How I Made $5,178 in One Month Blogging [Income Report]

This article contains affiliate links.

Hello everyone and welcome to my October blog income report.

My life has changed completely ever since becoming a full-time blogger and dedicating all my time to writing and updating content, interviewing people, building my email list and staying in touch with my readers, keeping the site optimized, testing and investing in new tools, taking online courses to master new aspects of blogging, and building and selling my own digital products.

A lot of thought is put into every element you see in this post and on the blog, as well as other channels such as Pinterest and Teachable where I promote my content, sell my products and offer my free courses. 

The life of a full-time blogger is not what others assume. Most of the time, the work never ends.

However, knowing that a blogger has worked hard to get to where they are today and the fact that they love what they do – this makes all the difference.

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.

For some readers, it’s the type of content they look forward to every next month as it keeps them working on their blog even when they don’t see results. For others, it’s how they find out about me and want to learn more.

Blogging definitely is my favourite side hustle and I only want to learn more about it and help others do the same. If you haven’t started a blog yet, make sure you enroll in my free course Launch Your Profitable Blog Today:

Read on to see what happened in October 2019 on Let’s Reach Success and in my business. 

With every new income report, I try to bring something new to the table. That’s why in the last one, I shared my exact Pinterest strategy. And the one before that talked about my business vision. 

Now, I’ll talk about the importance of free content and how it can scale your blogging business like nothing else.

Blog Updates

Free Resource Library

As you might know, I recently did some new things in my business, such as :

• Took the course Six-Figure Blogger to learn more about email marketing and selling digital products;

• Switched from MailChimp (which I used for free) to ConvertKit;

• Created new opt-in forms for my blog;

• Started investing more in my relationship with my email subscribers and began using automation and sequences to introduce new people to my brand and my best offer (my premium blogging course Financial Freedom Through Blogging);

• Purchased a new premium WordPress theme from Bluchic and changed the design of the blog;

• Paid for stock photos from IvoryMix to use unique images on my blog and Pins and in my courses.

All this shows I’m constantly investing in my business. I’m willing to try new things, learn from others and see where it takes me. But I also have fun during the process.

Another step I’ve been meaning to take is update all my freebies. 

As you know, every blogger trying to build their email list is offering free downloads such as checklists, eBooks, email courses, or else, to get people to subscribe. 

The better your freebies are, the more people you’ll get on your list. Of course, from then on you need to keep producing quality content and give it for free in order to keep them there long enough to form a relationship.

Well, I had many old freebies and they weren’t organized in 1 place. So I decided to finally do that by removing irrelevant ones and those that didn’t provide enough value, and leave only those that matter.

I called it the ‘Free Resource Library’ of Let’s Reach Success and those who are already on my email list, received a link for it.

The downloads (new and old, updated ones) are organized into 3 categories – Side Hustles, Blogging and Personal Development. I will constantly be adding new ones as my blog grows.

New Module in Financial Freedom Through Blogging

I learned a lot about ConvertKit ever since I switched and have seen progress in the last 2 months. New people are joining my email list on a daily basis, I’m checking the reports and know how the emails I sent performed as well as how my current optin forms are doing. 

I feel more in control of my email list than ever.

As email marketing is a major component of not just starting a blog and earning a solid income from it, but to actually reaching 5 or 6 figures, I wanted to share what I learned in my premium blogging course Financial Freedom Through Blogging.

There were already lessons covering:

• Email marketing 101
• How to launch an email newsletter
• How to add opt-in forms to your blog
• How to create a lead magnet to collect emails (+ 10 lead magnet ideas)
• And tips on how to get your first email subscribers.

Now, I added the following lessons:

• Why and how to get started with ConvertKit
• Switching from MailChimp (or Another Provider) to ConvertKit
• How to Create a ConvertKit Form
• How to Set Up a Welcome Email Sequence + Sell Your Product to Your Email List
• Connecting Your Form to Your Sequence (+ Setting Up Automation Rules in ConvertKit)

Also, I combined all these and turned them into a separate module called ‘Build Your Email List’.

More than 70 new people enrolled in the course in October thanks to an affiliate promotion I was doing of something called the Side Hustle Toolbox. My course was one of the many products in this bundle which was offered at a really good price.

It’s hard to sell an expensive online course, even if the product is super useful, as there’s so much going on in the Blogging niche already and people have many choices.

But that was a good way to get more people engaged with Financial Freedom Through Blogging and hear their feedback.

What’s more, many aspiring bloggers are contacting me through the chat box on the sales page of the course or via email and ask different questions about the course or about blogging in general. 

That gives me an idea of what people are struggling with before starting a blog or while trying to grow it. As my product and most of my content on the blog is trying to solve these problems, that’s valuable information.

You can find some of the questions together with my answers at the Featured Readers Questions section at the end of this income report.

Traffic Update

Pageviews: 111,961
Sessions: 93,646
Users: 81,419

For the first time since the beginning of the summer, there was no increase in traffic. While page views were still over 100K and the blog gets a decent amount of traffic, it was lower than the previous month.

Pinterest traffic has been going well for the last 2-3 months.