How Bloggers Really Make Money Blogging and You Can Too

How bloggers make money blogging is a mystery for many people, including bloggers. I know that you have come across an unbelievable income report on Pinterest. They usually say something on “How I made $100,000 last month with my blog!” or “Last month I made $25,000 while I traveled.”

While these reports get you excited to write your blog posts, insert your ads, and market your blog, they can also leave you feeling seriously bummed about your biz. You only end up with enough money to purchase a cup of coffee. What are you doing wrong?

The answer is probably nothing. However, you may not be taking advantage of monetizations that are right for you and your blog at this time.

In today’s blog post, I’m going to take a look at some blog income reports and break down how bloggers actually make money from their blog. I’m going to look at some income reports, first from experienced bloggers. Then, I will look at ones from new bloggers to help you understand what you should be doing now and in the future.

This will help you create a plan of action for your own profitable blog and start a path to make money blogging today.

*This post contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase after clicking on a link I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. For more information, click here.

Ways to Make Money Blogging

I’m going to break down blogging income into three simplified categories; affiliate income, digital products, and services. It’s important that you understand what each of these categories includes before I discuss the reports in this post.

Affiliate Income

Any products or services from which a blogger earns a commission or a referral incentive fall into this category. This includes any ad networks, affiliate programs, or third-party sales, and sponsored posts.

These are typically passive income sources. That means you do the work once and can continue to earn an income from them with little additional effort. Sponsored posts, however, are active income. This means you do the work once and are paid a one-time fee.

Digital Products

Digital products include any products you have created and sell online through your blogging business. This encompasses a wide range of products, including ebooks, online courses, and printables. These products are also passive income.

In the case of planners, ebooks, and courses, you may have to regularly update these products and actively promote them. Bloggers who make a significant income via digital products often take out ads, use webinars, and sales funnels to sell their products successfully.

Services

Services that you offer to other bloggers, businesses, or individuals through your blog fall into this category. If you use your blog as a gateway to earning money through services provided, they are part of your blogging income and will be included in this category.

Services are an active income source and are very common in the blogging industry. Services you may offer on your blog may include virtual assistant services, coaching, freelance writing, and design services. These are just a few of the services that a blogger can offer.

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Income Reports

Any time that a blogger is earning over $5,000 or more per month, the blog is likely to have been consistently active for a significant length of time or the blogger has extensive experience or an existing following. This will help bloggers to earn more money faster.

The reason I bring this up is that I want you to understand you shouldn’t compare your blogging income to these reports, especially if you are a new blogger. These income reports should be an inspiration for you, not a comparison. They should help you get an idea of where to go and what you need to do to get there.

Also, keep in mind that large income months may also include product launches which temporarily boost sales, but take months of hard work and preparation. These may also represent a large portion of a blog’s annual income, not just the monthly income.

The Breakdown

The following income reports are amazing examples that give you an idea of how experienced bloggers actually make money blogging. This will help you set your goals and plan the skills you must learn and master in order to be able to earn a substantial income from your blog.

The totals in the income report may or may not deduct expenses, but rarely ever deduct taxes (which will be around 30 percent).  If you would like to know more details about the specific income report, I will include the link to each report in the summary below the heading.

Bear in mind that these bloggers have years of experience, so don’t feel hopeless or intimidated. Think of it more along the lines of finding the direction you need to take your blog to earn a similar income in the future.

$11,195.28 in December 2016

Blog: Believe in a Budget

Blogger: Kristin Larsen

Post: December Online Income Report

Pageviews: Range betwen 100,000-230,000 monthly in 2016

Email Subscribers: 5,500

According to her blog, Kristin Larsen launched “Believe in a Budget” in January of 2015. That means that at the time of this income report, it was a month shy of 2 years old. The following is a screenshot of her income breakdown from her post:

For those of you who are not human calculators, using my broad categories, her blogging income breaks down as follows:

Affiliate Income: $8,183.08

Digital Products: $1,935.20

Services: $1,077

How does Kristen make money blogging? You will notice that most of her income is affiliate income. However, I love that she doesn’t put all of her eggs in one basket. She also offers freelancing services and digital courses and products.

Having multiple sources of income is diversifying your income. Think of it like diversifying with an investment portfolio. You have your eggs in different baskets and if one basket is suddenly gone, you will still have the other baskets to fall back on. Diversifying your income stabilizes it. This is a great way to have a more consistent income.

Having multiple income sources is a great way to gain financial stability when you are self-employed. Consider this when planning how you want to make money blogging and try to find ways to incorporate it into your income strategy.

$22,930.97 in May 2016

Blog: The Busy Budgeter

Blogger: Rosemarie Groener

Post: May 2016 Income Report from Blogging

Pageviews: 380,880

Email Subscribers: Not specified

This breakdown is not as detailed as I would like it to be. I would like to know which affiliate programs she uses and how much she makes from each. However, the total does give you an idea of how she makes money blogging. This is the screenshot from Rosemarie Groener’s income from this post:

Here’s the breakdown:

Affiliate Income: $22,583.25

Digital Products: $0

Services: $347

To be honest, Rosemarie’s breakdown would make me a little nervous. The majority of her income comes from affiliate income, which I find a little scary. I like the security of diversifying my income.

However, Rosemarie probably does diversify her affiliate income across several different affiliate programs. We just can’t determine that from the information provided.

Something I found really surprising was that she didn’t have any digital product sales. With her following and traffic, she would be guaranteed to earn a decent profit from her products as well. Still, $22,000 in affiliate marketing is astounding!

If you notice, there was a huge difference in the affiliate income between Kristin Larsen’s income report (above) and Rosemarie’s. This is likely due to the difference in pageviews between the two.

Kristen did not release her pageviews and email subscribers in the post, but she did reveal these in the comments of the post. Pageviews and email subscribers are a major factor in affiliate income. Larsen’s pageviews ranged between 100,000 and 230,000 for the year, but we know that Groener’s were over 380,000 for this month, which may be up to three times higher than Larsen’s. This explains the significant difference in affiliate marketing income.

$90,188.40 in August 2016

Blog: Making Sense of Cents

Blogger: Michelle Shroeder-Gardner

Post: My August 2016 Blog Income Report

Pageviews: 400,000

Email Subscribers: Not specified

Michell Schroeder-Gardner goes into quite a bit of detail with her income, as seen in the screenshot below. I love how she breaks down her affiliate income so that you know which programs make up the bulk it.

Affiliate Income: $70,792.40

Digital Products: $19,396

Services: $0

As you can see, Michelle also diversifies her income and earns a substantial income from digital course sales. However, her affiliate income is simply staggering. Her pageviews are around 400,000, but that’s not much more than Rosemarie, yet her income is four times that of Rosemarie’s.

I wish Rosemarie’s income was broken down a bit more so that we could see which affiliate programs she used. However, we can determine the bulk of Michelle’s affiliate income (over $48,000!) came from Bluehost.

I am pretty confident that she probably wrote blog posts sponsoring Bluehost. It is also very likely that she promoted their services via an email list, but there is no way to know this from this post. Neither ladies specified their email list subscribers.

Takeaways From High Earning Reports

As you can see, the high-earners above earned the bulk of their income from affiliate income. Pageviews greatly impacted their incomes, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say that email marketing likely played a major role as well.

Pageviews make a difference for nearly every product you can imagine and are what expose a product to its ideal customers.

Did you know that product manufacturers often make deals with retailers in order to have better product placement? This allows their products to be placed on end-caps and at eye-level on the shelves in retail stores. This increases sales of those products because more people will see the product!

That’s why premium affiliate programs require a minimum number of pageviews. They want their products to have credibility and be seen by as many of their ideal viewers as possible.

Email is a bit different and tends to be significantly more profitable than pageviews. This is because your email subscribers know and trust you more than a new reader. They are familiar with your work and want to continue to see what you have to offer. These are your loyal customers and fans and are more likely to buy something you recommend.

That is the reason why I would love to know the email subscriber numbers in the months of these income reports for all of the bloggers in this post. In my experience, pageviews tend to represent fewer sales than your email list.

New Blogger Income Reports

I wanted to show you larger income reports first. That is because I want you to know what is possible when you stick with it and put an effort into your blogging. Most blogs fail, but that doesn’t have to be you. If there is a will, there is a way.

There is absolutely no reason that you can’t make money blogging like the high-earners. Do you think those bloggers knew what they were doing when they started or had all of the skills they needed? Absolutely not. In all honesty, I learn every single day and you will too!

Now that I have that out of the way, I’m going to be looking at the same three factors for new bloggers that I did for the experienced bloggers.

Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t to the point of these bloggers or if you don’t see these bloggers as the success you were hoping for. Every blog and every niche is different, so no two bloggers will ever have the same results. Lets take a look at how four new bloggers make money blogging.

$10.48 in March 2018

Blog: The Atlas Edit

Blogger: Stephanie Tay

Post: The Truth About My First Month Blogging Income

Pageviews: 1,957 pageviews

Email Subscribers: Fewer than 50

Stephanie Tay is a brand new blogger and I’m glad that she is willing to reveal her blogging income to us. Not everyone breaks $100 in the first month (or first 6) and that is okay. Below is the screenshot of her income details.

Affiliate Income: $10.78

Digital Products: $0

Services: $0

To be honest, I don’t know how any new bloggers have time for digital products or services in the first two to three months of blogging. Creating content and beginning to learn how to brand and market your blog takes up so much time in the beginning.

I’m not surprised at all that most bloggers earned money from their blogs via affiliate marketing in the first several months. If you are new to affiliate marketing and/or blogging, be sure to check out Stephenie’s post for details about the affiliate programs she used.

$93 in February 2018

Blog: OhClary

Blogger: Clary

Post: My First Month Income Report – February 2018

Pageviews: 15,204

Email Subscribers: Doesn’t specify, but does discuss.

Clary started off with a bang and is going strong. Her Pinterest viewers are currently hovering around 2 million. During my first month, I ended with about 1,900 total pageviews, but Clary rocked it. She had a whopping 15,204 pageviews in her first month! Congrats, Clary!

Here is the screenshot of Clary’s first income report:

 Affiliate Income: $93.24

Digital Products: $0

Services: $0

More pageviews mean more money in affiliate marketing! If Clary had started her email list, her income would have likely been even higher. It’s perfectly okay if your traffic is nowhere near 15,000 in your first 6 months (let alone first month), so don’t fret if you are nowhere near her statistics.

You can still make money blogging, even with a small following. Implement affiliate marketing, if you wish, and work on your pageviews. The income will get there.

If you would like to see which affiliate programs Clary partnered with as a new blogger, be sure to check out her post as she goes into much more detail about her affiliate programs.

$770 in 3 Months

Blog: Anastasia Blogger

Blogger: Anastasia

Post: My First Income and Traffic Report

Pageviews: 7,895 in May 2017

Email Subscribers: Not Disclosed

This income report is a little different because it looks at the first three months for Anastasia Blogger instead of a single month. Here is how Anastasia reported her income from March through May of 2017:

Affiliate Income: $442

Digital Products: $0

Services: $0

I’m only going to include blogging-related income, but I did want to point out that bloggers have other options to supplement their growing blog’s income, if they choose. In this case, Anastasia has made $328 from surveys in addition to her blogging income. Since these are not services offered through her blog, I did not include them in my totals.

I want you to take away something from this income report. Your blog doesn’t have to be your only online income source. The majority of my income is freelance writing, which I am not offering through my blog at this time, but may in the future.

You also have other options to increase your income, such as completing surveys, reviewing websites, and completing online tasks. Even if you work full-time, this is perfectly okay. Do what works best for you and your business.

$9,100 First Year of Blogging (through February 2018)

Blog: Reroute Lifestyle

Blogger: Krista Aoki

Post: 1 Year Blog Income Report…

Pageviews: 50,515 / 6 months (August 2017 to January 2018)

Email Subscribers: Not specified

Krista Aoki of Reroute Lifestyle has close to what a successful new blogger should expect out of their first year blogging. The following screenshot of her income report offers a lot of detail. If you can’t read it well, please go to the post via the link above to view it more closely.

Affiliate Income: $6,546.90

Digital Products: $813.95

Services: $2,484.75

In my opinion, Krista made a significantly higher than expected income from affiliate sales than most new bloggers. She has some very profitable affiliates and must have some sales chops to get this much affiliate income, based on her number of pageviews.

As expected, a significant chunk of her income came from digital products and services sold through her blog. As a new blogger, you can offer affiliate products, services, and digital products all from day one to make money blogging. However, your conversions will be low until you earn your viewer’s trust and establish your own brand and reputation.

Consistency, quality, traffic, and branding are the basic ingredients that will help you grow a fast, high-converting blog. These all come with time, so remember to keep learning and be patient.

Each Blogger Has a Different Journey, Own Yours

Each blogger needs to decide what types of monetization are right for them and their business. For example, a busy mom would probably prefer passive monetization methods. On the other hand, a recent college or high school grad would profit and gain valuable experience from offering services.

 

The point is, this is your journey. Only you can determine what is right for you. Don’t feel pressured into a monetization method if you know it’s a bad fit for you, but don’t be afraid to try something new either.

How Do You Make Money Blogging?

Which of these methods of monetization do you prefer? What has and hasn’t worked for you? Let others know in the comments below and be sure to pin this post to Pinterest using the pin button below!

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