January 2020 Income Report
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links and I may receive a commission if you purchase through them.
Happy February and welcome to my blogging income report for January 2020.
My last income report was back in July 2019 but there were a variety of reasons why this income report is so late!
I didn’t really have much time to work on the blog until early December last year unfortunately, which is something I definitely need to work on this year. I was also kind of discouraged because of something that happened back in August related to Pinterest, which you’ll read more about later on in the post.
So without further ado, let’s move on to my second blog income report.
Why am I writing income reports?
If you don’t know what an income report is, it’s a report where bloggers breakdown their traffic, how much they made during the month, and their goals for the next month.
There are a few reasons why I’m writing income reports on my blog.
1. To keep myself accountable. Writing up a monthly report is a great way to keep myself accountable. I am letting the internet know my results and future goals so it’s a great way to keep me motivated and on track.
2. To stay transparent. I want to be as transparent and honest to my readers.
3. To inspire others. I started this blog to show others that it’s totally possible to make money blogging.
In fact, I was inspired to start this blog because of the income reports published by successful bloggers who are digital nomads and earn six-figure incomes a month.
It’s crazy to know that nowadays you can now make a career out of being a blogger and create your own life of freedom. Oh, how times have changed!
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January 2020 Income And Traffic Report
In January, I got 8,512 pageviews mostly from Pinterest and Facebook.
I wrote 9 blog posts back in December 2019 and 5 posts in January so my hard work finally paid off in terms of the increase in pageviews, which I’m happy about.
I am hoping to continue adding blog posts over the next few months so that I have a nice foundation of posts to keep visitors longer on my site.
I also made sure to create new pins and upload them to Pinterest on a regular basis so that there was constantly fresh content seen by my followers. These fresh pins helped increase my Pinterest monthly views to 250K over the past month!
Update on Pinterest domain block
If you read my previous blog income report from July 2019, my domain was blocked on Pinterest. A few days later, my account got reinstated after I contacted the Pinterest help desk so I was super happy because my blog could finally be seen by my viewers again.
However (if you’ll believe it!), within 2 days after Pinterest said my account was wrongly blocked, I got an email from Pinterest stating that my account was entirely suspended. I couldn’t even login to my account or check out what exactly I did to get slapped with a suspension. I was livid!
I spent the entire August emailing back and forth with Pinterest to get them to lift the suspension. They kept telling me that I was in the wrong and there was nothing they could do about the suspension.
Luckily, it did up end up getting resolved after almost a month of going back and forth but I was pretty discouraged and didn’t end up writing new posts for a while. The whole experience was horrible and a little traumatic and I don’t wish it upon anyone who needs traffic from Pinterest especially if you didn’t do anything wrong.
You can read more about my experience on how I finally got them to lift the suspension and re-activate my Pinterest account in this blog post.
Blog Posts Published This Month
- 100 Winter Blog Post Ideas
- 75 Fun & Amazing Valentine’s Day Blog Post Ideas
- 10 Inspiring Girlboss Books For Female Entrepreneurs
- Why You Should Use Freshbooks Invoicing For Your Small Business
- Genius Blogger’s Toolkit: Is It Worth It?
Now, let’s get onto my earnings for the month.
Note: I report these earnings in the month that I earned them, not when they’re paid to me because it’s much easier for me to track this way. I also only included money that I’ve earned directly from this blog and no other freelancing income.
Total January Earnings: $289.75
Google Adsense – $84.81
Affiliate Sales – $204.94
Total January Expenses: $14.70
Most of these reoccurring expenses were paid upfront but I like to just break down the cost of my expenses each month just so that it’s easier for me to see how much I actually earned in total with my expenses deducted.
In my last blog income report, I said that I purchased the Tailwind Tribes Pro plan.
However, when I started my new billing cycle at the end of September, I decided to downgrade back to the free Tribes plan.
I wanted to see how much value I could get from just having the free plan which comes with 5 tribe memberships and 30 pins a month. So far I’ve still been getting a great boost of pageviews each month and I’ll re-evaluate again how it’s going within the next few months.
Bluehost Hosting – $2.49
Namecheap Domain – $0.66
Tailwind – $9.99
Paypal Fees – $1.56
Total January Net Income: $275.05
February Goals
For February, here are my goals:
Traffic: 12,000 pageviews
Income: $350
Posts To Publish: 8
Other Goals:
- Stay consistent with blogging
- Improve my affiliate marketing skills (I more than doubled my July 2019 affiliate marketing income from $81.22 to $204.94)
- Get enough pageviews to qualify for Mediavine next month (I do have another blog in Mediavine so I need less pageviews to get this site to qualify)
Blogging Tools & Resources
Here are my essential blogging tools and resources I recommend that helped me to make money on my small blog this month. I always believe in investing in yourself to gain new skills and blogging is no different in my opinion.
Bluehost
If you haven’t started a blog yet, you’ll want to sign up with a fast host that provides good customer service to ensure that everything goes smooth. Bluehost is my #1 recommendation if you’re just starting out. They have awesome, affordable plans that start as low as $1.99/month.
Follow my step-by-step guide on how to start your own profitable blog here.
Tailwind
Tailwind is a must-have tool alongside Pinterest if you want to be as efficient as possible and gain blog traffic relatively quickly.
It’s one blog investment that I didn’t bat an eye on purchasing because it allows you to schedule out your pins in advance and send traffic to your blog even while you’re asleep or out having fun. This leaves you time to do other important things such as marketing your blog elsewhere or writing new content.
Try Tailwind for 1-month free and see how it grows your blog traffic!
Pinteresting Strategies
Don’t want to invest in Tailwind? Well then, a great resource for you if you want to manually pin instead is Pinteresting Strategies.
This affordable course is jammed-packed with great strategies that will help you manually pin with great success and gain explosive traffic.
This course even has tips on how to optimize your Pinterest account which is so important in order to be successful on the platform so that is a great bonus!
Journey To The Center Of Amazon
Journey To The Center Of Amazon is an essential course to take to improve your Amazon affiliate earnings.
If you’re a beginner and haven’t started making money yet on Amazon, this course by Debbie Gartner is the course to take. It’s simple and easy to follow but filled with tons of information for both beginners and intermediate bloggers.
Read more about my review about this affiliate course here.
Easy On-Page SEO & Easy Backlinks For SEO
Easy On-Page SEO is one of the most affordable e-books to check out if you’re new to SEO that I highly recommend starting out with.
Debbie Gartner is a seasoned blogger who earns $20,000 a month from affiliate marketing by driving targeted traffic from Google with SEO.
She makes on-page SEO very easy to understand so if you’re a total beginner with no previous experience, this should be the very first resource you start with.
Another great affordable resource to learn from is Debbie’s Easy Backlinks For SEO, where she teaches 31+ ways to easily get backlinks to your site without having to do blogger outreach.
Save $20 by getting both the Easy On-Page SEO & Easy Backlinks For SEO bundle today!
Stupid Simple SEO
If you’re looking to bring quality traffic from Google search results to your blog, you need to check out Stupid Simple SEO.
This is one of the most comprehensive and in-depth SEO courses I’ve ever taken and have learned so many tips and tricks so far. I highly recommend you check out Mike’s course on how you can explode your blog traffic.
Check out his free masterclass today!
Canva
Canva is the program I use to create beautiful and eye-catching pins easily for Pinterest in just 5 minutes. I have the Canva Pro subscription and I love it because all of its features save me so much time.
You get a ton of features from having unlimited folders, premium fonts, the ability to upload your own fonts, transparent backgrounds, and resizing capabilities so you don’t have to spend a ton of time making new graphics for every social media platform that you’re on.
Check out my Canva review for more information.
Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers
One of my favorite resources to learn about affiliate marketing is Carly Campbell’s Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers course. In this course, she teaches you the strategies she uses to earn more affiliate sales from both your blog posts and email list.
You can read my full review on the course here if you’re interested in learning more and hearing my thoughts about it.
Read More Income Reports
I hope you enjoyed my second blogging report and found it helpful if you’re looking to start a blog. Check back next month to see my next income report.
Liked this? Please share it!
I’m so sorry to hear your Pinterest account got suspended. I can’t believe it took so long to get it back. I’m glad you didn’t give up and continued contacting them until you got it back.
This was such a great income report to read, congrats on increasing your income to almost $300. That’s amazing!
I hope that February goes even better and that you reach all the goals you set for yourself xx
Valentina
Thank you so much Valentina!
It’s great to read this post. I love hearing real numbers from real bloggers. I don’t mind hearing about blogger X earning a gazillion dollars last month, but these kind of numbers are not achievable for the majority. It can be pretty demoralising for new bloggers who end up with unrealistic expectations as a result.
I think any income from a blog is pretty amazing. To create $275.05 from nothing but your own words and effort IS something to really celebrate… and you can kick on from here to who knows what. It’s a numbers and time game!
I’m also sorry to hear about your Pinterest woes: I had the same thing happen to me last month and it was a kick in the teeth. Luckily I managed to get my suspension lifted within a few hours but I feel your frustration! On the bright side I managed to turn the experience into a blog post!
If it’s okay with you, I’m going to include you in a post I’m writing for new bloggers about what they might expect when starting to make money from a blog. I’ll drop you a message when it’s live.
Thanks again for being so open about your income last month and I wish you all the best for this year!
You were so lucky to have your Pinterest suspension lifted in just a few hours! Yes, that’s no problem. Thank you so much including my income report.
This income report is definitely a big inspiration for a newbie like me. I would be happy with an extra £300 every month for sure.
Thanks for reading. Just keep going and you’ll get there too! Good luck!
Congrats on your earnings!! I have been blogging for a really long time and it became my full time job about 3 years into it! It’s definitely rewarding to work for yourself and be your own boss and earn that dough!! Keep it up!
Thank you for your kind words, Gigi. Congrats for making blogging your full time job! I hope to get there one day as well!
Congrats on increasing your income! It’s really encouraging for me and motivates me to write my own blog income report.
Thanks! Glad this inspired you!
Thanks so much for sharing these tips! I’ve recently been trying to learn how to incorporate affiliate marketing links into my personal blog. I’ll be following along to learn more :).
Best,
Katie Lam
Thanks for following me on my journey!
Thanks a lot for sharing these tips! I’ve been learning affiliate marketing for my blog. I’ll be following along to learn more.
Best Regards,
Nancy