Welcome, it’s been over a year since I did a blog income report, but I think I’m going to start doing them again in 2018.
If you haven’t seen any of my others, you can see all of my income reports here.
Over the last few months, I’ve been earning over $10,000 a month with my blog. In January I had my highest month ever, $13,841.39. I know, I can’t believe it either, but I wanted to share with you exactly where that income came from.
Before we get started, a few things to mention. I started this blog in December of 2013, and have consistently published new content since the start. Over time, traffic and income have continued to increase. Don’t expect to start a blog today and make over $10,000 a month right away. It takes a lot of hard work and time to be successful. It took me a few years before I was making a full-time income.
If you have any interest in making a full-time income online, check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate. It’s the course and community that I joined in 2013 and it’s where I learned how to make a real income online.
Below, you’ll find the exact programs that I use to make money with this blog if you have any questions make sure to leave comments below.
January 2018 Income Report Breakdown
Affiliate Income
Most of my income comes from affiliate marketing, and in my opinion, it’s the best way to monetize your blog. Below is the breakdown of the different sites/programs that I promote and how much I made from each. I’ve left links to full reviews of sites and a brief description of what the site is. Feel free to leave comments below if you have questions about a particular site.
Wealthy Affiliate – Read Review – $538.00 (Blogging Training & Community)
Panthera Network – Read Review – $257.40 (Affiliate Network I Use To Promote Sites Like CashCrate, SavvyConnect, and other sites)
Swagbucks – Read Review – $2,558.75 (My Favorite Rewards Site)
Ibotta App – Read Review – $830.00 (Grocery Shopping Cash Back App)
Dosh App – Read Review – $4,620.00 (Automatic Cash Back App)
ShareASale – $453.00 (Affiliate Network I Use To Promote HealthyWage, Grammarly, Checkout51)
AdBloom – $650.00 (Affiliate Network I Use To Promote VIPKid & Drop App)
Paidviewpoint – Read Review – $61.25 (My Favorite Survey Site)
FusionCash – Read Review – $1,127.00 (One of My Favorite Reward Sites)
Clixsense – Read Review – $42.00 (Reward Site Available Worldwide)
Earnably – Read Review – $15.00 (New Popular Reward Site)
PrizeRebel – Read Review – $14.75 (Reward Site)
FeaturePoints – Read Review – $50.00 (Paid To Download Apps)
1Q – Read Review – $97.00 (Paid To Answer Short Polls)
InstaGC – Read Review – $31.05 (Reward Site Available Worldwide)
GiftHulk – Read Review – $5.00 (Reward Site)
Amazon – $35.88 (Amazon Affiliate Program)
Transcribe Anywhere – Read Review – $170.20 (Transcription Course & Training)
Uber – $50.00 (Refer Uber Partners)
ZipRecruiter – $100.00 (New Work From Home Job Leads)
PinterestVA – $3.00 (New Course on How To Work From Home as a Pinterest Virtual Assistant)
Sponsored Posts – $30
Total Affiliate Income: $11,739.28
Ad Revenue
Most of my income comes from Affiliate Marketing, but Ad Revenue is still a profitable way to monetize your blog. Here are the ad networks I use to put ads on my blog:
Monumetric – $1,826.98 (Main Ad Network Need Minimum 10K page views a month to apply)
Google Adsense – $208.24 (Google’s Ad Network. Available to New Bloggers)
Media.net – $66.89 (Bing/Yahoo Ad Network Accepts Most New Bloggers)
Total Ad Revenue: $2,102.11
January Income: $13,841.39
How To Make A Real Income Online
I hope you enjoyed my income report of January, but now let’s talk about how you can get started making a real income online. If you have any interest in making a large passive income online, you need to get started right away!
It took me a few years before I was making what’s considered a full-time income each month.
Where I learned to make money online, and the site I recommend is called Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate is a website building training and community. They teach you how to create a website, how to get traffic, and how to make money.
They let you try for completely free, so you can make sure making a passive income online is right for you.
Again if you have any interest read my full Wealthy Affiliate review to learn more!
If you didn’t find what you were looking for here, check out these helpful links to other ways to make money from home:
How I Made Over $13,000 Online Last Month
Extra Income Sites I Use and Recommend
Work From Home Jobs Hiring Now
Thanks again for reading! If you have any questions about my income report, feel free to leave comments below!
Hi, I’m just wondering what’s a more important factor for a blog to grow to your size, time or amount of content?
I realize your blog is almost 5 years old and you seem to have about 1000 posts.
If I publish 1000 posts in 1 years time instead of 5 years, would I still get to where you’re at? Or is time a big factor into this?
And yes I know it depends on many things like quality of content etc etc etc. but just hypothetically speaking if you went back in time to 2013 and published all the same posts you have now, but in 1 years time instead of 5 years, would you be able to make that money in 1 year?
Hey Kent very good question.
If you were to publish 1,000 posts in one year and promote it heavily on social media you could possibly see great results but when it comes to organic search traffic that has a lot to do with time and targeting low competition keywords (since my site is 5 years old it ranks very very well for low competition keywords. Obviously not going to rank for the term “make money online” but ranking on the first page for low competition keywords is pretty easy at this point.)
I can’t answer if you’d see the same type of income but I guarantee if you’re targeting low competition keywords and publishing content that performs well on social media you’d see a ton of results if you published 1,000 posts in one year.
My advice is to get started right away and post as much as you can. If you hit the mark of 1,000 posts that’s great but if you get anywhere near that in a year you should have a pretty solid income from your blog.
Thanks for reading and if you have any other questions let me know.
Brok
I think I will use the US link because that’s the majority of my traffic. But is there a way to make sure if people from Canada click on my US link that they’ll direct them to the Canadian sign up page instead so I’ll still get credited?
KL,
It all depends on the program. A lot of places use the same link and will only let people join if they live in a participating country, then the payout is dependent on what country they join from.
Others do automatically use the correct link.
A way to make sure is to have a join now link that is separate like a Join Now US or Join Now CA.
Brok
Hey Brok,
how do you handle CPA network campaigns that have different links for different countries? I’m currently with MaxBounty and for Fusion Cash they have a link for US and a link for Canada. I don’t know which one to use
I have not used MaxBounty so I can’t comment on exactly how it works, but I would use whatever link most of your traffic comes from.
You can also have a separate link for each country. It’s not as visually appealing usually but most people will understand that they need to use the correct link if they are not in the US.
Also speaking of FusionCash, once you can drive 100 referrals a month make sure to reach out to them to try to get into their own affiliate program that’s through their site. The payout is more! You can see details on that here.
Brok
Hey Brok, I notice your biggest earner is Dosh App. Can you share a bit how you get so many referrals for that one app? I mean, I know you have a Dosh App review post, but from my keyword research that post’s keyword only has maybe 400 searches a month. How do you make like 4k from that?
Thanks for reading.
During January the app went viral due to the $15 per referral so I was receiving over 100 visitors a day from that review.
Now that the program has ended and they are only paying $5 the monthly searches have went down quite a bit.
The app is still legitimate but since the high paying program ended people have lost interest.
Hope that explains what happened.
Brok
Great work! This is really inspiring me to work harder as well. Hope to break $1000 a month on Adsense this year. Thanks again & keep it up 🙂
Hey Normar thanks for reading!
You should try adding some affiliate links as well. If you have enough traffic to make $1,000 in adense you probably could be making much more with affiliate links!
Brok
Hi Brok,
Great reviews on your site! And I appreciate your sharing your income reports so we can follow your progress. Do you blog full time or do you have a day job?
Tanya,
I blog part time and work as a property manager full time. Glad you enjoy my site if you have any other questions let me know!
Brok
Hello Brok. Have been trying to register to the wealthy affiliate website but it said my country is not supported. I will like to join, is there a way you can register me there. Thank you..
Deborah,
What country are you in? In a select few countries, the free membership is not available. Let me know and I can most likely find a way around it.
Brok
G’day Brok,
Thanks HEAPS for publishing your income report(s). It is inspiring to see the who/what/when/where and to read about your why’s in the associated review pages and posts.
You have given me and many other people some ideas.
Thank you !
Matthew
(Melbourne, Australia)
Great to hear you enjoyed it and found some ideas, Matthew.
If you have any questions please let me know.
Brok
Thank you very much Brok. It’s clear now.
Yes, no paid search. You’re right. Companies like Swagbucks don’t allow search traffic from CPA networks and they don’t even allow bidding on their main keyword through paid traffic. It makes promoting their offer extremely difficult. How do you promote through search traffic? As I know, they don’t allow search traffic.
I’ll try to explain a bit better. Organic search traffic is fine. When they say no search traffic they’re basically meaning they don’t want your affiliate link to be ranking in search engines when someone searches Swagbucks.
But it’s completely fine to target keywords such as Swagbucks review. Your website URL of the review gets ranked in Google and drives traffic to your review, you’ll have your affiliate link on your review where visitors can then join.
So to reiterate, paid search traffic is a no no. Organic traffic is fine as long as you’re sending people to your website and then they join by knowingly clicking on your affiliate link.
Does that make sense?
Brok
Thank you for the reply Brok. I mainly work with MaxBounty cpa network and as I can see, Swagbucks doesn’t allow search traffic. They also don’t allow bidding on their main keyword. How then can I promote their offer? Only paid traffic. What do you think Brok?
P.S. I couldn’t post my comment in reply to yours and that’s why I post it here.
Thank you
Ammar,
I’m not a member of MaxBounty so I can’t say for sure, but on the Panthera Network, it says no paid search. I’d check with Maxbounty but I believe that the terms are no paid search. Organic search traffic is completely fine.
Brok
Hi Brock!
Very impressive results! My congratulations on the achievements. Can you share your experience. Are you making such a huge commissions from Swagbucks and Dosh app just as a product review pages from Google search alone or it includes paid traffic as well? Is it from their referral program?
Thanks
Hey Ammar thanks for reading.
All traffic is free no paid traffic. Mostly from organic search but also social media and referral traffic from emails.
Dosh had a special $15 per referral in January so that really helped out. They usually only pay $5 I still refer a lot of people but of course the income is less.
I work with Swagbucks directly through a cpa program which is a certain dollar amount per sign up instead of the percentage of earnings. If you’re interested you can get started promoting the CPA offer for Swagbucks through the Panthera Network.
Let me know if you have additional questions,
Brok
Hey Brok!
I sent a couple of comments yesterday but somehow they got lost, anyway…
I have 3 topics I’m mainly interested in 1. Working at home. 2. Recipes and cooking. 3. Home remodeling, DIY and decor on a budget. The list was longer but I have narrowed it down to these.
I am super into all three of these and would like to have one blog with separate pages/categories. After all household budget would include all of these, right?
What do you think?
I Love your blog and I will be using some of your links very soon! I read a lot of blogs and review sites, yours is by far one of my favorites.
Elisha,
Yes, those can all fit into one website. My recommendation is to usually make it as specific as possible, but there’re tons of successful websites out there that cover all of those topics on one site. The issue with starting with such a broad niche is going to affect your organic search traffic. If your main focus is social media, which most sites like that focus on, it’s okay to be broad. Luckily all of those niches perform very well on Facebook and Pinterest. Not to say you can’t rank well, but getting ranked in Google will take longer with the broad niche, most likely.
Brok
I read your posts quite often and you make them easy to follow regardless how much experience a person has with any of your topics, I like that, and I’m sure most of your readers do.
This question may be a bit off topic but I noticed you mentioned in your blogs that you have more than one blog. I know you have more than one page on a blog but how do you set up more than one blog and are they on the same topic or niche and do they share the same domain name? Do you buy more domains and hosting packages (unless with WA)? How does that work? I am interested in more than one niche is why I ask(my interest in sharing is broad), but due to getting traffic and being authoritative and keeping up with more than one, I don’t know if I should pursue more than one. A little help here…
I have often wondered that from the blogs I read and not just yours but you are the only one I have asked this question of because I feel like you will actually answer it.
Keep up the good work! not that you wouldn’t. ($$$ LOL!)
Elisha,
Thanks for reading and the kind words, you’ve come to the right blog to get a response.
The income on this page is only for this blog fulltimejobfromhome.com.
I do have other sites that are in the same niche, and they have separate domain names. ExtraCashApps.com and JustExtraIncome.com
At this time I have all of my sites hosted at Wealthy Affiliate, but as mentioned they have separate domain names.
Here’s my advice on more than one blog. Both of my other sites are in the same niche, which makes it very easy for me to create content for them without much work because it’s usually things I’ve already covered. If you visit my other sites, you’ll see I rarely post.
My recommendation is to create one blog and stick with it. In my case, I rarely find the time or drive to post on those other sites, and although they are making a decent income, it’s hard to keep it going.
I would 100% recommend only having one site. If you build your main blog up to an income that you’re happy with and feel like a change of direction is needed, you can start another. But from my experience and reading about others, having more than 1 blog, in the beginning, will just lead to failure, mainly due to feeling like you can’t keep up.
What are the different topics you’d like to cover? I can give some feedback; maybe you can incorporate it into one blog?
Again, thanks for reading! 🙂
Brok
I really love all of your income reports. Question : How many pageviews are you getting now? Are you getting your traffic from Google or Pinterest?
Thanks for reading Andy.
Average sessions per day were around 6,000 in the month of January.
Most of my traffic comes from Google (organic search). Pinterest is my next highest source of traffic but about 80% of my traffic comes from organic search.
In my opinion, it’s the best recipe for long-term success. The Pinterest algorithm continues to change making it less and less friendly for bloggers. Still a great way to get traffic, but seems like it’s only going to get harder.
Brok
Impressive report.
You said, you joined Wealthy Affiliate in December of 2013 to learn how to blog and make money online. I’d like to ask, because I joined a year later but our difference is, I “on and off” with WA. Did you consistently worked with WA? Or, was there any time that you also stopped and then rejoined WA later?
I asked this because, I’m probing if… if only I didn’t stop and worked consistently, then perhaps, my results would be closer to yours here.
Thanks for reading Gomer. Once I joined I’ve never left and over that time frame I’ve consistently worked on my site.
Over that time frame I’ve went through slow spells where I didn’t do much but I was at least publishing once a week.
Keep at it, it’s not something that happens over night, it’s a long process that requires a lot of work before you see any results. Luckily once you see a small income it’s usually a snowball affect.
Brok
Hello Brok,
What an inspiring post! I followed your income reports over a year ago, and I am excited you are bringing them back. 🙂
Quick question: how much of your Dosh earnings are from referrals?
Thanks, and have a great day!
Thanks for reading and glad you enjoyed my income reports. I plan on continuing them the rest of the year!
I only included referral earnings on this post. They had a special $15 per referral in January instead of $5. So I made significantly more than normal with Dosh.
Brok
Brok, you have done wonderfully well. I am impressed about your progress.
Thanks for reading Lanu! Best of luck to you!
Brok