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Today we want to share with you the story of how we made our first 260.56$ just by blogging. We never thought that it could be this fun AND actually make us money. So here is our first official Income Report.
We, being my gorgeous wifey (to be) Maya and I – being Andy, we admitted from the get-go that we got into this business of blogging to make some money while we help others by sharing our ideas of self-improvement, lifestyle and our lessons learned in the magical land of blogging.
It’s also true that I am a skeptical man (everyone who knows me can attest that), and I could have never believed that we could make any money online, not to mention by starting a blog!
Apparently, rambling about the struggles of young millennials, giving all sorts of life hacks – from cooking, cleaning, money making & management, fun DIY projects we’ve tried, and sharing the life lessons we’ve learned from books, movies & pop culture – and doing it all with a geeky twist, can actually make you money.
Because we love to help others, especially the ones that are younger than us in every aspect we struggled in our adult life so far, to teach people about what we learned from our mistakes, we could not keep it in anymore.
We had to do something.
This, added to the fact that Maya and I are driven by the idea of being entrepreneurs since we were in our teens, and her obsession with Pinterest, pushed us in the direction of blogging.
The skeptical in me was screaming: “Lies! They are all liars! You cannot make so much money with a blog!“, all while Maya read amazing income reports to me, from bloggers that make over 10k$ per month to 120k$ per month.
I eventually gave in, because I realized this is not a scam, not MLM bullsh*t, not a “get rich quick” scheme. This is work, serious work – if you want to actually make money. Plus, Maya’s face lit up every time the blogging topic came into discussion.
Our first big problem was that “old bloggers”, aka those bloggers that have been doing this for years and years, they all tell you that it takes months, sometimes even years, to make a few hundred bucks online.
The relief came from new bloggers who have learned from the mistakes of others and found solutions to make it in the blogging world, much faster.
Our second big problem was that the big bloggers we follow are almost all from America, and we live in Europe. America is more open to the idea of making money online than the rest of the world.
The relief, in this case, was that there are some young European bloggers that make a nice income online, from 4k$ and up! This really helped us in the decision making process.
Our third problem was the fact that I am the only one with a job because since we moved to this part of Spain (it’s basically a Summer Resort), Maya couldn’t find a normal job, besides freelancing as a photographer and online – and that’s not steady income.
Life here is expensive, and we still have some debt left to pay back home, so we can’t afford to waste hard earned money, not even the 134$ we used to get us started.
After a long, 4 months debate, research and a long list of pros and cons, we finally agreed on giving it a try, on one condition: we’ll be super serious about this.
So we started our blogging journey on the 1st of March, 2017!
Maya is in charge of managing the blog, researching and creating the awesome content you all love, taking the photos and so on. I still work full-time, so my part is simple: I give ideas & help with the marketing, and, from now on have to make every Income Report.
But I have to say that starting this blog must be the best investment in our adult life so far. This is getting us one step closer to our dream, to having our own business. You must be serious with a blog, that is true, but you must think of the blog as an important tool for your business, not a business itself.
Have you started your blog yet? if not, get our FREE e-book Blogging 101: Blogging for Profitto learn everything about it! Or just grab your hosting for only 3,95$ and get started now!
I will try to keep this as simple and on point as possible. When we first started, we got overwhelmed with the information you find out there, but we tried to apply some of the most valuable tricks learned before the actual launch.
From having a couple dozen articles pre-written, to how to set up your Pinterest, learning about group boards, SEO optimization, when to apply for affiliate marketing, or the ongoing “war” ADS vs NO ADS… we worked a lot!
Of course, mistakes were made, or else we would have reached this point earlier, but we are glad it happened this way. Now we can tell you what you can do to reach it faster!
July 2017 Income Report
Our total earnings after 5 short months: 260,56$
Our total investments in the blog: 238,42$
Pure profit: 22,14$ – tiny, but so proud of it!
Pinterest views: over 1.150.000 + 1.470.000 from Tailwind Tribes
Total blog views: 24 757 – from the 1st of March to July 30
How did we make our money?
Believe it or not, but most of it comes from ADS and the rest from affiliates.
ADS: 239.56$
– AdSense(for Google searches) – 26,7$ – joined March 19th, 2017
– Media.net( for Yahoo and Bing users) – 212,86$ – joined on the 4th of April, 2017
Affiliates: 21$
– Ebates: 20$ – joined on the 1st of March 2017
– ShareASale: 1$ – joined March 19th, 2017
We started our blog on the 1st of March, 2017. In the first 3 months, we’ve only made 22,61$.The fact is that we could’ve made more, but we got all tangled in the information web. We got overwhelmed and were all over the place.
We had quality content, and it was improving day by day, as Maya was writing every day, the content got better, her writing got better. So, what was the problem?
We tried to do it all, at once.“I want it all, and I want it NOW!“, we screamed, like Freddie Mercury from Queen. That was our thought.
The Problem & The Solution
Posting every day, pinning, tweeting, posting on FB, and started an Instagram. It was too much.
We were so desperate to “make it” in the blogging world, that we got into EVERYTHING. Social Media Madness, that’s what we call it. It drove us CRAZY. It was too damn much! And we were on that point of giving up.
The solution?
We got our sh*t together and started taking things one step at a time.
We cleared our minds and we created a plan and a real strategy. Most bloggers will tell you to FOCUS ON ONE thing at a time. Now, we know how right they are.
For us, it was Pinterest. Why? Because we started this journey because of Pinterest. So we focused all our energies on creating the best Pinterest profile, finding our image, joining Group Boards and discovering all of its power and secrets.
Related:
The Ultimate Pinterest Guide to help Skyrocket your blog
How to manage Pinterest Group Boards the Simple Way
And then, it finally happened! We got our first viral pin that just skyrocketed our blog! Our traffic exploded and we were able to make our first 100$!
If you’re interested in finding out how that happened,make sure to check that story here!
From that point on, we were officially “on the map”! Keeping our status is a whole other battle that we must carry now.
How did we invest the money?
First, it cost us 134,42$ to start the blog. We went with Bluehost as our hosting service, because it’s super cheap (just 3.95/month), and they offer a FREE domain name, one click WordPress download, and 24/7 customer support.
Then, after trying them for free and falling in love with their service, we finally agreed on having some help with our visual marketing strategy, so we bought Tailwind‘s annual plan, for 104$.
Grab your FREE Tailwind trial, promise you will not regret it! Also, make sure to check our article Tailwind 101: All you need to know, to learn more!
Since making those changes & investing in Tailwind we got to focus on other things, like getting to know Facebook and how to use Facebook Groups for the blog, Tailind Tribes, and creating our first freebies!
Be sure to check out our new Resource Library! More awesome things to come!
Also, we stopped posting articles every day. We now post once per week at the beginning of the week. Why? Because we want to provide quality, not quantity.
What about our profit?
As we said earlier, we made a tiny profit of 22,14$ that we are super proud of! What are we going to do with it? We’ll, we’re saving that one for an investment in our blog’s future – but more on that in another day.
What you need to take from our experience are the following lessons:
– don’t be afraid to invest in a blog
– keep it cool, be patient (even though it’s hard as hell)
– don’t jump into everything from the start – focus on ONE thing at a time
– don’t forget to take care of yourself in the process
– celebrate small wins – like a viral pin, a tiny profit, a great idea!
And, that’s it, folks!
We hope you enjoyed reading our first Income Report and that you got some encouragement to do it yourself! If you found any value in this post, be sure to pin it, share it on Facebook, and Tweet about it! We won’t stop you!
Our question for you is: How does your first income report look like? Let us know in the comments section below!
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