Finance Blog Income Report: How I Made £3,786 Blogging in January 2021

The last income report I shared was August 2020. I stated at the end of that post that I was unlikely to do another until there was a significant change in income level, and that was the case in January.

For the months of August 2020 (the last income report) to December 2020 the blog has averaged just short of £1,500 a month. December brought in £2,300 and overtook my previous best month which was April 2020. January has again taken things to a new high of £3,786.

Over 12 years in the making

I’m blown away by January’s revenue and while I’ve known for a long time that blogs can deliver serious income it’s still an incredible feeling to actually achieve, what to me at least, is a significant amount of money. Particularly from something which is essentially a part time job.

This site is only 2 years old. However I do think it’s worth talking about the fact that this dream, that is – an income generating blog – has been more than 12 years in the making. That was around the time that I discovered blogging, affiliate marketing and SEO. I’ve made various attempts over the years since then to create a successful blog, and failed each time. So what have I done differently this time? Firstly, I have a passion for the subject of personal finance. Covering things I’m genuinely interested in. Secondly, I just didn’t give up. Anyway, I don’t want to blabber on too much here but my main point is that most blogs fail because they give up to soon. For any bloggers who may be struggling for motivation and wondering if things are ever going to pick up – you need to be prepared to put content out there consistently and give things time, at least 12 – 24 months, before making a decision on whether or not it’s worth continuing. I’m sharing the graph below to illustrate this point.

See all that empty space in the first half of the chart? Not to mention that’s from a blogger with experience. So if you are only a few months in and not seeing much in terms of traffic or even a penny to show for your efforts don’t beat yourself up. Keep going, as success might be just around the corner!

Revenue Sources

Display Ads – £218

There’s not much to say about this really. Ad revenue is consistent and continues to grow slowly in line with traffic growth. I’m still using the Ezoic ad platform and I wont go into too much detail as I’m going to do a separate in depth review of my thoughts on the platform. I’ve been using Ezoic for a while now and while it’s not all been completely smooth sailing, overall I’m very happy with it. Plus ad revenue is far superior to what I would be earning with Adsense.

Affiliates – £1,791

January was a great month for my affiliate earnings. I’ve added a couple of new platforms which has helped. I think an increased interest from people wanting to get their finances sorted out at the start of the year has likely had an impact also. It’s not a secret, but at the same time I’m conscious of not giving away too much information here to what is, let’s face it, potential competitors – So while I’m not going to list out individual programs, if you are a fellow blogger and are struggling to identify potential affiliate platforms and programs feel free to drop me a line.

Free Share Referrals – £1,777

Wow. This is by far the largest monthly amount to date that’s come from free share referrals. Numbers were well up early on in the month, however the whole crazy GameStop ($GME) situation definitely had an impact here and I seen a significant uplift in traffic as a result. Again I’m not going to go into specifics here other than to say this amount comes from two well known UK platforms.

January 2021 Total – £3,786

Costs

My total costs for January were £270. This covers hosting, software subscriptions and premium plugins for the site. This amount obviously varies from month to month however is generally around the £200 – £400 mark.

Traffic

In January I had just over 24k page views. Which is a 100% increase on my last income report from August 2020 so that’s really encouraging. As mentioned previously there was a traffic spike around the $GME situation however traffic was strong for the whole month. Organic search traffic accounted for 95% of total traffic. So my plans to diversify my traffic sources hasn’t happened. That’s partly down to a lack of time and partly down to a lack of motivation. I know being so heavily reliant on one source of traffic is a risk, but it is without question the ultimate traffic source. I’ve tried Pinterest previously and recently made a very half assed attempt at getting going with Tiktok. Although I’m clearly too old and grumpy for that as I simply can’t stand it. So I’ll be staying well clear of that!

Plans for the next few months

For now I’m going to carry on focussing on growing my organic traffic with a vague plan to go back and put a bit more effort into Pinterest at some point. I have a never ending list of content topics to cover so getting the time to cover those is going to be the main target. Going hand in hand with new content is trying to continue to grow traffic levels. My target for the end of this year is to be at 100k page views per month. It’s ambitious but hopefully achievable.

If you’ve read this far then hopefully you’ve got something from it, whether you are a fellow blogger looking for inspiration or just being nosey! If you have any questions or just want to connect I’m always happy to chat so please feel free to get in touch.

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