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A note from Sophia —
I wrote these income reports real time and looking back at them, I can’t believe how far I’ve come! I’m keeping it real with you and sharing the nitty gritty details of how I made money blogging. As I look back on these, I think they’re a fun look into my life at the time so I’ll be keeping them as original as possible. Hope they show you how possible it really is to make serious money blogging, and with that, let’s dive in!
As it’s been about a year since the previous income report, let’s break down my May 2020 blogging income report! I am pinching myself majorly right now because it is so crazy how much money I was able to bring in from my blog.
These income reports are long but they are FILLED with information if you are looking to start your own blog!
I mean, I think it’s pretty dang impressive I have been able to turn this website into a business that brings me thousands of dollars a month AND that I can do it around my full-time college schedule.
I used to publish these income reports monthly on my blog but now that BSL has many different business ventures, I’ve kept these three available from my first three years of blogging available to the public (before the business really started branching out).
I know just how motivational these income reports can be and I hope they can motivate you to start your own blog!
May 2020 Blogging Income Report
Since starting my blog in September 2017, I have increased my income from $0 a month to making over $43,000 in ONE month while being a full-time student and having a social life. After semi-figuring out this blogging world and all it entails, I am here to tell you that ANYONE can start and be successful with a blog. It is not hard to do.
However, it took and still takes a lot of work and is not “quick money”. If you’re a hard worker, you can get the same exact results as me.
It took me about 5 months after starting my blog to earn consistent money and those months were really hard. Even when I started earning consistent money, it was still pretty low considering the amount of time I was putting into my website.
I was constantly overwhelmed and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was so desperate to make it work that I continued to Google everything and anything about blogging.
Once those first $100 dollars hit my bank account, I knew that all the hard work I had been putting in was going to pay off.
Little did I know that in just three years after starting my blog at 22 years old, I would be making more in ONE month than most of my friends made at their full-time jobs in one year.
By Sophia Lee Income & Traffic Report: $43,225.37
- My Blog (Mediavine): $7,458.76
- My Youtube Channel (Google Adsense): $1,137.03
- Amazon: (+)
- Awin: (+)
- Skimlinks: (+)
- Blogging Related Affiliates: (+)
- Shopify: (+)
My Expenses:
- Employees (2 employees)
- Courses: Check out my recommendations to see what courses I have taken!
- Web Host: Started with Bluehost (who I LOVE!) but needed a larger (and sadly WAY more expensive) host as I got bigger so now my website host is Big Scoots.
- Shopify (what my store is hosted on)
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Advertising: Facebook Ads
I want to make it clear that I don’t get to take all of that $43,000 and spend it on whatever I want, although I wish I did ;).
I take 30% of my monthly income and put it in a bank account for taxes. I then pay my expenses and put the rest in savings. I am trying to pay myself as little as possible because I am saving for some BIG business goals that will happen in summer 2021 (hopefully).
I usually buy a blogging course or two because I find courses so dang important in growing my blog.
I definitely DID NOT spend a lot of money right when I started blogging but as it has grown, I’ve started to put more money back into it just like any other business.
My Stats:
Okay, this is the fun part. Let’s look at numbers!
Pageviews: 531,391
Total Email Subscribers: 44,424
Pinterest Followers (approx): 41,400 Followers
Instagram (approx): 4,082 Followers
Youtube (approx): 14,200 Subscribers
LET’S TALK ABOUT THESE NUMBERS…
May was an unbelievable month for this little blog of mine.
To graduate college and work for myself with a job that makes that much money is such a blessing especially while in a pandemic.
These numbers are especially large from a few viral Youtube videos I had. One of the videos was a video on blogging that I posted back in January 2019!
That video barely got any views the first year and now it’s blowing up which is a perfect lesson on how important it is to be patient in the blogging world.
May Highlights:
- Video did HUGE things for my blog this month. I just started taking video seriously in March 2020 so to see how much it has impacted numbers is showing me how important it is for the future.
- I have a lot of readers interested in the business side of blogging. I knew that a lot of people were interested in how I started my blog but I didn’t realize how MANY people were interested in this. I am making this a huge priority for June.
- I posted on Instagram and storied EVERY SINGLE DAY. Since March, one of my biggest goals has been to post daily on Instagram. Instagram is a beast and honestly something I dreaded for years. I am so proud of myself because it’s hard staying motivated on Insta since it is such a slow growth (the slowest growth out of all the platforms in my opinion) but I am so happy with how I have been growing. In two months I already have 4,000 followers and a very engaged following. This takes up a TON of my time every single day so I am just hoping this has a big return in the next year or two.
- Pinterest is just as important as it was when I started blogging. Pinterest and I have a love/hate relationship. The algorithm can be tough but this month it reminded me of why I love it so much. It brought in a TON of traffic.
June Goals:
- Hit $50,000 a month blogging (this has been my goal ever since I started blogging…I will literally be throwing myself a party if I hit this HAH!).
- Create a blogging course going over exactly what I did/do to grow my blog. This has been on my to-do list for FOREVER! I am really focusing on getting this done so I can launch it in July.
- Get three Youtube videos up a week (starting the week of June 8th) and corresponding blogposts.
- Hit 5,000 Instagram followers.
That’s it for May 2020’s income report. I hope that it was motivational for you!
© Perfecting Blogging 2024
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