How Much I Earned From Four Months of Blogging

Tell anyone you’ve started a blog and you’ll inevitably get the question about how much money you’re making blogging. It’s pretty straightforward to answer how much money I made THIS MONTH.  But it’s not at all easy to answer how much money you CAN make from blogging or how much you’re likely to earn in the future. It’s largely dependent on how much effort you put into being successful.  But what could a person expect?

Different Way Bloggers Make Money

Well, there are many things to consider about making money from a website.   There’s a great variety of ways to earn money.   Here’s some that come to mind for me:

  • You can sell your own product
  • You can promote your own service (I do a bit of tutoring on the side)
  • You can promote a product of another company which is typically called affiliate marketing ( I promote a few services I have used and recommend)
  • You can run ads on your site and get paid for your views. ( I believe you need a lot of traffic for this to be profitable..probably not ideal for early on)

These are some of the fundamental ways to make cash from your website or blog.    This blog “Getting Canned” seeks to provide entertainment and information about the experience of losing your job and I do hope to generate a bit of revenue from affiliate marketing to help keep the site running.

That means that on some of my pages, I refer to products or services like web hosting or scheduling software that I use and recommend.    If someone clicks the links and signs up for a service, I can earn a commission.   So how much have I earned from doing this so far?

Earnings From My Two Sites

Well I started this site in April 2018.  So I’m about 3 months in and I’m just now starting to ring up a few commissions.  I’ve helped refer others to sign up for web hosting and domain services and earned a few commissions that will pay out this month.   The sales commissions were earned from either clicking my site links or me sending the customer the link directly.    Here are screenshots of sales I’ll be paid for this month.

From Bluehost.   I referred two signups and should earn $130.

Bluehost Affiliate earnings
Bluehost Affiliate earnings for the quarter

And I’ve had one signup for the host I am currently using to host this site, which is Siteground.   This resulted in $50 of commissions.

Here’s earnings from Siteground affiliate program .

This felt pretty good to see earning commissions like this with minimal effort.   Full disclosure:  For web hosting signups, I typically have worked with the person to help them set up the site so it wasn’t totally passive income.

Earning my First Passive Income

I did earn my first passive income commission this month.   Someone saw the value in the M1 Finance signup which paid out a commission of $100 to me.   This resulted from them viewing my site and clicking the link.   I wasn’t involved.  To be honest, I didn’t even realize I earned this commission a few weeks ago because I’m a bit behind on my email.   But how’s that for passive income?   Thanks, fellow investor out there.

M1 Finance Affiliate commissions
My first signup from M1 Finance

Dare to dream but perhaps someday I can earn the types of commissions that some of the top people do.  It’s crazy to think some folks out there are making 10’s of thousands of dollars a month.   Take for example Michelle Schroeder who made $136,000 last month from blogging.

So the question is could you generate income from blogging?  This is capitalism so there are no guarantees.   It will take a little luck and a good deal of hard work.  Generally the harder you work, the luckier you’ll be.  In my opinion, it’s certainly worth a shot.   If you’ve been terminated and can spare around $90 that’s enough to get started.   Ping me if you need help.

How To Get Started Making Money From Running a Web Site

The first step is signing up for web hosting. If you don’t feel like spending money and are tech-savvy, why not try Digital Ocean?  Sign up here for a free $100 credit just for trying Digital Ocean.

Click here for a $100 Credit good towards hosting with Digital Ocean.

And What am I Doing With the Profit?

Some money gets reinvested back into the business and the rest gets invested into my new favorite no fee robo-advisor M1 Finance.

M1 Finance

Disclosure:  I have an affiliate partnership with M1 Finance, Digital Ocean and Siteground and may earn a commission on new signups over a certain threshold.