My Blogging Income Report for March 2019: $8,336 Working from Home

It’s time to publish my new blogging income report! I hope that income reports don’t rub you in the wrong way. My intention is to inspire and give you the motivation to keep working on your blog because I know how hard it feels in the beginning.

In March 2019, my blogging income reached $8,336 for the first time, and if you want to learn exactly how I managed to get this income working from home, keep reading.

I have to be honest before I start writing any income report, I have a few days of hesitation. Because people have mixed feelings (I do too!) reading income reports of others. On one hand, you really want to know what is the potential of growth for you when you start your blogging journey. On the other hand, reading how someone else makes much more than you do right now, can trigger anxiety and frustration.

So, if anxiety and frustration kill your motivation, don’t read income reports ever again. If they keep you moving faster, then you are in the right place 🙂

One thing I absolutely love about income reports is that I can learn from them what exactly works the best in terms of monetization for every blogger. And I can pick and choose what I am best at, and focus on those areas.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you purchase through these links, I might receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For more information, see my disclosures here.

If you came to this post and have never read my blog before, here is a short story of how it all started. If you know me well, just skip the three points below.

1. I started my first blog anastasiablogger.com which you are reading now, in Feb 2017 and worked on it part-time while still having a 9-5 job. I decided to focus on Pinterest as a traffic source and even though I started from scratch, with 0 followers, Pinterest worked miracles driving to my blogs organic (free traffic). I get over 90% of all my traffic from Pinterest!
2. I quit my job on the 10th-month blogging when I was accepted to Mediavine ad network because traffic was quite high by that time and ad income alone could cover my monthly bills.
3. In Feb 2018, one year since I started the first blog, I launched my second blog momshealth.co. I wanted to test my Pinterest strategies on a brand-new blog in a different niche (this one was a so-called “mommy” blog) and see how fast I could grow traffic knowing all that I learned in the first year blogging. This worked perfectly well as in just 2.5 months my new blog was getting 74,000 monthly pageviews.

Below you’ll see the income report for March 2019 (side note: this is income before expenses and taxes + for product sales, both mine and affiliate products, usually have a 30-day refund policy).

I can’t complain about traffic from Pinterest, it has been amazing for me in March, and also Mediavine’s RPMs were really good, so ad income still remains the main income source for my blogging business.

My Pinterest account for anastasiablogger.com has been around 7 Million monthly views on Pinterest throughout the month. And as much as people like to show off this number, the amount of traffic that Pinterest drives to my blog is what really matters.  You’ll see my traffic report in the screenshots below, so stay tuned.

If you are a beginner in the online world and are desperate to drive traffic to your website because Google takes forever to index and start ranking your content, Instagram, Facebook, paid ads are too expensive, maybe you should focus on something else instead. Maybe you should look at the underestimated platform which helps so many beginners drive traffic for free. Focus on Pinterest.

If you struggle to understand the basics of search engine optimization for Google, check this free training by Mike Pearson who has his Google SEO figured out and making over $10,000/mo with each of the two niche blogs he runs.

When you start a blog, most probably, you are still working full time, your blogging income is not high enough to quit, and you have a limited amount of time to spend on your blog. So, spend it wisely! Spend it on things that really work in 2018!

March 2019 Blogging Income report

Did you notice that Mediavine ad income is still the biggest contributor to my income report? That’s for those skeptics who like saying that you can’t making money unless you sell courses to other bloggers.

My third (newest) blog is still with Ezoic because I honestly have no time at all to invest in growing it to 50,000/mo sessions required for Mediavine. That’s another lesson for you – if you spread your efforts too thin between many projects at once, inevitably, some of them will be second or third priority.

By the way, if you have a new blog and not much traffic on it yet, you can still monetize it way better with Ezoic than you could with Google Adsense. Application to Ezoic is free and you might be making 1.5-2 times more than with Adsense even on a small traffic volume. 

Anyway, I think I will get to that blog more seriously at some point and will double the traffic to get it into Mediavine as well.
Ezoic accepts sites without any minimum required traffic, so you can try to apply as soon as you have some content on the site (and maybe not much traffic yet). Monumetric requires at least 10,000/mo sessions in your Google Analytics. Mediavine will ask for 50,000/mo sessions and Adthrive requires at least 100,000 mo/ pageviews.

Blogging Income Report – Mediavine Income 

You can see that I’ve got one day extremely good, it was almost $250 with Mediavine from that day, just on this blog. 

Note: This is the screenshot from the biggest income sources, I also have my second blog with Mediavine, and product sales. Some income sources pay directly to my bank account. With three blogs and this level of diversification, it’s just too many places I would have to screenshot! 

HOW MUCH MONEY YOU NEED TO START A BLOG?

Your initial investment in starting a blog is so much lower than any other potential business you might be thinking about! With the hosting provider I used for this blog for 1 year, for example, you can start a site at the price of one coffee a month! Literally.

I have a free 7-day course which will give you the right direction and will help you build a blog that’s not just a hobby, but an income source.

It’s also not as difficult technically, as many people think. I have a video tutorial which shows you how in about 10-20 min you can set up hosting and domain name for a WordPress blog – see a detailed post about it here.

This post contains affiliate links to Bluehost. This means I might receive a commission if you buy their hosting using my link (no extra cost for you involved). For more information, see my disclosures here. Using my link, you can get hosting + free domain name + free SSL certificate (https) at a 50% discounted price.

You can use this handy Bluehost’s tool to check whether the domain you are thinking about is available:

I recommend this hosting because I was still on Bluehost’s basic plan when I got 13.399 sessions in just one day (you’ve seen it in the screenshot in this traffic report)!

I had to move to another hosting plan only 11 months since I started the blog because my traffic for January exceeded Bluehost’s basic plan about 10 times. But for a blog that’s just starting, Bluehost’s basic plan will be more than enough!

BLOG TRAFFIC REPORT FOR March 2019

You can see from my Google Analytics that I received 236,717 pageviews just on this blog in March.

I’m getting about 90% of all my traffic from Pinterest. 

WHAT I’VE DONE RIGHT TO GET THESE RESULTS

1. I created (finally!) a decent free Pinterest Masterclass to promote the course

I launched my course about year ago, and back then it was a huge break-through for me, after 3 months of content creation for the course, I was happy to simply hit publish and show it to the world. I had no solid plan of how I will promote the course, but I knew I needed something like a webinar video.

So, I recorded a video and conversions from that one were super-low. People seemed to like the Pinterest tips I shared, but that video didn’t sell almost anything.

It was the longest task I ever did – creating a new free Pinterest Masterclass to introduce the course, it was like torture I imposed on myself and stretched it over the course of at least 4 months! I watched countless webinars of other educators from different niches before I came up with some understanding of how my Masterclass will work. I wanted it to be perfect. It’s not easy to find the balance between giving away free tips, making the content entertaining, selling the course, and stay true to yourself.

Anyway, long story short – the new Masterclass seems to work a lot better, at least I’ve got 1.5 times more sales than I usually had with my course in March, and I had NO promotion or sale on course in this month.

2. Started a Youtube channel to share my Pinterest tips. I think this one had as well a very strong input into my course sales – people finally could see who I am in full flesh, the girl behind the screen. And this creates a completely different experience and a higher level of trust. Also, I think that for information-based products, Youtube is the best place to establish your authority because that’s where people will go to find tutorials on every topic.

My Blogging Income Growth From the Beginning

As you can see, my blogging income has not been an overnight success. It takes hard work, but it is something I feel more than comfortable with compared to my former day job. And I know that my income depends on my effort, not on 100 other factors that are out of my control in the corporate world. And I work from home, literally from my sofa!

Whatever your monetization strategy is, you can’t make money without traffic.

If you don’t bring traffic to your website, you won’t make money with ads, you can’t sell affiliate products, nor with your own products or services. The fastest traffic source for a new blog is Pinterest – and I am sharing all my Pinterest SEO Secrets here.

Did you find this post useful, inspiring? Save THIS PIN to your Blogging board on Pinterest 🙂

Anastasia Blogger

I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.

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