Blogging Income Report May 2020

Hello friends, welcome to another blogging income report!

Contains affiliate links.

My name is Chantal Steele, and I’m the owner of this here blog. 🙂

I’m also a mom of two, a NASM certified personal trainer, and have been struggling to lose the baby weight for EVER. But those are all stories for different times. You can read all about it in some of my other posts.

Anyway, I’ve said it a few times before, but I originally had no intention of “blogging about blogging” on this website.

But over time, it became clear that it was still a needed topic. So I’m sharing my monthly blog income!

Why Share Your Online Income Report?

I still get questions about blogging for fitness professionals, how to use Pinterest for business, and how to make money blogging pretty regularly. I also noticed a gap in the market as far as someone to help personal trainers learning to take their businesses online. So that’s part of why I do these blogging income reports!

I also like to share monthly blog income to show fellow bloggers of all niches how I’m doing things – as well as what hasn’t worked.

I have been blogging for close to six years now in many niches. I have been in the fitness game the longest though – and the time I have spent learning is really valuable.

I really believe I have some great insight to share as I’ve been through a lot of trial-and-error.

Maybe I’ll spare you some time (or mistakes!) by sharing my reports. Plus, like I said, I just love blogging income reports! 🙂

Lastly, I do these monthly income reports to help me stay accountable for reaching higher.

In the blogging world, there is always room for improvement, and that can make it a little overwhelming. I love reading a many a bloggers’ income report to help.

It is so easy to get burnt out or discouraged, but I keep finding that it is still worth it.

For me, reading online income reports provided by other bloggers is super encouraging and insightful.

It has helped me set goals, keep trying new things, and grow my monthly blog income over time.

If you have just begun to follow me, I’d encourage you to read my last income report for April 2020. I share some important breakthroughs and tips, and it can help you put things in perspective, as this is a follow-up to that report.

A few major things happened for me in April, so you might want to check it out to help you understand this online income report!

You can also see my monthly income reports over time detailed in each post below:

November 2017 Fitness Business Report – $5.01
December 2017 Fitness Business Update – $12.45
January 2018 Blog Income Report – $61.66
February 2018 Blog Income Report – $135.74
December 2018 Fitness Blog Income Report – $149.02
Income Report: Fitness Blog Income April 2019 – $133.71
Fitness Blog Income Report July 2019 – $82.77
Blog Income Report For April 2020 – $485.32

As you can see, my blogging income has increased from my first income report. While the growth has been slow, there’s a lot to blame for that.

I hope you know that you can potentially do much better than I have. That’s because I am not a super-serious blogger quite yet, and I have been really inconsistent the whole way along. I have only now begun to buckle down and try to treat this blog like a job.

I actually explore all of the potential reasons for my slow growth in that last report for April.

So again, I’d check that out! I really don’t want you to be discouraged by my numbers because they don’t tell the whole story. 🙂

First Income Report With Ads

In last month’s income report, I explained that I recently got admitted into an elite ad network known as Mediavine. You can see from my list above that it has made a big difference in my income already!

It was a long, slow journey to get into this ad network, and it was just such a process for me that I wrote a super detailed post about exactly what I did to get in after-the-fact.

I had actually not been making much money blogging before getting in to Mediavine.

You can already see from previous monthly income reports that it was consistently less than $200/month. That was okay, but it was honestly not enough to justify the time and work I had put in.

I was originally very against ads, but without a lot of products to sell, I finally decided to give it a try. My favorite bloggers were doing it, after all!

The story of how I got into Mediavine is pretty long and I won’t get into it here, but I am excited to see a month-over-month increase in income so far. (You can see the final total for May below).

I have only been with them for 1.75 months, so that could easily explain why there’s a jump in income (in April I had the ads up for 3 weeks, and May for a full month). BUT I am hoping that it will increase continuously.

That is my goal for every blogging income report!

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Blogging Income Report for May 2020

See a breakdown of my fitness blog income below. If you want to start making money blogging, then be sure to read the low-down on traffic, mistakes, and expenses too!

Mediavine – $489.52

This is that amazing ad network we were talking about! For many bloggers, it’s the golden ticket.

That’s because getting into an elite ad network means that you are guaranteed to start making money when you get in. I got into Mediavine mid-April, so my income was automatically higher this month compared to last. But I’m hoping the growth is exponential.

Amazon – $33.55

I have long-since been an Amazon affiliate, and this month is a little whimpy but still worth it.

I love being their affiliate because there’s a wealth of products I can promote quickly and easily for a commission. Since I have Amazon Prime like so many others, it’s easy to promote real products I actually use.

If you’re curious, you can see an example of how I promote Amazon products in this post about cheap fitness gifts. It does super well around Christmas!

Etsy Sales – $25.98

A long time ago when I had a different blog, I wrote some ebooks and set up shop on Etsy. For about four years, I sold nothing there and forgot all about my Etsy shop.

Later, when I rediscovered it, I updated my shop and added my newer Ironwild Fitness workout programs to it. Then I forgot all about it again.

Imagine my surprise, after 4 years of ZERO sales, waking up to an order! This happened last month, and I immediately started beefing up my store. This month I had two sales as a result. Sweet!

Ebook Sales – $48.96

These are my on-site shop sales. I now have two workout programs, a meal-planning printable set, and some goal-setting printables. I have about 100 ideas for my next product, so I’m excited to continue working on developing this income stream.

Digital products have been a reliable source of income over the last year or so, but it’s obviously at a really small amount of money each month. I’m okay with it for now!

Siteground – $50

I am an affiliate for the web hosting company (Siteground) that I use to run my blog. I make a commission on sales that I make through my blogging startup tutorials.

I love this income because it’s a good chunk of change each time, and it doesn’t affect the price that new bloggers pay when they make their purchases.

If you’re a blogger, I highly suggest creating a tutorial to help new bloggers. This is kind of a “set and forget” income stream.

ShareASale – $4.27

As I’ve mentioned in previous reports and in my post explaining how affiliate marketing works, ShareASale is a bit of a carryover from my mom blog years ago.

It is an affiliate network that houses and manages many affiliate programs for thousands of brands. There’s a good chance that a company you love is working with ShareASale for affiliate marketing purposes.

On Ironwild Fitness, I don’t do a lot of marketing with ShareASale programs, but I am still seeing a tiny bit of income roll in each month.

While they house programs I promote (like Kiss My Keto and Tailwind), I make the majority of my money with them through helping bloggers get started on their platform.

That is, when you sign up for ShareASale (free) in order to access thousands of brands to help promote, I get a tiny commission. So that $4.27 is mostly from this!

Total: $652.28

As you can see, getting into Mediavine was sooo worthwhile already! This month I made $166.96 more than I did the month before.

I have a lot of elaborating to do though, so don’t leave just yet.

Blog Expenses

I wanted to make sure you knew, first of all, that this blogging income report doesn’t include expenses, though they were small.

Firstly, Paypal and Etsy both take small transaction fees for each digital product sale. It’s less than half a dollar per sale (it’s based on the price point of each item) so I don’t even really notice it.

Secondly, I pay for my web hosting costs annually, meaning that I didn’t pay anything for that this month.

However, if you were to average it out, it’s less than $15 per month. Still in the green! (Especially if you consider that I am making money as an affiliate for my web hosting company, Siteground.)

Thirdly, I did start using a new tool recommended by other bloggers this month. Since I am newly committed to SEO to increase my Google traffic, I began using Keysearch.

It has helped me so much already, and it’s well worth the price! (Less than $14 a month!) You can try it out for a 20% discount using my code KSDISC.

I have had some questions about other expenses, namely Tailwind (the social media scheduler I use) and email marketing services. (I use Mailerlite.)

The fact is that I have never paid for these things up until now.

Until a few months ago, I was still on the free plan for Mailerlite because I was below 1,000 subscribers. I kept it this way for a lonnnggg time by cleaning up my inactive contacts (people who were not opening my emails).

I just now had to start paying, but I paid for a full year because it’s cheaper, a few months ago.

Actually, I still have yet to pay for Tailwind, as I have always covered that expense with referrals. So many bloggers have seen the value in Tailwind for their Pinterest and Instagram growth, so it’s easy to get people signed up.

Everyone benefits because you get a free month of Tailwind when you sign up with my link, and I get a $15 credit towards my own account.

At one point in time, I had made enough referrals to cover a few years’ worth of service, so I am still coasting on that.

I highly suggest doing this where you can to keep blogging expenses low.

Especially in those first few years when you feel like you’re not making enough to justify what you’ve spent.

Traffic That Contributed To This Blogger Income Report

Next, you should know how much traffic this blogger income report is based on. I still consider myself a “small” blogger.

How you define a “small blogger” might be different than how I do, so I’ll give you some perspective. I think that in my mind, I need to reach a full-time income or at least 100,000 monthly page views to be a “big-time blogger.” Lol.

And in my mind, a full-time income would be at least $3,000/month gross.

I’m not exactly sure where those numbers came from, but I do know that 100,000 monthly page views would be the ULTIMATE blogging goal for me. And, I’ve learned that if you are relying on ad income as a major piece of your blog, traffic does indeed correlate to income.

(Imagine a blogging income report with that amount of traffic!)

(You’re a liar if you say that traffic doesn’t matter!)

Anyway, this month I actually had a *hair* more traffic than I did the month before. Since my income was higher, I won’t fret. I did slack off a LOT this month. 🙂

Here’s a snapshot of exactly how I fared, according to Google Analytics:

As far as pageviews go, I had only a *hair* more visits than in April. And to be fair, May has one more day than April.

So – when you consider that my traffic was almost the same, my income taking a solid jump is pretty satisfying.

Monthly Blog Income Goals

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now – my only real goals are to improve month over month. I have been through that new blogger period where I set myself ridiculously lofty goals without any real idea of how to meet them.

That has never worked.

So, my goals are to simply improve.

For ad revenue, I’d like to make at least $500 for the month of June. That’s less than a $10 improvement, so I feel that it’s an achievable and realistic goal.

For page views, I’d love to get 36,000+. That’s also only a small improvement of a couple hundred views. Totally doable. If I do better than that, great! I’ll let you know what happens in my next blogging income report, of course!

Fitness Blog Income Plan

As you know, I have started to work much harder on my search engine traffic and ranking better in Google. I touch on it a bit in my last income report, but now that Pinterest traffic has stalled, I don’t feel it’s safe to rely on it anymore.

So, I have taken a few courses on SEO (read about Lena Gott’s Adventures in SEO here). But I feel that it was only recently that SEO really clicked in my mind, despite having put forth effort in that domain for a few months ago. The evidence that this is paying off is in my Google Search Console data.

Here’s the Year-Over-Year data:

This time last year, I got 264 clicks from Google. I held an average ranking of 37.3 and about 9.44k people were exposed to my articles via Google searches.

In the same 28-day period for 2020, I had 2.76k clicks, 94,000 impressions, and an average position of 19.9 for rankings. (Lower is better in a Google ranking – the closer you are to 1, the better!)

So, while the improvement is slow, it does feel significant! I even improved month-over-month, from April to May. I’d love to share the data to help support my overall blogging income report. Here is April:

And here is May:

affiliate marketing and bloggers income report

While it seems like a small difference month-over-month, I really value this potentially steady increase in SEO results. That means that Google is beginning to show my site to more people.

That also means that my efforts to write in a way that supports that are paying off.

Future Blogging Income Report Hopes

I am hopeful that my new tool, Keysearch, and my increasingly refined SEO tactics will pay off in the next few months.

I’ve learned that when you publish a new post, it can take 3-6 months for it to rank. (My research also tells me that this varies from site-to-site. If you have a better domain authority and page rank, it can be much faster.)

So, I’ve marked April and May as the time period in which I started really focusing on Google traffic. If, in 3-4 months I start to see a significant boost in search engine traffic, I will know that my investments are paying off. Hopefully an even more impressive blogging income report is in my future.

I’m pretty confident they will since I’m no longer taking shots in the dark. 🙂

I hope that my explanation of blogging income and sharing my blogging income report helps you…but now it’s your turn!

Start A Successful Blog Today

Do you have an idea for a blogging project that you’re dying to start? If you want to start your own blog, below is a quick breakdown of how it works. Who know knows – you might have your own blogging income report to share some day!

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 my blogging income report.

-Chantal