A look at my blogs progress
This is a post looking at my current efforts to make blogging and the online world pay for all of my bills. In brief I started blogging back in 2011 whilst at university. I started to consider blogging as a way of making additional income towards the end of 2015 when a blog post I wrote attracted a lot of attention. At the start of this year 2017 I started to take this blog super seriously.
My goal at the start of this year was to leave my full time job and make this blog my sole source of income. I quit my job in July and whilst living off savings I tried to make this blog pay. Currently this blog makes myself a part-time income (which is OK for 6 months of trying). I have lived off some savings and also I am lucky enough to share my household bills so my expenses are not too heavy. It’s a half achievement and my goal for new year is to double my blogs monthly income.
I am planning on getting a part time job to help out with my bills until my income doubles. (seeing as my savings are all used up - these saving where created especially to help me during the full-time job to freelance blogger transition). In other words I am doing OK, several times my blog income alone has paid for all of my monthly outgoings. Its not perfect but I know this career move is now very possible.
Most of my income has come from my 1-1 CV services and I have made a little more through online courses and affiliate links. Setting up services on my blog was the easiest and fastest was to make money. Simply my idea for the CV service came from looking at the blogs most popular posts topics and paying attention to questions I receive via email. The topic of filmmaker CV design kept showing up and so I created a service around this demand.
I have 10K unique blog readers a month. Which is a lot for someone who only posts weekly, this is due to SEO keywords ranking high on Google. Learning SEO has helped me a lot in finding an audience for this blog. It’s not so obvious that my blog is popular as readers in my niche are not the type to excessively leave comments. I am finding it hard to get sponsored content as my social media numbers are low. The social media will build up in time however sponsorship's where never part of my original business plan.
The best advice I read online about blogging was to only focus on one number - the profit. If you want this to make you money you need to think of it as a business. Treating my blog as a business and not comparing myself to others in my niche has helped greatly in making this blog profitable. My plans for new year as I say is to double this blogs monthly income. I am going to do this through creating more quality posts and videos, better content marketing, improved services and a new online course.
Here is some of the best advice I have heard and found useful and true to making an income from online –
Treat your blog / YouTube channel / podcast whatever you do like a professional business
The only number to focus on is your profit
Services are the easiest and fasted way to make money
Start growing your email list as soon as you begin
Before buying something most people need to have heard about it seven times before they hand over their money
So right now in all fairness this blog is a part time income stream however I believe I can make this blog double its income next year. If you have any questions on online income or any thoughts on how this blog should develop this new year let me know below.