What I made in my first calendar year of blogging and how it was done. A discussion of blogging as a side hustle to build wealth while working on things you enjoy.
I’ve talked a lot on the blog about the four components that go into building extreme, early wealth:
- Earning more money
- Saving more money
- Taking the resulting savings from the first two steps and growing them in the best investments opportunities possible
- Optimizing the taxes paid on your portfolio’s growth because what matters is ultimately how many dollars stay in your pocket
When it comes to that first step of wealth building – earning more money – I think many people discount the possibility of a side hustle that would fit well into their lives, something they might actually enjoy.
One opportunity I certainly overlooked myself for years and which I’d like to share with you is how to make money blogging. So here’s a case study of how much blogging has generated for one person – me.
Why Share?
I actually hesitated for a long time over the idea of writing an income post. It’s mildly awkward to talk about in a way that sharing all my other financial details isn’t. This is in part due to the fact that several of my real life friends have ended up finding my blog, so it’s the equivalent of telling your friends what you make over dinner. Ultimately, though, I strongly believe that it’s hearing personal stories of what’s possible from others and how they did it that motivates us to pursue our own opportunities.
Partway into my own blogging journey, when I was trying to figure out how to monetize enough to pay for hosting and other small blog expenses, I ran across a few bloggers who published their income figures. I found them enormously helpful, and so I feel obligated to pay it forward to open other people’s eyes to the opportunity.
2017 Blog Income
In 2017, the blog saw over 1.2 million page views from over 361,000 visitors. It generated $62,326 of income ($57,328 in cash since some payments take 30-45 days past the end of the month to come through).
I started the blog in August of 2016. 2017 was my first full calendar year running the site. My view of blogging was that it would be an amazingly fun hobby that had no hope of making any money. But I enjoyed writing, and I thought it would be neat to connect with others who were as interested in personal finance as I was, so I decided it was the perfect hobby to try out in retirement. The blog attracted a few new readers, and it was panning out to be just as fun as I thought it would be. At the beginning of 2017, I decided it would be nice to find a way to make $50-$100 a month just to pay for things like nicer website templates, an email list service provider, and other things that would make the blog nicer. So I started reading a little about how other bloggers monetized.
I wrote about all the main ways to monetize a blog over here, but you can see from the chart above that the method I chose to start with was affiliate commissions. I found a few businesses whose products I like and share them with my readers. If a reader ends up making a purchase because of me, the business will share a percentage of the sale or a flat commission with the blogger. A great example of one of my affiliate partners is Amazon. So if you buy a book from Amazon I recommend, I might get a fraction of the sale price.
I really like this monetization path and recommend it for all new blogs over other methods, because it’s a way to provide your content absolutely free to your readers. And you get to choose your partners and can make sure that everything is a quality product you can stand behind.
Towards the end of 2017, I explored adding advertisements to the site. The advertising total for the year is a little deceptive: it only includes a month or two of results since I started it late in the year. A typical month is probably $1,000 on the low end and $1,800 to $2,000 on the high end. I chose advertisement as a second monetization tool because, while not as seamless to the reader as affiliate relationships, it allows me to provide the content completely free to them rather than asking them to plunk down cash for my work.
What I Didn’t Do – The Interesting Part
If you do a little research into how much other bloggers make, I wouldn’t say my results are particularly eye-popping. In fact, if you’re wondering what the real ceiling is on how much you can make blogging, I share some profiles of other real bloggers’ income over here. Compared to those figures, what I earned is peanuts. But the interesting part of my story is how it fit seamlessly into the rest of my life while providing the income it did. Here are some of the highlights:
5 Hours A Week
Aside from the first few weeks of starting the blog and these last two weeks doing a complete site redesign, I set strict limits for myself of doing this five hours a week, at most seven when there were a lot of non-writing things to do like answer emails.
I’m retired, and the reason I started this blog was because I enjoy writing and wanted an outlet that allowed me to pursue that while helping others. It was therefore important to me to not let this become an ‘obligation’ that took over my life or burnt me out on doing the thing I loved (the writing).
Real Income In The First Full Year
The trajectory of a blog is hard to tell when you begin. I’ve read in several sources that it often takes about a year to build the traffic and readership of a blog to the point where you can generate meaningful revenue. This is probably true, so it was a surprise to me that the blog generated actual income in 2017. It certainly wasn’t the plan. I can’t place my finger on a magic blueprint to ensure this happens for everyone, but the fact that it did (and the fact that my blog isn’t the only one to do this in the first full year) should be encouraging and cause you to think about the possibilities.
Technologically Challenged
I have a confession. I am the least technologically savvy millennial on the planet. When I was issued iPhones for work, I lived for two and a half years with these fancy Apple gadgets sitting in my pocket without ever having figured out how to download iTunes and load music on my phone. Seriously, I would listen to Pandora on my way to work, and when I went underground to take the subway, my music would cut out and I would sit in silence until my phone could connect to the outside world.
Fortunately the WordPress blogging community is so robust and huge, you can find answers to almost any newbie question instantly with a Google search. If for whatever reason your request is extremely unique, there are a thousand developers on places like Upwork or Fiverr who will get you what you need for $10-$50.
Allergic to Marketing, Managing People, and Anything That Isn’t Writing
Again with the retirement focus. I started my blog as a hobby to have fun, which meant as I dove into my research on how to build and monetize a blog, there was a lot of advice that I straight up refused to implement.
I didn’t want to hire and manage writers or folks to create a social media marketing campaign for me. I didn’t want to spend hours each week implementing a ‘viral Pinterest marketing strategy’. I did make some efforts on this front, but this took up less than 10% of my time which meant less than an hour of my week. I won’t lie to you: some amount of this is going to be necessary, but I was delighted to discover that I was still able to achieve this level of readership without having to sacrifice half my hours to work I wouldn’t enjoy. Like so many things in life, the Pareto principle prevails: 20% of the techniques probably give you 80% of the benefits. In my extreme loafer case, it was more like implementing 5-10% of the techniques probably gave me 50-60% of the effect.
This should all be deeply encouraging to you. I’ve read success stories about people who seem like they have all their shit together and were meant to be marketing and website geniuses. I never quite identified with them. But if you’re not as technologically challenged as I am, willing to work on something more than 5 hours a week, etc. etc. your odds of succeeding are that much higher than mine were trying to do the same thing, at least as it relates to blogging.
Finally, case studies like mine prove that there is a spectrum of effort/skill/time/market fit that can yield successful results, and it’s not all or nothing.
Takeaways
So here’s the deal. I feel kind of cheated.
I built my career around this idea that I had to find a way to make a ton of money and become financially independent before I could run off and do the things I wanted, since the things I wanted supposedly wouldn’t support me financially.
Now, there are a whole host of caveats – not least of which is that one year of data is risky to bank an entire life plan on – but it seems increasingly likely that I could have quit and pursued my freedom much sooner had I put more frying pans in the fire.
I have enjoyed writing ever since I was young, and I planned to pursue it once I was retired. Why didn’t I give it a shot while I was working? Sure, I wrote things privately and saved them in the dusty annals of my computer during my working years. But I never even thought about putting it out there for others to see, commercially or not.
What It Means For You
If I could share one thing from my experience this first full year of blogging, it would be how important it is to give yourself a chance and put some more frying pans in the fire.
Will all of them pan out? No.
But your goal is to create a constant pipeline of opportunities for yourself, particularly ones that involve you spending time on things you and enjoy and would do for free anyway. That’s the part I missed. Putting more frying pans in the fire didn’t have to be about doing work on my off hours that I would find onerous. It could be about pursuing opportunities that involved me spending time doing things I wanted to do anyway, like blogging.
I don’t know what this is for you. Maybe you’re really into fitness and would dig being a personal trainer for a couple hours a week or teaching a yoga class. Maybe you’re crafty and want to open a fun little Etsy shop. Or for a pretty wide swath of people, you probably have at least one hobby or interest you could talk for hours about. Sharing your expertise on the subject and connecting with others interested in the same thing sounds like fun, so starting a blog of your own would be an excellent fit.
Today’s marketplace makes it so easy to give yourself a chance. You can get a blog up and running in 10 minutes, and you can host it for as little as $2.95 a month.
Investing $2.95 in yourself is a no-brainer. I spend $2.95 every month on some truly spectacular crap which has no hope of transforming my life and providing the kind of enjoyment that running your own site can possibly provide.
Here’s what you can take away from this case study:
- You know that blogging can make real money with a time commitment that probably works for your schedule (less than 5 hours a week)
- You know that there are success stories of people doing this who are technologically unsavvy, have strict limits on the time they can invest, and other real restrictions that go against the myth of the ‘all or nothing’ startup life.
- Will you have the same exact success level with the same inputs? Unclear. But at least you know it exists where you didn’t before. And think about how much better your odds are if you’re willing to work harder, do more research on best practices, etc. than the folks you read about in case studies like this.
- Perhaps most importantly, even if you don’t reach the same exact level of success, would even half that amount make a difference to you? Or would getting there in two years vs one year still be worthwhile? These are all real possibilities. But only if you start.
Start Your Own Blog
If you’re interested in starting your own blog, I highly recommend registering a domain and getting started with Bluehost.
They host over 2 million websites and are one of the largest focused on WordPress, which is the free blogging platform that most bloggers use. You can get hosting through this link for $2.95 vs the usual rate, and it comes with free registration of your chosen website. You can then use this guide to get your blog live in 10 minutes.
Given that Bluehost has so many blogging clients, it has built a streamlined process to walk you step by step through the setup process. It’s quick and pretty painless. Then you can check out these posts on common beginner blogger questions and how to monetize a blog.
Conclusion
I hope this case study encourages you to pursue a side hustle that focuses on work you enjoy. If I had put more frying pans in the fire while I was working, I might have been able to shorten my working career even more, and had more fun to boot. Whether that’s starting your own blog or something else, it helps to know there are others out there that have done it. So I’m telling you now: there are others, they are doing it, and you can, too.
How did 2017 go for you? Are there interests you’d like to pursue this year that you think you can commercialize? Do you have a topic you think would make a good blog of your own?
Thank you for sharing this info – it’s encouraging since I’ve just launched a blog “for fun”. It would be icing on the cake to see a little money trickle in from it.
Also, very nice redesign of your site!
Thanks Lisa! Super happy with the redesign as well. Glad you’re giving blogging a go.
Hi JP,
You mentioned in a previous post that you initially spent time writing a blog that no one ever saw – to kind of “clear” the system. I’ve spent several months writing, and still haven’t quite determined one specific topic I want to focus on.
For people like me who haven’t narrowed it down, do you recommend just jumping in and “starting” the public-facing blog anyways?
Absolutely in support of going live if you’ve already put 5+ posts together. The beautiful thing about blogging is how flexible it is – if you go live and finally find your groove a few months later, you can go back and delete or edit posts that don’t fit the messaging of your blog. In the meantime, you’ll get the momentum and encouragement of interacting with your first few readers as well as the kick in the pants of ‘this is live and I need to stick to a schedule.’
Great post! I’m actually starting a podcast “for fun” about issues I care deeply about. I’m not sure if I’ll monetize it – or if there will be a market for it – but this isn’t encouraging! I’m also learning the tech side of things, as I’m doing my own recording and editing.
Awesome. It’s interesting – a ton of bloggers are starting their own podcasts and I think the monetization options are catching up quickly in the podcasting space with those for blogs. Podcasts create a deeper level of engagement in some ways than a blog, so I’m pumped for you.
Thank you for sharing this, JP. My blog went live on January 1st. I’m really excited about it as it’s something that I love. I, too, am not technologically savvy and I’m diving headfirst into a world that I know nothing about (social media!). I’m learning so many things. I just wanted to thank you because you are the reason I decided to jump that last hurdle and start my own blog. I haven’t started on the monetization part yet because, right now, I’m just trying to generate traffic. It’s coming along nicely, though. I’m excited about the upcoming year and I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Thanks, again!
Hey Shannon. This is fantastic – sounds like 2018 is already shaping up to be a strong year for you! I think you’re going about it the right way. So many folks want to talk about making money right away, but traffic generation is what’s important for at least the first 6 months, sometimes even the first year and a half or so depending on your niche and your traction/progress. As long as you’ve picked a topic you really enjoy, I’m sure you’re going find it a positive experience. You get to write about things you love and meet and interact with others who are interested in the same things as you, no matter what. And then maybe you make some really significant money as well, which is just another layer of win. Good luck!
I find this very inspiring. I too am challenged by technology and work 4 hours a week. I haven’t seen your level of success but my readers and revenue are continuing to grow. Thanks for sharing!
It’ll happen! Literally every blogger I’ve talked to has said the beginning period (which can be 6 months for some, 2 years for others) seems really slow, and then you reach an inflection point, wake up and have real traffic. I think that’s why the prevailing advice (and advice I support) is to write about something you love and only get into blogging if you really enjoy your subject; you won’t survive otherwise if you’re just hoping to make a quick buck. Glad to hear you’re seeing steady growth.
Hi JP,
Thanks for this update. These reports are immensely helpful. I first came to your blog after seeing an article about your story on CNN. It seems to have really gone viral, as a few other friends mentioned it at a dinner without me bringing it up. Your initial post on blogging even motivated me to start my first ever blog.
I was wondering though, does having a viral post like CNN, or several of them (Forbes, Lifehacker, etc), make all the difference? Did you see your viewership and income skyrocket after that?
I would love to hear more detail at some point about that 10% marketing time you put into the blog and how you may have gotten on those publications radar as well, if you ever have the time.
Again, really appreciate your ongoing advice and openness about your success!
-L.B.
Hey Louis. Thank so much. I’m glad you’re launching your own blog! So the features with publications like CNN definitely bring in a spike of visitors. In those periods, you see viewership and income skyrocket. A certain amount stick around as ongoing subscribers. It definitely helps, but it’s definitely not necessary to succeed and grow a blog. In fact, most blogs that are at the $85k-$150k threshold in income and 100k+ page views a month get there without that kind of help from big news sites, and it’s only after they hit that scale that they get an email asking for an interview.
I’m happy to write a post about what I do for marketing. It’s just so embarrassing how basic it is, but I suppose it could be helpful for others who really want to get started and just do the 5-10% to get 50% of the results. Rooting for your new blog and hope to keep seeing you in the comments over here.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Great to know.
It is definitely a bit of a wake up call having started a blog and seeing the slow initial numbers, but, I’m already seeing them pick up after just a few weeks. So I can see how what you’re describing is possible.
While it may sound boring to some – I think the marketing side is fascinating! Would love to hear more about it as it’s still clearly very important.
I think my subject and the original writing and research I’m conducting for my blog will be valuable to a lot of people and help them potentially bring in significant side income as it has for me. Want to make sure I am getting it out in the best way possible.
Thank you again!
Good luck!
Interesting read. I learned about you and your blog when you were featured on Forbes. I’ve always been interested in personal finance, but I really find it difficult to find other people around me that has a budget or know how much they spend a month. The content of your blog has been very helpful to me and hope you keep it up!
Thanks DN. Hopefully you can continue to find folks who share your interest online (there are lots of us!). Hope to see you around on the site.
I too have been thinking about blogging~I have a couple of questions-how do you get people to see it? I’m going to do it anonymously. Just deciding on a topic. Also-is there a way to see what other blogs there are out there with a similar topic to what I might do?
And lastly how do you claim the income at tax time? Thank you. ? If I start it I am going to use your links.
Hey Susanne. So I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread, but I got my initial traffic from being an active poster in personal finance forums as well as guest posting on other blogs in the space. I highly recommend guest posting as away to get started since you get to talk to other writers who are interested in the same space as well as generate readership. You learn in two different ways at the same time. Also, checking out other blogs in the space helps you get a handle on what others find are interesting topics.
As far as how you find out what other blogs are out there, I think you employ the usual techniques you would when you are interested in learning more about a field – google searches for the topic, hanging out on forums where people suggest their favorite sites, etc. Taxes is its own conversation. Suffice it to say that it’s pretty easy to get started, and it then it gets pretty complicated if you want to optimize your tax situation. I don’t think that’s generally a concern for the first 6-8 months, maybe even 12 months as you can file taxes as an individual on your own tax returns. You only start doing fancy stuff when your blog is generating a significant income to warrant it, and all those tools are optional rather than required.
Hope that helps! I can’t say enough about the positives of blogging. Again, I started it without money generation in mind and the neat thing about it is that it improves your life in so many non-monetary ways while giving you a crack at real side hustle money. In the worst case you are spending time on and meeting people who are interesting in something you also love, and in a best case you get to do that and also make a lot of money. It’s a guaranteed win of some sort, and it’s only a matter of what degree you win by. I like set-ups like that.
Very interesting read. Can you tell us more about how you got your fist visitors to the site and what made the biggest impact in terms of traffic?
Hey SK. My first readers came from me visiting and participating in personal finance focused forums where I was active before I started the blog. I also did a few guest posts for blogs in the space. I highly recommend guest posting as a way to start building a readership. Not only do you steadily gain readers, but you are getting to know other folks in the space. There’s a whole conversation we could have on how to approach other bloggers (short version: should be focused on how it can benefit them and their readers, not how it can benefit you, you should do your homework on their style and suggest one to two post topics that might interest them). The first few months you definitely need to be patient and success is measured in the single digits of new readers. It’s part of the experience and we all go through it.
Love the redesign! Thanks for the continuing inspiration and easy-to-digest information, both about personal finance and blogging.
Thanks MiM.
Great article JP!
Quick question. If I were to sign up on the $2.95 monthly plan with BlueHost, it’s capping me at 50 GB. I know nothing of web hosting so I’m wondering if we easily go over the threshold. Do you go over 50 GB?
Hey Nick. I haven’t gone over 50 GB yet even a year plus out. The only things that take up storage space are images so think about how many photos you need for a blog and how many fit in 50 GB as one way to get a handle on things. I’d definitely go with the basic and you can always upgrade mid cycle if you want more storage.
Amazing results, JP! That kind of success on roughly 5 hours/week is quite an achievement. I’ve been reading your blog for about 6 months now and would have never guessed you weren’t tech savvy. Fake it until you make it!
I think one of the things that can’t be underestimated is product/market fit. You blog about a hot topic (personal finance) and a growing very hot topic (FIRE). Combining that with your unique selling proposition and personal story (the ideas you used to retire at 28 with $2M) is a recipe for success!
Thanks Kyle
Congratulations on the success JP! You’ve clearly identified the right steps to build a profitable blog.
I am interested – can you share your blog expenses? I’m interested in how you first got your name out. As you’ve mentioned above; traffic from personal finance forums and guest posts certainly helped. Did you pay to be featured on any blogs to get an initial boost of traffic?
I blog for my eCommerce business, so this could be helpful validation for some of my own content marketing efforts.
Thanks,
Nick
Hey Nick. I didn’t pay to be featured on any blogs, but I did guest post (no money exchanged hands) on a few within my space. That’s a strategy I highly recommend for new bloggers. Not only do you get a chance to connect share your ideas with readers who have already self-selected themselves into reading a blog on the subject you write about, but you also get to know another blogger who is interested in the same things as you. Many established bloggers find guest posting a win-win; they get to share great content with their readers. The trick to this is showing them your guest post will be quality and worthwhile, and that can be an entire post on its own of how to pass those filters as big blogs get a lot of pitches to guest post. They’re wary of investing time talking to just anyone because a lot of the folks who pitch don’t actually have anything interesting to share and/or editing their writing is a laborious task.
As a new blogger, reading this time of report as an 18 month progress report is epic. You’ve done really well there, without putting in loads of hours – a great demonstration of Pareto.
Thanks Ms ZiYou. Excited you’re on your own blogging journey.
Hey JP, I just wanted to say thank you. I too just started blogging about something that I have struggled with my entire life and am very passionate about. I keep this post saved in my inbox for when I get a little discouraged. I was wondering if you could shed a little light on how to get more subscribers. I have scoured Google and other search engines and it seems like there are millions of ideas out there. It’s a little overwhelming. If you have a chance, awesome, if not that’s cool too. Take it easy and thank you again
Hey Lee. So glad to hear you’re blogging about and contributing to a subject that’s been important in your life. A number of folks have asked me a version of this question (how to get started acquiring readers and traffic). It’s definitely worth its own post. At a very high level, I would say being active on forums focused on your subject and guest posting to other blogs in the space are two fantastic ways to get your first readers. These are both techniques I employed. Will plan to talk about both in more depth in a post one day, as well as some other techniques. Hope that helps!
Hey JP,
I’ve been a big fan of your blog ever since I stumbled upon you from a Facebook advertisement. I too, am striving for early retirement – and albeit at a slower rate than you, I hope to one day achieve financial freedom to do the things I love on my own agenda.
I’m actually thinking about starting a blog as well and taking a stab at it for a side income hustle; just wanted you ask you – how long did it take for you before you started getting a lot of traffic for the blog?
I have a few affiliate companies in mind to connect with for the income generating end of things, but getting to a point where I actually have enough readers to make it worthwhile is another.
Any thoughts or advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated!
JP
Thanks for the post! I also just started a blog just a few days ago and I am feeling a little overwhelmed trying to figure this wordpress stuff out. Once I get it figured out then I can focus more on the content. Your post gives me encouragement that I can do this. So many times you read other people’s blogs and they say, “I’ve been blogging for 10 yrs and I make $100K a month”. That is amazing but finally seeing your post and other comments of people just starting out gives my power and strength. I am similar to the comment from Shannon, I am not on social media at all. My co-workers give me crap all the time because I don’t know anything about walls, tweets, insta, snaps, pins… But there is one thing I do know how to do is share my heart and thoughts. Like I said earlier I started my blog a few days ago, (it is not even live yet) but I figure it might be time to switch from hand writing in a journal to come into the digital world. I just got text on my phone, and internet at home! Moving On Up!
Hey Zach, that’s wonderful to hear. I am terrible about social media and all I can say is you should keep doing you. Glad you’re putting your thoughts out there.
Wow. That is great. Thanks for sharing your results.
Hi, I am new to blogging/creating my own website. I like the simplicity of your website and a “tab” for “blogs”. I think a website is easier to start, less pressure to post regularly, and later add the “blog” tab to create my blogs as I become more confident. What are your thoughts? What is the best site for both? I know you recommend bluehost for blogging. I also read about Wix and site123 for website. Which is most affordable, best for both website and blog and ease of use for a beginner like myself? thanks!
Hey Rene. I really like WordPress because there’s such a huge community of others running websites that you can almost always find the answer to your question with a Google search.
Thanks, JP!