Blog Income Report - April 2008
I’m so excited to be reporting my very first Blog Income Report. Every month on the first of the month I typically go check out the income reports posted by other Bloggers out there and get inspired. However, this month before I go and check out what the other Bloggers did, I get to publish my own.
I launched this Blog in October 2007, and after 6 months of on and off blogging whenever I found some spare time to write, I made the decision to commit to Blogging on a much more serious level. About one week into April I decided to really step up my writing output and to just start to really build a habit of sharing what I know about “Making Money Doing What You Love”. On April 17th, I also made a second commitment to get a lot more serious about monetizing this Blog than I have ever before.
Some of you may have read my “Make Money Blogging” and “AdSense is Alive!” articles where I outlined some of my small successes tweaking AdSense. Studying Joel’s work I realized that AdSense is still very much one of the best ways to monetize a Blog that is just starting out. Yes there are better ways to monetize a Blog later on once you’ve got a massive following, but in the beginning stages I think AdSense is an awesome starting point along with affiliate marketing.
The First Baby Steps
One of the first things I wanted to get really clear on when making the decision to monetize my Blog was to set some personal goals that are:
- Personalized to my situation. I don’t want to compare myself to anyone else, especially A-List Bloggers who are already earning 6-figure incomes from their Blogs. I wanted to make sure my goals, however small they may be compared to others, were believable and achievable for me.
- Stretching my vision. I wanted my goals to stretch my beliefs of how much I believe I could make online. I didn’t want to set them too high with an unrealistic outcome, but I did want to stretch myself a bit so as not to cut myself short.
- Utilizing the exponential growth philosophy. The numbers may not seem huge yet compared to a typical full time income, but if I just focus on doubling my numbers every month, it is amazing how quickly things can grow.
- Inspirational. I wanted to set goals and achieve them to inspire myself and even maybe some of the other people following my Blog. I’m not an A-List Blogger (yet), so it’s not that hard for people to see themselves doing what I’m doing right now and follow along. Hopefully I can inspire at least a few others to come along on the journey for us to become the next wave of 6-figure Bloggers.
Looking through my AdSense earnings from October 2007 to March 2008, I saw that the absolute biggest month for me in earnings was January 2008 with an AdSense earnings of $7.83. I know that’s not a lot of money, but everyone has to start somewhere right? AdSense was also the only source of income I was utilizing.
So the most I’ve made from my Blog prior to April 2008 was $7.83. That’s my starting point.
I thought about what I should set my goal as, and thinking exponentially I wanted to at least double my income to at least $15.00. I thought about that figure though and I thought that I might as well make it $20. I figured that even if I don’t hit that from AdSense earnings, maybe I can make some more money by diversifying my income streams and adding other ways to make money with the Blog.
So, how did I do?
My total income earned from my Blog for the month of April 2008 is $279.55.
Even thought the number may not seem like a very large number compared to what the A-List Bloggers are making, I’m personally very happy with the results. First of all, this is only my first month really focusing. Secondly, I didn’t even really have a full month to work with as I only really started the monetization game as of the 17th of April. Thirdly, I would have been happy just doubling my income to $15, so $279.55 is an awesome personal achievement in my books.
To achieve this number, however I had to diversify and utilize other streams of income besides just using AdSense, so here is the breakdown of how the numbers tallied up by the end of the month:
- AdSense: $29.39
- Affiliate Commissions: $199.50
- ReviewMe: $12.50
- Text Link Ads: $26.24
- Kontera: $1.97
- eBook Sales: $9.95
April 2008 - Total: $279.55
A few notes on the numbers above.
Firstly, I’m really happy to see my AdSense numbers jumped from $6.66 in March to $29.39 in April. That’s a 341% increase in AdSense alone. I like the income that AdSense brings because even though it may not be huge yet, it is consistent and it will grow as my traffic grows.
Secondly, I have offered a refund to the person who purchased my eBook for $9.95 (since you can now get it for free) but they haven’t gotten back to me yet so I’m going to count that in as income for the time being and if they want the refund I will subtract it from my May income.
Other Goals
Although this is an “Income Report”, there is a lot more that I’ve gained from my decision to really commit to growing this blog than just earning money. One of the greatest things that I’ve “proven” to myself as well is that if I just focus on providing value and helping people as best I can, the income part will flow in naturally anyways. The joy of helping people has also been incredible. I haven’t really been sleeping well because I’ve been so excited about this whole thing.
As another indicator of how many people want to “tune in” to my Blog I’m also just as excited about my RSS Feed count going up. It took me 6 months to get the Feed up to 69 RSS subscribers, and as of today I’m at 133 RSS Feed subscribers. That’s a 93% growth rate in just one month.
Final Words
Is it really STILL possible to make a good income as a Blogger? Or has the ship sailed and the few that made it will continue to increase their income while the rest of us drool over their monthly income while sitting in traffic on our way to work?
I’m an optimist so I always believed that it was possible to make an income Blogging, but until this month I didn’t really “know it” from personal experience. Now that I’ve experienced what it takes to make some money as a Blogger, I totally know that the opportunity is still there. I might even argue that it’s even easier now than it was before, but nobody will probably believe me anyways.
Either way, I’m extremely happy that i just got to express myself creatively and had the privilege of meeting and helping other people out there, and if I got to do all that and make a few hundred bucks while doing it, then all I have to say to that is - how cool is that?
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| 19 Comments
That’s fantastic, Paul! In particular, your AdSense growth. I’m wondering how you got triple my AdSense income for April with half the subscribers–do you get much search traffic? I currently get almost no search traffic, because I don’t even rank well for my own name. My theory is that I’m in the Google sandbox.
@Hunter Nuttall: I get some traffic from search engines, but not much so far.
You may want to check out my article on Adsense is Alive. It explains what I did.
It’s nice to see other people getting increases in their numbers. My percentages were higher, but you must receive more traffic than I since your revenue was higher.
Nice job!
Fantastic results, man. I hope that I can have some form of growth like that on my network of blogs sometime soon. Keep up the good work!
You are doing quite well! Though Kontera really sucks! Try Chitika, I get a much better payout!
Click for Nick
@Tyler Ingram: Thanks Tyler. Good to hear from you. What kind of traffic are you getting on your site?
@Joe: Thanks! Hope everything works out for you. I too have started a couple of other blogs mostly with friends to help them build something up in their area of expertise.
@clickfornick: Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to check it out.
Paul;
I asked this same question of John Chow - can you break down your affilaite income a little more? I’ve been using CJ for quite a while and with only minimal success. Exactly what products are you selling, and how are you doing it?
@Ashley: Well, if you read through my blog posts you can kind of see where my affiliate commissions come from.
I don’t know if affiliate commissions are going to be a HUGE thing for me because I like to actually buy and own products before I promote them. So for example this month I ended up buying Joel Comm’s AdSense eBook and I thought it was great so I told people about it and included a link for anyone else who wants to buy a copy. I actually ended up getting his complete package as well and that was well worth the money too, but most of my readers just bought the eBook for $9.95.
One thing you may want to ask yourself if you’re trying to promote products via affiliate marketing is whether or not you would use the products yourself. And if you WOULD use the products, but AREN’T using them, then why not?
The affiliate game is not my area of expertise yet, but my basic philosophy on it is to just let people know about stuff that I like and let them decide what to do with that information.
Paul,
This is my first time on your blog. I stumbled on it from a comment by you on John Chow (inbound link for you!)
I just wanted to say congrats. And to comment on the whole “Is blogging dead?” question; I’m still new to IM, but I do believe that now is a great time to get into the industry. There are so many resources containing free and useful information that once an individual sifts through all the hype and sales copy, they will realize there is an industry and it is profitable with a minimum investment required.
I’m not so much into the blogging side of things, but I am gearing towards niche markets and incorporating sites with targeting affiliate products…And to put it plainly, the world is not yet fully connected to the internet. There are still many countries, cities, and towns globally that are not yet connected to the mainframe as we are… I look at those places as being profitable in the very near future.. and when these places do get online, they might be intimidated by the John Chows and the Shoemoney players, and they will be more inclined to turn to niche sites, and attentive blogs like this one…
The future is bright!
you keep doing what your doing… I see great things across the board!
@Elijah: Thanks Elijah, and welcome to the blog. Come back often.
Paul,
Happy to see your tremendous growth.Am reading your blog from day 1 and remember u mentioning a goal of achieving a huge amount (forgot actual amount) in one u r early articles. Intially i was skeptical about it, now am sure and u really inspire us.
congrats and all the best
–Prathap M
Congratulations on having your hard work pay off and thanks for posting this information. I’ve started my own blog that profiles people who do what they love (some of them for a living, some just for fun), so reading your inspirational “do what you love” stories AND reading about the nuts and bolts of how you are earning a living off of the blog is very helpful to me.
Congratulations man, That’s not bad for the first month. Hope you can earn more in the future
@TheLifeLessTraveled: I checked out your Blog and it’s pretty cool. I like the profiles you’re doing. Keep at it!
@Norhafidz: Thanks!
Great post and some great motivational tips there for an up and coming blogger like me. Adding you to my RSS reading list.
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