How I Made $54K from my Blogging Business in 2020 [Year in Review]

How I Made $54K from my Blogging Business in 2020 [Year in Review]

Hey and welcome to episode 7 of the Free and Fearless Podcast and the first one for 2021. 

I’m so excited about this year and spent a lot of time reflecting on what happened during the previous 12 months, both in my business and personal life. From there, I decided what to release and leave behind, what to keep working on and what new things I wanna do this year.

Tune into today’s episode to hear how much I earned, in what ways, and exactly what I worked on each month of the year.

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Show Notes:

  • [01:19] What’s an income report and why it matters
  • [03:42] How much I’ve earned in the past 3 years and what changed every next year
  • [05:58] My current 4 income streams (and what % of revenue comes from each)
  • [08:49] How I grew my email list (+ the exact numbers)
  • [11:13] How many page views I got in 2020 vs 2019 + my top traffic sources
  • [15:34 ] The 2 traffic sources that help me get nearly 100K page views/month
  • [18:54] What happened to my traffic and income once the pandemic hit the world
  • [21:55] Why I deleted 1/3 of my email list
  • [24:18] What I did to take control of my online presence
  • [26:39] How I re-designed my blog
  • [29:25] How I took massive action in the last 3 months of the year

Mentioned:

Transcript

This is my third annual blog income report.

If you’re new to this type of content, let me quickly explain.

An income report of a blogger or any other business owner, means that you get to see exactly how much they earned and spent over the course of a month or a whole year.

I’ve been publishing monthly income reports for the past 3 years I think. 

Many people from my audience were eagerly awaiting every next article like that so they can see:

  • the exact numbers
  • what goes into a 5-figure business
  • what things I worked on that month
  • what mistakes I made, what I invested
  • what new project I started
  • how many subscribers there are on my email list
  • how many page views I got on the blog
  • and other updates. 

Over the years as I was growing my blogging business, these income reports of other bloggers really helped me stay motivated and showed me what’s possible online.

So I also wanted to show others what’s going on behind the scenes, to be authentic, and to stay accountable. I mean I can now always go back to these articles – which easily be found on my blog.

But I stopped publishing them monthly. It’s not aligned with my business vision anymore.

They became sort of repetitive. Also, I don’t wanna be focused on monthly earnings anymore but instead wanna manifest my business goals and I know now that this can happen at the very end of the year, and what matters in terms of income, is the yearly revenue.

All previously published blog income reports will stay on my website though and they basically show how I got to consistent $5K months.

What I’ll continue publishing is the yearly report as well as any other interesting things that happen such as let’s say a successful course launch, affiliate campaign, hitting $10K in a month, or anything else that is a milestone and worth sharing. 

What You Need to Know First

Here are a few key things you need to know before we get to the exact numbers and stats.

I’ve been in business for 7 years now. I’m a blogger and course creator but started as a freelance writer back in the days. 

2018 was officially the last year where a portion of my income came from freelancing. It was $10K or something. 

As of the beginning of 2019, I left freelancing behind. I definitely didn’t enjoy it anymore and I just wanted to create content for my platform and my audience.

Since then, I’ve been more inspired than ever and more relaxed because there wasn’t any client telling me what to do, there are no deadlines or things I must write about even though I don’t feel like.

So this was a big milestone for me.

Many people can say I’m leaving money on the table by not wanting that kind of work, but how that money is made is much more important because my happiness depends on it. And without freelancing, I’m mentally and emotionally free to do my best work and use my most productive hours in the day to write or create courses or anything else that serves my audience.

So, to recap, in 2018 I made $47K from my business, but $10K from that came from freelancing.  My goal was to never have to write for others again.

In 2019, I earned just a bit more than the year before that ($51,379), but I’m happy to say that none of this money came from freelance work.

It was solely earned from sponsored content on the blog, affiliate marketing, ads, and selling my digital products. That means I’ve reached the next level of my blogging career and even if nothing changed, I was gonna be truly grateful and keep enjoying my work.

2020 was the second year in a row that I earned over $50K, and the exact revenue is $54,389.

Another thing I wanna make clear if you’re new here is that I earn in 4 different ways through my blogging business. Which is also what I teach women to do whether they’re new to blogging or have been doing it for a year or so but want to finally turn it into a business, and I mainly teach that through my blogging courses.

My income streams

First is ad revenue which is directly related to blog traffic. I’m partnering with Mediavine which is a professional ad network and this income is passive and regular. 

Next is affiliate marketing which means recommending other people’s products or services, using my special link, and getting a commission any time someone purchases through it.

I only promote tools, courses, services or else that I’m using or have tried or know enough about and trust their creator.

That’s the authentic way to do affiliate marketing, I’m not pushy, and I do believe in what I recommend to my audience. Mostly, that’s my hosting provider, email marketing software and all other tools I use to run my business, as well as courses I’ve taken. 

Next is sponsored blogging. That is when a brand reaches out to me or I pitch them and we collaborate on a blog post with a link back to their site. Each sponsored article on my site looks natural and similar to all the content I have there, and it provides value. 

This income stream has been my most profitable one in the last few years, which means most of my income is coming from there as opposed to the other 3 ways in which I monetize my blog.

And finally, there’s digital products which is my favorite way. It’s a great way to scale, to provide value, to teach and to have an evergreen product that will keep earning revenue for the rest of your life once it’s created and launched.

So these 4 income streams show how I diversified my income over the years. Things aren’t always stable and you don’t wanna lose your whole profit only because you were earning from 1 thing, and let’s say it depended on blog traffic or on one social media channel and you suddenly lost because of an algorithm update.

Let’s get to the numbers.

Out of the $54K I mentioned, $34,000 came from sponsored content, $12,000 from advertising, $4,000 from affiliate marketing and $3000 from digital products.

The last number is low for the simple reason that I was never actually launching. I had good products already year but I didn’t create any excitement about them. This year, aside from the new programs I’ll be releasing, I’ll also be launching and getting them in front of the right people

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