How I Made $3,067 Online: December Income Report

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Welcome to my last monthly income report for 2018. 

I publish these to share not just the revenue from my blog and online business, but also the mistakes, lessons and new projects.

You can find all income reports here.

I’m currently earning a few thousand dollars a month thanks to sponsorships, freelance writing and ads but I’m also working on 2 other income streams (affiliate marketing and selling online courses). 

Read on to see what’s been going on over the past month. Hopefully, this will inspire you to add a new income stream to your business, start a blog, learn how to make money blogging, or simply work on new side hustles.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, enroll in my free course Launch Your Profitable Blog Today:

What Happened in December 2018 on My Blog and in My Business

December wasn’t a good month for me in terms of revenue. It’s also the month we are more distracted due to the holidays, spend a lot, and get the chance to analyze the past year and set goals for the new one.

I did get a lot done but for projects that will be bringing me revenue in the future, such as my new course Financial Freedom Through Blogging (although the first students are already enrolled and enjoying the modules I’ve published).

Some blogs have a big drop in traffic these weeks. Many bloggers also see little to no money in ad revenue as compared to other months. So whatever your situation was, it’s okay for a month like that.

Let’s use it to let go of things such as numbers and get ready for 2019, where we can do our best work ever and reach our financial goals.

Here are some things I worked on in December.

10 free printable to kickstart 2019 

I created a new freebie for Let’s Reach Success. The end of the year is a good moment to get organized and start planning our time, activities and money better for the next couple of months so we can achieve our goals.

Tools such as a habit tracker, to-do list, goal tracker, monthly and yearly planner, and expenses tracker have helped me tremendously over the years. So I decided to design some printables and offer them for free to subscribes of the Let’s Reach Success newsletter.

Updated the pillar content on Let’s Reach Success

Cornerstone content is something every blog should have. These are the most important articles on the site, which are well-optimized, pretty long (thousands of words), well-formatted, researched, and updated frequently.

I freshened up 2 of my big guides here on the blog. They are How to Start a Profitable Blog and How to Make Money Blogging.

In addition, I’m updating old blog posts with potential to rank for a different keyword. I might re-write sections, add content, change internal and external links, and even re-publish it if I want to bring the piece back to life.

Two such examples are the following posts (titles are updated too):

Morning Ritual: A Habit All Successful People Share (+How to Create Yours)

How to Become Wealthy with No Money: A Simple Formula for Success

WordPress 5.0

The new WordPress update is here and it’s the biggest one since I’ve been a blogger. The new editor is now with the default system for everyone and those who want to keep the old look and feel of the WP editor can use a plugin for that. 

The new one uses blocks of content and I find that a bit more complicated and time-consuming than the previous version. Many experts online also argued whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

I’m still getting used to this new editing experience though and have noticed some errors. But that’s normal for every big change in a piece of software and each will be fixed soon.

A cancelled flight and getting a lot done

On a more personal note, I was supposed to go to my home country for some family time around the holidays, but my flight was cancelled. I didn’t want to deal with the chaos of finding another one from that same airport exactly when everyone else is visiting family for Christmas, so decided to put it off for this month.

Booked 2 weeks in January that I’ll spend in Bulgaria. Being in the Netherlands for Christmas also helped me get more done.

There was a drop in revenue like most blogs experience these months when everyone is buying presents and taking time off instead of actively reading blogs. I used this time to work more on the course I released last month – Financial Freedom Through Blogging.

Things are going well, the first students are already taking it, and I’m publishing new modules as we speak. Here’s what I did for the course exactly.

Progress with Financial Freedom Through Blogging

I completed and published Modules 4 and 5 from Financial Freedom through Blogging, which were quite the work.

Module 4 is about optimizing your blog. So I wrote lectures and tutorials on how to get Google to index your new site quickly, set up Google Analytics, make your site mobile-friendly, do on-page SEO, write content that ranks, and speed up your website. 

I also shared my