A few years ago I published my first income report on my food blog, Pickled Plum. My goal was to show that it’s possible to make money while doing something you love, like cooking.
I wanted to change people’s perspective on how they saw blogging – not as a cute hobby where you make a few dollars here and there, but as a full time job that can pay really well.
I shared income reports with my readers for 8 months and really enjoy the process of writing about the blogging industry. I think a lot of people were surprised to see how much a food blogger could make! But I eventually decided to stop publishing these reports since I felt they didn’t fit with the theme of my blog, which is food.
Over the next few years I continued publishing recipes regularly and watched my income steadily increase. Then a few months ago something interesting happened – a couple of my posts about blogging got a lot of exposure and I started receiving requests from bloggers wanting me to share more blogging tips, even asking for private consultations!
That’s when the desire to help others fully kicked in and I made the decision to start another blog, which is the one you are reading now, where I share everything I know about blogging. With 9 years of experience as a professional blogger under my belt, I thought the timing was right. I have put in my 10,000 hours of work and understand how the industry works. I also know how to make money, as you can see!
In these monthly income reports you will find the total revenue of both of my blogs – Blog for Profit and Pickled Plum. I will also share my revenue streams and tidbits about things that I’ve learned during the past month.
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Blog Earnings for July 2020
TOTAL: $18,296.50
The chart you see above is the income I make with Adthrive, which is an ad monetization platform. In case you were wondering, a blog needs a minimum of 100,000 monthly pageviews to join Adthrive.
This shows how much money I made in July ($15,791) from ads that were placed throughout the Pickled Plum blog. I currently don’t have any earnings for Blog for Profit since the blog is still in its infancy. But I’m hoping it won’t take too long before I can share some numbers with you!
I have also made and additional $2,505.50 from affiliates I promote on Pickled Plum and products I have created on my Shopify store. I can only show you a couple of screenshots because the others show my personal information. Some of the affiliate programs I use are:
Expenses
Here are some of the expenses I have to factor in on a monthly basis. Liquidweb and Convertkit are more expensive because of the amount of bandwidth I need and subscribers I have. Their basic prices are totally affordable for beginners, should you be interested to check them out).
- Liquidweb (Hosting) : $100
- Convertkit (Email marketing): $100
- Tailwind (Pinterest Scheduling Program): $10
- Buffer (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Scheduling Program): $10
- Cloudflare (CDN and Internet Security): $20
- Adobe (Photo Editing Program): $10
- Shopify (Online Store): $29
- WP Tasty (Recipe Card Plugin): $79 yearly ($6.58/month)
- Nutrifox (Nutritional Label Maker): $9
- DIVI Theme from Elegant Themes (the theme I’m using for this blog): $89 yearly ($7.40/month)
Blogging through the “Summer Slump”
Many bloggers see their traffic take a dip in the summer. If you are new to blogging, don’t freak out, it’s totally normal since people are taking summer vacations and spending more time outside. Advertisers also spend less during the month of July and August, opting to save their budget for the beginning of the school year and the upcoming holiday season.
Just be patient and you should see an increase as soon as September comes around.
So what does this mean for a blogger in terms of work? Should you take the summer off to enjoy the sunshine since less people will be reading your stuff?
No you should not.
Unless you are an established blogger who can afford to do that, you should keep on creating new content to attract new visitors to your blog. I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years and I still don’t feel comfortable taking more than 10 days off consecutively. I still create new content every week because I know it pays off in the long run.
For intermediate and advanced bloggers, tidying up loose ends, doing a site audit, or finishing a project, are other ways to stay busy during the summer. There’s always so much to do when it comes to blogging!
If you still think it would be okay to take most of the summer off, look at it this way – if you had started a new job last week, would you be able to take 2-3 months off right away?
Of course not!
So why should you now just because you work from home?
You have made blogging your new career and now you must treat it like it’s a normal full-time job. If you don’t have any respect for your job, who will? Whenever you feel like your brain is trying to trick you into taking too much time off, always ask yourself, “would I be able to do that at a normal job?” If the answer is no, then get to work and stop procrastinating! ?
Taking Time Off
That being said, I think everyone should take some time off in the summer to enjoy lazy mornings, cocktail with friends, and spend lots of time with family. Not taking time off can be detrimental to your mental health, especially for self-employed people like us.
I know this because I suffered from severe bouts of depression from working too hard and not taking good care of myself. It got so bad that I was completely zapped of energy and no longer wanted to hang out with friends, because I had nothing positive to talk about.
Being your own boss is extremely rewarding and freeing but can also negatively affect your personal and social life. We spend so much time alone and in front of a computer that it’s easy to forget how nice it is to meet up with friends over coffee, or go for a bike ride, surrounded by nature.
So please do take some time off, just be reasonable, not greedy, and only take the amount that you need.
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