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 $248.14 this month? First, the breakdown:
Bluehost : $0 (vs $0 in April)
Affiliate marketing : $54.75 (vs $71.80 in July)
My book : $23.40 (vs $13.55 in July)
Consultancy fees : $170 (vs $130 in July)
Google adsense : gave up!
Paid surveys : $0 (vs $0 in June)
Total : $248.14
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 much, as I was sick and honestly, not keen on doing consulting. Yet, I collected a check from previous consulting hours.
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
Sadly, I am still sick – I experience nausea and dizziness on a daily basis. This makes me have way less time to write for the blog, produce kick ass content and promote it correctly.
Although last month was very bad, this month was even worse and the worse in the last 12 months… when it comes to visits. Remember that I am looking to my blog on a 5-10 year horizon. I don’t care about money, I want to create value and a nice platform to deliver kick ass content! The views will increase at some point, I am sure.
and the number of sessions:
Considering the very low activity of the blog, I should be happy that my authority hasn’t decreased… Being this sick, it is impossible to keep up with the expectation of writing 10 guest posts a month. Even one guest post sounds like a very hard challenge! Since the last update, my authority actually increased (while the domain authority is still at 34, page authority has gone up from 44 to 45). This will probably decline if I don’t post more often and I don’t write guest posts…
My Alexa rank continues to tank but again, I am not that concerned:
Social Media
This month my Facebook page grew by 63 likes to a total of 1062 likes, which is again on the lower end, as we are talking about an increase of about 5%. As I said last month, I had a few tricks I could use to grow my Facebook page and these seem to work beautifully. I am sure that the 5k like mark I talked about in a previous report is almost impossible…
As I said before, I am not keeping track of Pinterest.
The subscriber count grew from 1154 to 1181, which means a shy increase of about 2%. I would like to hit 2,000 subscribers until the end of the year. Let’s see how I do until then.
Goals for August 2017:
- Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1200. ALMOST DONE. I had a reasonable goal, but I am not far from it, so I am am not said with where I stand at.
- Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250. FAIL. I assumed that if I managed to post more often, the number of subscribers would go up.
- Write at least 2 guest posts. FAIL. Being sick sucks!
- Make about $500 online. FAIL. Not posting often can’t lead to much money.
Goals for September 2017:
- Increase the number of likes on my Facebook page to 1250.
- Increase the number of blog subscribers to 1250.
- Write at least 1 guest post.
- Make about $350 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