Welcome to my income diary. If you wonder how do websites make money and how to make money with a website, you may find my reports useful.
I release reports on my online income every month. In 2017, I am projected to make $15k on online income.
I’ve received many e-mails concerning this matter. Most people ask me “What can I do to start a side online business?” or “What can I do to make a few hundred bucks at the end of the month”? First, know that I offer consulting services for this, on 1:1 consultations. Either way, let me hash out a general recipe here:
0) Choose a niche. Many people choose niches based on keyword search. I highly recommend people to blog about what they are passionate about instead. If you add value, any niche will work out for you.
1) Set up a website. I host my website on Bluehost, which I highly recommend. For one, its cheap, two is highly reliable. If you are interested in starting a blog of your own, I created a tutorial here, to help you start off.
2) Blog. A lot. You may have noticed that I’ve posted twice in the month, on specific months when I started From cents to Retirement. Doesn’t work. It won’t tie people in, it won’t please search engines and your blog will rapidly be forgotten. Note that I am not saying “publish crap”. Do not, if you expect to have loyal fans and grow. But do not forget to publish.
3) Promote your blog. A big part of having your blog out there for people to see is through high-quality posts – eventually, people will share. Promoting your blog will not only get it out there faster but deeper. Promoting your blog can be very hard, but its necessary.
4) Monetize. Adsense is an option. I like Amazon a lot. If you offer consultancy services, as I do, you need to show you can do it yourself first, but clients will pop up eventually.
So, how did I make $225.19 this month? First, the breakdown:
Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in April)
Affiliate marketing : $116.09 (vs $54.75 in August)
My book : $49.10 (vs $23.40 in August)
Consultancy fees : $0 (vs $170 in August)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in June)
Sponsored posts on other sites : $60
Total : $225.19
Disclaimer: the BlueHost and the Amazon links are affiliate links, which means that I get commissions if you buy products or services through them. The amounts reported above are before any fees, taxes or expenses. I can’t say exactly how much I will net from this.
I haven’t consulted as I am still sick and I don’t feel like consulting. I feel dizzy and overwhelmed, and I experience nausea throughout the day.
Note that although I am committed to release my income diary and help those who want to know how to make money with a blog, if they and blogging for money, my primary focus is not to make money with the blog, but create a very valuable platform that people love.
Expenses
I didn’t have any expenses with the blog this month.
Views
Even though the dizziness and nausea don’t seem to want to go away, I was able to publish more posts and to post more on Quora, which increased the traffic a bit (check the figure below) I still have no time for proper promotion and write some awesome posts I had in mind, but at least I could do more. I hope to get these things fixed until the end of the year, otherwise I will never come close to what I thought I could do with From Cents To Retirement.
and the number of sessions:
It is funny how the number of sessions went up by 35%, compared to last month, and the average session duration didn’t even change by a second. Remarkable! 🙂 The bounce rate decreased a little bit (although I think I’d be getting like 60% at most) and the rest of the stats improved altogether.
Like I said before, being in a state where I experience dizziness and nausea on a daily basis, I can’t keep up with the expectation of writing 10 guest posts a month. Even one guest post sounds like a very hard challenge to me right now, but I was able to write one this month. Next month, I think I could write 4 or 5.
My authority decreased slightly since the last update (domain authority decreased from 34 to 33 and page authority from 45 to 43). I need to reverse this aggressively but publishing more guest posts and promoting the blog further, which I hope to do next month!
My Alexa rank continues to tank but I am not that concerned with it, as there is a strong connection with traffic:
Social Media
I’ve been working really hard on my Facebook page, and I could grow it by almost 100 likes this month, to a total of 1158 likes. This is an increase of about 8.3%, which, if maintained, would mean a total of 1470 likes by the end of the year. I know, this is so far away from my goals that I feel that I threw a random number out there, but we must consider that I’ve been sick and not hustling as I thought I would do!
As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest.
As for the subscriber count, I was able to grow it from 1181 to 1259, which means an increase of about 6.2%, much better than 2% in August. As I will send a few newsletters until the end of the year, this number will decrease, I am sure, but I hope to be stable at 1500 subscribers at the end of the year.
Goals for September 2017:
- Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1250. FAIL. Again, an aggressive goal, which resulted in failure. I need to work more on my Facebook page.
- Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250. DONE! This is actually a very good result
- Write at least 1 guest post. DONE! Not bad for a guy that seems best friends with dizziness! Check my interview for PhysicianOnFire, here.
- Make about $350 online. FAIL. I still managed to do almost $250, which is not bad at all given the circumstances.
Goals for October 2017:
- Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1400.
- Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1400 (aggressive goal, but I think I will get there).
- Write at least 2 guest posts.
- Make about $250 online.
In the meantime, let me know if this information is useful to you in the comment section down below.
Your biggest fan,
Ben Davis