First Year Blog Update: How I Earned over $36,000 in One Year of Blogging

I am finally sharing my first year blogging update.

First year!!

WOW!! It’s already been a year since I started my blog and I am so grateful for all the support and help I got from everyone.

Seriously, over the last year I have come to know how helpful this blogging community is, and I am so thankful to be a part of it. And I am grateful to all my readers who keep sending me email messages about my posts.

Last year was a big roller-coaster ride for me right from starting my blog to making it a full-time business.

Yes, I am earning more than a full-time income from my blog within a year. I am not saying it is going to be the same for everyone, but you will never know what you can achieve if you don’t try. I took the leap, and I am super happy that I did.

Lots of things happened last month with regard to changing my ad network, starting a new course, and more, and I want to share them with you. Hopefully, it is going to help you in your blogging journey in some way.

If you are thinking of starting a blog, just do it. I took the leap and started my blog, and now I am making significant income from it. It took time and hard work, but it is all worth it. I have an easy step-by-step guide to starting a blog even if you are not a techie. So, go ahead and start your money-making blog.

There are two reasons I share my blog update and income report: first, to be accountable, and second, to show you no matter how young your blog is, you can make money from it.

Before I started blogging, I learned a lot of things reading blog updates from other bloggers, and I want to make my blog updates useful for others.

Now, let’s get into the blog income details.

Traffic

Page views were slightly lower last month, which is to be expected during the summer months. I am not expecting to see a big change next month either.

In the first month of blogging, I got over 16,000 page views, and now I am at 124K. That’s a huge jump for me. Over these 12 months, my bounce rate has gone down and the returning visitors have gone up.

The two major factors for my blog traffic are

Pinterest (My biggest traffic source)
Facebook

I did not focus on Pinterest till my third month, and that’s when my traffic started to climb. But the traffic increase from Pinterest is thanks to Pinteresting Strategies. Seriously, this eBook is gold!!

I would not have come this far if it wasn’t for manual pinning. I did a lot of testing with this eBook’s strategies, and within two weeks, I saw a huge rise in my traffic as opposed to when I was scheduling my pins.

Here are some of my previous month’s income updates:

How I Earned $7,132.88 in 11th Month of Blogging
How I Made $4,952.70 in One Month of Blogging
How I Made $5,189.08 in 9th Month of Blogging
How I Made $3,002.94 in One Month of Blogging

SUBSCRIBERS

I am happy with my list growth. I have over 2,000 subscribers now. At the beginning, I was not very aggressive in building my list, but I learned a lot over the course one year.

If you are struggling with anything related to your email list, I highly recommend Meera Kothand’s blog. I have gained so much knowledge related to every aspect of email marketing from her blog.

Another big thing that I worked hard on last month was creating a FREE blog course. With one week, I had more than 300 people sign up for the course!!

In the last six months, I have received many email messages from my readers with regard to different aspects of blogging. To answer all the questions and to share everything that I learned this year, I created this free course.

Sometimes it can be overwhelming to go through this whole process of starting a blog. This 5-day course will help you to go through different stages of blogging at your own pace and get you started with your new blog.

PINTEREST

My Pinterest growth is going steady, reaching almost 8K. In the last two months, I have spent a lot of time on updating pins, working on SEO, and focusing on my Pinterest profile. It is always testing and analyzing your pins and making the changes that will get you the best results.

One important thing I have come to understand after starting manual pinning is that it is essential to spend time on this platform. If you want to up your Pinterest game, then I recommend Pinteresting Strategies. For me, this eBook alone has increased my Pinterest reach from 700K to over 1.6M, and it is still growing. If you can commit to manual pinning, then this eBook is for you.

FACEBOOK

Apart from Pinterest, I have always focused on Facebook more than any other platform. For the first two months, my major traffic source was Facebook, and I highly recommend the Strategies Worth Sharing eBook to help you get started with Facebook. I am experimenting a lot with different types of posts and with Facebook ads.

TWITTER

Now, this is the part where I have to focus a lot next year. My Twitter growth is too slow, and I share mostly other people’s content on this platform. As I always say, I don’t believe in working on everything at the same time. But I might be focusing more on this social media channel going forward.

INSTAGRAM

I AM SUPER HAPPY! I have finally crossed 900 followers on Instagram. I use this platform to share my travel and photography posts. Well, that’s the biggest plus of working online, right?! This platform has inspired me a lot to work on my photography skills, and I will work more on this next year.

Now for the income report: last month my income was $4,541.57, and most of it was from affiliate marketing and display advertising.

INCOME REPORT

Affiliate Income

Survey Affiliates (iGain, MaxBounty, Panthera) – $2,216.75
Bluehost – $720
Bookkeeper Launch – $131
30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success – $49.60
Pinteresting Strategies – $12.80
Amazon – $4.81
Grammarly – $0.20

Ads – $1,406.41

EXPENSES

BoardBooster – $15

NET INCOME – $4,526.57

My income figures were lower because of the decrease in traffic. I will be working more on diversifying my income from next year.

I started with $300 in the 3rd month, and now after 12 months, I have earned over $36,000. I couldn’t be happier about this growth. This increase might be different for everyone, but one thing that’s common is if you want to make money blogging, you have to invest. Invest in learning new strategies and work on them to get the results you want.

I was a total newbie when I started blogging, but Michelle’s course was something I needed to make money from my blog. If you are thinking of monetizing your blog, then you need to take this course.

Things I Did

This year has been a big learning experience for me. I did a lot of experimenting, learning, and analyzing. These three things have given me the results that I have today. So don’t be afraid to try new things with your blog; it might work out for you.

Last month, two big things happened. I changed my ad network to Raptive. I have heard many amazing things about this network, and I finally got an email from them last month. There is usually a big wait before you get accepted. They also require you to have a minimum of 100K page views to get approved. Now, I am hoping to see a rise in ad income.

It was also a special month for me as I released my first free course. I have poured everything that I learned into this FREE blogging course and hope to help others who want to start blogging to earn an income from home.

What I learned

Blogging is such a great thing because you learn something new every day, and you get a chance to implement it as well.

Here are some of my takeaways from last year:

Give it a try – Starting a blog was on my mind since 2008, but I actually took the leap in 2016. If you don’t try, you will never know.

You will have to work hard – Though the flexibility and the freedom you get from blogging cannot be matched, it requires a lot of hard work. If you are thinking of starting a blog, write about your passions or your interests. That way you never get exhausted from providing good content to your audience.

MAKING MONEY FROM A BLOG IS POSSIBLE – I have said this before, and I’ll say it again now: you can make money from your blog no matter when you get started. I earned my first income in the 3rd month. It depends on your hard work and your willingness to learn and implement new things.

What’s Next

There are many things I am looking forward to next year. I am hoping to create more useful freebies for my readers. I am also going to explore more options for working from home and other side hustles.

I will also focus on writing more in-depth reviews for my readers.

Traffic

I know the page views might be slightly lower next month, but I am hoping to push them back up by September.

Income

I always love to see some income progression every month. I will be happy if I can grow the income figures to more than this month. Breaking five figures would be great next year!

Subscribers

I will be working more on growing my list next year. I have many ideas for creating more useful freebies for my readers.

Update: All the below resources have helped me immensely to reach this point in my first year of blogging. I highly recommend them, and they can be quite helpful—no matter what stage of blogging you are at.

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – This is by far the best course I have ever taken, and it has helped me with many aspects of affiliate marketing. This course is a must for anyone who is serious about making money from a blog.

Pinteresting Strategies – Carly’s Pinterest strategies helped me grow my traffic exponentially, and in turn, my income. I have tested them, and they work.

Facebook GPS – Tracie is a pro when it comes to Facebook strategies, and her course is a complete guide to growing your Facebook followers. My reach is increasing every day as I keep implementing tips from the course.

Traffic Transformation – I love Lena’s eBook for the fact that she dives into getting traffic from less frequently used platforms like StumbleUpon and Google+.

Strategies Worth Sharing – This is an eBook that I bought even before starting my blog, and it helped me to reach 700+ likes on Facebook. With Facebook being the second biggest referral for traffic for many bloggers, you need to invest in this eBook to grow your traffic.SaveSaveSave

About Sireesha Narumanchi

Hi, I am Sireesha, and thank you for stopping by to get to know me. I am a work-at-home mom, a side hustler, and a firm believer in making "working from home" a success for everyone. I have worked in a remote job for over 11 years and tried many side gigs. I have been featured on many popular websites like Forbes, Business Insider, American Express, QuickBooks, The Muse, Moneyish, Virtual Vocations, Spark Hire, Bustle, Fairygodboss, Side Hustle School, Payoneer, Jobbatical, and Skillcrush.Read more...

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