This article contains affiliate links.
Welcome to my monthly income report. I publish these online income reports to share not just the revenue from my blog and freelance writing business, but also the mistakes, lessons and new projects.
Make sure you check out all my income reports.
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 profitable blog, make your first money freelancing, or simply work on a new business idea.
If you haven’t started a blog yet, make sure you enroll in my free course Launch Your Profitable Blog:
What Happened in May 2018 on My Blog and in My Business
Joining Mediavine Publishing Network
I stayed away from displaying ads on the site for years. However, I believe we should all test different blog monetization methods in order to find what works best for our audience, skills, content, etc.
So I decided to sign up with Mediavine – a reputable publishing network that’s collaborating with some pretty big names in different industries.
In terms of traffic, other publishing networks usually require a website to hit 100,000 monthly views. With Mediavine, however, it could be 30,000, which means I could apply.
I did that and my application was approved. After which people from the company started reaching out with welcome emails and next steps.
This is a serious collaboration as it requires me to keep the ads for at least 3 months in order to test them and see the full potential of the site in terms of making revenue through ads.
They also have some detailed guides on what a blogger should do before the guys from Mediavine place ads on the new website.
That might mean removing some plugins, changing the settings of others, displaying your content in a way that’s easier for the reader and for ads to appear, etc.
They usually require sites to have a sidebar, but they made an exception as I still want the focus to be on the content of the page. That means the ads on Let’s Reach Success are in-content and show up after a certain number of paragraphs.
They aren’t pushy, are customized well and are from trusted partners. I saw them myself, and as someone who’s always had a minimalist-looking blog, I liked how they look. So I’m keeping them to see where this goes.
Working on New Courses
I recently mentioned I’d soon create my first paid course. After falling in love with Teachable as an incredible way to create courses that look stunning and professional, and after releasing my free course How to Make Your First Money Online Freelancing, I set on a mission to decide the topic of my first paid course.
The new one is about Productivity.
Why? Because it’s one of the first ever things I improved in my life that allowed me to do so much more. I might even say it’s the reason I was able to start an online business, move to another country, and now double my income.
Getting more done, ditching procrastination, eliminating distractions and finding focus, prioritizing, tracking, saving time… All this is something I’ve changed in my life through a ton of researching and experimenting.
And because I write less on the topic but have covered it in details in the past (even have 2 books on it), I decided to pack all the knowledge I have about Productivity and Time Management and turn it into an online course.
I already created the homepage for it on Teachable, collected some old content that I’ll update, and made a plan on some of the steps I will have to take next. It’s a ton of work but it’s worth it.
It won’t be released just yet as this time I want to go the extra mile and launch not just another digital product of mine, not just yet another course on Productivity, but the ultimate resource that includes anything and everything you need to know about getting stuff done in less time.
Stay tuned!
Making The Most of Teachable
As you might have heard, I’m now a big fan of Teachable – my favorite place online to take courses and create your own ones.
It all started when I purchased my first paid online course – Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (here’s my super detailed review of it).
Then, that inspired me to create my own course and provide value in a new way. That’s how How to Make Your First Money Online Freelancing was born and I see new students enrolling every day.
As I’m now working on my next courses, free and paid, I also decided to use more of the wonderful features that Teachable offers.
When you get to the numbers of this income report, you’ll notice a new monthly expense. That’s $39 for Teachable as I signed up for their basic plan.
Here are some of the benefits if you’re wondering:
The one I needed, in particular, was Integrated email marketing.
I noticed that every time a student signed up, the system saved their email and I could even reach out and let them know about other courses. So it would be great to have these people on my actual email list here at Let’s Reach Success.
With the new Teachable paid plan, I connected Mailchimp and Teachable and now each student is also signed up to my newsletter.
Another cool feature I will use some time this year or the next one is Affiliate marketing.
As I’m about to launch my first paid course, one of the strategies to promote it might be to have affiliates. Teachable handles all that for me and gives them unique codes, a dashboard to track their sales, and much more.
How Bloggers Can Make $10,000/Month from Home
Decided to write more about the big picture of making money blogging. Many people just starting out in online business get discouraged looking at the stories of all these bloggers earning 10K/month. But they too started from $0 in blog profits and got to where they are today the hard way.
I calculated my earnings from the last 3 months and made a list of what I did differently to double my income since the beginning of the new year. Together with that, I shared what it really takes to get to making $10,000/month from your blog.
Check out How Bloggers Can Make $10,000 a Month from Home
GDPR Compliance
Whether you’re an online business owner, have a blog or are just an Internet user, you might have received multiple emails from apps and brands you’ve subscribed to about the updates in their privacy policies. That’s because one of the biggest changes in the last 20 years related to data privacy is happening right now – General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
It concerns site owners based in Europe (like me) or those outside of Europe but who receive traffic from there (which, let’s face it, is almost any platform online). So we have to make certain changes in order to meet the requirements.
In a nutshell, GDPR is about giving greater protection to website visitors, being careful with the personal information site owners gather and letting individuals know what exactly is being tracked and why.
I took some time to get familiar with the concept, installed the new WP plugin for it, and updated my privacy policy so it includes information about all third parties I’m using (such as Google Analytics and social media networks, for instance, as they too track data to personalize the experience of users).
Here’s the updated privacy policy on Let’s Reach Success (it’s pretty long).
Updating Old Blog Posts
I recently shared that I publish less new content but do a lot more on the back end of the site, meaning I go back to old articles and update them. I also promised to share the process and why every other blogger should be doing this.
Check out 5 Solid Reasons You Should Update Your Old Blog Posts
May Monthly Income Report
I earned a total of $3,950 in May 2018 from my blog and freelance writing business.
Please keep in mind that’s gross income. After extracting fees I pay to other platforms, transaction fees, paying my own taxes and insurance and covering my pension as a solopreneur in the Netherlands, there’s much less left for me to spend.
It took a while till I got to $4K/month blogging and freelancing. You can see the progress here together with all other income reports.
This Month’s Revenue Breakdown
Total Revenue (Gross Income) – $3,950
Freelance Writing – $730
Upwork
Clients outside of any platform
Sponsorships – $3,185
Books – $35
Smashwords
Amazon
If you too want to write and self-publish a book, here’s my free guide on how to do it in less than a month.
This Month’s Expenses Breakdown
Web Services
WPX Hosting – $25 (Read my honest WPX Hosting Review)
Teachable – $39
ShortPixel – $20
Professional Services
Accountant – €0
Office Supplies and Misc.
Mobile Plan – €27
Health Insurance – €102
Upwork fees – $47
PayPal fees – $174
Last month’s best content on Let’s Reach Success
68 blog posts were published in May on Let’s Reach Success. Here’s some of the content worth checking out if you haven’t already:
An interview with a location independent serial entrepreneur.
I published a great interview with a guy I’m working with, whom I asked to share his story in front of my audience. He too lives a life of freedom and independence, although he’s at a level I may never reach.
Here’s the post: Traveling 40 Countries in 4 Years and Running 7-Figure Businesses: The Laptop Lifestyle of Yuli Azarch
Longest review of this affiliate marketing course.
I admit, I was tempted to do a few quick and short posts on it, but decided to go all in and create the ultimate review where I answer every possible question people might have about the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle from MakingSenseofCents.com who’s earning $50K/month through affiliate marketing.
The purpose of my review is to help people decide whether it’s worth the investment (as the course is almost $200) and let them know what exactly to expect from it.
Check out The Only Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review You’ll Ever Need to Read
Lessons from a successful startup founder.
I sometimes get emails from entrepreneurs looking to write a guest post for Let’s Reach Success. But it’s much better to do an interview-style post and allow them to share how they started in business, run a company and what they’ve learned along the journey.
Recently, Tim Chaves approached me. He’s the founder and CEO of ZipBooks, one of the best accounting software for small business. Here’s the interview he did for Let’s Reach Success: How Tim Chaves Started ZipBooks
Other articles:
Transition from a Day Job to Self-Employment: 4 Tips to Make It Smooth
5 Easy Mindfulness Exercises to Boost Present-Moment Awareness
What is Information Overload, Why It Matters and How Will It Affect The Future
How I Earned $4,325 Working from Home in April 2018
Want to Explode Your Brand? Consider Influencer Marketing
Next Goals: What I’ll Be Working on in June
The Next Free Course
My new free course is almost finished. It’s called the Passive Income Boss and shares the top ways to make money online through your blog. Not just any type of income though, but the sweetest one – passive income.
I’ll release it soon and hopefully, it will inspire many people to start a blog on their own to begin earning passive income from it.
Update: It’s now released.
Enroll in The Passive Income Boss for free now
The First Paid Course
That will take longer and there are other things I’ll be doing in June, so it won’t be released just yet. Also, for a paid product, I need to really do my best, which requires more focus than a free course does.
Check out Financial Freedom Through Blogging here.
Final words for this month’s blog income report
Thank you for reading this far. Hope you enjoyed learning how I earned nearly $4K blogging last month. All things are applicable if you too are blogging. If not, you can start your own blog any time now. Here’s my guide on it.