How I Doubled My Blog Income During My Second Year Blogging

Partners in Fire is killing it with monetization.

 I nearly doubled my income during my second year of blogging! 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 of blogging. I nearly doubled that this year, bringing home nearly 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 discussing the reality of making money blogging before we show off our epic growth is more important.

Making Money Blogging

Last year, I ranted about 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 utterly impossible for a newbie blogger to 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 blogger’s affiliate link for hosting services and get started, only to discover that blogging isn’t as easy as it seems. Learning search engine optimization (SEO), building a social following, and getting page views is hard work. It’s far harder to translate those page views into cash.

Should I Even Start a Blog, Then?

If you want to start a blog to make money fast, you should reconsider. 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, love writing and sharing with people, and are committed to slow growth, then you should absolutely go for it. 

It’s so much fun to write down your thoughts 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—skills that can even transfer into the job market and enhance your career.

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 they can start a blog and make thousands of dollars a month immediately or that if they just took this course for thousands of dollars, they’d make tons of cash blogging. 

To be fair, I haven’t taken any blogging courses, so maybe there is one out there that really helps. However, none of them can guarantee you will make money fast because blogging takes time. 

How I Doubled My Blog Income During My Second Year

Okay, I know you’ve all been dying to see how I doubled my blog income during my second year of blogging, so here’s the breakdown. 

We made money with two sources this year (as opposed to one last year—it’s 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.

Affiliate Marketing

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

The Amazon affiliate network is fantastic for new bloggers. It offers millions of products, providing options for bloggers in nearly any niche. It tracks cookies for a few hours, so if your supporters click your link and then go back and buy something later, it may still count as your sale. 

It also has some downsides. First, it’s an objectively awful company. Second, the commissions are notoriously low. You would make more money on literally any other platform, but Amazon accepts new bloggers, and other programs don’t. 

I also made $2.25 through Share-a-Sale this year. That vast fortune was from the merchant Tailwind, a 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. 

I’m a member of many 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.

Display Ads

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 entire year! 

I like Interactive Offers because they accept newer bloggers with fewer page views and are dedicated to the personal finance niche. They are also a newer company 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, 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, more targeted affiliates, and more pageviews (more pageviews translate to more sales). My third year of blogging will be my most profitable yet!

Looking Back Five Years Later

We first published this article in 2019, after two years of Partners in Fire. It’s now 2024, and most of what we wrote here remains the same. 

We had some really good years. Last year, we made nearly $30,000 blogging. This year, we will make far less. 

To successfully run a blog, you need to adapt. The platforms we rely on for traffic constantly change; if we don’t keep up, we will be left behind. 

However, it’s far more than money. I’ve become a better writer, gained recognition as a journalist, went on press trips, and developed relationships with a network of others in the community. I’ve also learned in-demand skills like SEO, social media marketing, website development, and copywriting. 

It’s been nearly seven years of Partners in Fire, and I still love every minute.