Blog Income Report: $681 in June 2020
Welcome to my first ever blog income report!
I decided to start sharing my income reports because I remember reading so many income reports from other bloggers when I first started out.
I found them so inspiring and I was amazed to learn that it was possible to make so much money from blogging. Some income reports I read were from other college students like myself, along with stay-at-home moms and people who were able to quit their day jobs to blog full-time.
Right then I decided that if they could do it, then I could too!
Simplifying College is my newest blog (I have two others) and I’m going to show you exactly how I make money from a new blog!
If you want to learn how to do this too, read my guide on how to start a blog.
Previous Income Reports
I officially started this blog at the end of March 2020.
This is my first published income report, but here’s a look at my income from the past two months since starting this blog:
- April 2020: $33.47
- May 2020: $205.42
All of this money came from the Amazon affiliate program.
And if you’re curious about the traffic numbers I received, I had 9,478 pageviews in April and 25,716 pageviews in May.
Now let’s get onto my income report for this month!
Traffic Breakdown
June 2020 Blog Traffic:
- Pageviews: 31,835
This was an increase from 25,716 pageviews last month.
As with last month, I continued to get 99.9% of my traffic from Pinterest.
Eventually, my goal is to get traffic from organic search (Google) too. To accomplish this, I’m working on SEO (search engine optimization.)
However, SEO can take a while to go into effect. It can take 12-18 months for a new website to really start ranking in Google, whereas with Pinterest you can start getting traffic on a new website much faster.
June 2020 Email List:
- Subscribers: 92
I launched an email list towards the end of this month. Now I just need to figure out what to do with it once people sign up!
Income Breakdown
June 2020 Blog Income:
- Amazon: $339.44
- Mediavine: $342.06
Total: $681.50
I more than tripled my income from last month, which I’m very excited about! Let’s talk about where all this money actually came from:
Amazon
Amazon has an affiliate program which allows you to link to Amazon products in your blog posts and earn a commission if someone clicks through your affiliate link and makes a purchase.
The great thing about the Amazon affiliate program is that you earn a commission on everything someone ends up buying within 24 hours, not just the product they originally clicked on.
So for example, in my blog post about college dorm essentials I link to various products on Amazon. Let’s say someone ends up buying a few things for their dorm room, along with some new makeup and books.
I would earn a commission on all of that!
Amazon’s commission rates are pretty low (1-10% depending on the product) but it all adds up, especially since people do so much shopping on Amazon.
If you want to learn how to make money with the Amazon affiliate program, then I highly recommend getting this super affordable ebook from Maria, who makes over $4,000 a month from Amazon on her blog!
Mediavine
This month I got into the Mediavine ad network!
Those ads you may be seeing around my blog? Those are from Mediavine. I get paid based on how many people view them (which is known as RPM, or revenue per one thousand impressions.)
I didn’t launch ads on my blog until June 9, so the earnings you see above actually only reflect about two-thirds of the month. For July, I expect my earnings to be much higher because it will be my first full month with ads.
Mediavine now requires 50,000 monthly sessions (about 60,000 pageviews) to apply. I was lucky enough to get in JUST before they increased their requirements. Since I already had one website with Mediavine, I was able to apply with Simplifying College right when I hit 10,000 sessions back in May.
Blogging Expenses
One thing that annoys me when reading blog income reports is when bloggers leave out what their expenses were!
Like any business, blogging comes with some expenses.
The only consistent expense I have for Simplifying College is web hosting. This is something I pay annually, and it’s about $170 a year with Bluehost.
This is because I have multiple blogs and I need to be on a higher plan, but if you’re just starting one blog you can get web hosting for less with them.
The other thing I paid for this month was a graphic designer! I hired a graphic designer to create a printable college packing list that I can give away to my email subscribers. This was a one-time expense of $28.
Blogging Goals
I’d like to diversify my income sources in the coming months by introducing more affiliate programs on my blog.
Right now, I have a few links to affiliate programs other than Amazon around my blog, but I haven’t made any sales yet.
Another thing I want to do is increase my traffic!
Obviously, more traffic = more dollars from ads and affiliates.
I plan to keep focusing on SEO and Pinterest in order to accomplish this. I’d love to be getting 100,000 monthly pageviews by the end of this year.
Finally, I want to keep publishing new blog posts that are high-quality and optimized for SEO and affiliate marketing.
My goal is to get 50 posts published by the end of year, which at the rate I’m going (with 30 blog posts written already) shouldn’t be too hard to do.
Want to Learn How to Start a Blog?
Starting a blog was by far the best decision I made in college!
I now earn over $5,000 a month between my three blogs, and this is still something I do only part time!
You can read more about how I started blogging, along with the step-by-step guide to start your own blog, in this post.
Basically, it boils down to the following steps:
- Decide what you want to blog about (AKA your blog niche.)
- Choose a name for your blog.
- Get your domain name and web hosting through Bluehost. (Your domain name is FREE and web hosting with them is only $3.95 a month.)
- Choose a WordPress theme. (Mine is from 17th Avenue Designs.)
- Write your first blog post!
Starting a blog is actually really easy and something you can do today.
Click here for the full step-by-step guide on how to start a blog.
Best Blogging Resources
One of the best things you can do as a new blogger is invest in yourself.
If I had never invested in my blog as a beginner, I probably would have never figured out how to start a successful blog and make money blogging.
Here are the blogging resources mentioned in this post:
Bluehost: If you want to start a blog and make money, you NEED to start a self-hosted WordPress blog. You can’t make money blogging if you start your blog on a free platform like Blogger, Wix, or the free WordPress. I recommend using Bluehost for web hosting because it’s only $3.95 a month and you get a FREE .com domain name with them (normally $15-20.)
17th Avenue Designs: This is where I got the WordPress theme I am using on my blog. I love these themes because they make your blog look so nice and professional compared to a basic free WordPress theme.
Amazon Affiliates Ebook: For tips on how to ACTUALLY make money as an Amazon affiliate, I highly recommend this amazingly helpful ebook from Maria, a blogger who makes $4,000 a month from Amazon!
While you don’t NEED to spend money (aside from the cost of web hosting) to start your blog, I do recommend investing in some blogging resources (like ebooks) if you want to make money sooner.
I hope you enjoyed my first ever blog income report!
If you have any questions about this blog income report or blogging in general, please leave me a comment below and I’ll respond. 🙂
