January 2023 Blog Income Report + Pinterest Growth

Hey and welcome to the first monthly blog income report of 2023.
Why am I back to income reports you may ask? Because I’m focusing on the blogging business again (as opposed to the course business, which was the case for the whole last year).
Now this feels aligned – getting back to where it all started. My passion for writing, growing the website’s traffic and income, and all the tasks of a full-time blogger, which I had left behind for a long time.
As a result, the income dropped. So here I am creating consistency and staying accountable again so I can grow it back to the 5K months I was having with ease some time ago and hopefully inspire and help some of you do the same along the way.
Below, you’ll see how much I earned last month, where the income came from, what new things I worked on, some progress I saw and I’ll include blogging tips you can use for your business. Let’s dive in.
January Blog Income Report
I earned a total of $2,528 in January 2023 from my blogging business.
Please keep in mind that’s gross income. A lot of it goes for fees I pay to other platforms, transaction fees, paying my own taxes (close to 30% of my income), insurance and pension. You can see all income reports here.
Let’s break this down and see each income stream.
Sponsorships
Sponsored content – $1,740
*My income from sponsored content is earned through online marketplaces for bloggers and advertisers as well as networking with brands via email. If you want to learn how to turn that into a regular income stream, check out my course The Blog Sponsorship Boss.
Display Advertising
Mediavine – $421
Read also: How to Make Money with Mediavine (+ Tips to Boost Ad Revenue)
Affiliate Marketing
Revenue from affiliate marketing: : $227
Products
*Some of these come from payment plans for programs. Also, my course platform sends the money to my bank account 2 months later. For the purpose of this income report, I only track income I actually receive.
Total Sales: $140
TOTAL (Gross Income): $2,528
Blogging Expenses
SiteGround domain and hosting – $0
WPX Domain – $13.99
WPX Hosting – $0 (paid yearly)
Teachable – $0 (paid yearly)
Canva – – $0 (paid yearly)
ConvertKit – $0
TypeForm – $0 (paid yearly)
Accountant – €0 (paid quarterly)
Transaction fees – $91
Blog Traffic

Pageviews: 28,854
Sessions: 22,773
Users: 20,365
One of my main blogging goals is to grow my traffic again. I remember when I was getting 100K page views a month. Good times. While almost all of my traffic still comes from old articles, it’s significantly less.
I’m now doing a content audit – going back to the archives and updating old content with the goal of ranking it higher.
Read also: How I Got 103,231 Page Views and Made $4,305 from My Blog Last Month
Pinterest Traffic
Pinterest monthly views: 335K
Website page views from Pinterest: 5,184
This is a new section I’m adding to the blog income reports because a more specific goal I have other than growing traffic is to get more clicks from Pinterest.
I believe the ideal formula for blog traffic is SEO + Pinterest. It’s long term and short term traffic, although Pinterest can also lead to long term once a Pin goes viral.
Here’s my progress over the last month since I’m paying attention to it daily.
I grew my Pinterest account from 240K views to nearly 340K views. Now, you might know this metric doesn’t mean page views on the blog, but still it’s growth in that direction.
The saves (which means how many of my Pins were saved) increased with 19% in the last month, and the outbound links with more than 50%.
So, what have I been doing differently?
Well, for a start, I started pinning regularly. And as I update, optimize and republish old content, a lot of it gets repinned but with a fresh new image, which is what Pinterest loves.
I do all this manually and it’s quick. Once you get the hang of it, you will have a few of your own templates in Canva and will quickly change the text, image and maybe font and colors and create a new Pin in seconds.
Read also: How I Increased Pinterest Traffic by 778% in 2 Months
Email Subscribers Update
New Subscribers: 120
Cancellations: 69
Net New Subscribers: 51
January Highlights
Interviews
I’m back to publishing interviews with successful bloggers and business owners and last month I got to share 2 amazing business journeys.
The first one is with Caz and Craig – an Australian couple that has been traveling nomadically for 22 years now (the last 13 with their 2 daughters).
They are the founders of the YTravelBlog.com (one of the biggest travel blogs in the world), and they’ve tried it all – solo travel, couples travel, expat travel, digital nomad travel, RV travel, and travel with kids.
And that’s back in 2010, when no one was making any money travel blogging. So they had to figure it all out on their own.
In 2020, they were even granted a green card for their accomplishments in the travel blogging industry, they have worked with the biggest travel brands in the world and earn multiple six figures through their blog.
Read: How Caz and Craig Travel (with Kids) and Blog Full-Time Since 2010
The second interview wis with a super successful men’s fashion blogger and he has so many things to share with us!
That’s Brock McGoff of The Modest Man, which is a blog he once started to share fashion advice for shorter men (it was a super niche blog), but over the years it started attracting a general men’s audience: guys interested in dressing better, shopping smarter, and improving themselves overall.
The site reaches millions of people each month and generates multiple six figures per year.
Brock has been featured in all the places online and over the years has grown other men’s fashion blogs (in even smaller niches).
>> Read: How Brock McGoff of The Modest Man Built a Top Men’s Fashion Blog
Podcast episodes
In one of the last episodes of the show, I share what my business taught me in 2022. Check it out here.
These aren’t just business lessons or things I’ve learned from other people or even from experience. It’s specifically what my business was meant to teach me one way or another.
Then, there was the The 2022 annual income report.
You’ll learn:
- How much I earned in 2022
- Breakdown of each income stream
- Why I earned less from blog sponsorships than I did last years
- What’s up with my ad revenue
- Where most of my time was spent last year and what that led to
- The negative sides of a digital product business
- What I’ll create now that I’ve completed my product suite
- How many page views the blog got in 2022
- Where that traffic came from
- Email list growth
- How the podcast did last year
- What I launched and when in 2022
- Things I won’t do again when launching
- What I’ve learned from multiple product launches
- What went well in 2022
Another episode was called ‘Content that helps vs content that sells’.
Some of you might find it confusing to see the difference between a strategic piece of content that serves, and one that only sells. And I’m here to help you with that by introducing to you a little concept I came up with.
Tune into the new episode or read the article here to learn about the difference between the content that helps and the content that sells, as well as what to do and what to avoid in terms of content creation.
More new content worth checking out:
- The Morning Journal: What is It and How to Do It (+ 7 Morning Journal Prompts)
- How to Create Your Own Morning Ritual for Massive Success
- How to Get Paid for Blogging If You’re Just Starting Out in 2023
- The Ultimate List of Morning Habits: 32 Easy Yet Powerful Morning Routine Ideas
- The 17 Benefits of Journaling That Will Motivate You to Start Writing Tomorrow Morning
- How to Write a Sponsored Blog Post: 8 Tips for Bloggers
- 100 Confidence Affirmations to Boost Self-Esteem and Reclaim Your Power
- How Much Money Can You Make Blogging
- Stop Being Shy and Increase Confidence Today in These 3 Ways
- What Are Morning Pages: Benefits, How to Do Them & Mistakes to Avoid
- How to Start an Online Clothing Business from Home
- Top 8 Printing Business Ideas You Can Start on Your Own
- 60 Confidence Boosters That Have an Immediate Effect on Your Self-Esteem
- These 7 Benefits of Writing Can Change Your Life
- 8 Tips for New Bloggers Guaranteed to Make Your Blog Profitable
New feature
I got featured on the CourseMethod.com where I talk about:
- the courses I’ve created
- how I got into the market
- what it’s like inside my programs
- how long they take me to create
- overcoming doubt as a course creator
- getting my first sales
- my lead magnets and how they fit into everything else
- my traffic strategy
- mistakes I’ve made along the way
and more.
Read: How Lidiya Kesarovska Started LetsReachSuccess.com and Provides Epic Value to Visitors of Her Site
My Plan for Next Month
- Content Audit – I’ll continue publishing a new, optimized article weekly as well as updating old ones and republishing some of them.
- Pinterest – over 15 Pins a week will continue being the norm.
- Offer – planning an offer about Pinterest. Stay tuned.
- Content creation – I’ll publish at least one new interview with a business owner, and will get back to the podcast. Hopefully, a minimum of 2 episodes of the show will be out.
And that’s it for January’s blog income report. What do you think? How’s your blogging journey going?
Wanna work together?
If you’d like to take your blog to the next level, here are some ways you can work with me:
- Get a professional blog audit of your website + a growth action plan
- The Blog Sponsorship Boss (a course on how to start making money regularly from sponsored content on your blog)
- Blog Income Boost (a workshop covering 7 things you can do THIS WEEK to take your 1-year old blog to 5 figures)
- Blog Coaching
- Blog to Biz System (my self-paced program that covers anything you need to know to start, grow and monetize a blog and turn it into a full-time business)
- The Master Blogger Bundle (the business bundle for bloggers where you can find all my programs and trainings in one place and at a big discount)
New to Blogging? Check Out These Resources
Start a Blog
What is a Blog and How Does Blogging Work?
How to Start a Blog That Makes $1000/Month: A Beginner’s Guide
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Blog (+ My Blogging Expenses)
Grow Your Blog
8 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic
Pinterest Traffic Avalanche: A Solution for Beginner Bloggers to Drive 10,000 – 100,000+ FREE Monthly Visitors to Your Blog – on Autopilot!
Make More Money Blogging
How Many Page Views Do You Need to Make Money Blogging?
How to Make $50,000/Year Blogging from Home
How This Stay at Home Mom Earns $30K/Month Blogging and Retired Her Husband at 30
How These Highest-Paid Bloggers Earn Over $100K/Month
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners, Created by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents Who Earns $100K/Month Blogging)
How I Earned $250 from 1 Sponsored Post on My Blog
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