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August 2018 Income Report

In celebration of my two-year anniversary of blogging, I finally am going to start doing income reports. The reason is because exactly two years ago I had no idea what a blog even was. Nor was I aware of the fact that you can make a full-time income working from home. I have been a bartender for the last 15 years, so the idea of making that kind of many doing anything sounded absolutely insane to me. Then, I read an income report from a blogger. I was beyond floored. No idea.

But now, two years later, I see the importance of sharing income reports because I will not be the only person who had no idea. And it is because someone was brave enough to share their income report. It goes beyond just how much a blogger makes to spark an interest. Income reports give you the exact tools that are working RIGHT NOW. Which affiliates are necessary.

Like anything else in life, there is no “one size fits all” for anything. I may make most of my money from affiliates, but you might use all the same tools and find the same affiliates, but a majority of YOUR money is stemming from digital product sales. So, you just gotta go with your gut, learn from someone who is a few steps ahead of you that can guide you in the right direction, then you will have to do the trial and error on your own. See which things work for you.

Books & Courses I Used In The Very Beginning:

First I will go over the courses that I took in my first year of blogging that really taught me everything I needed to know. Plus these are great women to have behind you:)

• What Matters To Mommy (Michelle)– She has written a ton of books, and a lot of them are free reads! Check out her library and other resources. She was one of the first wonderful ladies I found online that offered free and helpful goodies. Or if she does charge, it is totally affordable.
• Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing (Michelle)– This course came to me at the perfect time. I had my blog up and running, probably had about twenty posts published already. I knew I wanted to monetize my blog ASAP, but had no idea how to start. Affiliate marketing is definitely my favorite way to make extra income through my blog, and this course will lead you step by step. She teaches you what affiliate marketing is, important technical things you need to be aware of with affiliate links, and how to legally be safe and comply with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). I recommend this course to anyone thinking seriously about using affiliate marketing on their blog.
• Building A Framework (Abby)– Abby has added SO much material since the initial course I paid for. She takes you step by step of how to start a profitable blog. Helps you gain traffic, and what types of posts are often shared more, how to handle social media, and so much more. There are videos walking you through the steps as well as written books, articles, and posts. She offers free and affordable sources of information that are worth checking into.
• She Means Business (Carrie)– you can read my full book report here, but this is a wonderful book to read to hear about a fellow blogger's journey to entrepreneurship. Her frame of mind and powerful thoughts will give you a boost of confidence and encouragement to follow through with your goals. And to really put yourself out there and connect with people. A fun and helpful book for any blogger.
• How To Blog For Profit: Without Selling Your Soul (Ruth)– This book is also an easy read with loads of helpful tips and blogging information to get you started out on the right foot. Highly recommend.

Working from home for me is not just about blogging. I love doing an array of different gigs and side hustles. I am going to show you how I made $2291 from all these various activities. Here we go, income report #1:

Income For August:

• Shareasale Affiliate Network: $118.
• Awin Affiliate Network: $123
• CJ Affiliate Network: $186
• Pepperjam Affiliate Network: $26
• Ebates: $75
• PoshMark( selling clothes and referring friends…use code SERADIANE82 for $5 bonus)- $90
• Siteground Hosting- $125
• Part time in home care for a man with ALS- $1000
• Pet Sitting– $110
• Barefoot Books (selling childrens books online and at book fairs)- $236
• Melaleuca (helping shoppers open up their accounts)- $533 (Every month my residual income grows!)
• CSL (donating plasma)– $100 (for two donations)

INCOME TOTAL FOR THIS MONTH: $2722

Expenses For August:

• Adobe– $29.99

This fee covers using ANY of the Adobe programs. They are all very complex so I am slowly teaching myself how to use them. Bought some books on Amazon and watch YouTube videos to figure out how to do things. I am working on creating my own fonts, upload graphic designs to sell on POD sites, edit videos through After Effects, and alter photos with Photoshop. But you would have access to ALL their programs for this price. You can call them and ask for this price if you don't automatically get it after your free trial.

• PicMonkey– pay yearly($79)-

This is the program I used for editing my photos. Since I am still learning how to use Photoshop, this is my go-to for everything else. Love PicMonkey because they are incredibly simple to use (I am in the middle of creating how to videos to help newbies:). I can store my creations on their online hub, in layers so it is easy to create templates for all your different types of social media posting.

• MiloTree– $9

This tool has helped my gain email subscribers and social media followers. Totally affordable, nice looking, not to annoying for your readers, and easy to set everything up on your site.

• Tailwind– pay yearly ($99)

Tailwind is great for every single blogger out there. If you don't use them, it doesn't cost you anything to use them for Tailwind Tribes, and this will help you gain traffic to your blog. I use them for my auto posting too now that Boardbooster has gone away, and I LOVE them so so much. It is so easy to bulk schedule, change things around if needed, and you can now use them to auto post to Instagram when you have a business account. That saves me a ton of time right there. It is a breeze posting to Instagram now, so I hope you get to use that feature too. Totally worth it. But, if not you at least need to join some Tribes and watch your traffic increase. Just make sure you are sharing as much as posting.

• IvoryMix (styled stock photos for my posts)- $11

Kayla from IvoryMix has been my go-to for beautiful styled stock photos for a year now. I have no complaints at all. She offers tons of free resources for not only photography success, but for your blog success too. She is very professional, experienced, flexible, and generous with all the freebies she wants to share with you:)

• Aweber (quarterly)- $49.99

The main reason I switch from Convertkit to Aweber was because they have integrations for Etsy, so that makes it incredibly simple to build my list through my Etsy sales, on top of my blog. The forms are easy to customize, you can tag your subscribers, send them automated messages, and more. All for a super affordable price. Would recommend these guys to all my fellow bloggers no matter what stage you are at.

• Crowdfire (paid yearly already)–

Crowdfire is my favorite Twitter follower building tool. They find people that don't follow you (to unfollow them) and help you 

TOTAL EXPENSES THIS MONTH: $277.98

Income (2722)-expenses (277.98)= $2444.02 for the grand total (before taxes).

Not bad for a stay at home mommy, huh?!

Here is what I am going to work on this next month…

I would like to continue to increase my social media following. Currently this is where my follower stats are at followed by where I would like to be by the end of the month:

• Pinterest 7,680 (want to be at 9000).

My plan for this goal is to engage more with my group boards. My problem is I am a contributor to too many group boards all at once. I feel stressed trying to keep up with the auto posting even. My intentions are to share WAY more than I post, but lately that has not been able to happen.

Since I am using Tailwind, this month I am going to pay most attention to my tribes, and then choose a board or two a day to manually pin and keep the ball rolling. I don't know where I would be without my auto-poster, but it is still important to get on there every couple of days to do some extra sharing.

Also, I am going to be more choosy with which pins I share and make sure the descriptions and hashtags are good to go.

• Twitter 3,170 (want to be at 4500)-

People have been extremely good about following back for me on Twitter. The thing to keep up with is unfollowing the people that don't follow you back in a few months, or inactive accounts. It is more critical to keep up with this on Twitter because if you follow too many or unfollow a lot all at once, your account can be suspended. I guess that makes it seem you are a robot or something. Also, once you hit 5,000 follows (following other people) if your following isn't in proportion your account will tell you that you cannot follow any more people until you gain more followers. And that is hard to do without actively following people.

SO, this is why I signed up for Crowdfire. They send you daily “prescriptions” for your Twitter account(s). They tell you which people that you follow are not following back, so you can unfollow all those accounts. They tell you who is following YOU, and you are not following back so you can go ahead and follow. They give you related posts you might wanna retweet, and ones to like. They offer people to follow that are in your niche based on your keywords and posts. And they do this everyday as part of their program. Whether you follow through with the actions or not is totally up to you, but you have someone to hold your hand and walk you through the steps of gaining an awesome Twitter following. Golly, wonder how many times I just used the word “follow” in one paragraph, lol.

• Instagram 1,300 (want to be at 2000)-

What I have found with Instagram is that everyone is super sweet in liking and commenting on posts, but following back is not as easy. Currently I am following like 5600 and only have 1300! I supposedly can do Instagram through Crowdfire, so I will figure out if I can do the same process as they do the Twitter accounts. I have been so busy with other things, so I haven't focused on that yet. Tailwind is my poster for Instagram, and since I changed over to a business account they can post for me automatically. No copy and pasting, having to check my email for notifications, just schedule and GO. Tailwind will also help you find awesome hash tags and help with stories.

For Instagram, I would like to find many more inspiring quotes to keep posting every few days. I need to go back through ALL my posts and add more hashtags too. This will get the views up for sure.

When I just had a regular Instagram account, there was a limit to how many people I could follow in one day, but since changing my account to a business account, I have not been limited in following anyone yet! So, I guess for now I will just keep on following like crazy, engage more with other people's posts, and hopefully work on unfollowing my unfollowers.

If you are just starting to build your social media following or just trying to keep it growing, I shared exactly which things I need to work on so it could possibly help you too. The social media apps that help with sharing are great, but no substitute for our human touch. The whole point of blogging is to put yourself out there and connect with people, so it is good to have some extra time to do that by using the apps, but we still gotta manually do some of the engaging with others.

***This income report was created to give you hope, show you where you could be by following some of these basic footsteps, and most of all believing in yourself and the ability to create a better life for you and your family. It is possible. Don't quit!!!

Related: Gigs-simple ways to make money from home

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