Background: I started blogging about a year ago as a way to document my life, the kid’s milestones, and share photos with family and friends. Over the course of the year my following grew and opportunities arose to monetize my site. I earned a little under $3,000 in the first 5 months since I started monetizing and grew to over $3,000 in the first quarter of 2017. I should also note that I am currently working full time and blog on the side. You can read all the details on how to get started here.
I’m starting to get blogger burnout…that’s why I’ve made the decision to pull it back and slow down in May. (you’ll see soon I didn’t quite achieve this goal) I had my highest month’s income in March and with that comes a lot of hours put in. I honestly love blogging and taking photos so that’s why it’s really hard for me to slow down. Ideas are constantly swirling around in my head and if I didn’t work full time I’m sure I’d be able to make more of them come alive! It’s a daily struggle!
I’ve had people contact me, amazed that I’ve come this far AND hold a full-time job. Time management is key. Here are some helpful hints on how I manage to get it all done.
April 2017
Income
Sponsored: $325
SoFab: $200
Linqia: $520.60
Influence Central: $250
Social Native: $35
Affiliate Income: $11.90
Expenses
BoardBooster: $20
Pinfinite Growth Course: $397
Top Posts for the month:
Spring Fashion with OshKosh B’gosh
Coping with Colic (in my top 3 since it went live in February)
Net Income for March 2017: $940.50
1st Quarter Net Income: $3,475.58 (See Previous Income Reports: January, February, March )
Things I’ve learned this month:
1) Affiliate marketing is not my thing.
I don’t know how influencers make so much money from affiliate links. I’ve almost given up hope. Amazon Affiliates has been a huge one for many bloggers/influencers, but I noticed I wasn’t receiving payments for purchases made through my links. Their screening process is much stricter than most and when I inquired about missing payments I received a message stating it was determined that orders were resulted from me “encouraging your friends, relatives, or other people you know to purchase products through your Special Links”. You are not to have people “routinely place orders through their links”.
2) Don’t buy into the hype.
You’ll notice above that I spent a good chunk of money on a Pinterest course. I really want to focus on growing my pageviews through Pinterest and I had heard good things about this course. Working full time hasn’t truly allowed me to devote an enormous amount of time to the course as I’m sure others have. However, the lessons I have worked through didn’t provide an overabundance of knowledge I didn’t already have. Now that’s not to say that it was a complete waste. I have changed up some things and reworked by Pinterest profile and board keywords which has resulted in a steady growth of followers.