November Income Report: How I made $2,203.37 in 1 month

I’ve always loved reading income reports that I find on Pinterest. And today is the day that I’m officially launching one about my blog!

If I could scream right now, I’d be screaming. But I’m currently sitting in Glen Edith writing this, so I don’t think that would be appropriate. I want to be accepted when I come back here, okay?!

In my eyes, Income Reports are great for many reasons:

1. It helps to demystify how blogger’s make money. Because sometimes it seems like some magic voodoo that just happens to the lucky ones.
2. It provides a documented journey of my growth and my blog. I always loved doing monthly recaps. But now we are going to take it up a notch with these income reports. I love looking back to see how far I’ve come
3. It provides you with hardcore facts about my blog. Sometimes it’s not enough to just say that I’m making money on my blog, you really need to see it. And that’s what I want to provide you with today.

In this post, you’ll get a glimpse at what I made during my 11th month of blogging. But let me explain my timeline so you don’t get confused.

I first bought my domain, and “officially” started my business on October 18, 2016. But it wasn’t until January 17th, 2017 that I actually launched my blog! Meaning it was not complete and shown to the world until January.

So for the sake of this report, we are going to talk about my 11th month of blogging: November.

Let’s get into it!

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting TheContentBug.com so I can continue to provide you with free content each week.

November 2017 Income

Total Income: $2,203.37

I’m going to break it down into exactly where this money came from so you have as much information as possible! But this was the total income that I received with my blog this month. That means the money that actually went into my bank account. But we’ll talk about that in a bit.

Freelance: $2,067.50

The majority of my income this month came from freelancing and I expected it to!

For the next few months, this is how I’m going to be making a steady income while I try to build up a passive revenue stream for my blog.

For those of you who are wondering, I am a freelance content writer. So companies hire me to write and edit content for them or their clients. My rate changes based on what the client needs and the amount of work that is required.

I currently use UpWork for my freelancing jobs and I love it so far!

But I do want to say that they take a small commission of the money that you make. So if you say that your hourly rate is $28 an hour, you might actually make $24 an hour. So when you submit a proposal you need to take this into consideration.

They do a great job of explaining their fees and are upfront about what money you will actually pocket. So I never worried about the money they were taking. I understood it was because they are the middleman and I’m a-okay with that!

Consulting: $60.00

I currently perform consulting services for people that are in the Rochester area. But I am willing to expand this service through virtual coffee dates!

These typically come about be people reaching out to me through Instagram or email. And these meetings are about an hour long. You can ask me any questions and I’ll spill all my knowledge on ya.

So this month I made $60.00 from consulting.

Affiliate Income: $75.87

You probably already know that I’m an affiliate of a couple different companies. And if you didn’t, then maybe looked over the little snippet in the first section of this blog post. Because there are affiliate links included in this post!

I use Share-a-Sale to connect with companies that I want to become an affiliate of. And then for some companies, I go directly to them and sign up for their program!

I made money through affiliate marketing by including special links on my website with products or services that I recommend. If you click on that link, I may receive a small commission. Or if you buy a product or service through that link, I’ll receive a small commission as well.

The rates for these commissions vary based on the company. So sometimes I make a few dollars and other times I make a few cents. It just depends! But this month I made $78! And that’s my largest affiliate marketing (monthly) payout to date. Woot woot!

RELATED: Beginner’s Guide to Making Money Online

Money that I’m waiting to receive

Ads: $9.58

I use Google AdSense to place ads randomly throughout my website. This doesn’t help to generate a lot of income. But it’s a little something extra.

And I do want to explain that I technically didn’t pocket this money this month. I have to wait until I hit the buyout amount of $100. So in the total income, this $9.58 is not included! But I still wanted to include this to show you how much money my ads are generating.

Just trying to keep it real for you guys!

November 2017 Expenses

I love when Income Reports share expenses. It really helps to get clear on what the blogger profited from the money that was coming in.

So here is a list of my expenses.

I plan to do a more detailed post on what it costs to run a blog in the next week that shares my yearly expenses as well. But these are just my expenses that hit my bank account in the month of November.

Total Expenses: $68.00

ConvertKit: $29.00

I love using ConvertKit for my email marketing. And I’ll probably never switch from this platform because I am so obsessed with it! So each month I pay $29 to be a part of their platform.

RELATED: How to Start an Email List

Teachable: $39.00

I recently signed up for Teachable to host my current free courses and hopefully, in the future I’ll be able to launch an amazing paid course for you guys!

Expenses that are paid yearly

Here are my expenses that are paid yearly but could be broken monthly to give you a better picture.

Tailwind: $10.00

I use Tailwind for scheduling all of my pins on Pinterest and I fully believe that they are the reason that my Pinterest account is so successful! Seriously obsessed with this platform.

Website Hosting: $11.67

I also pay my website hosting as a once a year fee. It cuts down on the price and makes it a little bit easier for me. But this $11 would be my website hosting expense if it was paid monthly.

And with these expenses added to my current monthly expenses, that would make my total expenses for November $89.67. But again, this is not how it’s reflected in my bank account.

I few it as these costs are already sunk and I don’t have to worry about them!

So again, you’ll get a better picture of my yearly expenses when I share that report soon!

My Goals for 2017

For a while, I was sharing monthly reviews that covered how close I was to my goals for the year. So I figured, why not create a big picture of my business right now to lay it out on the line.

So here goes nothing.

Goal 1: 5k a month in income

Well, we just covered this. So I’m not going to go over it again. But this month my income was $2,203.67. And if you want to get technical, I profited $2,135.67 from my blog.

RELATED: Beginner’s Guide to Making Money Online

Goal 2: 5k followers on Instagram

Okay. Let me be honest here. I completely changed my Instagram strategy.

I no longer use it as a platform to expand my reach, gain new readers, and grow my audience. I simply use it to connect with my current audience and get real with you guys.

I love chatting and talking all day long on Instagram stories. And I do that to stay connected! I never want to lose sight that my readers are the reason why I’m even writing this income report. So my Instagram account is dedicated to you guys.

Just me keeping it real. Not trying to use any tricks on ya to gain more followers!

Here’s my Instagram at the end of August:

My Instagram account at the end of November:

RELATED: How to Authentically Grow Your Instagram Account in 30 Days

Goal 3: 50 blog posts

This is where things get fun because the last 3 goals I’ve crushed for my blog! And I’m so happy about that.

At the end of October, I launched my 50th blog post and this is actually my 60th blog post! And if everything goes according to plan, I will have launched 67 blog posts by the end of this year!

Here are the last 5 blog posts I’ve launched in case you missed them:

1. How to Prioritize Your Time as a Blogger to Get More Done
2. 7 Content Ideas Your Email List Will Actually Enjoy
3. How to Set Goals and Actually Achieve Them
4. How I Went from 100k to 600k Monthly Viewers on Pinterest
5. 50 Questions to Get to Know Yourself Better

Goal 4: 5 guest blog posts

Ahhh! This is another exciting one for me. Because for so many months I never thought I would be featured in guest blog posts. But here I am hitting my goal yet again!

I currently have 4 guest blog posts that are already live to the world. And there are currently 2 more in the works right now. So expect those soon!

Goal 5: 1k followers on Pinterest

Back in August, I crushed this goal! And I now have over 1,400 followers on Pinterest and I continue to watch that number growing daily.

I’m seriously so impressed with the growth on my Pinterest account and I can’t wait to see where I take it in the future.

Here are 3 great blog posts you can read about how I grew my Pinterest account:

1. Why I TANKED My Pinterest Account
2. How I Grew My Pinterest from 7k to 100k Monthly Viewers in 2 Months
3. How I Went From 100k to 600k Monthly Viewers on Pinterest

My Pinterest Account at the end of August:

My Pinterest Account at the end of November:

Website report

My website statistics have been interesting.

A couple months ago, there was a big spike in my traffic. I was consistent with about 30 to 40 people a day on my blog. And I knew that something had to change.

So I started working harder and promoting more on social media, and most importantly Pinterest, and my stats spiked! And they’ve remained consistent ever since.

I would like to see a more steady growth on my website traffic, but I know that one area that’s holding me back is my website speed. It’s just too slow for this industry!

So I’m working on trying to fix it and hopefully, that will help to grow my audience!

Enough blabbing… here are my website stats for November:

Email report

I am so beyond excited to include my email report in this blog post.

This is something that I haven’t shared too much about. But I’m very proud of my growth.

When I started my email list, I knew nothing. And I mean NOTHING! For 3 months I gained a total of 30 subscribers. And then in my 5th month, I gained 30+ in just a month and I was so excited I wrote a whole blog post about it!

And then you wanna know what happened? In the month following, I gained over 100 email subscribers.

It was insane.

Ever since then I’ve been pretty consistent with my growth. October was actually the slowest month in terms of new subscribers. So I decided to up my strategy a little bit more and within that weekend I was receiving about 3 more subscribers a day!

In my goals for 2018, you’ll see what my email list goal is going to be. And it’s a big one! But I know I can do it because I’ve grown my email list fast before!

RELATED: How I Doubled My Email List in 1 Month

Wrapping it up

Before I let you go, I want to leave you with a little food for thought.

These income reports are just that: they’re reports.

I want to be as honest as possible and as upfront as possible about my whole journey. It’s my intent that someday I can work with other bloggers and entrepreneurs to help them grow! And by sharing all this information I hope to share with you a little insight into what I’ve done with my blog business in less than a year.

And if you get something out of this, if there is a key takeaway that you can implement into your blog, then that makes me super happy. But if you didn’t, then I’m just as happy with writing this report.

Because as much as this report is for you, it’s also very much so for me.

I love to look back and read these reports to see how far I’ve come. Right now this may seem like a big accomplishment to be making $2,000 a month on my blog. But a year from now my situation could be very different.

And I know that I’ll ever forget the first dollar I made with this website. Because when you truly work hard to earn your money it’s a feeling that can’t be replaced.

And I’ll never forget the day I made the decision to take a freelancing job instead of a steady job with a successful company.

I’ve worked hard to be where I’m at. Could I have worked harder? Sure. But that would have come at a price of my own mental, emotional, and physical health.

And that’s why I started this journey… to improve all aspects of MY health.

Through this little blog, I’ve been able to get a taste of the good life. To live a life that I really want to live. When I can work when I’m at my best and where I can fuel myself to be my best!

If I can leave you with one thing today, it would be to never compromise your happiness for money or “success”. When you follow your passion and listen to yourself, great things will come.

The current state of your life is completely because of you. It’s no one else’s responsibility but your own.

So take accountability and start taking control of your life. No one else is going to do it for you.

This coming month, I already know that my income report will be much lower. I’m expecting it.

Because I’m taking the time off to spend it with family and friends during this holiday season. And I encourage you to do the same.

XO, Cath

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About the Author

Cathrin (Cath) creates content that encourages bloggers & online entrepreneurs to be themselves, chase their passion,  and create their success online. 1 year after started her blog (TheContentBug.com), Cath left her full-time position working in the digital marketing industry to pursue her dreams of being her own boss. In weekly blog posts, sporadic YouTube videos, and constant talking on Instagram stories, Cath hopes to spread her story and be an inspiration to others who desperately want to change their lives.