How I Doubled My Blog Income During My Second Year Blogging

Partners in Fire is killing it with monetization. I nearly doubled my blog income during my second-year blogging! How awesome is that? Read on to see how we did it!

How I Doubled My Blog Income

If you remember from last year’s epic post, I made a smooth sixteen dollars during my first-year blogging. This year, I nearly doubled that, and brought home close to thirty-two dollars! That’s enough to cover my domain registration! #winning!

We’ll show you the breakdown and how we did it a little later (I know, the suspense is killing you!) but I think it’s more important to talk about the reality of making money blogging before we show off our epic growth.

Making Money Blogging

Last year, I ranted about those blogs purporting to have made thousands of dollars in their first month. Now that I’m a “seasoned” blogger, I truly know how much work goes into it. I’m not saying that it’s completely impossible for a newbie blogger to get started and make thousands during their first month; I’m saying that’s not the norm.

The average blogger will quit after six months. My guess is they quit because they’ve been sold a lie about how easy it is to make money blogging. They see all these posts about making thousands in a month, hundreds of thousands in a year, and it all looks so easy. “I can do that” they think. So, they use the bloggers affiliate link and get started with blue host (see what I did there!) only to discover that blogging isn’t as easy as it seems. It’s hard work to learn SEO, build a social following, and simply get page views. It’s far harder to translate those page views into cash.

Should I Even Start a Blog Then?

If you are starting a blog because you want to make money fast, then you should probably not start a blog. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. It’s not an easy passive income generator. Blogging takes a ton of time and commitment.

But if you want to start a blog because you have an awesome idea, you love writing and sharing with people, and are committed to slow growth, then you should absolutely go for it. Its so much fun to be able to write your thoughts down and share them with the world, build a little community around your interests, and be a voice for that community. There is also so much to learn in the blog world – SEO, social media management, HTML and web design, marketing and promotion – these are skills that can even transfer into the job market and enhance your career.

If you are ready to take the plunge, check out Bluehost for hosting. You can get started with as little as four bucks a month. The low cost makes it a great way to test the waters and see if blogging is right for you (and if you can keep up with the commitment – its probably more work than you are thinking!)

 

Know What You are Getting Into

It may seem like I’m trying to discourage people from starting their own blogs, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I want everyone to blog! I want blogs to be the new news – the go to sources for personal stories and real-world journalism. However, I want to keep things real about what to expect. Nobody should be misled into thinking that they can start a blog and start making thousands of dollars a month immediately, or that if they just took this one courses for thousands of dollars, they’d make tons of cash blogging. To be fair, I haven’t taken any blogging courses, and that might very well be true, but the reality is it takes time.

How I Doubled My Blog Income During My Second Year

Ok, I know you’ve all been dying to see how I doubled my blog income during my second-year blogging, so here’s the breakdown. We made money with two sources this year (as opposed to one last year – its always good to spread out your sources of income) affiliate marketing and ads.

Let’s see how these sources worked together to help me double my blog income during my second-year blogging.

Affiliate Marketing

The vast majority of my affiliate marketing income came from Amazon this year. I made $21.86 through the Amazon affiliate program over the course of the year, which is a few bucks more than I made from it last year.

 The Amazon affiliate network is amazing for new bloggers. There are so many product options that pretty much everyone will find something in their niche to try to sell. The other great thing about it is that it tracks cookies for a few hours, so your supporters can buy whatever they need on Amazon using your link, and you will get some cash. This makes it easy for your biggest fans to support you. I’m pretty sure the bulk of my Amazon income was my blogger friends supporting me throughout the year, but I appreciate it!

I also made $2.25 through share-a-sale this year. All of that vast fortune was from the merchant Tailwind. Tailwind is an amazing service that lets you schedule your Pinterest pins. Although I’m not doing as well as I’d like on Pinterest, the only reason I’m even getting page views from the network is Tailwind. If you’re looking to grow your reach on Pinterest, definitely check it out.

I’m a member of a ton of other affiliate sites (Impact, Flex offers, CJ, and even Ultimate Bundles) but I haven’t been able to translate those into sales. Maybe next year.

All in all, I made $24.11 via affiliate marketing this year.

Ads

My other main source of income during my-second year blogging is advertisements. You may have noticed a new ad in the bottom right hand corner, and an ad or two throughout my content recently. Those are from the ad network Interactive Offers, which I’ve been a member of since the end of September.

 

In that short time on the network, I made $6.16. That’s not too shabby for just recently getting the network up and running! I could have tripled my income if I had it for the full year! I like Interactive Offers because they accept newer bloggers with fewer page views and they are dedicated to the personal finance niche. They are also a newer company and they are trying to build their portfolio of advertisers, so there is the potential for growth there as well.

Total Yearly Income

My total income for the year was $30.27. So ok, I didn’t exactly double my income this year, but I was close. My goal for year three is to double the income yet again. I’ll do that with better ads and more targeted affiliates (and more pageviews – more pageviews translates to more sales). My third year blogging will be my most profitable yet!