First Blog Income Report: How I Made Extra Money From Home in July

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If you’re new to Finsavvy Panda blog, you may be wondering how I make money online from home, what this blog income is about, and why I publish these reports.

When I stumbled upon blog posts like these, I was skeptical about the idea of making money online and thought it sounded too good to be true but I kept an open mind and tried it out myself, which I’m very glad I did!

My blog income reports are a true reflection of the journey and progress of a brand new blogger, me, who started with no experience – you’ll know that I’m not lying or exaggerating when you read through my blogging archive. I’m a very emotional and highly sensitive person so I wrote things that truly reflect how I felt and what I did as a beginner.

As a brand new blogger, I started with $0 to earning my first $100 in a few months.

After six months, I made my first $1,000 and within my first year of blogging, I exceeded my goal of earning $5,000 per month. Eventually, in my second year, I was able to earn over $120,000 with this small and personal blog, which really surprises me!

I always prove this with all my screenshots in my blog income reports when you go through the pages. But to quickly show you now that this is real, here are just a few screenshots of the earnings I made from home with this small blog!

$31,255.47 just from displaying very little ads on my blog:

$48,685.18 from affiliate earnings, which you will learn more about in my FREE 7-day course I mention below.

$1,385 and $2,015.20 from other affiliate earnings.

Other than these examples, there are many other sources that generate an income for the blog you’re reading now.

I really want to inspire and help you learn how to make money from home too, so I created this FREE 7-day e-mail course to show beginners like you how to start your blog and make money from home!

In the course, I lay out the EXACT steps I took to earn over $10,000 every month with a small blog.

I’ve changed the lives of 1,000+ students who took my course and now they’re earning an income with their blogs which really excites me!

I’d love to help you too! Sign up below to learn more!

Quick story of how I earn a full-time income online with no experience

If you’re someone who feels trapped at a job you dislike or you’re unsure of what you want in life, then you and I have something in common.

I was very unhappy and I DREADED going to work every day. I did not want to see or interact with anyone and it was very hard to get through the day.

To make things worse, I’m an extremely introverted and quiet person who had to put on an extroverted mask at work just to not feel like an oddball, or in a worst-case scenario, get let go in times of a company restructuring because I didn’t “fit” in.

I hated my job so much (actually all the jobs I’ve ever had) to the point where I was desperate enough to save as much money as I could and look for different ways to earn a full-time income online.

Working another job for another company wasn’t going to solve the problem either because I knew that I wanted to work on my own terms without having to deal with gossip and political BS.

Just like you, I was looking for ways to earn extra cash so I could increase my savings and hopefully quit my job one day.

Within one year of starting this blog, I made it happen. I reached my goal of earning a full-time income as a full-time blogger from home and I left my job.

Whether you want to earn money from home as a stay-at-home mom, quit the job you hate, or just want to make extra on the side to help you pay off debt and increase your savings, I want to help you achieve your financial goals.

I’ll be honest. When I first started this blog, I was confused and didn’t know what my goal was.

I just thought of giving it a shot to see if I could earn an extra $100 to $500 a month. I was already working on other side hustles to distract me from going nuts at work. 🙂

That’s why I started this blog income report series to keep track of my blogging journey and to show you that earning a full-time income online from home is possible.

It’s my way to have fun testing, experimenting, and sharing live with you on what worked and what didn’t work.

I’m very happy with my blogging progress and I would love to help beginners like you!

How to start a profitable blog: Many readers e-mailed me and asked me what I did to get the results I get. To help you, I created this FREE 7-day e-mail course that teaches you how to start your blog without having to be an expert at what you blog about. There has been a lot of positive feedback from many readers so I highly encourage you to sign up for my free course below if you want to learn how to start a blog and make money.

My First Blog Income Report

Welcome to my very first blog income report AKA my July blog income report!

I haven’t blogged about blogging, but I thought writing this income report would be helpful for beginners and those who haven’t started a blog yet. This also gives me a chance to reflect back on what worked and what didn’t work. With that said, I can look back on my blog income report to see where I can improve.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I would share this private information with the public?

I was debating whether or not I should share this blog income report because I was afraid of coming off as bragging or lying — or even both! I don’t want to come off as either because my sincere hope is to help others who want to earn extra money on top of their full-time jobs.

As you can see, I’m definitely not making a lot compared to other bloggers who are pulling in over $1,000 every month. But despite how little or much I make, I believe that everyone can learn from each other!

For the past month, I started reading more into other bloggers’ income reports and it taught me how to monetize my blog properly. Again, I’m not making thousands of dollars like other bloggers, but I am learning a ton from them! From what I’ve learned, every bloggers’ income report will be different. For example, there are bloggers with fewer page views who earn more than me and there are bloggers with more page views who earn less than me.

Before I started a blog, I was pretty skeptical about the idea of making money online. But after seeing other bloggers’ income reports, I realized that it is possible to make money blogging as beginners with no experience!

My Blogging Progress:

• Febuary 2019 Blog Income Report: $7,498.94
• January 2019 Blog Income Report: $6,790.93
• December 2018 Blog Income Report: $6,840.01
• November 2018 Blog Income Report: $5,532.13
• October 2018 Blog Income Report: $4,798.01
• September 2018 Blog Income Report: $4,509.50
• Blog Income Report: How I Made $2,797.64 Blogging in August 2018 (300% Increase from July 2018)!
• July 2018 – $703.57

Start your blog for cheap today!

I’ve been blogging for less than a year and I feel grateful that I’ve been able to increase my monthly earnings from ~$0 (Nov 2017) to $500 (April to June) and now $703.57 (this month) after taking a few blogging courses which I will mention later.

If you like the idea of making an extra $1,000+ per month or even turning it into a full-time income, you can start your blog for cheap with my easy step-by-step tutorial. There’s also a low-pricing offer exclusive to through my tutorial when you sign up. On top of getting the low price deal, you’ll receive a free website domain name for the first year (a $15 value) when you purchase, at least, 12 months of blog hosting.

So many people asked me if you can making money blogging without going self-hosted. In other words, can you make money by signing up for a free blogging platform.

I NEVER recommend you going towards the “free blogging” route. Instead, I always highly recommend investing in the basic hosting plan with Bluehost (60% off with this special link), which is exactly what I did as a brand new blogger, because 1) it’s very affordable to get started and 2) your blog will look more professional, welcoming and polished. These factors will definitely help your blog make money!

Anyway, let’s take a look at my first blog income report and I’ll show you how I made money online as a beginner!

July Blog Income

In July, I earned $703.57. Please note that this is in Canadian dollars.

Affiliate income – $510.80

Money-saving resources (Checkout 51, OhmConnect, Ebates, $5 Meal Plan, survey companies, etc.) – $384.09

Amazon Associates – $19.93

FlexOffers (budgeting resources for Trim and Paribus) – $106.78

Display advertising from Google Adsense – $192.77

You can learn how to earn money online with Google from home along with my personal experience with Google Adsense.

Total blog income = $703.57

My blogging income was ~$0 when I first started

I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t making any money with my blog when I first signed up. I started this blog under a year ago on a whim and I had NO CLUE what I was doing. To be honest, making money wasn’t my top priority because I was focused on learning how to use WordPress. Until this day, I’m still not proficient with WordPress, but I know that I will learn more as I move forward. 🙂

July 2018 has been my highest blog income so far. I don’t know what to expect in the months ahead, but what I do know is that I’m not ready to give up despite the volatile blog income and traffic. I’m in this for the long-term and I’m even ready for any sudden drop in traffic and earnings.

Let me tell you my story.

In my first four to six months of blogging, I was earning close to nothing! If I could remember correctly, I had a BIG SMILE on my face when I earned my first $1.45 from Google Adsense in my first month of blogging. I thought “Woo-hoo! I made my first dollar online!”

I was in the same spot as you are in now.

After many months of blogging, I saw almost no results. I kept wondering how other bloggers were able to earn over $1,000-$5,000 per month in their first, second, and third month of blogging! Just like you, I felt really sad and discouraged. Gosh, I thought it would even be nice to make $100 a month!

Not to mention, I wasn’t able to generate much traffic either. It’s something I’m still trying to improve on!

At the beginning of my blogging journey, I was trying SO hard to increase my traffic because I knew I wanted to eventually make money from my blog. I heard about Pinterest and how it’s a crazy traffic driver for most bloggers, so I decided to give it a shot! WHY NOT? It’s FREE traffic after all!

SO…

I signed up for Pinterest in November 2017 in hopes to make an income from my blog one day. I followed exactly EVERYTHING I learned from all these paid Pinterest courses and resources I found online:

– create relevant boards that are keyword focused and related closely to your niche.

– join high-quality group boards that will put your content in front of their followers (leverage is power!).

– make eye-catching pins that scream “CLICK ME! CLICK ME!” (or did they mean CLICKBAIT??).

– input a sweet description in your pins by sprinkling in relevant keywords.

– do not stuff your pin descriptions with keywords (this tends to look spammy).

– make at least 3 different pin images on Canva for each of your blog posts.

– do A/B testing with your pins.

– pin like a madwoman on Pinterest!

Okay, I did all of that PLUS everything else they taught in the courses!!!

SO WHY AM I NOT GETTING TRAFFIC?? Why isn’t anyone pinning my pins?? Is my content garbage? Does nobody like me? 🙁

I didn’t understand how people were even getting 5,000 monthly page views at that time!

*crickets*

*crickets*

and some more crickets…

This is how my traffic looked back in November 2017. 1,059 sessions and 3,773 page views.

This is how my traffic looked last month in July 2018. 34,426 sessions and 43,226 page views.

I truly believe that taking small steps and learning at your own pace is key. But, of course, you need to learn from the right course instructors! In the next section, I will list out all of the resources (both free and paid) that helped me get:

– from 3,773 to over 40,000 monthly page views in less than a year. (No, I’m not here to sell you “how I went from 0 to over 100,000 page views in three months!” I am telling you a more realistic story and something that’s more achievable!)

– from 1,500 (back in November 2017) to over 500,000 monthly viewers on Pinterest (as I’m typing this, I’m at over 600,000 monthly viewers, but I don’t know how this will look in the future).

– from earning ~$0 to over $500 per month blogging in less than a year ($703.57 in my last month)

The Right Blogging Resources That Helped Me!

Here are the resources that helped me during my blogging journey and I am confident that it will help you too!

But I want to mention this before I list those resources.

One thing that held me back at the beginning was my fear of wasting money on blogging courses. Initially, I was skeptical of paying for these e-books and online courses because I was afraid of being scammed by what people call them “online salespeople” (which isn’t true BTW). I was also afraid that the strategies in the courses might not work.

I’m sure that’s exactly how you feel, right?

Despite that possibility, I took the plunge because I knew that there’s no such thing as free lunches. I will be honest and tell you that some of the material in paid courses can be found for free online. But, do you really have that much time to dig and search through millions of articles out there? Plus, for some of the stuff, you wouldn’t even know what to Google search for in the first place!

With that said, I’d rather take the shortcut and optimize my time by investing in the right blogging courses and learn from the experts. All that time you spend weeding out free (and potentially useless) information could have been better spent optimizing your earnings strategy.

As the saying goes:

“You gotta spend some money in order to make money!”

Believe me, don’t be afraid to invest in the right blogging material! I’m really glad that I did!

1. Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

I noticed a difference in my blog income in April when I implemented Michelle’s affiliate marketing strategies on my blog. Michelle’s course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, was a serious game changer for me!

When I learned that she was making over $1 million a year from her business, I knew that I’d be learning from the best when I purchased her e-course. Within my first month of taking her course, I earned over $400 (~$520 in CAD) alone in affiliate marketing! Before that, I was earning $0 from affiliates.

Also, I’m SO glad that I was able to make the minimum sale of 3 items on Amazon before getting kicked out. Thanks to Michelle’s course, I met Amazon’s requirement within a few days of implementing her affiliate marketing strategies! With that said, I didn’t have to worry about re-applying for Amazon’s Affiliate program!

My overall traffic wasn’t skyrocket-high in April (24,573 page views) but one of my blog posts about building wealth, generated most of my affiliate income as that was ~75% of my traffic during that month! So, Michelle was spot on when she said:

“You don’t need a million page views to start earning with affiliate marketing. You’re ready to earn money even if you have only ONE blog post!”

And one reason why you’d want to implement the right affiliate strategies into your one epic blog post ASAP is that you’ll never know when it will go viral. Once it starts getting a lot of page views, you’d wish you implemented affiliate marketing strategies sooner!

Update 2019:

I went from making $0 in affiliate marketing to $400-$500 USD consistently from April to July after implementing Michelle’s strategies.

Fast forward one month later in August, I made over $1,500 USD in affiliate marketing.

And fast forward 7 months later, below is a screenshot of my blog income where affiliate marketing and display advertising are my only sources. Today, I’m earning well over $5,000 USD alone using affiliate marketing strategies as a full-time blogger!

I have a free bonus for you!

Before we dive into my blog income results, I also want to mention that I am offering 2 FREE bonuses to help you organize and plan your blogging journey when you purchase Michelle’s Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course through my link.

I want to let you know that I will be giving away my printable Blogging Binder + Affiliate Marketing Planner as my gift to you when you enroll in Michelle’s course using my link!

When you purchase Michelle’s affiliate marketing e-course using my link here, I’d love to hear from you and thank you for your support! Please send an e-mail to [email protected] with a screenshot that you purcahsed through me and I’ll send you my blogging binder and affiliate marketing planner for free!

It’s the binder I made for myself to use so I could organize my blogging goals. This binder helped me earn my first $1,000 blogging and I still use it after achieving my goal of earning over $10,000 a month. I also have a lot of positive feedback from my readers about how my printable binders have helped them organize their blogging goals to reach their income goals!

2. Making Pinterest Possible

If you’re new to Pinterest, or if you’re like me, who’s tried so many different strategies yet nothing’s working, I highly recommend this Pinterest e-book.

As mentioned earlier, I’ve tried almost everything that was taught by other Pinterest course instructors but I wasn’t seeing results!

One day, I woke up and saw Ana’s email about her new Pinterest e-book and I thought: “Oh, great… another e-mail trying to sell me some blogging/Pinterest course. Really?? Do I need this?? Will this really help me increase my traffic and my blog income??” *Sigh*

I clicked into her email (for fun)…

Okay, her e-mail sounds pretty convincing. Plus, I trust Ana because she’s sweet. She PERSONALLY responds to all of my e-mails in a VERY friendly manner even though I’ve never purchased a course from her before buying this one.

So, I really like her! And I decided to buy her course and give it a shot. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything at all.

To my surprise, Making Pinterest Possible e-book is PACKED, and I mean JAM PACKED, with a lot of valuable information. Even for someone like me who has been using Pinterest for a while got valuable lessons out of it! I could tell that Ana put in a lot of sweat, blood, and tears into her e-book.

If you’re new to Pinterest, or you don’t fully understand Pinterest (or not seeing the results you like) after using it for a while, then this course is PERFECT for you! BUT you NEED to be patient and FOLLOW EXACTLY EVERYTHING in her e-book to actually see results!

I bought this 172-page e-book totally by fluke, but I’m really glad that I did (see my results below)!

I invested in this course because my traffic wasn’t moving much after a while. If anything, it was starting to trend down from March to May. I even saw dead traffic (<300 per day) on certain days. But after learning more about Pinterest and implementing her strategies from mid-May onwards, my traffic picked up!

You’ll see that my page views from June to July increased by almost 150% whereas my sessions increased by 158%!

Update: I’m so surprised that this is how my traffic looked one month after in August 2018 where my blog reached over 88,000 page views!

You can read all about it in my second blog income report: How I Made $2,797.64 Blogging in August 2018.

Overall, Ana does make Pinterest VERY possible! I am extremely happy with her material and her customer service. I highly recommend her book if you are new to Pinterest and/or not seeing any results in your Pinterest traffic.

Tailwind has been very helpful at boosting my traffic!

In addition to learning how to use Pinterest, this Pinterest scheduler app has changed my life!

I don’t pin manually as much anymore and it has saved me SO MUCH time! I’ve only been using Tailwind for 3 months and I see a huge improvement with my traffic! The app has some limitations and it’s not perfect, but it sure saves a ton of time because you can schedule your pins to pin throughout the day! Plus, it’s the only pinning scheduler available that most bloggers use. You can get a FREE one month trial plus a $15 credit with Tailwind by using my link here.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many blogging resources because I believe in quality over quantity. I’ve been blocking a lot of noise and just focusing on a few resources for help. As a result, all of this has helped me generate some blog income outside of my full-time job. It hasn’t been easy and it won’t be easy, but I believe you can do it when you stay focused on YOUR own goals. Again, don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. Instead, be inspired and learn from them.

Blog Income Results from 99% Pinterest

I would like to point out that I’ve only been focusing on Pinterest to grow my traffic and that’s where all my blog income comes from. I learned from established bloggers that it’s okay to focus on one thing at a time.

Jeff from Breaking The One Percent (and Dollar Sprout) personally told me:

“By focusing on Pinterest and SEO (in that order), you are definitely on the right track!! Slow and steady wins the race! :)”

After about nine months of blogging, I have NOT focused on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Gosh, I just opened a Facebook account last month and I’m still not using it! Those were never my priority because I didn’t want to stretch myself thin. Who has time for all of that when you’re working a full-time job?

With that said, I will continue to implement these Pinterest strategies while learning how to increase my traffic through other means such as Google SEO. Yes, learning and implementing SEO will be my next step and I admit that I’ve put this on the backburner for a while now. Not to mention, it’s very important to diversify your traffic. But again, I’m taking this slowly and won’t be comparing myself to other bloggers who are making it big on every platform.

Over to you — How has your blogging journey been? Do you share your blog income report? If you’re not a blogger, do you plan on starting a blog today? 😉

Enjoyed this post? Don’t forget to share it and follow me on Pinterest! 🙂