How I Made $10,932.45 Blogging Last Year – Blog Income Report + Monthly Breakdown

This post may contain affiliate links. That means we may make a small commission on items purchased through links in this post at no extra cost to you!

Table Of Contents

My Story
How To Start a Blog
Year Blog Income Report:
Year Total Blog Traffic and Stats:
Blog Income Month to Month:
January Blog Income: $542.65
February Blog Income: $568.50
March Blog Income:
My Biggest Wins this Year (What Worked):
My Biggest Misses This Year (What Didn't Work):
Final Thoughts:
Blog Goals For Next Year:

This last year was a great year for my blog. I doubled my blog income, rebranded, launched a few tripwire products, finished EBA, and learned so many valuable lessons. I am so stoked to see what next year will bring!

My Story

In case you’ve never been to my blog before let me introduce myself. My name is Cassie Scroggins and I teach other mommas just like me how to start and run their own profitable blogs.

Back in 2016, I was a brand new stay at home mom surviving off dry shampoo and fruit snacks who was looking for more.

Something to fill that space inside that longed to be more than “just” a mom. Something that I could build myself and succeed in, all while raising my littles from home.

I had just had my son, Jamie, at just 20 years old and I was so blessed to be able to stay at home with him. And to be honest, that’s all I ever wanted.

But 3 months later when my husband started law school, I realized that I wanted what he had. He had just started his journey towards his dream job while I had put all of my dreams and aspirations behind me to be fully focused on being a mom.

And, don’t get me wrong, I was so happy and grateful that I could raise my babies from home but I wanted something more.

I wanted that something that would satisfy those dreams and aspirations and give me that thing I could succeed in. Something I could call my own and do all WHILE raising my babies from home.

So that fall I started my blog.

And I went from feeling like “just” a mom to a momtrepreneur who was raising my babies and making money at the same time!

Starting my blog gave me that fulfillment in an area of my life that I so desperately needed filling as a mom. And because it truly changed my life, I am determined to help other moms learn how to do the same: Start their own successful profitable blogs.

Now each month I make over $1000 from just from my blog, and that number is only growing. What would an extra $1000 do for you if you could raise your babies at the same time?

Blogging allows me to make money, build my own business, and raise my babies from home all at the same time. It’s truely living a dream.

How To Start a Blog

If you’ve ever been interested in starting your own blog, check out this post and you can get my free step by step guide and checklist to start your own blog here! Join the blogger squad!

I never knew how much money there was to be made in blogging until I stumbled upon an income report myself. It was the big push that I needed to start my own and I am so glad I did! Which is why I share my own blog income.

Just a little pay it forward type of thing ?.

Year Blog Income Report:

*Note I only count income I actually received, not revenue I earned but hasn’t been paid out yet.

Affiliates: $2,351.79

Amazon Associates: $1,878.99
Bluehost: $160
Ultimate Bundles: $312.80

Affiliates Total: $2,351.79

Ads: $7,726.77

Mediavine: $7,494.40 (Ads on the blog)
Youtube ads: $232.37

Ad Total: $7,726.77

My Own Products: $853.89

Mom to Momtrepreneur – Ebook/Workbook: $257.35

38-Page Blog Planner: $116.63

Ultimate Mom Planner: $71.31

Etsy: $408.60 (Blogging Tees & Digital Prints) Check it out here!

Product Total: $853.89

2018 Blog Income Total: $10,932.45

Year Total Blog Traffic and Stats:

Pageviews: 910,440 (up from 480,651 in 2017)

Pinterest Followers: 2,292 (+822)

Pinterest Reach: 1.6M (+N/A)

Instagram Followers: 1,620 (+848)

Facebook Likes: 6,000 (+5,132)

Facebook Group Members: 258 ( +258 – You can join the Blog For Profit group here!)

Email list: 4,293 (+3,737)

My Most Popular Posts From 2018:

Blog Income Month to Month:

January Blog Income: $542.65

*Note I only count income I actually received, not revenue I earned but hasn’t been paid out yet.

Affiliates: $69.57 (Amazon affiliates)

Etsy store sales: $107.03 (Digital Prints and Bibs) Check it out here!

Ads: $366.05 (Mediavine)

Total: $542.65

January Traffic and Stats:

January Pageviews: 71,250 (up from 49,083 in December)

Pinterest Followers: 1,470

Instagram Followers: 772

Facebook Likes: 868

Email list: 556

My Pageviews this month went way up! My free printable habit trackers were crazy popular which I think was because of the New Year and the craze to work on yourself and the habit trackers are a great way to visually see and track your progress. Get them here.

Other than the skyrocket on my habit trackers, everything else was had some steady growth which is pretty average around here.

What worked this month:

EBA:

If you didn’t know, I am working my way through an amazing blogging course, Elite Blog Academy, which is actually the reason I am making any money right now and I haven’t even made it to the monetization module yet!

I started EBA in February 2017 and have been slow as molasses, and have procrastinated my way through it. However, I have been diving back in since the New Year and have a goal to finish the course by August! Wish me luck.

If you are serious about blogging I would highly suggest investing in EBA. It’s pretty expensive but the strategies and information in the course is invaluable! Pretty much if you could get an MBA for blogging, the curriculum would be EBA.

The course is only open once a year but you can get on the waitlist here, and fair warning, the price has substantially gone up every year so the sooner you invest the less you’ll have to pay!

Facebook Ads:

Back in December Facebook gave me $30 to put towards an ad to try them out and oh baby, I’m hooked! My first Facebook ad reached 6,142 paid and 698 organically (so from tags and shares) and 136 paid link clicks (people clicking through to my site) and at this time I had only 147 facebook page likes so those numbers were pretty amazing!

Since I have run a few more ads and have seen my page likes grow around 30 likes a week with no other Facebook strategy other than pushing my posts there so I’m really loving Facebook ads.

Monthly Giveaways:

In the New Year I decided to grow my social platforms and give back to my followers I was going to do a giveaway every month on my Facebook Page and Instagram account. I started by giving away two Google Home Minis. One to giveaway on Facebook and one for Instagram and boy did people love it! You can like my page here and follow me here.

I ran my giveaway for 2 weeks, each post had over 2k entries and comments and added 246 likes to my Facebook page and added 306 followers on Instagram. I was excited to see people react to the giveaway, and since I am doing monthly giveaways these new followers have an incentive to keep following my pages.

We’ll see how people react to February’s giveaway!

*update! (6/25/19) I no longer host monthly giveaways on my social media accounts. I do however dish out killer content! So you can still follow me here!

Goals for February:

Crack 1000 followers/likes on Facebook and Instagram
Finish EBA unit 5
Create content for the entire quarter – right now I’m barely a month ahead
Work smarter not harder – I have been getting so distracted and procrastinating

February Blog Income: $568.50

*Note I only count income I actually received, not revenue I earned but hasn’t been paid out yet.

Affiliates: $129.94 (Amazon affiliates)

Etsy store sales: $9.20 (Digital Prints and Bibs) Check it out here!

Ads: $429.36 (Mediavine)

Total: $568.50 – Up $25.85 from January

February Traffic and Stats:

February Pageviews: 82,556 (up from 71,250 in January)

Pinterest Followers: 1,550 (+80)

Instagram Followers: 847 (+75)

Facebook Likes: 1,002 (+134)

Email list: 990 (+434)

My most popular posts stayed pretty much the same which I expected. However, my How To Easily Take Photos of Yourself for Your Instagram or Blog Post from January went viral and knocked those habit trackers right out of the number one spot by A LOT! That post alone got over 18k pageviews in February! Woohoo!

That made up for the fact that the craze for the habit trackers triggered by the new year has significantly decreased. However, the habit trackers still sent me about 4k pageviews.

What Worked This Month:

Email Opt-ins:

Midway through February I finally got serious and published 2 email opt-ins focused towards bloggers to grow my email list.

My opt-ins where:

My Free Start A Blog Checklist
And my Free Printable Monthly Blog Planner

*For those of you who are brand new to blogging, an email opt-in is a freebie you offer to your readers in exchange for their email. They want your freebie, so they give you their email and join your email list.*

I had never offered an email incentive before so those on my email list prior to this were people who just wanted updates on new posts when they come out.

The nice thing about offering an email opt-in incentive is I was able to target specific readers on my site and in doing so, I have a better understanding of how to accurately serve them. Meaning those who signed up for my email incentives I know are either new (Start a Blog Checklist emails) or current bloggers (Monthly Blog Planner emails) which means I’m not going to be sending them an email about a new hair tutorial I have coming up.

Anyway, I published my opt-ins February 15th and in only 13 days already gathered 434 new emails and new bloggers to serve! So I’m pretty happy with my results thus far!

I’m hoping to soon get an opt-in published specifically for my hair lovers out there, so stay posted on that!

Social Locker is a plugin for WordPress that helps you grow your social media accounts by locking your content, like a freebie, until the reader likes, shares, +1’s or tweets your page.

So at the end of the month, I decided to lock my popular Habit Trackers requiring my reader to like my Facebook page to get access to them and it’s been great!

I’ve used Social locker before but they started getting buggy and wouldn’t work on mobile so I ended up removing the plugin. I decided to give them another chance after they updated the plugin and haven’t had an issue yet, but it’s only been a few days so we’ll see how it goes.

How I did – Goals For February:

Crack 1000 followers/likes on Facebook and Instagram – Made it for Facebook with 1,002 likes but didn’t for Instagram with 847.
Finish EBA unit 5 – Check! I finished EBA unit 5 & 6 this month! #OverAchiever
Create content for the entire quarter – Didn’t make it, I’m still only a month ahead.
Work smarter not harder – I did a lot better than January but still had a more procrastinating than I would like.

Goals For March:

Finish EBA unit 7
Hit 1,200 Facebook likes
Hit 1000 Instagram Followers
Grow Email list to 1300
Invest in Jenna Kutcher’s Instagram Lab + Stay up with it week to week. (I’ve been wanting to try this course for a while)

Right now I am focusing on maintaining quality content and growing my platforms rather than building my income right now. My blog is bringing in enough that I can pay to run the blog with lots of extra to reinvest into it so I’d rather focus on serving my readers than making a profit.

March Blog Income:

My Biggest Wins this Year (What Worked):

Tripwire products:

This year after attending Activate EBA Live blogging conference I decided to launch a few tripwire products. These are product promotions that are activated after someone opts into my email list via a freebie. It gives them 20 minutes to snag one of my products at the lowest price they will ever see.

For example, I offer my Mom to Momtrepreneur Ebook/guide for only $7 instead of the regular $15, and my Ultimate blog planner for only $9 instead of $20.

These tripwire products have allowed me to add about $150 each month in income which is awesome! They also allow me to instantly make money off my subscribers before ever sending them an email!

Finishing EBA:

In case you’re new here, EBA is Elite Blog Academy and it is the blogging course that I took to really explode my blog and taught me how to actually make money.

It is a 12 unit course and took me way longer than it should have to finish (I started over twice!) but this year I finally finished it and boy, I can tell you this pricey course was worth EVERY PENNY!

It was able to guide me through how to grow my blog like a business and left me with an action plan for the future. It is the reason I am making money today and in the future!

If you have your own blog or want to start one I highly suggest purchasing EBA. The thing is it only opens up for enrollment once a YEAR so your best bet is to join the waiting list now. You can join it here.

Seriously EBA will change your life. It changed mine.

Activate EBA Live blogging conference:

Attending Activate (EBA Live) was a game changer for me this year.

I learned so much and made some great connections. I left that conference totally inspired and with a bunch of new ideas (like new tripwires) to grow my blog as a business.

It was at Activate that I realized I needed to get more specific and focus on serving other mommas just like me. Since then my brand mission and clarity have been so much more clear and focused.

The conference was pretty expensive -$650 ticket plus airfare, hotel, and food. Totaling way over $1000 but I am 100% going to do it again plus attend way more blog conferences.

My Rebrand from Life on Waller to Cassie Scroggins:

Towards the beginning of this year, I rebranded my diy and mommy blog, Life on Waller, to my self branded blog Cassie Scroggins. I felt like having a self-branded blog allowed me to expand my blog and let it encompass me as an authority rather than all my projects.

Since the rebrand, I have been much happier with where my blog is going an feel like I can take my blog in whatever direction I choose because I am the brand. So whatever direction I choose to go in the future is what my blog will encompass.

My Biggest Misses This Year (What Didn’t Work):

My Rebrand, sort of.

Although my rebrand was one of the best things I did for my blog this year, the one downfall of the rebrand was the hit it took on my income.

My ad revenue and RPMs dropped dramatically right after I rebranded because advertisers see my new domain as a “new site” altogether and therefore only bid smaller amounts on ads. It’s like my site was uncharted territory because even though lifeonwaller.com had a good traffic record, there was no record for Cassiescroggins.com.

They are the exact same site but to the advertisers, they aren’t.

So, where ads make up a huge part of my income each month, it has simply taken time for my RPMs to go up. And once my “new blog” hits that 1-year mark, it won’t be seen as new anymore which means a bigger increase in revenue for me!

Productivity:

If you’ve followed along and read many of my income reports you will probably come to find that 1, I travel a lot. And 2, I am horrible at being any kind of productive when I’m away from home.

Living in Kentucky with our families out west we have been very blessed to be able to go home every few months. Even for months at a time. But I have come to realize that I DO NOT WORK WHEN I’M AWAY! I always plan to but I just don’t.

I know, it’s a huge flaw of mine.

And the other hard thing is that I am really awful at getting motivated again after I return home. After living the entire summer in Vegas I didn’t get my butt back into gear until late Septemeber! It was bad.

So I’ve come to realize that when I get the ball rolling in my business, I need to batch like crazy.

The hard thing is that we travel so much that it seems like every time I finally get the ball really rolling, I leave again. And enter into that cycle of not working, getting home unmotivated, finally get my butt into gear again, then leave again.

I need to be better and I really believe that if I had a team then I would stay a little more motivated. (We’ll work on growing that this year).

But for now, I need to work on my flaws, plus understand that my blog will work best if I batch like crazy while I have the engine running. So this year especially because I am about to have another baby I need to get way ahead.

Final Thoughts:

Blogging changed my life. Dare I say it saved my life. It took me from unhappy, unsatisfied, and guilt-stricken to the best mom and wife, and the happiest I have ever been. Not because of the money but because I built this.

I built my own business from the ground up and am living my dream life. The life where I can stay home and raise my babies while I make money from home and serve others.

I’ve found new passions in business and marketing and it has brought me so much joy to be doing something for ME! I am so stoked to see what 2019 has in store and I’m sure it can only go up from here!

Blog Goals For Next Year:

Hit my first $5,000 blog income month!
Hit 150,000 pageviews a month!
Grow my list to 30k subscribers!

I’ve got big goals this year for my blog! So big in fact that they totally scare me. But I heard that the best goals, the ones that help you reach your big dreams are the ones that scare you. So here’s to 2019, big goals, and doing things scared!

The Comments

Ashley M Dahdona

January 29, 2019

Girl that is amazing! Thank you so much for sharing. I totally understand getting the ball rolling. I made plans to start my blog in July. Since then I have posted 3 posts. I hope you hit your goals (im sure you will)

Reply