July 2018 Income Report: How I made $80 with my college blog

Hi everyone! I’m back at it with another (bigger and better) income report! This past month I had a lot of success with my blog, and I want to share with you guys how I did it! If you wanna know how I made $80 from my college blog…just keep reading. 🙂

This post contains affiliate links. For more info click here. 

Why I’m sharing how I make money blogging

I know that a lot of people are curious about how to make money blogging, so I’m doing this not only to show people that it is possible, but also to be transparent about where my income is coming from.

I for one have spent so much time reading other bloggers’ income reports in hopes of finding ways to monetize my small blog. I’ve seen a lot bloggers say that you can’t make money until your blog gets loads of traffic, but the income reports that I have read from other small bloggers (and my own income reports) prove that isn’t true. After reading other small bloggers income reports, it has made me feel hopeful for my small blog! So if this helps or encourages even one person, that’s good enough for me.

A little about me

I started this blog from scratch a little over a year ago. I was a senior in high school, and I had no experience with anything having to do with having a website.

I was getting closer and closer to graduating, and I was frantically searching for ways to save up money for college. I thought about doing online surveys, selling all of my clothes, selling my plasma…you name it. Then I finally stumbled upon some blog posts that said that blogging could be a side hustle.

After some months of contemplating, I finally decided to make the jump and start my own blog. It was quite an investment of money and time for a super busy second semester senior (who really had no idea what she was doing), but I took the plunge and I’ve never looked back.

Now, this is all not to say that I only started my blog to make money. I knew that I probably wouldn’t make money straight away–if I made any money at all.

I love to write and I love anything creative. So, the thought of having a place where I could have complete creative freedom, while potentially making money? It seemed too good to be true.

However, here I am today, a little over a year later, and starting my blog has been the best decision I’ve ever made. It has provided me with so many opportunities, and as you can see from the title of this post, I have made some money.

Keep in mind that when I started this blog I had no experience, just like you probably don’t. I was just a girl about to go to college who was yearning to share her stories and maybe make a little bit of money while doing it.

I was completely clueless when I started this blog, and I had to work really hard to figure out how to get it set up. That’s why I made this guide. It outlines everything you need to know about how to start your blog so that you don’t have to be as scared and clueless as I was. 🙂

Okay, now let’s finally get to the part you’ve all been waiting for, my July income report!

Blog traffic:

June 2018: 2,889 views

July 2018: 3,460 views

Income:

Bluehost: $75.00

Bluehost is the web hosting service that I use for this blog. You can click here to start a blog with Bluehost for just $3.95/month (that’s less than a cup of coffee!). Purchasing hosting is the first step to take towards making money blogging, and in my humble opinion, Bluehost is the best option out there for web hosting.

Google Adsense: $2.75

Up until now, google Adsense has been the primary way that I monetize my blog. You just post ads on your website and generate income per view or when someone clicks the ad.

Amazon affiliates: $2.11

Amazon has pretty much anything anyone could ever want, and the way that the affiliate program works is you link a product in a post and get a commission when someone makes a purchase through your link. The cool thing about this program is that you get a commission from anything that the person buys within the next 24 hours, even if it’s not the product that you linked!

Overall income: $79.86

Summary:

I know that this might not seem like a lot of money to some people, but I am so happy with this total. I’ve been working so hard on my blog for the past year and it’s finally starting to pay off!

What worked:

• Focusing on Pinterest. For the past few months I had been really slacking when it came to Pinterest. I paid for Boardbooster to loop my pins for me, and I didn’t put in any effort past that. However, last month I got an email saying that Boardbooster was going out of business. It was like a huge wakeup call. I’ve since started the free trial with Tailwind, but I’ve also been pinning more every day and it has helped my traffic a lot.
• Changing my graphics: Up until like a month ago, my graphics looked like this:

I decided to change my graphics because I just didn’t think they looked very professional, and sometimes they were hard to read. You also couldn’t see the pictures I used because they were constantly hidden behind the giant pink circle.

I had noticed that on Pinterest graphics that were longer, had square backgrounds, and bolder font (usually black) did the best, so I decided to switch up my graphics and now they look like this:

I feel like my new graphics still go really well with my brand, and they have been getting my site a lot more traffic than the old ones.

• Making a “how to start a blog” post: I had been meaning to do one of these for a long time because I know that a lot of people who visit my site are curious about how to start a blog. I finally did it, and within a month I made my first affiliate sale with Bluehost.

What didn’t work:

• Trying to focus on multiple social media outlets: I went through a phase where I tried to focus on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook all at the same time, and let me tell ya, it did not work. It is so easy to get burned out when you do that. I have had a lot more success just focusing on Pinterest and occasionally posting on Facebook and Instagram.
• Slacking on Pinterest: During the time that I stopped pinning, I lost a bunch of traffic. I even got kicked off of some group boards because of it. Now I’m having to work super hard to regain some momentum on Pinterest. Moral of the story, don’t slack when it comes to Pinterest.

After reading this, I know what you’re thinking…

“I wanna make money blogging. How do I start?”

The answer my friends, is this free guide to starting your own blog. It takes you through everything you need to know about starting your own blog.

Like I said, I started this blog with absolutely no experience. Now I’m making some money to help pay my rent. You can too!

Click here to learn how to start your own blog.

That’s it for my July income report–thank you guys so much for reading!

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