December Blogging Income Report: How I Made $17,000+ in 2016

Welcome to December’s blogging income report! I’m excited to share both this month’s income AND my yearly income from the blog. Let’s get started.

If you’re new here, I’ve been sharing monthly income reports since I started blogging. My reports include both blogging income and freelancing income; but as of roughly one year ago, I decided to quit freelancing and focus more on blogging. Every once in a while a freelance opportunity pops up, and of course for the right price I will take it.

I share income reports for two reasons: 1) To keep myself accountable and motivated, and 2) To help other bloggers. It was reading others’ income reports that made me realize blogging could be profitable. For me, it’s been a slow journey, but that’s OK! Blogging is not my full-time job and I have three little kids, a house and a husband. Those are my priorities and always will be.

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If you’re interested in starting your own blog, check out my tutorial on How to Start a Profitable Blog. Blogging will not make you money right away, but I truly believe that if you stick with it for a good year, you’ll start to see your hard work pay off (big time!). Right now, I’m spending just 10 hours per month on my blog (and again, I’m making over $1,000 on average). If I can do this, so can you!

*If you do decide to start a blog through my Bluehost link, you’ll receive a special discount from Bluehost for my readers only! And, I’ll send you my blogging ebook – The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging – for free!

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Now, onto December’s blogging income report.

December Income Report

• Blogging: $2,522.53
• Freelancing: $638

TOTAL: $3,160.53

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that my blogging income has slowly (verrrry slowly) grown. I really think I’m incredibly relatable in that sense. I’m not making five figures a month, and it took over two years to hit this month’s blog income of $2,500. I’m first and foremost a wife and mom, and I have a full-time job. Blogging is NOT something I spend a ton of time on, yet over time I’ve been able to earn quite the income. I promise you – YOU CAN TOO!!!

A big source of my income is from Bluehost and helping people start a blog. Because of how much success I’ve had with it, I created a course called “How to Make Money as a Web Hosting Affiliate” and it’s available now! The course is for ALL BLOGGERS (not just bloggers who blog about blogging) who want to increase their income! Hosting companies pay an average of $50-$65 per sale. That adds up, big time!

Having this extra source of income for my family has been huge! This month, we received a bunch of medical bills from giving birth to our third daughter. Rather than taking money out of savings or being forced to put it on a payment plan, my side income was able to cover it.

What would you do with an extra few thousand per month?!

2016 Totals: How I Made $17,000+

I just tallied up my income for the year and was shocked!

In 2016, I brought in $17,305.84.

And again if you’ve been following me for a while, I also got pregnant and had my third baby girl in 2016 🙂 My pregnancy was hard, I had (and have) a full-time job, and my other two little ones were (still are) toddlers. Life is hectic. Blogging is a passion of mine and I did it when I had time. But again, if I was able to make that much, anyone can!!

Let me let you in on a little secret about blogging:

It’s not how much you write, it’s how much you promote!

I probably averaged one post every 2-3 weeks for the year. That’s really not that much. However, I consistently promoted my posts over and over again. Pinterest is huge for me and I use Tailwind to do all of my scheduling. I can get the whole week scheduled out in about 10-15 minutes. In 2017, I’m focusing on growing other means of promoting my blog, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Google+ and more.

Blog Goals 2017

My two BIG goals for the year are:

• Make $30,000 for the year blogging
• Have 75,000 pageviews/month by December 2017

If I made $17,000 in 2016, I really don’t think it’s all that impossible to double it. I’m launching a course in a few weeks and am focusing on SEO, which I’ll talk more about below.

My smaller blog goals for 2017 include:

Regularly promote posts on Facebook/Twitter/Stumbleupon/Google+. Like I said above, I feel like I have Pinterest down pat, but other social media platforms I’m basically starting from scratch as I’ve never made them a priority. For right now, I plan on learning everything myself, but I may end up taking a course on growing my Facebook page. If I do, I’ll be sure to share!

Join more Pinterest boards. With Pinterest, group boards are huge. On a group board, your pin is seen by thousands of people. I spent a ton of time last year finding and joining group boards, but have since slacked off majorly. Since so much of my traffic comes from Pinterest, I’d like to spend 30 minutes per week joining new boards.

Launch my second course/eBook. Woot! I’m excited about this one! I just finished writing my new course – How to Make Money as a Bluehost Affiliate – and will be ready to launch it in a few weeks. I’m currently getting quotes from designers on creating the cover of my course. Stay tuned!!

Focus on SEO. I’m taking a course right now on SEO that I highly recommend if you’re hoping to grow your blog. It’s called The SEO Ultimate Guide 2017. The course will teach you everything from technical stuff to make your site run faster (it’s easy, trust me) to how to find good keywords to target to how to incorporate them correctly into your posts. It’s been life-changing for me and my blog!

Create longer content. Part of my strategy for 2017 is to create longer, more useful content that has a specific keyword that I’m targeting. While last year was profitable, I was sort of all of the place with content and didn’t have a specific strategy other than to grow my blog, help readers and make money. With longer content, my posts will both be more helpful to readers and help me rank higher in search engines (Google likes long content!).

Make better images. I’ll admit, creating images is my least favorite part of blogging. I’m just not good at it naturally nor do I enjoy it. But, you have to have images in order to promote your posts. I’ve learned a ton and think my images have improved significantly over the past two years, but this year I really want to focus more on creating eye-catching, clean images to go along with my posts.

If you want to start earning an income online, check out my ultimate guide to making money online in 2017!

And if you already have a blog but need ideas on how to monetize it, get instant access to “5 Blog Post Ideas That Will Make You Money” for FREE!

Did you have a good December? What are your blog goals for 2017?!