How I Made $6,836 from Blogging as a Side Hustle: Blog Income Report

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Looking to make money blogging? I'm showing exactly how I made $6,836 per month with a new blog as a side hustle in this blog income report.

You asked for it so I am breaking down how I grew my blog so quickly and how I monetize it!

I made $6,836 from my blog in my 12th month of blogging as a side hustle with NO EXPERIENCE.

Hi, I'm Lisa. I run The Financial Cookbook a few nights a week as a side hustle since I have a demanding full-time job that keeps me occupied during the days.

The Financial Cookbook started as a passion project and has grown into an actual respectable income stream in under a year.

In fact, it's grown more than I had expected so I have been so excited to see my revenue progress each month since I started the blog!!

After Michelle at Making Sense of Cents published a guest post I wrote on her blog about how I was able to grow my blog so quickly, I received so many emails asking about how I monetize my blog.

I promised I'd do a blog income report on it to break down everything.

If you guys like it, I'll go back and do all of my other months as well.

I always found that blogging income reports were SUPER helpful when I started my blog, so I'm hoping to repay the favor! In fact, blog income reports were the REASON I started my blog so maybe my blog income report will inspire you as well! =)

First off, if you are thinking of starting a blog, I'd highly recommend it! It's not too late and with my step-by-step guide to starting a blog tutorial, you can get up and running in 30 minutes and set up an income stream that can be passive income (in the future).

Check out some of my posts about blogging that will help you avoid the mistakes I made and save you a LOT of time! in fact, I wish I had blueprints like this when I started blogging. (They could have saved me months of time!)

• How to Start a Blog from Scratch in 2022: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide
• How to Launch a Blog with No Experience (in Under a Week)
• Should I Start a Blog? The Truth About Blogging
• Blogging Tools
• Feminine Blog Themes You’ll Fall in Love With

You can also see new posts about blogging here!

You can get your blog up and running in less than an hour with my tutorial! You'll first need a domain and a website host! I highly recommend this host as they have been instrumental in helping me with my blog since I had ABSOLUTELY no experience!

You'll then need a theme. I highly recommend this feminine theme company as they were also beyond helpful in getting my website set up!

From there, you'll be able to start creating content!

My guide on how to start a blog that is set up as a business from the get-go to actually make money will walk you through every step with detailed instructions. It's very important that it's set up from the beginning in a way that will allow it to make money.

Also, I've made my blog income tracker spreadsheet available to my readers at no cost. You can sign up to download it here!

Who Am I?

Before we get going with my blog income report, maybe I should introduce myself! My name is Lisa and I run The Financial Cookbook.

I have a full-time demanding day job that I absolutely love in the tech industry.

However, my passion is finance, investing, and real estate. I LOVE learning about it and talking about it. In fact, my friends may say I'm borderline obsessed with finding passive income streams and coming up with new business ideas.

Yes, I have a whole list on my phone of over 100 business ideas. I can't help it. My brain never stops working. Haha!

• Related: Ultimate List of 45 Insanely Easy Ways to Make Money (that are actually good)

Fun fact: None of my friends know about this business. Okay, I lied. My best friend knows, but she is the ONLY one. I run this site completely anonymously and plan to continue to do so. I also feel that it's not necessary to tell all of my friends about this business as this is my journey and I like to keep things private.

Anyway, I realized over the years that all of my friends were coming to me for financial advice so I knew this was something that most people weren't taught in school or at home.

Therefore, I wanted to bring my passion for finance to the world so that I could make a difference in the lives of others!

Last year, in February of 2021, I decided to make my idea a reality and launch The Financial Cookbook.

I had absolutely no experience in website design, blogging, writing, or anything like that. In fact, although I work for a tech company, I am not a tech person whatsoever, so even that has been a challenge!

Since the launch, it has been a whirlwind!

In just a year, I was able to:

• Grow over 200,000 followers on social media
• Gain almost 11,000 email subscribers
• Reach 70,000 page views a month to the website
• Have the honor of 12 Features in Major News Articles like Business Insider and Yahoo Finance
• Make almost $7K a month by my 12th Month
• Make a TON of new business friends
• Learn more than I ever would have imagined

Whew! I can't even believe all of that!

Am I tired? YES!! SO, SO TIRED!! Haha!

However, I don't have kids yet so the way I see it is that I'm going to work hard now to build the foundation so that later, I can hire people to help with tasks I can offload. (In fact, I'm looking to hire my first role right now.)

(Don't worry, I also have a great social life and do many, many hobbies! However, the work-life balance is getting trickier as the site grows.)

I also don't plan to quit my corporate job anytime soon since I love it so much and it's a great company. Therefore, I'll need a lot of help going forward to keep things moving as the website workload becomes greater.

What is my Blogging Business Plan?

I have SO, SO, SO many ideas for The Financial Cookbook…it's seriously insane. (see above comment about my never-ending business ideas. Send help. Haha.)

However, I know it will take me more time to make these ideas a reality since I have a full-time job and a social life.

Therefore, I wanted to first start with a blog to draw an audience to The Financial Cookbook. I believe a blog is the best way to bring traffic to a business…whether you're a lawyer, CPA, doctor, etc.

In fact, did you know that 77% of internet users read blogs? Therefore, there's definitely a market for the content.

Right now, I offer all FREE RESOURCES and plan to continue doing that on my website. My ideas for the future are beyond just articles and are going to be EPIC. They will help women take their finances to the NEXT LEVEL!

For now, though, getting traffic to my website is where my focus needs to remain, and having a blog does exactly that!

Alright, let's get into the meat and potatoes!

How Do I Track my Blogging Income?

Great question!

I track all of my blogging revenue in an excel document in a very organized fashion. I realized early on that I'd have to be EXTREMELY organized if I was going to do this whole blogging thing.

There are SO many things to keep track of.

Therefore, I created a Microsoft Excel document that has helped me stay so completely organized!

I decided to make my blog income tracker available to my readers at no cost.

You will need to have Microsoft Excel to use it, but all of the formulas are set up for you so you'll just need to plug and play your own figures.

You can download it by clicking the button below. I hope it's helpful for you! =)

January 2022 Blog Income Report: Made $6,836 in Month 12 on Top of a Full-Time Job

First off, I sometimes need to take a step back and realize how amazing this is.

I have worked so hard on The Financial Cookbook that it's easy for me to feel like I'm working way too hard for the amount of money coming in. (Finance gal here…so everything is about ROI.)

However, I keep telling myself that it takes time to grow a business, which is what I'm doing.

This amount of money is INSANE and so AMAZING for having this blog for under a year AND having another full-time job.

I am SUPER proud of it!

However, it requires a LOT of TLC to keep it going. It is in no way passive income, BUT in the future, I know it will be! (That is the goal!)

Side note: It's a common misconception that passive income means no work involved. That couldn't be further from the truth, actually!

Passive income usually requires a lot of work up front to lay the foundation, but then can be passive in the future.

Okay, I'm done with my rant…back to the main event. =)

Breakdown of January 2022 Blog Income Report- $6,836

I've been nervous to share this information, which is why I haven't done a blog income report.

However, it was helpful for me and is the reason I got started in blogging, so I'm doing it to repay the favor in the hope that it will help others as well!

In January of 2022, I made $6,836 from my blog on top of my full-time job.

Here is where that revenue came from.

• Affiliate Revenue- $2,994.57
• Ad Revenue- $742.48
  • Ezoic- $667.20
  • Google Adsense- $75.28
• Sponsorships- $2,200.00
• Product Sales- $895.00
• Miscellaneous Revenue- $4.39

Total: $6,836

I honestly have a LOT of affiliate income streams, which is something I'm trying to work on. It gets to be very hard to manage and keep up with when I work with so many affiliates.

I need to streamline that!

Something to note is that my blogging income has increased each month (for the most part) since I launched it. I didn't have any crazy viral months or anything like that, so my story is very doable and normal.

Sometimes I hear about these bloggers with major viral pins that catapulted their entire website and blogging income. Nope, not this girl! That would be amazing, but right now, it's consistent revenue, which is wonderful as well!

This month was my highest month yet. Therefore, I expected this month to be a one-off because of the sponsorships I had.

However, I just did February's Income Reports and the amount was almost identical, but with little sponsorships, which means the other income streams picked up. {That's a really good thing as the ad revenue and affiliate revenue are more consistent income streams.)

If you guys enjoy this post, I'll do a February income report for ya! (Let me know in the comments!)

Now, if you're looking to start a blog, my VERY DETAILED step-by-step blogging tutorial will explain EXACTLY what I did to make my blog a money-making blog from the get-go!

Now, keep in mind, the total revenue amount above is before expenses and taxes. Therefore, it wouldn't be a blog income report if we didn't talk about the expenses.

Blogging Expenses in January 2022

Alright, so those numbers are great and all, but what about blogging expenses?

First off, let's chat about taxes.

Taxes are enormous these days and are not taken out of blog income so it's something I have to account for and set aside for tax day.

As a rule of thumb, I always plan to only get to keep half of my earnings…woof. I know the government will want their share so I'd rather plan for the worst.

I also have really low expenses since I don't pay for ads, virtual assistants, or extra things I don't need. I'm very, very frugal so I only buy things I think I need.

The way I track and log my expenses (for my brain to function correctly) is that I allocate for the expense in the month I paid it.

I know some bloggers like to amortize them out, but since the expenses don't come out of my bank account in lump sums, I only log them in my books for the month I incur them. Does that make sense? This way, it makes sense to my CPA come tax time.

For example, my website hosting gets paid for in the summer in one lump sum. Therefore, I will allocate for it in summer. (I plan to do blog income reports for those months too to be fully transparent.)

I will say that for the entire first year of blogging, my expenses were never over $368 a month, AND that is ONLY because, in that month, I was buying blog courses like a madwoman.

After this month (currently in March 2022 where I bought a VERY expensive course), I plan to layoff on buying courses and implement the ones I have taken to a T.

Alright, so my blogging expenses for January 2022 were:

• Flodesk Email Subscription– $19
• Product Store- $9
• 2 Finance Books for Education- $10.46
• Product Store Fees- $36.13

Total Blogging Expenses in January 2022: $74.59

As you can see, there was nothing too crazy here.

I don't do any ads (and never have) and I try to keep expenses as low as humanly possible.

I mean, I DO coach on finances so obviously my entire mindset is always about ROI. I'm like this in my personal life as well.

My friends still tease me because I had my laptop duct taped together all through college since I was paying my own tuition and needed to save money.

Like I said, I'm frugal…which means I also am frugal with my blog.

Therefore, if I buy something, it's because I truly know that I need it.

Blogging Stats for January 2022

Luckily, I have kept VERY DETAILED views every month of my blogging stats.

On the first of the month, I log all of my revenue and expenses for the previous month, as well as all of my blogging stats.

This way, I can see EXACTLY how my site is progressing over time in an easy-to-see format!

• Pinterest Impressions- 11.73 Million
• Pinterest Followers- 72,500
• Email Subscribers- 10,882
• Website Pageviews- 70,000

Alright, let's talk about our love-hate relationship with Pinterest.

In 2021, my Pinterest impressions were up to 22 Million. Yes, you read that right.

Then, the Pinterest algorithm changed (yet again) and it's dropped me down so I'm still trying to recover from it!

This is why I've made a big push to focus more on SEO.

Either way though, my blogging statistics are pretty amazing for being less than a year in!

Actions in January 2022: What did I do?

Well, January 2022 was an interesting month because I got sick so I didn't feel like doing anything but watching Netflix. Haha! (It was probably more an excuse than anything…but hey, we need those moments.)

I was sick for about 2-3 weeks, but I stayed true to my blogging schedule.

My blogging schedule meant that I stuck to at least 1 post a week. I really can't do any more than that so I do my best to stick to the 1 per week.

I so admire bloggers that can whip out 3 a week! That's amazing!

However, blog posts can take me 8-16 hours to do sometimes, depending on the topic, so this girl is lucky if she can whip out 1 a week.

In January, I focused a lot on SEO.

I've been trying to go back and update my old posts, but it is a PROCESS! It has been taking me forever SO this will be the main focus going forward until I'm finished.

Since I had no experience in website design, I did not know to make my posts SEO-optimized. In fact, I'm still learning every day! It is a never-ending process!

My Blogging Plans for February 2022

Next month, I plan to focus on updating all of my old posts.

I know it will be a process, but it needs to be done.

That will be my sole focus so I'll let you know how it goes! (Wish me luck!)

I also KNOW that I need to hire someone to handle some tasks for me. This will be really difficult as I don't know where to go to look for someone.

I also plan to learn more about SEO as I know this is very IMPORTANT for my business so it needs to be my biggest priority (especially since my Pinterest stats went down).

I try to have a focus each month that I deem as more important so that I can progress in particular areas versus spreading myself so thin that nothing gets accomplished.

Conclusion to January's 2022 Blog Income Report

I was VERY excited to see what January brought in as it gave me the extra boost to keep pushing hard because I am able to see the trajectory of the blog!

However, I don't just view income as a measure of success. My success with features from big publications, my growth on social media, my email subscriber list, and even the kind messages from my readers letting me know that I'm changing their life in some way are all great indicators of the progress I am making.

Some months, I'll be more focused on revenue while other months I'm focused on growing some portion of my blog.

I hope this was helpful! Let me know if you have any questions and if you enjoyed this post or have any questions, feel free to email me at lisa@thefinancialcookbook.com!

Related Posts about Blogging

• How to Start a Blog from Scratch in 2022: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide
• How to Launch a Blog with No Experience (in Under a Week)
• Should I Start a Blog? The Truth About Blogging
• Blogging Tools
• Feminine Blog Themes You’ll Fall in Love With

How I Made $6,836 Blogging in my 11th Month on Top of a Full-Time Job

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