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.
I’m currently earning a few thousand dollars a month thanks to sponsored posts and freelance writing. 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 April
Published my first online course, for free.
Teachable is a great platform. I’ve heard about its ease of use and how popular online courses are so many times. And I finally took action upon it.
In my first course, which is free, I share practical steps on how to start earning your first money as a freelancer (whatever your niche is and even if you start with no experience). That’s how my journey began so it made sense for me to share more about it.
Check out How to Make Your First Money Online Freelancing.
Pinterest Progress
I learned a lot about Pinterest in the last couple of weeks and things are looking good. In last month’s income report, I shared my first steps to optimizing my Pinterest account, organizing boards, connecting with other Pinners and creating Pinterest-friendly images for new and old posts on Let’s Reach Success.
Currently, I get over 40,000 monthly Pinterest views (which doesn’t mean blog traffic yet, that’s the next stage of the whole process). But still, I’ve never seen such results with another social media platform before.
In fact, it got to 40K just in the last week. Before that, I was happy to see 20K and even wrote a post about it sharing my best Pinterest tips for bloggers and what I did exactly to double my views there.
Created a better guide on how to start a profitable blog.
I seem to be writing more and more about working from home, making money online and blogging now. Maybe because I started with spiritual growth back in the days, after which I moved onto personal growth, and now it’s time for business growth.
My passions and knowledge change and so does the main focus of my writing. Let’s Reach Success now combines all these fields but they are so connected that I can’t say I’m changing direction.
Anyways, the next update I have to share with you in the April income report is about my new free guide – How to Start a Profitable Blog: A Step-by-Step Guide for Serious Bloggers Only.
It’s for ‘serious’ bloggers only because I’m tired of seeing blogging guides promoting cheap hosting. I wasn’t happy with my previous host and now that I’m using WPX Hosting (and pay more each month), I can say it’s totally worth it.
If you haven’t started a blog yet, make sure to head to my free blogging guide. I will be updating it frequently.
As you know, having a blog will be the foundation of your online business. I started Let’s Reach Success knowing nothing about it but it was definitely one of the best decisions ever, and I’m truly grateful I stuck with it.
Completed Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
In March I purchased my first ever online course. I wanted it to be on affiliate marketing as that’s my goal for a new income stream. It’s also something I should have learned a long, long time ago.
The course I chose was from a blogger that’s an expert in it and someone who I’ve been following for months now. That’s Michelle from Making Sense of Cents. The course is called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.
Michelle earns over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing, and she shares all of her best tips in this course. I’ll soon share what I learned from it in another post. Check out Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing if you’re interested.
Published my most expensive sponsored post so far.
I make half of my money through sponsorships here on the blog. They are in no way promotional but look like the free guest posts I also encourage writers to contribute, so no hurt feelings.
In April, I got paid for one I published at the end of March which is officially the biggest number I’ve seen in my business so far for a one-time paid guest post.
I talk more about it in this article.
Big changes in my freelancing business.
In April, I made close to $400 from one article for a freelance client on ClearVoice (which is a platform for freelancers and brands that’s much more professional and obviously pays way more than bidding sites like Upwork.) I wrote a detailed post about how this happened.
That gave me the confidence to charge older clients more, to not settle down for less than I deserve as a freelancer. These are all mistakes contract workers make. As I do have other income online, I’m not limited to this. But still, I find myself less and less interested in this and thinking about other things.
I don’t enjoy freelancing as much as blogging anymore and believe my time is better spent writing detailed guides on my site, creating free courses, updating old blog posts, gaining traffic on Pinterest, etc.
Ultimately, I want to go from a freelancer to a full-time blogger. That takes endless hours of work, finally starting to make money from affiliate marketing, placing links strategically, being helpful with every new piece I publish on Let’s Reach Success, organizing all the information on the site better, and much more.
We’ll see where this takes me. I’ll be sharing updates on my progress in every next income report.
New homepage design with focus on the freebies and helpful guides.
You might have noticed the new homepage of Let’s Reach Success. I made sure the pages, posts and products I want to bring attention to are all displayed there, as it’s easy for them to get lost in the hundreds of articles that get published here.
April Monthly Income Report
I earned a total of $4,325 in April 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 over $4K/month blogging and freelancing. You can see the progress here together with all other income reports.
Let’s get to the numbers.
This Month’s Revenue Breakdown
Total Revenue (Gross Income) – $4,325
- Freelance Writing – $1644
Upwork
ClearVoice
Clients outside of any platform
- Sponsorships – $2669
- Others – $12 (books on Smashwords)
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
Total Expenses – $789
- Web Services
WPX Hosting – $25 (Read my honest WPX Hosting Review)
Domain Renewal – $18 (WordPress.com)
- Professional Services
Accountant – $292
- Office Supplies and Misc.
Mobile Plan – $31
Health Insurance – $122
Bank fees – $5
Upwork fees – $138
PayPal fees – $158
Net Profit Breakdown
Net Profit – $3,536
Last month’s best content on Let’s Reach Success
69 blog posts were published in April. Here’s some of the content worth checking out if you haven’t already:
Interviews:
How This Family Guy Makes $10,000/Month Online Teaching Others How to Make, Save and Invest Money.
Articles:
How to Start a Mommy Blog and Make Money: The Only Guide You Need
How to Get Digital Clutter Out of Your System
How I Made $4,252 Blogging in March 2018
10 Productivity Boosting Foods You Should Add to Your Diet Today
How to Find a Niche Business Idea That Makes Money
How to Have Energy All Day When You Work from Home
5 Convincing Reasons to Start a Business in Your 20s and 30s
My Guest Post on The Ways to Wealth
After reaching out to R.J. from The Ways to Wealth (a great site in the personal finance niche), he offered me to write a guest post. I shared how I became a freelancer without experience. Check out How to Start Freelancing Without Experience.
After that, I asked him for an interview-style post, which is the first link in the Interviews section above. Many good things can come out of simply reaching out to another blogger!
Next Goals: What I’ll Be Working on in May
Updating old posts and adding pinnable images.
I keep doing this. In the last income report, I shared what I do when I update old blog posts. Soon, I’ll write a post about the process as it’s something any blogger should be doing after a year or a few in the business.
I play with Canva daily now to create beautiful images and place them at the end of articles I’ve published in the past (which are evergreen, of course). I also add affiliate links, link to my blogging guide and new course for freelancers, etc.
New Freebie
I’ll work on a new freebie in May. It might have something to do with how to make money blogging, working from home, passive income 101, or else. It could also turn into a free online course.
New Course
Additionally, I’ll start working on my first paid course. That will take plenty of time even if I only repurpose content.
I’ll use Teachable again and design it with their dashboard, create the sales page, organize the lessons in an easy to consume way, and start mentioning it here on the blog.
Courses really are helpful and they seem to be the preferred digital product now, compared to eBooks, for example. So let’s see how that goes.
Final words for this month’s blog income report
Thanks for getting this far in my monthly income report for April 2018. Appreciate it. There’s so much more I often wish I could be working on. But then I take a deep breath, let go and get back to work on the daily tasks while keeping the long-term vision in mind.
Online business can get overwhelming, but only if you don’t manage time, resources, creative energy and expectations well.
Good luck with your journey to having an income online and thus living an independent lifestyle!