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I think it’s safe to say that 2020 is not turning out to be the year that most people were hoping for. However, I am grateful that through everything going on, I am still bringing in some income through Financial Flamingo! Today, I’m sharing my July 2020 online income report and breaking down how I made money this month.

Why am I sharing an income report? Since my website is primarily finance-based, I thought it would be helpful to some of you to show that blogging can be a viable side hustle. Even in 2020 when it seems like everyone is starting a blog! I’m going to share an overview of my milestones and income each month so you can get an idea of what really goes into blogging. It will also be great for me to look back on as my business grows!

I’m not sharing my income reports to try to brag about how much I’m making – blogging is a lot of work and I run my website and YouTube channel like a business. It takes long hours to build a profitable blog. I think sharing my progress and being transparent about what time commitment I’m putting in to get the income results I’m getting is a good way to show people the realities of blogging as a side hustle.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a commission off sales at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn on qualifying purchases. Check out my Disclaimer for more information!

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SHOULD YOU START A BLOG?

I don’t agree with people who say you can’t start a profitable blog today! You don’t have to have any special skills or technical knowledge to get started, which makes it a great side hustle option. And don’t worry that there are so many other blogs already – that just means that it is possible to be successful at blogging!

Read: A Simple Guide to Starting Your Own Blog

I don’t blog full time and do have a pretty intense day job, so it definitely is possible to do as a side hustle. These blog income reports are a great way for me to share my experiences and real progress so you can get a realistic idea of what is possible! I read so many other income reports online before I started my own blog, and those are really what made me think this all could be worth it.

I want to be real about what type of time commitment blogging takes – it’s a lot. I spend most evenings and weekends working on my business. I do work a full-time job along with blogging, and I really don’t have much free time anymore. Blogging is also not a get-rich-quick type of business. I made pretty good money this month, but I know plenty of other bloggers that didn’t make any money in their first year. It all depends on what you’re able to put into your business and what monetization methods you use!

Blogging is a lot of work, but it’s been very rewarding for me so far! I absolutely love getting to talk to my followers and help people change their financial futures!

July 2020 ONLINE INCOME REPORT

In July I again struggled with keeping up with my blog, YouTube channel, and day job. Things are getting better, finally. I feel like I’m finally getting back into my productive groove!

TRAFFIC BREAKDOWN

Before we get into my income breakdown for the month, let’s talk about what kind of traffic I had in July. You can see my Google Analytics below.

So if you’ve read any of my other income reports, you can tell my traffic looks like it’s WAY down. That’s because I realized I made a mistake with implementing my Google Analytics code. Turns out, it was on my site twice.

While this is discouraging, I still have over 10,000 page views a month. I haven’t been super focused on my traffic numbers lately, but I do want to make that more of a focus going forward for the rest of the year. I really lost some focus when it came to my blog over the last six months, so I want to get back on top of things.

HOW DO I GROW MY TRAFFIC?

While website traffic and growing your traffic is important when you run an online business, I have shifted my mindset around this a little bit. While I do want to continue to grow my audience, I am trying to check my analytics less and not worry so much about chasing pageviews.

One of my main focuses for the rest of 2020, as I mentioned, is going to be to increase my blog pageviews and increase my subscriber count on YouTube. Both of these goals are going to require me to brush up on my SEO skills and focus on Pinterest.

Tailwind is a great Pinterest scheduling program. I am able to schedule my pins ahead of time, set them up to post to different boards, and even use the interval tool to space them out. This has completely changed how I bring in Pinterest traffic without doing a ton of constant work. Click here to get Tailwind for your website!

Convertkit is also a major tool that I use. This is the automation system I use for my email marketing. I am focusing on improving my email strategy for May, so I have started learning as much as I can about ConvertKit and how I can better use it. Growing my email list is a major focus because that is the audience I really want to be growing!

Now on to the income…

July ONLINE INCOME BREAKDOWN

For my income, I am going to be sharing what was earned during the month, not what I’m actually paid out. That’s going to be easier to keep track of for these posts. So everything I report in these income reports is what my reported “estimated earnings” are for the month for these different platforms. Most of this money will be paid out around the 20th of the following month.

JULY ONLINE INCOME TOTALS

YouTube – $84.40

Printables Shop – $553.00

Flamingo Fundamentals – $130

Affiliate Income:

Amazon – $8.27

Share A Sale – $162.45

Total Affiliate Income – $170.72

Ad Income: $0

Total Income – $938.12

All of my affiliate income is through Share A Sale, and all of it is from promoting Erin Condren! The majority of my income for the month came from Share A Sale. If you’re unfamiliar with what that is, it’s a network that you join to find affiliate merchants to work with. I have had a great experience working with them so far!

In my shop, I sell printable budgeting products and planner stickers. I have switched to using my own budget binder to track my finances and sharing my updates on YouTube. It’s paid off with a big jump in income!

Check out my printables shop!

I am also an Amazon Affiliate. While I don’t make much money from this yet, I honestly haven’t focused much on promoting products from Amazon. I have plans to utilize this program more in the future. I did make a little bit from it this month!

If you’re new to the idea of affiliate marketing, I highly recommend Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. It is 100% worth the money! I am working through it again and updating my site based on the lessons in the course, and I think it is already helping me increase my income a little bit. Michelle definitely knows what she’s talking about when it comes to affiliate marketing (she makes A TON of money this way!) so I love that she has a course that walks through exactly what steps to take to be successful with this income stream! You check out the course here if you’re interested!

I was accepted into both Monumetric and Ezoic ad networks in January. I used Ezoic for a while, but I haven’t had ads on my site since April. I have been working with Monumetric throughout July to get through the approval process and get ads back up and running on my site. This will bring in a little bit of income next month hopefully!

JULY BLOG EXPENSES

Something that can be hard for a lot of people that are thinking of making the jump into blogging is that it costs money. It actually can cost quite a bit depending on what all you’re into. I think this is an important side of blogging to talk about because if you run your website like a business then you are going to have to put some investment into it to really make it work.

I have chosen to pay the majority of my business expenses on a yearly basis so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of a bunch of monthly expenses. I currently only have a few recurring monthly expenses. This month I had some unusual expenses that won’t be recurring. Investing in my business is important to me right now because I really want to establish a good foundation for growth in the future.

March Expenses:

  • ConvertKit – $49.00
  • Askimet – $5.00
  • Shopify – $29.00
  • DepositPhotos – $29.00
  • Product Membership – $30
  • Teachable – $39.00
  • Canva – $12.99
  • Pinterest VA – $150
  • Zoom – $14.28

Total expenses: $358.27

You can see I do end up investing quite a bit of money back into my business each month.

The main expense I have right now is for my Pinterest VA. I work with someone to have her create 50 pins for me each month so that I don’t have to be constantly focused on creating pins. Creating pins is not something I enjoy, so this is well worth the money for me!

The rest of my expenses are pretty general – they pay for my email platform, store platform, and tools I use to run my membership. I also pay for my stock photos and am part of a membership that discusses digital products and online business.

I will be sharing these blog income reports each month from now on, and I’m excited to see where my business goes in 2020!

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July 2020 Online Income Report