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This article contains affiliate links.
Welcome to my monthly income report. I publish these 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.
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 profitable blog, make your first money freelancing, or simply work on a new business idea.
What Happened in August 2018 on My Blog and in My Business
2 New Income Streams
The efforts from the last few months paid off as I received my first bigger affiliate commission. That’s also the first time I received money from Mediavine after I put ads on my site and started collaborating with a great advertising network.
The affiliate payment is around $80 and that’s passive income. It came after someone purchased the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing through one of my links here on the blog.
It’s an online course I’ve taken myself. Affiliate earnings usually arrive months after the item is purchased, so that took some time.
Here’s my detailed and honest review of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, if you’re curious what it’s about.
Ads Now Bring Me Recurring Revenue
Ad revenue also arrives nearly 2 months after the last day of the current one. The very first payment from Mediavine arrived.
It’s a total of $64, but ads were placed on my site in the middle of May. So most of the next 2 weeks was simply testing user engagement and what ads perform best on Let’s Reach Success.
From then on, after the initial 2-3 weeks of having ads on the site, the revenue has only been increasing. I know what money I’ll get paid the next few months.
This is now not just a recurring income stream, but also passive income.
That’s one of the 4 best ways to earn passive income through your blog I talk about in my free course The Passive Income Boss.
Check it out if you haven’t already.
Back on Track After The Summer Slump
Last 2 month’s income was lower, I was distracted, spent fewer hours in front of the laptop, and didn’t really work on the new projects I have on my list.
That happens to many people in the blogging business.
But because users and readers too are on vacations, enjoying the good weather, spending more than usual and not caring about their usual life goals, traffic and revenue decrease during the summer months.
I’m now back on track. I do freelance work more often (I left it behind for quite a while as I didn’t feel like it) and I create content for the 2 paid courses I’m working on.
The Evolution of Blog Categories on Let’s Reach Success
My journey started with spiritual growth (forming a stronger mindset, letting go of the past, mindfulness).
Then, it moved onto personal development (studying the habits of successful people, becoming more productive, managing our time better, fixing our relationships, taking care of our health, setting goals and sticking to them.)
While these 2 areas of life will always be important and something I come back to and keep covering here on Let’s Reach Success, I also became passionate about business. With that, came the categories ‘Entrepreneurship’, ‘Career’ and ‘Self-Employed’.
That means I began writing about it more as I built my own online business and with that, I started covering lifestyle design and location independence.
I also allowed guest posts and sponsored articles in these niches.
Now, you might be seeing blog posts on saving money, making money online, earning through your blog, side hustles to start from home, investing in real estate, and more.
That’s because the ‘Money’ category is also part of the personal development and business growth process.
Money management is as important as time management. And earning more provides freedom.
So I turned ‘Money’ into a separate category and placed it in the menu on the site. It has subcategories such as ‘Make Money’, ‘Save Money’ and ‘Investing’.
Being in debt, not having a budget, and not starting something on the side to earn extra income are all mistakes we do that prevent us from living a better life. So this category is something I’ll be focusing on more and more in the future.
Especially now that I myself am getting better at managing my finances, have some savings, and am thinking of buying my first home in order to rent it one day before I buy a second one.
Now, let’s move to the numbers and see what I earned last month with my blog and online business.
August Monthly Income Report
I earned a total of $5,406 in August 2018 from my blog and business.
This is a big thing for me as I’m hitting the $5K/month milestone for the very first time!
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 over $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) – $5,406
FREELANCE WRITING: $1,181
Upwork
Clients outside of any platform
SPONSORSHIPS: $4,049
AD REVENUE: $64
AFFILIATE MARKETING: $78
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
BOOKS: $34
Smashwords
Amazon
This Month’s Expenses Breakdown
Web Services
WPX Hosting – $25 (Read my honest WPX Hosting Review)
Teachable – $39
Professional Services
Accountant (paid quarterly) – €0
Office Supplies and Misc.
Mobile Plan – €27
Health Insurance – €102
Upwork fees – $77
FreelanceMyWay.com fees – $17
PayPal fees – $185
Last month’s best content on Let’s Reach Success
52 blog posts were published in August. Here’s some of the content worth checking out if you haven’t already:
These Highest Paid Bloggers Started from Nothing and Now Earn over $100K/Month. Here’s How
How to Pay off Your Mortgage in Half the Time: 14 Money-Saving Tips for Homeowners
Here’s How 9 of The World’s Most Successful People Got Their Brilliant Ideas
How to Make It on Youtube: A Beginner’s Guide to Building Your YouTube Empire
5 Crucial Elements of Success to Help You Live a Truly Fulfilling Life
6 Fantastic Ways to Get Traffic from Pinterest to Your Blog
The Essential Guide to Balancing Business and Leisure While Traveling
Should You Study Abroad? Here Are 8 Benefits of Studying Abroad to Consider
Working from Home: 5 Career Choices You Can Consider to Make Money Online
4 Legal Tips for Everyday Life
Next Goals: What I’ll Be Working on in September
Online Courses – Writing The Content
I’ve outlined the 2 courses, decided on the titles, general idea and problems they will solve, and have created the sales pages.
I also began writing the content and have 5-10K words for each already. There’s a lot more for this phase of the product creation process so no need to worry about editing and formatting it, final touches, marketing, or else. That comes next.
It’s interesting how my creativity hits. Some days I feel like writing content for one of the courses, and other days – for the other.
I follow this
Resources to Help You Start Making Money Blogging
Make Your First Money Online Freelancing [Free Course] – I created a free course sharing my journey to making more than $4,000/month blogging. It all began with freelancing and you can use this course to follow the steps I took to become a freelancer with no experience and earn my first income online.
How to Start a Profitable Blog– This step-by-step guide to starting a blog is a must for everyone who wants to start earning online and become self-employed. Having your own blog is the first step to selling products, making money from affiliate marketing, building a name for yourself, getting traffic and monetizing that attention.
The Passive Income Boss[Free Course] – That’s another free course I released on the topic of earning passive income through blogging. You’ll learn what passive is exactly and how it works, how to get started with blogging and make your site powerful, and the 4 main passive income streams you can create using your blog.
Blogging Resources – To build a powerful site that turns visitors into buyers and monetize it well, you will need the right tools. In my Blogging Resources page, I’ve gathered the best of the best and the exact tools I’ve used to grow Let’s Reach Success and be able to make a full-time living as a location independent freelance writer.
How I Gained 100K Pinterest Views: 8 Pinterest Tips for Bloggers – If there’s one social media I’d recommend that will transform the way you bring traffic to your blog and make money online, it’s Pinterest. I recently doubled my Pinterest views a month after I got active on the site. In this post, I share the strategies I learned from experts that worked for me.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – If you’re not earning money through affiliate marketing, then you are leaving money on the table. This step-by-step affiliate marketing strategy course shows you how to increase your affiliate income and make more money blogging. It’s by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents who went from $0 in affiliate income to over $50,000 per month (and also the first online course I’ve ever taken).
How Bloggers Can Make $10,000 a Month from Home– Curious how bloggers get to 10K/month working from home and what you need to do differently? In this article, I discuss why it’s possible for everyone to make that much on a monthly basis and how to get there.
Final words for this month’s blog income report
Hitting a certain number per month is the motivation to keep working on new things, and the best proof that this can be my new monthly revenue. While $5K might be similar to $3,000 or $6,000 per month to other people making money online, it’s yet another milestone I wasn’t sure I’d ever reach.
And that’s the biggest barrier to growing as a person and as a business – looking at other people’s income reports and not being sure if you can ever make that. The work comes first though and it’s what makes the earnings sweet at the end.
So whoever you are, wherever you come from and regardless of your background, you too can start an online business and make a few thousand dollars a month, and much more.
