I made $3,278 Blogging in September

If you landed here, it means that you want to know how to make money blogging, right? You’re in luck. This income report will show you that it’s possible to not only make money as a blogger but actually make a full-time income from talking about your hobbies on the internet.

This past month, I was finally able to achieve probably one of my biggest dreams and goals in life — that is, to turn my hobbies and passions into a full-time job, one that allows me to have freedom + full control over my schedule and life.

If you’re fairly new to this blog, I am Joanna Rahier, owner/founder of this website where I write content about business, making money online, life design, financial independence, personal growth, and cultivating an abundance mindset. Lol, that was a mouth-full 🥴😅

Some of you reading this are already bloggers and, if so, skip this part and check out my income breakdown included further down. I would love to see you post your income report from blogging too! You can actually link to them in the comments below.

If you haven’t started a blog yet and might be thinking about giving it a try… 

Here are some reasons why becoming a blogger may be right for you:

• You want to escape your unfulfilling 9-5 job and become your own boss. 
• You‘re passionate about a certain topic and would love to teach people more about it.
• You are a stay-at-home parent who wants to earn a full-time income while taking care of your kids — or, perhaps, your parents.
• You just want to give blogging a try and see what it feels like since it’s the cheapest business to start — and one you can start today from the comfort of your own home!

Everyone is different and we all have our ultimate “why.”

Wee Little Disclaimer: The purpose of this “income report” is to educate, assist and inspire new bloggers! None of this is meant to show off or brag about any success. I am sharing what worked for me, so it may not work for everyone. The foundation of my own success, however, has been “time, dedication, and consistency,” so I have a teeny little feeling it may work for anyone who really dedicates themselves completely to becoming a successful blogger. 

Nobody wants to share something that is so personal and potentially vulnerable to their competitors just to show off. These kinds of “inside peek” blog posts often come with some surprising benefits.

For example, I’m publishing these income reports for two primary reasons:

1. To motivate you – In my case too, my first impression of this whole blogging industry was through an income report of a wildly successful blogger who had 6-figures in her monthly income reports & that was enough to start my very own blog.
2. To motivate me – Income reports motivate me to be better. When I have a like-minded community that monitors and analyses my progress over time, it makes me do things more sincerely and responsibly. And this makes me want to give my 110% in everything I do on this blog. In short, It keeps me in check when it comes to slacking off.

How I started making money blogging: my story!

Ever dream of quitting your job so you can have more freedom by working from home?

I know I did! I was working an incredibly demanding job as a production accountant, clocking in 10-12 hour days on set. My job was to oversee the budgets of multiple departments, which would overspend and frequently run out of money and, eventually, blame my department for it. To say that dealing with entitled and overzealous crew members was stressful and exhausting would be the understatement of the century.

Crying on my way to work was super normal for me during those years. 

I kept dreaming of a more relaxed life, one where I get to pursue my interests, learn more, and finally experience freedom. I wanted to be able to work out of a cafe in Paris if I wanted to; to be able to start projects on topics that give me a deep sense of fulfillment and meaning. The freedom to spend more time with my family and friends if I so desired, and overall, just enjoy life more. 

One day, I had an Aha! moment: After spending a lot of time reading blogs, I found a bunch of people currently living the life I wanted to live. I even came across a random article of this guy named Max who turned an obscure passion for fish tank aquariums into a blog that generates several thousand in passive income each month. I mean, common! Fish tank aquariums??????

Some can stay at home and raise their kids away from the corporate world. Some can travel every day of the year using their savings and investments. Some even created a 6-figure business while going to school, and some have created a new life for themselves that allow them to do what they love.  

What do they all have in common?

They have a blog!

So I thought: maybe I should start a blog as well!

While on a break after finishing a 3-month movie, I started my first blog as a creative outlet and potential source of income.

This was back in the fall of 2018. And let me tell you, in the very beginning I had some difficulties overcoming limiting beliefs, insecurities, and even, imposter syndrome.

The first part was my limiting beliefs, which came in the form of “yeah, you’re no tech expert, how in the world do you think you’re going to code?” After some research, I came across Bluehost, a website hosting provider that offers WordPress as a drag-and-drop website builder. After signing up, I built my first website in 30 minutes. I was B L O W N   A W A Y at the ease of it all! 

But then…. another, more serious and crippling limiting belief stepped in. 

“Joanna, you ain’t no writer…  you’ve never written an article before. Plus, you probably need to become popular and huge in order for it to work.”

But I reminded myself that all of my favorite bloggers were once beginners too. 

I’m also well aware that there are probably 1000 other blogs online talking about the very things I write about. Something that I like to remind myself every time I start writing anything – is that there is only one me (or you in this case). You have a unique perspective, a unique way of delivering your message, and you have to understand that your audience will find you. Just put yourself out there, have faith, and be as real, open, and as honest as you can.

After publishing a couple of articles and sharing to Pinterest during the first month, I ended up receiving over 9,000 page views. 100% of the traffic came from Pinterest and I only had around 200 followers at that time. 

I quickly realized why so many bloggers praise Pinterest for helping them create brands. And, that is: Consistent and high-quality traffic + the algorithm it uses is super efficient at getting your content out to those searching for it.

Within a couple of months, I became better at social media marketing strategy, navigating WordPress, writing, and graphic design. I figured that even if my blog didn’t take off, at least these new skills would come in handy. And they have – over the past year, I turned my Pinterest know-how into a successful Pinterest Virtual Assistant business – more on that later. 

I have yet to rely on any paid advertising or other social media platforms to drive traffic to my blog. I now have 70,000 followers on Pinterest using the same strategy I have used from the very beginning. 

If you’re curious about my Pinterest Strategy >> click here <<

If you’d like to learn more about making money on Pinterest >> read this! <<

I still don’t know a single line of code, so that goes to show that the little voice inside my head really didn’t know sh*t. I am living proof that you DON’T have to be a good writer and that you actually DON’T have to draft a blog post every day or every week to earn a full-time income blogging. 

Today, I spend only 1-2 hours a day maintaining this blog, which allows me the liberty to focus on things that are more important to me, such as self-care and family – things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had continued working at my 8-6 job

Want to make some extra money this month? Read these:

15 Creative Ways To Make $100 Every Day In 2024
How To Make Money On Pinterest For Beginners
The Complete Guide To Starting A Profitable Blog In 2024
Freebies: 67-Page Minimal Budget Planner For 2024
25 High-Paying Jobs For Introverts
How To Land Your first job on Upwork in 24 hours
8 Great Podcasts For Ambitious Millennials
How I Take Surveys To Make Extra Money Every Month (Up to $50/hr)

How to become a full-time blogger

In all seriousness, the hardest part about blogging is the actual starting of a blog. You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed, doubtful, and even a little awkward about blogging. It’s 100% normal! Allow yourself to be a newbie at something. It’s normal to feel inadequate or awkward when publishing your first couple of posts. 

So, if you’re even considering starting a blog or have started one already, give yourself a huge hug, a (huge) cup of coffee/glass of wine, and a whole lot of grace, because you deserve it. 

For those that haven’t started yet, I think it’s finally time! 

If you have ever really considered building an online business I would suggest you start immediately. 

Don’t know exactly what to sell or write about? Keep 2-3 of your dream niches in mind. Just start writing…. and, then share your posts to Pinterest!

Eventually, you will start getting traffic to a specific post. This is what I like to call a win-win scenario. It’s when you start getting readers and subscribers on a topic you absolutely love writing about. This is blogging in a nutshell.  

The more you write, the higher the chance that one of your posts will blow up. On average, bloggers typically get 2 posts to go viral for every 10 that they write. 

What to write about:

– Passion: What is one topic you could talk about all day long without feeling tired about it? Could it be fashion, travel, home decor, renovations, gaming, crafts, parenthood, budgeting, personal finance, money matters, entrepreneurship, or marketing…? 

– Skills: What are you good at? What do you usually get compliments on?

– Market demand: Is your topic very popular? Is it highly searched for on Pinterest? For example, fashion, home organization, decor, personal finance, money matters, business, tech, marketing, and more are extremely hot topics — those that get searched for the most every single day! Billions of people out there want answers and solutions to their problems!

💡PRO TIP: You don’t have to be an expert in your field to be considered skilled. For example, you could document your learning journey and teach others your mistakes and what you’ve learned. Lessons add a ton of value to your readers (as long as it’s what people are CONSISTENTLY searching for)

The four simple steps to starting a blog

It’s time for you to create your little home on the Internet. It might sound intimidating, but actually, it takes less than 30 minutes to set up. Nearly 95% of all “serious” bloggers run their sites on WordPress. The other 5% are conglomerates that have a whole team of coders and fancy website people. If you have no idea what WordPress is, don’t worry,

I created this easy step-by-step tutorial on how you can start your blog today.

I’ve actually helped hundreds of people start their first very own blogs from this very tutorial so I’m sure that it can help you too. 

I’m also more than happy to answer any questions that you may have. My inbox is always open… you can message me >> here << or by sending an email to 

hello@joannarahier.com

Ultimately, the most powerful, fastest, and best hosting platform (in my humble opinion) is Bluehost. When I first started my blog, I chose to go with Bluehost as a beginner because from what I heard, they host the fastest websites, and also – (this is the best part) – they offer FREE domain for the year, which saved me a cool $13 when I was first starting out.

You can start your blog as low as $2.95 USD per month plus get a FREE domain name when you purchase the 12-month plan. This low price and free domain name is an exclusive deal only when you use this Bluehost link.

BONUS!!: As a thank you to those of you that sign up through my link, I’ll add you to my Share The Blog Love group board on Pinterest, so you can get a jump start to your blogging career by promoting your posts to my 140,000 followers! To cash in on this bonus, make sure to message me here after signing up with Bluehost.

💡 REMEMBER: Your domain name doesn’t have to be perfect. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve come across that admitted that they hated their first domain name. If you don’t like it, you can always change it anytime you want for only $12.99. Bluehost makes it super easy, even if you get confused, you can call their 24/7 support and a technician can walk you through the process. 

After you sign up for hosting, hit the one-click WordPress install, decide on a cute theme, and there you have it – you have finally started your first blog and business! Congratulations!  

Be careful about taking blogging courses!

During my blogging journey, another blogger reached out to me seeking help for her Pinterest VA business. We spent many hours talking on the phone and sharing our “trade secrets.” Naturally, the topic of blogging courses came up and she told me that she had spent several thousand dollars on a few really well-known courses. What she told me was shocking – most courses taught regurgitated material found mostly from content you can find from other blogs for FREE. Also, many of these blogging courses have really high affiliate commission rates ($20 low end to upwards of $130). This means bloggers get to recoup the money they spent on the course by selling the same course to other, more intermediate bloggers. Pyramid Scheme? Possibly. Also, many of these “courses” are written by bloggers that blog about blogging. Am I the only one that finds this hilarious?

So my two cents is to really deep dive and learn as much as you can by reading free content from other blogs.

PICK A NICHE. Then look to an authority in that niche to see if they have a course. Here’s why – even if you don’t learn much from the course, at least you will become part of a community interested in achieving the same goal as you. This can be really motivating when you face hardships – cuz blogging is a solitary profession… it can get lonely sometimes when no one in your personal life knows or understands what’s going on.

Once you hit 50k monthly sessions on your blog, try to start learning as much as you can about SEO so that you can take your blog to the next step. I heard StupidSimpleSEO.co is a great course. I have yet to take it so I will let you know within the next month or so.

Neil Patel is also an incredible resource to be aware of. He runs a free blog that has everything you need to learn for your website to be taken seriously in the eyes of Google – and then some. He developed a completely free keyword searching tool called Ubersuggest that I use to SEO optimize all of my posts. Check him out here

Takeaways For September

I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of blogger income reports before while scrolling on Pinterest, and you’ve probably noticed that each one of them is different. This is because there are plenty of ways to monetize your blog.

You can find my previous blog income reports here from when I was still a complete beginner.

Pinterest

Pinterest, I love you. This sounds cheesy but I once had a dream where I called Woody Allen up to try and convince him to make a movie about my favorite website. Think of it as a virtual romance. I joke. I joke. Too much coffee. I’m sorry.

Another great month, my impressions increased by 5 million. I spend about 2-4 hours a week on Pinterest using the same strategy I used since the very beginning.

Keywords are my primary focus. My strategy starts with the name of the image and alt tags on my blog. Followed by the keywords in the pin description. THE FIRST BOARD THAT YOU PIN IT TO IS ALSO IMPORTANT!!! I won’t pin something from THIS post about making money blogging to my “Pins From Joanna Rahier” board. I’ll pin it to “Make Money Blogging.” I make sure that the board description also has keywords about making money blogging. DON’T USE TAILWIND!!! – a Pinterest employee said recently in a conference that the algorithm will ignore you if you use Tailwind. Most bloggers won’t tell you this because they make affiliate commissions from Tailwind.

If you follow this method, the algorithm will promote your pins to people looking to make money blogging – this works even if you have less than 200-500 followers.

If you want to learn more about my Pinterest method READ THIS

Again, if you like to be added to one of my specialized group boards and have signed up through my Bluehost link, please don’t hesitate to email me. Clicking my affiliate links really helps me out and is 66% of the reason as to how I’m able to support myself while making free content.

Convert kit (OMG OMG OMG OMG!!)

I’ve read time and time again that if you blog or own a business, then you HAVE TO START an email list ASAP!

But guess what?? Guess who didn’t have a subscriber list until August 15th of this year? 🤡🥴🥵😳

Well I finally decided to sign up for Convertkit. Just take a look at these numbers from the past 30 days:

I’m averaging 60 new subscribers each day with an 80% AVERAGE OPEN RATE. That’s insane.

I’m almost embarrassed over how much time I wasted and the revenue I missed out on due to not having an email list 🥴😳

Get your first month for free using my affiliate link (affiliate links help sponsor my coffee addiction so that I can continue to make really cheesy commentary – so thank you)

Income Report for September

Now is the moment you’ve been waiting for!

To be honest, I still feel weird about publishing income reports LOL. I’m a super private person when it comes to a lot of things, particularly finances.

I guess I’m a little bit of a rebel, I didn’t really follow the tried and tested “blogging route/strategies” because I don’t want to be tied down to one niche. I blog about pretty much anything I’m passionate about.  I love graphic design, creating products, organization, business, self-improvement, style, and travel. Without a central focus, my blog had a harder time generating consistent income. So… I decided to work smarter, not harder by choosing affiliate companies that are more or less the blogging world’s lower-hanging fruit — they have higher conversion rates with pretty decent commissions. As a result, the following commissions might seem all over the place – and that’s because they are! 

The first part of the income report is completely passive. It means that I can go on a vacation or take a break and I would make most likely make more or less the same amount of money (assuming my traffic is consistent). The second part is income from my Pinterest Virtual Assistant Service which is definitely not passive and I wouldn’t of booked had not for this blog + Pinterest following. If you’d like to learn more about what kind of Pinterest services I offer >> check out my offerings page by clicking here <<

Display Advertising: $421.50

Affiliate Income: $958.84

I work with more than 20 affiliate programs. They range from large companies like Amazon & Airbnb to independent companies that I personally love and so I reached out for an affiliate link.

My biggest earner was RewardStyle ($476.90). Other Affiliates that I used this month were:

• Saving money and budgeting resources, survey sites, cash back apps, etc (SurveyJunkie, Rakutan,
• Amazon Associates
• Travel companies (Airbnb, Expedia, Skyscanner, Booking.com)
• Blogging tools and resources (BlueHost, Convertkit, Adobe, & Canva)

My online Store & Digital products: $847.54

Lastly, my favorite way to make money blogging is through digital products that I created. This is an awesome way to make passive income. You create the digital product once and sell it on autopilot multiple times! Let me just mention that people on Pinterest looooooovveeeee budget planners. I also would like to mention that I make most of my money not through direct traffic, but from my email list.

Another thing I have started focusing on is creating minimal & aesthetic themes for Laptops & Phones. I really love making them, so hopefully, sales pick up next month! *crosses fingers*

Another great reason to start a blog today is that even if you don’t know what you are going to sell, you can still create an audience of around 2-3 niches that will convert to paying customers later on.

Pinterest VA Services: $1,050

Like a said earlier, even if you don’t know anything about marketing, keywords, blogging, or blogging strategy, once you actually commit yourself to blogging and making money online you eventually pick up some valuable skills that you can, later on, earn money from. This month I made income off of helping a client set up her Pinterest account and her overall blogging strategy. I was also able to secure a client whom I will work with monthly to manage their Pinterest account!

Total Blog Expenses: $74.48

Hosting – $2.95

Convertkit – $65

Canva – $6.53

September Blog Net Income After Expenses: $3277.88 – $74.48 = $3,203.4

Final thoughts on blogging this month

Starting a blog allowed me to pay off debt, save more, and quit my day job. It also allowed me to buy things I appreciate and enjoy in life!

Blogging is also very therapeutic, especially during today’s health crisis. If it weren’t for blogging, I would have gone nuts because of Cov!d.

I knew absolutely nothing and even signed up for a blog on a whim and I’m so thankful that I didn’t spend time overthinking too much. If I had spent too much time researching or making everything perfect before blogging joannarahier.com probably wouldn’t exist today. I would have burned out from analysis paralysis and not have taken action. I also would not be here today inspiring you to start one too.

And due to my lack of knowledge at first, I truly understand the struggle of a beginner with NO experience.

Again, I don’t know any other business idea that allows you to start with such a low cost at this time and year other than blogging.

If you haven’t started your blog yet, then the best time to start is now!

Have a question or comment about how to make money as a blogger? Be sure to comment or ask away in the comment box below, and I’ll be happy to answer! 🙂

Best wishes!

Joanna

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