Pinterest management as a service for other bloggers, so I can hopefully get them similar results.

So this just backs up I know what I’m doing!

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!

It’s also worth noting that the amount of Pinterest followers I’ve gained this month seems a lot lower than normal.

But this is for 2 reasons:

Pinterest cleared out loads of accounts, and you can see on one day I actually got minus followers
Tailwind seems to be having a problem, as I can’t access any information or stats before the 4th of Oct.

So in reality I have gained more followers than this, it’s just some technical errors occurring that I’m not too worried about as I have seen the same changes in the Pinterest account I manage for my client too!

MY BLOG VIEWS

I am getting a little frustrated with my blog views, as they just don’t seem to be growing.

BUT I have some plans to increase my traffic massively that I’m going to start implementing soon.

And, I’m really happy to see my organic search traffic (from Google) increasing, as diversifying my traffic is one of my long term blogging goals:

So not a bad outcome, but not amazing either.

But hopefully it shows you that you don’t need hundreds of thousands of blog readers to make money blogging!

MY EMAIL STATS

I literally only sent 2 emails this month.

Because I always end up writing crazy long emails that are time consuming to create… And with less time available, sending loads of emails wasn’t something I wanted to do.

Here’s my number of new subscribers and unsubscribes:

I used to get frustrated with how many people unsubscribe, but I’ve just accepted this is a part of blogging.

Not everyone will want to read your emails, and that’s okay, because I only want subscribers that actually want to read them.

Because they will be the people who buy the products I recommend, or the courses and ebooks I create.

So I’ve stopped worrying too much about unsubscribes.

I’m also aware I’ve hit a bit of a wall with getting more subscribers each month (I’ve been getting around 200 new subscribers each month for the last few months).

But this isn’t exactly awful, and I have ideas for getting more each month too!

MY BLOGGING INCOME

Below is my blogging income!

(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).

October 2019 Blogging Income report

Blogging Her Way (affiliates)	$20
Bluehost (affiliates)	$160
Advertising income	$52.59
Product sales	$180.89
Services	$147.10

Total	$559.69

Let’s go over each one in detail:

BLOGGING HER WAY AFFILIATES: $20

So I’ve been an affiliate for Dale from Blogging her Way for a while now.

Because often my audience ask how to make money on just Pinterest, so I always suggest Get Paid to Pin (as Dale makes over $500 a month from Pinterest alone!).

And when they ask me about making money with Amazon, I suggest her second guide Amazon Affiliate Affluence as it teaches you her best tips for how she makes $1000+ a month with Amazon.

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.

But my affiliate income from BHW this month is crazy low when you consider I made over $100 from this affiliate programme in July!

However, I just suppose affiliate income is sometimes out of your control.

And if I’m honest, I’m not too upset about this as it hasn’t lowered my income this month too much.

BLUEHOST AFFILIATES: $160

Again, this has been a source of frustration for me in the past.

As I even created a free course teaching people how to start a blog and make passive income (it’s called Easy Passive income– you can read more about it here, or sign up below).

But I still seem to only be making around one or two affiliate sales a month.

However, I do have some really exciting ideas to increase the income I make from this affiliate programme.

And I can’t wait to try them!

AD INCOME: $52.56

So I’m not gonna say much about this because I’m really annoyed about it!

But BASICALLY, I was earning around $5 dollars a day from ads on my blog… and then suddenly it dropped to less than $1!

But it turns out it was an error with the files the ad company had placed on my blog (not my fault).

The ad network fixed it and my earnings went back up towards the end of the month, but I’m still not making the earnings I was before.

So I’m just hoping to get more traffic and move to a better premium ad network eventually (and I’m glad I don’t solely rely on ad income!).

PRODUCT SALES: $180.89

Some big wins and massive problems this month.

I currently offer The Viral Pin Guide for half price when people sign up to my free Pinterest course.

But I was offering it for just $9..and once I converted it into GBP (I’m based in the UK), I was left with around £6.

My boyfriend also suggested that the low price might actually be putting people off buying it, as they wouldn’t think it’s very good if it’s so cheap.

This didn’t make sense to me at first as I come from quite a frugal family.

But he explained it like this: if he were to buy a pair of trainers he’d buy a pair for $40 rather than $15, as the $40 will probably be better quality.

And once he said it like that, I got it; “you get what you pay for” is a mentality a lot of people have.

And I agreed that if the guide was priced at $25 full price, people would perceive it to be of higher value.

So I decided to increase the price of the guide from $18 to $25, and then the half price sign up offer I put at better than half price ($11).

So, how did it impact my sales?

Well, until about halfway through the month it was working– I was making more money with slightly less sales.

BUT THEN, suddenly it stopped. And I was suddenly getting lots of days in a row where nobody was buying the guide….

…Well I knew something was up, because I usually make a sale every other day at most.

So I went to visit the subscriber sales page to start trying to work it out…AND IT WAS BROKEN!

As in the whole page where I offer my guide for a discounted price wouldn’t load!

After looking into it, it turns out it’s an error with my host! Which is COMPLETELY beyond my control.

So now I am starting to move to a different host (hopefully it will speed up how fast my blog loads too!).

And now I’m a bit annoyed because I don’t have real results of my price increase experiment to see if my boyfriend was right!

But hopefully I will go back to making more regular sales (like I was at the start of the month).

It’s also worth noting I added a shop to my blog, but it hasn’t really helped with sales. So that’s something to look at too.

SERVICES: $147.10

I’m SO excited about this one!

Because this is the first month I have had a client for the Pinterest services I offer.

Now, I’ve gotten really good results for my own Pinterest account and my blog. So I was really excited to be doing this for someone else.

AND I ACTUALLY GOT THEM RESULTS!

Within a month, I increased the reach of their Pinterest account from 240k to 360k! (I will be adding these results to my Pinterest services page ASAP).

And the client has been really happy with my results!

So I’m SO happy to be making money by offering this service, as I really enjoy it and know what I’m doing with it now.

And I’m hoping that eventually I will make more money with it and get more clients in the future!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: EXPENSES

Here are my blogging expenses for Oct:

Blog Hosting	$7.90 p/m
Tailwind	$19.92 p/m
Mailerlite	$15 p/m
SendOwl	$15 p/m
Adobe Photoshop	$12.12 p/m
Total	$69.94

Keep in mind:

Some payments are annually, not monthly. I paid for Tailwind and blog hosting 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 slightly more so I can have multiple sites.
Not all are purely blogging related. (I used Photoshop for my degree for example).

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.
PHOTOSHOP: I AM CANCELLING THIS NEXT MONTH. I haven’t touched it at all in October!

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT WORKED

It was very different blogging part-time, but I had some big wins:

I worked less, but earned more. Blogging is so strange! I worked a fraction of what I usually do, and still made money! I suppose that’s the power of passive income.
I received more positive reviews on the guide (and a testimonial!). Each positive review makes my guide more reliable, and this month I actually had feedback that included visual proof the guide had worked for someone (they got a viral pin) which I was thrilled at! You can see the results they got here.
I took on my first client and got them results. And they are super duper happy, which isn’t always a given!
I was just happy that my blog didn’t fall apart whilst working full-time if I’m honest!

But sadly, lots of things didn’t work.

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Affiliate marketing. I’m just not the affiliate marketing pro I want to be yet.
Getting more traffic. I’m glad I’m getting traffic from different sources, but I want to keep growing my blog so I can make substantial income from well placed adverts, completely passively.
Tech stuff. My blog literally breaking massively impacted my income. This was beyond my control, but I want it fixed ASAP.
Getting more subscribers. I want to be able to say I get 500 subscribers a month, as this should mean way more product sales!

But luckily some of these things like the tech side can be fixed soon, and I’m hoping with the income I am getting from working I can start to invest in my blog and get even better results!

BLOGGING GOALS

These were my blogging goals for October:

Get 2k sessions through SEO- FAIL. I almost want to list this as a win because I was SOOO close! But I’m not upset that it isn’t a win right now, because I’m pretty much guaranteed to reach this next month. I had one day in October where I had 90 sessions from Google alone! So with my SEO efforts and my plan to move hosting to improve my site loading speed, hopefully this will continue to increase.
Open a shop and add 1 product- SUCCESS. This was pretty much guaranteed as it was the top of my to do list for this month!
Reach 100 members in my Facebook group- FAIL. I barely made halfway to this! But I knew it was ambitious anyway. I have got some plans for next month to grow this, like hosting a giveaway of my Pinterest ebook (you can join the group here if you think you might like a free copy!).
Gain X5 Bluehost affiliate signups- FAIL. This keeps letting me down! But I do have plans for this that I will be implementing in the long run.

So again not 100% successful, and more fails if anything.

But this has all been done alongside working full-time, and it’s just given me lots of ideas and plans I’m excited to work on!

BLOGGING GOALS FOR NEXT MONTH

So here are my blogging goals for next month:

Reach 100 members in my Facebook group. This seemed too ambitious for last month, but hopefully with my giveaway plans this will be done in November.
Get more active in the FB group (me and the members). It’s currently quite quiet, and I want it to be more active for sure!
Get 3k sessions through SEO. Majorly ambitious considering I barely made 2k this month, but I need to push my SEO efforts and want to invest in it more in the future. So I’m saying straight up I probably won’t reach this next month, but it’s good to try!
Share 2 blog posts. That might seem kinda low, but I’m massively struggling with creating content now I’m working. So I think even 2 new blog posts would be good.
Write 2 emails. I need to keep up contact with my readers, and I’m putting emailing as a goal to make sure I actually do it!

So some really ambitious goals here, and also some nice and easy ones so I’m not giving myself too hard a time around working!

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. I’m already going to be working towards saving ready for when we go, but earning $1k- $2k on top of my savings would be ideal.
Gain 4 Pinterest clients. I’m starting to believe more and more that this will happen, as I already have 1 client and have gotten them results! And I enjoy doing it, so it seems silly not to have this as a long term goal.
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. This is a new one, but surprisingly one of my favourite bits about blogging has been selling a guide. I actually have people asking me to create more products for them to buy (which is absolutely crazy), but if that’s what they want then I want to give it to them!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I really hope you enjoyed my October blogging income report!

And hopefully you can get a feel for the new excitement I have towards blogging, now that I don’t only rely on the money I make from it.

I have big plans and I can’t wait to see how they go!

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!