Hi everyone! How have you been? I can’t believe what a busy month August has been. I barely had any time to focus on my blog since we spent half of the month moving to a new house, and the other half of the month I was extremely sick and didn’t even get out of bed.
I am so thankful that my blog provided me with passive income during that time since I would have been totally broke if it didn’t.
I’ve always worked as a casual at my job so that means you don’t get paid anything when you are sick. That’s why in the past I would always go to work even when I was sick because I couldn’t afford to have time off with no pay.
Now, I can sit back and get better at home all thanks to this little blog I started only 7 months ago! I honestly can’t even describe what a difference it has made in my life… Enough of the soppy sad story, let’s get on with the income report you all came to read.
This post contains affiliate links. Please read my disclosures policyfor more info.
Now let’s start with the usual component of every single income report I have ever read:
Why am I sharing my income reports?
Honestly, if it wasn’t for other bloggers income reports I would have never even thought about starting my own blog. There’s just something so inspiring about blog income reports and they show how it’s actually possible to make money blogging.
I always feel like I gain a ton of value from reading other bloggers income reports.
By seeing what works for other bloggers you can learn what could work for you as well.
It can also help me stay on track with my goals and see if I am actually achieving them and if not what I could be doing differently.
Check out my previous income reports here
My First Month Blog Income Report – February 2018
My Second Month Blog Income Report – March 2018
My Third Month Income Report – April 2018
My Fourth Month Income Report – May 2018
My Fifth Month Income Report – June 2018
Who am I and how did I start blogging?
I started this blog in February 2018 so it is still brand new by all standards. Prior to starting this blog, I had absolutely no experience in blogging, website design, graphic design or any of that. (And I still feel like I don’t have much experience now!)
What got me motivated to start this journey was the fact that I hated my day job and felt it made me more miserable by the day.
I was making ok money but I felt like I was getting nowhere in life since all my money was spent on expenses and the ‘fun’ thing about working as a casual is that you only get paid when you are physically at work.
The idea of passive income started interesting me and I researched till my fingers were sore of all the ways people were making a passive income with low upfront costs (since I didn’t have a lot of money to invest.)
Blogging really stood out and I decided to make it my goal to start earning USD $3000/mo (which translates to roughly AUD $4000/mo and I consider a full-time income) before the end of 2018. The amazing thing about blogging is that you can start a blog for as little as $50 for a year so pretty much anyone can do it!
What I also love about blogging is every hour of work you put into your blog and every article you write has the potential to earn you income for years to come! It really is passive income at it’s finest!
Because I started my blog as a complete novice, it took me much more time and effort to monetize and grow. I was trying to do it all on my own without any help.
I suggest other new bloggers to invest in a really great course to start off with, instead of wasting time trying to figure everything out on your own. Yes, it costs a lot up front but it will be worth it because your blog can start making serious money much more quickly.
The course I decided to invest in was The Billionaire Blog Club and it has given me all the tools I needed to start making money from my blog.
Now while The Billionaire Blog Club is amazing and contains absolutely EVERYTHING you need to make your blog successful, it is quite expensive and I know how tight money can be when you first start out blogging.
That is why I suggest 2 cheap ebooks that are both amazingly helpful:
Pinteresting Strategies –This easy to read and straight to the point ebook taught me pretty much everything I know about Pinterest and how to drive massive traffic to my blog using Pinterest. Prior to reading this ebook, I was receiving about 200-300 page views a day to my blog and felt like I was just spinning my wheels, but not really getting anywhere. As soon as I started implementing the easy strategies outlined in this ebook, I managed to raise my page views to 1000-1500 per day and got accepted by an AMAZING ad company called Mediavine. All thanks to this simple ebook.
**UPDATE: I now receive 2500-3500 page views per day all thanks to Pinteresting Strategies!!
Carly, the blogger behind Pinteresting Strategies went from 0 to 200k page views a month to her blog without using any schedulers and spending only 10 minutes a day pinning manually. My favorite thing about Pinteresting Strategies is that it was updated in November 2018 so it’s completely up to date with all the crazy Pinterest updates.
How To Make Money As An Amazon Affiliate–If you’re a complete newbie like I was and struggle to make any Amazon affiliate sales, then you need this ebook by Laura Iancu. She’s an Amazon affiliate marketing pro. Before reading the ebook, I was struggling to make more than $10 per month from Amazon sales, now I earn over $100 a month, and hope to grow it to at least $500/month by the end of this year! The ebook is full of tips and tricks on how to increase your commision that you won’t find from anywhere else!
If you want to start making passive income from a blog too, check out my 6-day free email course to get you started!
How are the earnings reported
I share my income as it is earned not as it is paid out
Some of these programs have 30 to 60 day payout time and I won’t see the actual money for a while. The reason I choose to share it that way is I find it more accurate and more current. A lot can change in 60 days in the blogging world!
These reports only cover the amount I have made DIRECTLY from this blog.
I do earn an income online through other ways (surveys andnon-blog related affiliate marketing). I won’t be sharing any of that income on these reports though.
August 2018 Monthly Summary
Finding the motivation to blog
If you remember, back in June I revealed that I managed to go from working full time to just part-time (3-4) days a week as opposed to 5-6 days a week at my job. Now I’ve cut it back even more and I will only be working 2-3 days a week as of September!
Honestly, my biggest motivation for starting this blog was the fact that my work was making me feel miserable. Working in a restaurant is not fun and it’s extremely hard work, both physically and mentally. So in a way, I’m kind of glad that I have this job because if I had a nice and well-paying job where I didn’t get treated like dirt I would have never gone out to seek a way to make money from online.
It’s really important to find your WHY.
If you have a reason WHY you need to make your blog work, then you will actually put in the effort and time it takes to make it successful and MAKE IT WORK. Whether your reason is the same as mine and you hate your job, or you want to stay home with your kids, whatever your reason, use that as your motivation!
The whole month of August I was struggling with lack of motivation. I could barely force myself in front of my computer to churn out a post and now that it’s September and I only wrote 2 articles the whole month of August, I regret it big time! Because I was so slack in August I didn’t even publish a July income report. Sorry about that!
So I made myself a promise to write at least 20 articles in September to make up for the slacking I did in August.
And every time I feel like watching Netflix instead of blogging, I’ll visualize myself at work, carrying heavy trays full of other peoples dirty dishes and having them shout and me and snap their fingers to come to serve them like I’m a piece of trash! (that is almost every day at work for me :D)
So I challenge you to do the same. Every time you lack the motivation to blog and waste time on things like watching Netflix of spending the whole day refreshing your Google Analytics, visualize your worst day at work and realize that you have the control over your life and how it plays out. I for a fact know that I don’t want to stay at my job for longer than the end of this year so I have no choice but to make this blog work and finally quit my job completely!
My goal is still to reach $3000 USD/mo($4000/AUD which is roughly what I would make if I worked full time 40-45 hrs a week at my current job).
As soon as I reach that goal, I will hand in my resignation. That’s what’s keeping me motivated.
Wow, that was a big long sad rant but I had to get it out!
Now let’s get on with what I actually did do to benefit my blog this month:
Created a ton of new Pinterest boards
I created about 20 new personal boards and I believe it had something to do with me increasing my page views so much. I try to have at least 2-3 boards per post I publish so I can pin all the new pins for that post straight onto those boards. I try to have the boards keyworded very well so Pinterest knows what the new pin is about much sooner.
Created 3 new pins for 6 of my old posts that have lost popularity
That is one thing I love about blogging. It’s not hard to make an old post popular again simply by making a bunch of new pins and adding a new description. Again, I pinned these new pins to my niche personal boards and noticed a few of them take off in as little as 3 days!
Gave up manual pinning altogether
I have always used Tailwind to do about 50% of my daily pinning, but I tried to always pin at least 20-30 times a day manually because I thought that you HAD TOpin manually to grow your traffic. Well… as I said I barely had any free time for blogging in August so I pretty much stopped manual pinning. I would still pin 2-5 times a day but not daily. I would do it when I remembered, which was every couple of days. And I even went 2 weeks without pinning absolutely nothing manually.
I thought this would make my pageviews drop, but it didn’t!
I actually managed to grow my page views to 82 000 only using Tailwind for pinning. Now before you ask, I set my tailwind account to pin about 40-50 pins a day and about 80% are my pins and 20% other bloggers.
I’m not saying that’s the perfect ratio but it seems to be working pretty well for me!
Since I’m such a huge fan of Tailwind I plan on writing an in-depth guide on how to use it and how you can gain huge traffic to your blog with the help of Tailwind too!
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August Traffic Report
From the 1st of August to the 31st of August I reached 82 869page views! That’s +31 517 page views from June. I am extremely happy about this as it’s the highest traffic month I’ve ever seen since starting this blog in February 2018. PS. The main reason why I was able to grow my pageviews by so much is the tips& tricks I learned fromPinteresting Strategies
August Income Report
- Affiliates* – $ 503.46
- Amazon Affiliates – $73.54
- Mediavine Ads – $1333.42
Total: US $1910.42 = AUD $2,656.63
*The Main Affiliate Income Coming From:
Bluehost – My Host of choice. They have amazing plans starting at only $3.95 a month which is so much cheaper than any other host I have found. They also have had amazing support and helped me a ton while I was setting up my blog and trying to figure out how everything works!
Awin–Awin is one of the only places you can sign up to be an Etsy affiliate with. I absolutely love Etsy so I use Awin a lot to promote Etsy products. It does cost a $5 deposit to sign up with Awin but you get it back with your first payout.
Linqia –This influencer program is probably the most well known among bloggers. To sign up toLinqiayou need to reside either in theUSorCanada. You must also have at least2500 monthly visits to your blogor 2500 social followers. The payments from this program vary anywhere from $30 to $300. They also have a great referral program for bloggers.
Pinteresting Strategies –This easy to read and straight to the point ebook taught me pretty much everything I know about Pinterest and how to drive massive traffic to my blog using Pinterest. Prior to reading this ebook, I was receiving about 200-300 page views a day to my blog and felt like I was just spinning my wheels, but not really getting anywhere. As soon as I started implementing the easy strategies outlined in this ebook, I managed to raise my page views to 1000-1500 per day and got accepted by an AMAZING ad company called Mediavine. All thanks to this simple ebook.
**UPDATE: I now receive 2500-3500 page views per day all thanks to Pinteresting Strategies!!
How To Make Money As An Amazon Affiliate–If you’re a complete newbie like I was and struggle to make any Amazon affiliate sales, then you need this ebook by Laura Iancu. She’s an Amazon affiliate marketing pro. Before reading the ebook, I was struggling to make more than $10 per month from Amazon sales, now I earn over $100 a month, and hope to grow it to at least $500/month by the end of this year! The ebook is full of tips and tricks on how to increase your commision that you won’t find from anywhere else!
August Expenses
I didn’t have any expenses in August since my blog hosting is paid for a year as well as myTailwindsubscription.
I expect to have quite high expenses next month though as I plan on trying out promoted pins!
Goals from last month:
If you read my last income reportMy Fifth Month Income Report – June 2018
These were my goals for this month:
- Sustain 50 000 monthly page views – Done!
- Grow my Pinterest monthly viewers to 2.5 million –Done! I grew it to 2.9 million
- Publish 6 new blog posts – Done! Published 7
- Earn $700 in Ad income – YAS
- Earn $700 in Affiliate income – Not quite 🙁
Goals for September:
- Reach 90 000 monthly page views
- Grow my Pinterest monthly viewers to 3.3 million
- Publish 8 new blog posts
- Earn $1300 in Ad income
- Earn $700 in Affiliate income
- Email my list at least once every 2 weeks
If you want to start a money making blog of your owncheck out my easy step-by-step guide on how to start your own blog today!
Hope you enjoyed my August 2018 blog income report!
Let me know if you reached all ofyour goals you set for the month?
Chat soon,
You May Also Like:
First Month Income Report – February 2018
My Second Month Blog Income Report – March 2018
May 2018 Blog Income Report – How I Made $1193 My 4th Month Blogging
ps. if you found this post useful please make sure you pin it for later↓
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About the author, Clary KingsleyI'm a DIY-loving millennial with a passion for cozy home decor and cooking healthy, mouthwatering meals. My adventurous spirit leads me to explore creative ways of making money online, like selling printables and crafts. Join me on this exciting journey as I share my enthusiasm and zest for life! 