Intro
Hey everyone, it’s Tom here with thisonlineworld.com. I hope you’re all having a fantastic day today. So, in this video, I’m going to share how I earned over from blogging in . I’m also sharing the exact steps I took to get here, some of the most important lessons and mistakes I learned along the way, and how anyone can ultimately boost their income this year if they put in the effort and have a strategy. Plus, at the end of this video, I’m revealing how much this YouTube channel made in . So, drumroll… in this YouTube channel made about. Definitely stick around until the end. I hope that this video ultimately helps you make money with your blog if you’re blogging, or inspires you to start a blog if it’s something you’ve been thinking about. And yeah, without further ado, let’s get into the blogging income report.
Blog Income
Context of My Blogging Journey
Just for a bit of context, I started blogging way back in . I started blogging in . So, five years ago already, which is honestly pretty crazy to me. You know, just how fast time flies. And so, my first year of blogging, I actually only made . And when you factor in how many hours I’m spending a week working on the thing, I wasn’t even getting paid minimum wage. But I still remember being so excited when my blog finally hit a hundred dollars per month in revenue. I mean, the fact a website with content I wrote was buying my groceries or helping me pay for bills every month was just crazy to me, and I was so excited. And so, I kept going.
Earnings from Blogging
Anyways, that was back then, and a lot has changed since then. You know, five years later, and in , like I said, this online world made about thousand dollars through a mixture of three different income sources: display ads, affiliate income, and sponsorships. And I’m gonna break down each one for you guys.
Display Ads
In terms of display ads, I use Mediavine on this online world, and about of my blogging income came from Mediavine ads. So, those are the ads you see all over my website when you visit it. Now, if you’ve ever had a blog or used something like Google AdSense, Mediavine is basically like that, just for more premium publishers. It’s a very, very good ad network; it’s the best advertising network for bloggers in my opinion, and I’ve been with them for about three years now, and I can’t say enough good things about Mediavine.
For the entire year, my average Mediavine RPM was . That means every time a thousand people visit my blog, Mediavine on average pays me . cents, which is pretty remarkable in my opinion.
Affiliate Income
Now, for my other bloggers out there, this is for a finance site. This online world is in the finance and making money online niche, so advertisement rates tend to be a bit higher than some other niches, but again, forty dollars as an average RPM is pretty crazy.
In terms of affiliate income, in , this online world made about from various affiliate channels. Most of this affiliate income came from, you know, promoting things like DoorDash or paid survey sites, and I promote these offers through Impact or Radius, which is my favorite affiliate marketing network, and it has thousands of brands that bloggers and influencers can promote. I also promoted a variety of other products and services like passive income apps, investing brokerages, real estate crowdfunding companies like Fiverr, and there was really a nice variety this year. I really expanded the partners I was promoting versus last year, and the revenue boost really shows that this strategy worked.
Sponsorships
For the third and final category of blogging income, we have sponsorships. This is an area where a lot of bloggers I know make a lot of money. You know, they write sponsored posts, or they make sponsored videos, or they post content on social media and get paid. I’m not like that. I don’t have really any good sponsorship money coming in or anything like that. I made for sponsorships in , and this is a massive area of growth. So, I’m going to be reaching out to more brands this year to try and land, you know, brand deals or sponsored posts and things like that. So stick around, you know, subscribe to the channel, because in next year’s income report, we’ll see if these strategies are working or not.
Blog Traffic
So all in all, this online world made about thousand dollars in before expenses. But for a bit of context, I just want to show you some Google Analytics data, so you know how many readers came to the site, how many posts were published, and everything like that to get here.
Traffic Growth
To generate this revenue, the blog had about . million readers in , and it also published over articles and updated hundreds more to keep content fresh and competitive. So, really within the last year, this online world became a main focus, not freelance writing, and I actually quit my day job to just go full-on blogging mode. So it’s been really, really fun since then, but honestly, the amount of content the site produced in has really paid dividends, and I’ve seen it with traffic growth and revenue growth.
SEO and Niche Focus
I also niche down slightly more, which is what I suggest other bloggers do as well. I had a lot of content on a lot of different niches, because when I started the blog, I wasn’t really, you know, too focused. And I’ve kind of trimmed the fat on the website a little bit. I focus a bit less on the gig economy, a bit more on money-making apps, and a bit more on making money online and the topics that seem to do really, really well on Google and with readers.
Finally, investing more into SEO and keyword research has again paid really great dividends. I personally use Semrush or Ahrefs; I think it’s a great tool for bloggers to use. It has a free plan, so you can search a bit on it and get valuable keyword data without paying. The paid plan is awesome as well. Some people use Ahrefs. I think Ahrefs is great as well, but ultimately, if there is one thing you can invest in as a blogger, I think it should be keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs.
Blog Expenses
So the blog made thousand dollars, give or take, in , but what about expenses? How much does it cost to run a blog like this? And, you know, to have writers producing content for the site every week? What did we spend? Let’s break down the numbers.
Content Costs
So, really, the main expense for this online world is content. You know, content is the lifeblood of the business. It’s what gets readers in from Google; it’s what produces advertisement revenue or affiliate revenue. And so, in , I spent about on content. There’s a team of six writers for this online world, and they’re awesome. They’re a huge help, and it really helps free up a lot more of my time to focus on affiliate marketing or now sponsorships. So that’s a priority of mine.
Other Business Expenses
So, if there’s another tip I could add to bloggers, it would be to reinvest some of your earnings into content and the things that keep the lights on to free up some of your time to focus on other high-value parts of the business.
The other costs for the business are pretty boring and fixed. Like, I have big scooped hosting, which is about per year for me. I have a security plug-in that’s and, you know, other various plugins, dollars. I was actually working with a VA to promote stuff on Pinterest that was about for the year, but I ended up scrapping it because Pinterest is pretty pitiful right now and not doing anything, which is kind of sad.
Total Expenses
Anyways, total expenses for the blog in were about fifteen thousand dollars. So, a really great profit margin. The expenses were actually pretty much similar to , and so I’m happy that revenue has gone up dramatically, but expenses haven’t really cropped up and followed it. So, that’s something I’m really, really happy with.
YouTube Income
Alright, now like I said, I was going to also tell you how much the YouTube channel made in . So again, thanks for watching this video if you are right now, thanks for subscribing, all the comments, it really does mean a lot.
YouTube AdSense Revenue
Drumroll… in this YouTube channel made about fourteen thousand dollars in YouTube AdSense revenue. Now, this came from about video views. So again, thank you so much if you guys are watching because it’s crazy to me that almost people watched my videos last year, and that also comes from videos published in .
YouTube Expenses
Now, just like blogging, I do have expenses for YouTube. I don’t do everything myself just to free up some time, and because I’m not a great video editor, and I’m not good at designing thumbnails, so I need to hire people to help out with that kind of stuff. Anyways, in terms of editing expenses, I spent about four thousand five hundred dollars last year. Thumbnails cost about , so that brings the total profit for YouTube to just under ten thousand dollars, at about nine thousand six hundred dollars.
Growth and Consistency on YouTube
Honestly, YouTube started for me as just a little fun side project to promote this online world. It’s been really cool to grow into its own thing that doesn’t just talk about blog posts I’ve written before, but kind of branches out into new things. And again, anyone who’s watched before or you’re watching right now, thank you very much. It really does mean a lot, and I appreciate the support.
Tips for Starting
Focus on One Thing at a Time
Guys, I want to just wrap up this kind of blogging and YouTube income report with maybe a few tips or things I found really helpful over the last few years in growing two different online businesses at the same time and scaling the revenue year over year.
Create a Non-Negotiable Routine
The first tip would actually just be to do one thing at a time. I started my blog first. I wasn’t doing anything else. I wasn’t doing Instagram, I wasn’t doing YouTube, I wasn’t doing TikTok. It really took me a year to learn the ropes with blogging and to actually build it into a stable income source. Then I could free up my time by outsourcing a bit of work and start dabbling in other things like YouTube.
Focus on Small Wins
Now, a second tip that I found very, very helpful was just to create some sort of non-negotiable routine in your day-to-day life. For example, for pretty much all of my time blogging, I’ve either been full-time freelancing or having a full-time office job or remote job, and so it was difficult at times to find enough time to work on this online world. But really, what helped was just making some hard-set rules that I had to follow every week.
Consistency is Key
That leads me to my third and final tip, which is really to just focus on stacking small wins but stacking them consistently. Most online businesses take so long to get up and running. I mean, I really wasn’t making any serious money with my blog until year three. But it’s again those small, consistent wins that you stack up over time that end up somewhere massive that you never really would have thought you’d end up.
Conclusion
For this blog and YouTube income report, I know it’s a bit of a different style this year than previous years. If you guys are curious about a really deep dive into how I do keyword research, how I write blog posts, and how I kind of grow organic traffic, or you just want more blogging content, let me know in the comments, and I’ll make some more videos about that stuff. I really love talking about SEO and blogging.
And yeah, if you want to start your own blog, or something you’ve been thinking about, I’m going to be linking Namecheap down below in the description as well. They provide really affordable domain names, hosting, and everything like that, so you can start your own blog for less than a cup of coffee a month, kind of thing, and it really could change your life if you stick with it and are consistent.
Anyways, guys, that does it for this one. Thank you so much again for an awesome year and for all of the support. It really does mean a lot. I hope you all have a fantastic day, and as always, don’t forget to check out thisonlineworld.com for more unique ways to make and save money. I’ll catch you guys in the next one.
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