January 2017: Blog Net Income Report

Welcome to the first earnings report for 2017!

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I have been watching many people around the blogosphere disclose their monthly online income, and quite honestly, I thought it would be a good idea to do the same. I am not disclosing any income from my day job as a Corporate Finance Manager. Instead, this will serve as a marker for the additional earnings I achieve as a result of my online endeavors and various side gigs.

Please understand that I am not disclosing this to make anyone jealous, only to serve as a very visual and tangible reminder that any of you reading this can achieve the same results…probably better even!

Category Explanations:

Advertising Sales: These are direct advertisements from various media companies. I have several sites which I own and have sectioned off that amount that I earn from those. I also place ads for clients of mine as well. These are other bloggers that I find advertising for, in which I keep a small percentage of the earnings for myself.

AdSense/Clickable Ads: These are the earnings I get from all of those banners you see spread throughout sites…they could be on the sidebar or even within the article itself. I actually keep the ads hidden and the only people that see them are the ones that find me through a search engine like Google or Yahoo. This way my more loyal readers aren’t bothered by the additional clutter and noise. This is an area I am always looking to increase.

Affiliate Earnings: These are the earnings you receive from selling other peoples (or your own) products on your website. Think of major players like Amazon Affiliates. If you put up their affiliate links people can buy items from Amazon from your site directly, which in turn earns you a portion of that revenue.

Misc Earnings: There will be always miscellaneous ways of earning income and racking up expenses! This misc. buckets is a collection of many items, some are recurring while others are one-off items. I might write an article for a major site and get paid $50 to do so. Or perhaps I help someone with organic link building. I also offer some minimal paid services for blog coaching and helping others start blogs…this earns me some additional income, but I haven’t widely publicized and advertised it to really grow that part of the business yet.

Summary and Conclusion

At nearly $30,000 for the month I am pretty pleased with my start to the year. I might be down $23k from last month, and down $13k from this month last year, but since both of those months are my highest on record I can’t really complain much. 

I have seriously ramped up my efforts when it comes to client outreach. That’s a fancy term for emailing and calling customers non-stop to see how I can better meet their needs. My pitch is simple, “what can I do to win more of your business?” It seems simple enough, but in the past I have always let the business just come to me rather than actively seeking it out. I have found my efforts paying off big time over the past several months. I have 4 steady monthly customers that I picked up in the last quarter alone, and they are increasingly becoming a larger percentage of my monthly income as the months roll on.

What I am currently slacking on is buying up new sites! I have been crazy busy making sure I fulfill all customer orders by meeting and exceeding their expectations, that I simply haven’t had enough time to seek out suitable sites for purchase. This is a huge “to-do” on my list over the coming months.

If you are interested in earning online income, and making $200,000 blogging, trust me it can be done! I’m telling you, the internet has opened up possibilities that used to be non-existent. If I can start a website and earn money, then literally everyone else in the world can too! You just need to have a little patience, and a little persistence. If you’re inspired, I included a banner below for BlueHost, this was the Hosting company that I started with as well. They help you setup your site for free, and are one of the cheapest and more reliable hosting companies in the game!