Blog Income Report For April 2020

Welcome to my blog income report for April 2020. I am excited to share this one with you! If you’re curious about blogger income and ask, “How much money can you make from a blog?” this is definitely the post for you! *Contains affiliate links.

In this blog income report I spill the beans on blogging revenue

A blog income report is something I find pretty personal to share.

It’s basically sharing every single penny made or lost publicly. Can you imagine if all small businesses would do that? It’s strange to think about!

But reading income reports from other bloggers is what keeps me going. It’s what helped me decide to start blogging to begin with, really.

The difference between my blog income report and those by other bloggers is that I still consider myself “small potatoes” in the blogging world.

How do 2020 bloggers make money? Click to find out how to make money blogging.

I don’t share with you any crazy, dream-worthy income like so many others. I’ve read income reports of bloggers making five or six figures monthly.

And honestly, it’s fun to dream, but it’s also easy to read those blog income reports and go…hmm…yeah. right.

But a few years ago, I told myself that if I could make even $500/month blogging, it would be worth it.

$500 is a LOT for a family that has been on one income for over six years. (Like mine!)

Show Me The Blog Money

My thinking has always been that if I can just get past that $500/monthly threshold, I may never go back to a “normal” job again!

So my favorite income reports are those that share realistic but still exciting numbers. I mean, who doesn’t want their blog to earn money – even if it’s just a little?

Why Share My Blog Income Report?

For me, sharing a blog income report is a form of accountability. If I don’t take stock of how I did month-to-month, I can’t properly set goals to aim higher.

I have had a history of setting lofty, unrealistic goals before, however. So, when it comes to blog income reports, my only real goal is to do better from one month to the next.

Any progress is good progress in the blog world.

Secondly, I share my blog income report publicly to enlighten other bloggers. (Or those curious about blogging.)

They have already cracked the codes, so-to-speak.

Big, giant, insane blog income reports don’t show the years of hard work, writing, failing, Pinning, and investing behind it all.

Lastly, I hope to encourage new bloggers. I started my very first blog six years ago, though that sounds like a long time, it’s not.

I believe that it IS possible to start seeing decent income in far less time, but there are reasons I haven’t.

This blog, Ironwild Fitness, is just over two years and I’m starting to see some success now.

How can I earn money from blogs? Click to find out!

But I feel that had I not “messed around” in the blogging world and done it casually for the first five years or so, I would have seen success much sooner. (I’ve owned over a dozen domain names and have blogged in what feels like every niche possible.)

This has been my biggest mistake!

However, my blog income report for April 2020 shows that it is possible to earn money blogging. Moreover, if getting into Mediavine is one of your goals (a GREAT ad network), I’m going to talk about that too!

What My Blog Income Report Covers

How much money does a beginner blogger make? Well, it’s all bit more complicated than that.

I like to talk about the income streams, to be sure. But I also want to cover expenses and the black hole that is “blogging education.” I also like to go over analytics. You know, page views, organic traffic, SEO, Pinterest traffic, and much more.

I feel that it’s important to put some context behind each penny earned. That’s because you really do work hard for each dollar in blogging. At least in the beginning.

And it is my belie that if you’re not learning, analyzing, and learning and analyzing repeatedly, you’re not going to make it.

So in my blog income report (you can read some of my older ones here, this isn’t my first blog income report) I want to share some revelations I had, goals I met, and what I’m planning on doing next. Along with the income breakdown, of course!

So let’s dive into the numbers first, and then we’ll get into the details.

My Blog Income Report April 2020

Siteground – $50

I have a few blog posts and tutorials about how to start your own blog (fitness related or not!) and someone used it to start their own blog! This is a great time to do it since Siteground has been running some coronavirus-related specials.

ShareASale – $0.91 – ShareASale has pretty much always been a flop for me on this blog, since it is a carryover from my mom blog a few years ago. It’s basically a big network of affiliate programs for various things. I don’t use it much but do participate in the programs for Tailwind & Canva, which are tools I use a LOT on my blog.

Ebook Sales – $57.95 – I have ventured into eBook style workout programs and printables, and this month I sold a handful of those. (Restore The Core ab program and the 21-Day Postpartum Challenge, specifically.)

* This month I decided to make a bundle that includes both of my home workout programs so that readers who want both can get a discount.

Mediavine – $333.21 – Yey! This is my highest ad income for a single month ever. It’s partly because other ad networks suck, but also because my page views are higher now.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mediavine, it’s an ad network that is the envy of many small bloggers. That’s because you must have 25,000 monthly sessions in order to apply – but once you’re in, your income is sure to see a substantial jump.

Mine sure did!

I have tested at least three other ad networks (that were easier to get into) and they not only had bad customer service, they also paid poorly. It took me a whole year to make $100 with those guys.

I’ve been trying to get into Mediavine for a LONG time (like two years) but I actually applied almost a year ago and got denied. I had enough sessions and technically met the base requirements, but there were some other issues.

I actually wrote a LONG and super helpful post about this as a guest post on Mom Beach, but it’s not live yet. I’ll be sure to link to it when it is. (Update: Now live!)

If you’ve gotten denied by Mediavine or simply want to make sure you’re top notch when you go to apply, it will be a great read. There’s also a bit more info further along in this post.

P.S. I’m also excited about my Mediavine income for May because I didn’t even start with them until April 8th. (So it was a short month.) Plus, the first few weeks are for tweaking and troubleshooting, so I’m hoping to see a slight increase next month at the least.

InboxDollars – $24.33 – This is also sort of a carryover from my mom blog. I don’t promote it a lot, but it still brings in a little money so I count it.

Referral links to InboxDollars (a legit survey, game, and coupon site for earning extra income) from my other blog still make me a little money each month.

Amazon Affiliates – $18.92 – I participate in Amazon’s affiliate program and though this month was “slow” as far as income from them goes, I’m gonna keep going with them.

*I mostly see income from my posts about ways to tighten your postpartum belly and cheap fitness gifts, if you’re curious about how to sell Amazon products on your blog.

Total: $485.32

Expenses for this month: $0 – Mostly because I pay for things like Tailwind and my hosting package annually. I will have a couple of expenses to share next month though, but they are actually totally optional.

Let’s Elaborate On This

Now, this is NOT my best month blogging by quite a bit. I once made $900 in one month on my old mom blog. But if we’re being honest, that was a different time and the blogging climate was much different.

It was easier to use many social platforms for business, and I was getting mega traffic at that time. The quality of my blog and my blogging skills in general were not anything special, but I was in the “mom blogging” niche, which I find easier to make money with.

I have no doubt that I would have been making at least twice that much per month if I’d stayed in that niche. I knowingly decided to stay in fitness despite the monetary challenge.

That’s a story for another day.

(But if you’re asking, “Which blog is best for earning?” take this as a hint!)

On this blog, April was my highest month so far. But until this year, I did not take blogging seriously. So that surely plays a part in why it has taken me a couple of years to see decent income here.

About The Traffic

When you take a look at how much traffic I had for this blog income report, the income seems to correspond. At least with the ways I’m monetizing. Take a look.

While I am well above the required threshold for Mediavine, I still only had 35,364 page views in April 2020.

I can only imagine what bloggers who have over 100,000 page views per month are making in ads alone!

I am happy that this is a few thousand more than the previous month, and I’m also happy to see that my acquisition is changing. (My traffic sources are diversifying.)

I started to focus on SEO a lot more after getting rejected by Mediavine last year, and what I’ve learned in Lena Gott’s Adventures in SEO has paid off.

My traffic used to be like 97% from Pinterest (no joke) and I am glad that I’m slowly seeing more clicks from search engines on top of that.

Here’s the evidence:

diversify your traffic for a great blog income report

While I’m still getting plenty of traffic from Pinterest, I’m putting my eggs in more baskets now. 🙂

It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I feel like SEO has finally *clicked* in my brain in the last few months.

Here’s a year-over-year comparison for how many clicks and impressions I had in April, as well as my average ranking for blog posts/pages in Google:

In April 2020, I had nearly 3,000 clicks to my site from Google, compared to 341 for the whole month last year. And my average ranking (22.8) has dropped, while the number of monthly impressions has gone way up to over 99,000 impressions.

So visibility and traffic has definitely improved! This is not a coincidence – I’ve worked hard to understand SEO lately. 🙂

I so regret not caring about SEO sooner.

Getting Into Mediavine

I do want to dive into this a little because I know that it’s the goal of many bloggers to see their hard work pay off in the form of decent ad income.

(Like I said, I will link to the elaborate post I wrote about how to get into this ad network as soon as it’s live.) Update: It’s up! Find my post on getting into MediaVine here.

Anyway, when I was a new blogger, all I wanted was to make a buck online. At that time, I was willing to try doing that with ads. I failed.

I tried many ad networks, and only pennies ever trickled in. It took me a whole year to make it to the $100 payout threshold with other ad networks.

As I got to the “middle” of my blogging journey, I was very anti-ads. I wanted to sell my own products and kind of had my nose up in the air about ads. I had heard other bloggers say, “Ads ruin the user experience, and why would you want to send your readers away anyway?”

IDK, maybe I was just burnt from my experience earning pennies per day.

Later on, I found out that many “big” bloggers whom I looked up to were using ads. Not only that, they were making several thousand dollars per month with them.

But here’s the thing – as I got into fitness blogging, I found that I didn’t care anymore. It was time to stop making rules for myself. After all, I was reading blogs with ads and it felt normal to me.

I didn’t have a ton of products (still don’t) to sell, so why not go for ads for blogging income?

Honestly people, there are much worse ways to make money. I can provide a list if you’re still anti-ads. 🙂

Anywho, I started paying attention to the ad networks that my favorite bloggers were using. I started paying attention to the way they did things. As it turned out, they were eligible for ad networks I couldn’t even come close to.

Reading a blog income report from other bloggers told me this much.

But, these ad networks (Mediavine, AdThrive and CafeMedia), were paying publishers WAY better than most others.

So I made it my personal goal to get into Mediavine, the network that has a lower traffic requirement. I learned the requirements, and set off on a journey to obtain a coveted spot with those guys.

That was close to two years before this blog income report.

At one point last summer, I reached that monthly requirement of 25,000 monthly sessions for Mediavine. I was ecstatic and applied, of course!

A few weeks later, however, they replied with their denial.

They said that while my page views and sessions were enough, the amount of time people typically spent on my site wasn’t enough. They also said that they wanted to see diversified traffic.

SO.

Enter my SEO efforts and me learning not to rely so much on Pinterest.

At this point, I was so discouraged about not really making blogging income that I gave myself an ultimatum.

If, after one more, honest try, I couldn’t get into Mediavine, I was done blogging.

YEP, DONE.

I had honestly just spent so many years, time and money on blogging that it felt hopeless not to see any ROI.

So – this is just to say that if you’re hoping to get into Mediavine or another ad network, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

While I LOVE my Pinterest traffic, I have been hurt by the last few algorithm changes. I also just feel like in order to truly “level” up, you need to get on your SEO game.

(You can read all about Lena’s Adventures in SEO course in my review.)

Anyway, I am proud of what happened in this month’s blog income report.

There’s a lot of work behind my blogging income, though. I hope that my explanation shows that.

Start A Successful Blog Today

Just because I’m not making crazy blogging income just yet doesn’t mean you can’t! If you want to start your own blog, here’s a quick breakdown of how it works.

Step 1: Get Yourself A Hosting Package

I use Siteground to host my site in the clouds! Click for a review of Siteground.

Step 2: Pick A Name

This is your blog name and/or URL! You’ll want to consider this carefully. You can do this in Siteground when you sign up for hosting.

Step 3: Start Building Your Brand

You’ll need content, branding (like a logo and colors), social media accounts and more.

<<Click for a full blog startup tutorial with Siteground.>>

That’s it, friends! Hopefully you have gained some insight from my blogging revenue and learned about how we make money blogging.

Thank you for reading,

-Chantal

2 Comments

Sarah says:
May 18, 2020 at 4:25 pm
Wow, you did really well with making money through your blog in April. I appreciate you sharing your tips and story on getting Mediavine, as that will be very helpful for a lot of bloggers including myself.
1. Chantal | Ironwild Fitness says:
  May 18, 2020 at 4:41 pm
  Thank you. Sure hope it helps!

Blog Income Report For April 2020