How to Make $5,000 a Month Blogging: My Blog Income Report
When I started monetizing my blog in September 2016, I had a goal of hitting $4,000/month in revenue. I finally hit that goal less than two years later in May 2018. Another huge milestone is when I made over $5,000 a month blogging in March 2019.
So if you’re interested in learning how to make $5,000 a month online through blogging, I’m going to show you a blog income report for that month PLUS give you my tips on how you can do the same.
Note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you buy from my link I might make a small commission. This does not affect the price you pay. See the full affiliate disclosure here.
Let’s dive in!
Some important things to note:
- Showing affiliate income is tricky because often payments are delayed until you reach a payment threshold, or, as with Amazon, I get paid for one month’s earnings two months later. So what I report below is what I EARNED that month, not necessarily what hit the bank account yet.
- This shows GROSS income, that is, income before taxes. I will reveal blog expenses below though.
Previous Blog Income Reports
March 2019 Blog Income: $5,935.91
Let’s break it down below:
Affiliate Income
| Amazon | $314.80 |
| SiteGround | $525 |
| Online courses | $325.20 |
| Skimlinks | $2,025.17 |
| Other affiliates | $59.82 |
| Total Affiliate Income | $3,249.99 |
Ads – Mediavine
I made the switch from Google AdSense to Mediavine in August 2017, and I am SO GLAD I did! My ad revenue increased significantly.
| Mediavine | $2,685.92 |
March 2019 Blog Expenses: $108.90
| SiteGround – What I use to host all my sites! | $14.95 |
| Gsuite | $14.46 |
| iMark Interactive – Monthly blog tech support | $47.00 |
| KeySearch Keyword Research Tool – What I use to see how well I can rank a blog post in Google | $11.90 |
| Tailwind – Pinterest scheduler | $29.98 |
| Total Blog Expenses | $118.29 |
March 2019 Total Blog PROFIT: $5827.01
Blog Traffic Report
Argh, this part I failed to take exact note of, but I can give ESTIMATES. Pageviews were over 86,000 for the month of March.
My Tips on How to Make $5,000 a Month Blogging
- In the beginning, focus on creating high-quality, long-form content. Before you can even THINK about making money blogging, you need to be creating VALUE with your blog. I see so many beginner bloggers trying to churn out daily blog posts that are generic and have only 300 words. That’s not what will get you ahead! Google likes long, detailed content. So even if you can only publish one blog post every two weeks, make it LONG (like, over 2,000 words) and make it the best darn blog post you could possibly write (make it more detailed than any other blog post out there about the same topic).
- In the beginning, try everything. Later, narrow it down. The only way you’ll find out what works is to try MULTIPLE income channels at the start. When I started to monetize my blog, I was selling freelance services, digital products (ebooks), putting up advertising, and using affiliate marketing. But LATER, I realized that 90% of my income was coming from ads and affiliate marketing. Because of that, I got rid of the freelance service and digital products—it just wasn’t worth putting time and effort into channels that earned me only 10% of my income.
- Optimize what is working. In line with what I mentioned in the previous point, I started optimizing what was working best. So I culled down my income sources (deleted freelancing and digital products), and even within certain income channels, I kept optimizing. For example, I had maybe 20 affiliates, but there were three that were earning me the most money. So instead of wasting time trying to optimize ALL of the affiliates, I started focusing on improving the top earners, such as going through those blog posts and finding ways to improve them so I could earn more money from that top-earning affiliate. Even with advertising with Mediavine, I found ways to optimize my existing posts to earn even MORE ad revenue; this included breaking up paragraphs so I’d have more spaces between paragraphs and increasing font size.
- Don’t waste time on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Focus on SEO and Pinterest. This may be controversial, but I personally think Instagram is a HUGE waste of time UNLESS you plan on being an “influencer.” If you want to make money blogging, you need to focus on driving TRAFFIC to your blog, and Instagram is not set up to drive traffic (you can’t click links in Instagram posts!). SEO (search engine optimization) and Pinterest are the top traffic drivers for me. Pinterest is optimized for traffic because you can CLICK every pin and be taken to the site.
- Learn SEO! SEO is the reason I think my blog did so well. About 80% of its traffic was coming from organic search (Google). If you’re feeling stuck, here are my favorite SEO resources:
- Yoast SEO blog (free)
- Moz blog (free)
- Anything by Sharon Gourlay of Digital Nomad Wannabe (free)
- Stupid Simple SEO online course
- BE PATIENT. I want to point out that it took me TWO YEARS to get to over $5,000 a month in income from my blog. It is a slowww process, and believe me, there were MANY times that I broke down and wanted to quit. I actually made myself sick with trying to hit the $4K mark. But eventually, I hit that mark and then exceeded it! So don’t give up! Just wait it out and be patient (easier said than done, I know!).
Now that you know how to make $5,000 a month blogging, it’s time to go out there and apply these tips to your blog!
Happy blogging!
