How I Made $5,834 Blogging Last Month (& Spent $1,300+ on My Biz)
This article contains affiliate links.
Welcome to my November blog income report.
I publish monthly income reports to share the numbers (earnings and expenses) from my blogging business and the mistakes I made, the lessons I learned, and the new projects I’m about to work on.
You can find all income reports here.
The month was different than previous ones. Here’s what’s new in a nutshell:
- For a start, traffic was down a bit.
For the first time in a few months, I’m below 100K monthly page views. That’s fine as it’s due to the holiday season and in these months, people are shopping online and looking for deals and my blog can’t really offer them that.
- I took an SEO course and already started making some serious changes.
I deleted over 150 blog posts (old ones that were short, off topic or that didn’t provide any quality). To make sure no broken links appear, I redirected them (with most, I added the content to other articles on the same topic to have 1 page containing this info on my site and allow it to rank higher) and replaced all internal links on the site pointing to the old blog post to the new one.
- I also spent more on my blogging business than usual, mainly due to yearly payments such as ConvertKit (email marketing software) and Teachable (where I create and sell my courses).
Together with the SEO course I purchased, these 3 were pretty expensive things but also a good investment.
- I also started a new online side hustle.
Diversifying my blogging income is a big goal of mine but it happens slowly over time. Just this year I began making money from selling my courses and from affiliate marketing, as well as earning consistent passive income from ads on the site.
My new business idea is quite practical, easy to implement and if done right, can lead to passive and regular income after some time. It’s a digital product I’m selling on Etsy – printables for bloggers.
Read on to see what happened in November 2019 on Let’s Reach Success and in my business.
If you haven’t started a blog yet, make sure you enroll in my free course Launch Your Profitable Blog Today:
Blog Updates
Started an SEO course for bloggers.
I knew for a long time which online course I’ll invest in. It’s an SEO course all bloggers are going crazy about by Mike Pearson. Even 6-figure bloggers are taking it because most of their traffic is coming from Pinterest and they want to pay more attention to SEO and get organic traffic to Google.
And that’s the main idea behind Stupid Simple SEO. Pinterest changes its algorithm and while it means quick traffic and potentially income, you never know till when.
With SEO, however, things are exactly the opposite. You do the work in the beginning and reap the benefits forever.
Once you start creating content that ranks high, re-organize your site categories and do link building like a pro, magical things begin to happen and Google sends you the traffic you deserve.
While I’ve managed to reach 100,000 monthly page views on my blog without any professional SEO knowledge or any help, I knew it was time to take the next steps.
There are still things I didn’t do right such as not doing any link building at all. I also knew I had to update the way my site is structured and only cover a few main categories so Google can know what the site is about.
I’ve only just enrolled in Stupid Simple SEO and here’s what I’ve changed on my blog so far:
- Deleted over 150 blog posts
- Started re-thinking the architecture and relevancy of my site
- Updated the blog categories and menu
- Created my first silo pages (custom category pages) and redirected my blog category pages to them
- I’ve made SEO a priority by setting goals and tracking the results.
One of the main reasons why a course like that is a good investment is that once you pay for it, there’s nothing else you can do but actually go through it. Once you do, many things become clear and you’re given a sure roadmap for SEO success.
Stupid Simple SEO is only open 4 times a year so that makes it an even more valuable product. You can join the waiting list here to be the first one to know when it’s open again.
Spent over $1,300 on my blog.
You might remember that I switched from MailChimp to ConvertKit just recently. I tested it and it all went smoothly so I was ready to pay the annual fee for a ConvertKit membership instead of having that as a monthly expense. Even for my small email list, that meant nearly $500.
The other big expense is the annual Teachable fee.
I use Teachable to sell my courses and to offer my free ones, as well as to take courses and be an affiliate for some. In other words, I have a lot going on there and I’m just beginning to see some good income come out of it.
It’s an amazing platform for course creators and I can’t imagine replacing it. Nearly 4,000 students have enrolled in my 3 free courses and I have an idea for another big course to sell in 2020. So all the Teachable features I’m paying for come in handy.