How I Made $113,235 In July Blogging

Welcome to July’s business income report where I show you how I made money online last month. It’s time to look at this month’s update and see how I did. If you’re new to Making Sense of Cents, you may be wondering why I would want to publish my income report each month. You can simply skip…

Written By:

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Last Updated: April 17, 2021

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

Welcome to July’s business income report where I show you how I made money online last month. It’s time to look at this month’s update and see how I did.

If you’re new to Making Sense of Cents, you may be wondering why I would want to publish my income report each month. You can simply skip to the next section if you’re not new here.

This all started out as my extra income report because, in the beginning, it was all about the money I was earning from my side jobs. In my side income reports from the beginning, I included all of the income I made except for what I made at my day job.

However, I left my day job as a financial analyst in October of 2013 and now my monthly income reports consist of the many ways I earn a living.

Many have asked why I would ever want to publicly post my income each month. Some think I’m crazy, whereas some are glad I’m open about what I’m doing. Whatever you think, I enjoy publishing my monthly online income reports and I share them publicly for three main reasons:

Before I started blogging, I knew nothing about side hustling and making money online. I didn’t think side jobs were worth the effort and I thought the only way to significantly increase your income was through raises at your full-time job. If it weren’t for others publishing their monthly income reports, I don’t know if I would have ever tried side hustling. I want to help show others the positives in side hustling and how it can change a person’s life. There are many different ways to make money online, and I like to share my story each month to help motivate others to improve their financial situation by making more money.
Secondly, I like to publish my income reports because it’s a way for me to look back, learn from my mistakes and actually see what areas need improvement. I use my monthly income reports as a way to track how I’ve done and I treat it sort of like a journal.
Lastly, I like to show others that making side money is possible and that there are many legitimate ways to make money from your home. If you are looking for information on the many ways to make money online, I published the article Monthly Income Report Roundup that showcases many successful bloggers who are kind enough to share their income with the public each month.

I know I say this every month, but it’s the truth. Life is great now that I’m my own boss and a full-time blogger. I look forward to each and every day and it’s a wonderful feeling. I truly love waking up every single morning.

Above are just a few of the reasons for why I enjoy publishing my monthly income reports. I like to show others that you don’t have to hate your job and hate your life. You can make changes to your life and make money in a way that allows you to truly enjoy the life you are living. I’m not saying that you have to LOVE your job, I’m just saying that your job should, at least, allow you to do what you like to do outside of work (whether that be spending time with loved ones, painting, hiking, etc.).

How was business income in July of 2018?

I earned $113,235 blogging and online in July of 2018, before expenses.

Before we begin, can you share in the comments if you’re still enjoying these income report updates? I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I should continue with these. I enjoy them, but I want to make sure everyone else still does too! Also, please let me know if you think there’s anything else I should add, or maybe there’s something that you’d like me to stop talking about? haha!

July was a great month for Making Sense of Cents and the whole blogging business. I earned a great income and enjoyed my month.

The last few months have seen a similar income level (around $100,000) due to the normal summer blogging slump. It should pick up again sometime around the fall. This is for many reasons such as me just being busier over the last few months (we had visitors staying on our boat almost all of July!), as well as the summer months usually just being a little bit slower for personal finance websites.

My biggest goal for the year is to still improve my work-life balance. I’m getting better and better, but I’m still nowhere near perfect. My goal is to work less than 10 hours a week over the summer months.

Currently, I am working on creating my next blogging-related product to sell, which will be about how to earn money through sponsored posts on a blog. You can sign up for the waitlist here. I was supposed to launch this earlier in 2018, but since we found the boat sooner than expected, I haven’t had much time to work on it. Things should become more “normal” with the boat soon, which means that things may start to slow down (they won’t slow down completely but that’s just #boatlife for ya!).

EDIT: November 23, 2018 – Making Sense of Sponsored Posts is available! Learn how I made my first blogging income, and how I’m now making $10,000-$20,000 a month with sponsored partnerships!

Anyway, to get back to my monthly income…

I never thought that I would ever earn over $1,000,000 a year, especially with a blogging business.

While my income levels are high, I do want everyone to remember that I started at $0 a month and have grown my income to where it’s at now through a lot of hard work.

Before you think that $100 or even $1,000 is out of your league, you should remember that it is not!

I, myself, used to think that it would be great to one day earn $1,000 online and through my blog. I looked up to many bloggers who were earning over $10,000 a month, and I thought it was impossible.

Now, I’m here to show everyone that it is possible! Through hard work and dedication, you never know where life may lead you.

As you can see, July was another great month. It was great on all fronts – blogging, course-wise, life, and everything else. The business is doing well and I’m very happy with it. I’ve been catching myself saying “Life is really good” a LOT. And, I truly mean it. Life is really good!

My business is growing, I have tons of amazing ideas for this year, and I am very excited about everything. I really love my business and I don’t know where I would be without it.

My Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course is still doing very well as I had many new students join the course recently. It’s still not showing any signs of slowing down – and this is still without any guest posts, webinars, etc.

If you are interested in starting a blog of your own, I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own for cheap, starting at only $2.75 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting. In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free website domain (a $15 value) through my Bluehost link if you purchase, at least, 12 months of blog hosting. FYI, if you are asking yourself “can you make money blogging?” – my top tip is to be self-hosted. This is essential if you want to monetize your blog as you will appear more professional and this will help you monetize your blog tremendously. My blogging income did not take off until after I switched to self-hosted WordPress.

*This chart only goes back to January 2017. You can find all of my income reports here.*

Breakout of July 2018 income – $113,235.51

In July of 2018, I earned $113,235.51 from my blogging business. Below is how my income breaks apart in the different business income categories:

Affiliate income – $68,675.51 total:
- Bluehost (check out my tutorial on how to start a blog) – $42,280.00
- Survey companies – $9,125.50
- Six Figure Blogger – $1,174.73
- Ebates – $500.00 (estimated, as this is a tiered affiliate program)
- ConvertKit – $387.00
- Internet Scoping School – $354.48
- Bookkeeper Business Academy – $335.00
- How To Work From Home Selling On Amazon FBA – $235.60
- $5 Meal Plan – $148.20
- Miscellaneous affiliates – $14,135.00 (affiliate promotions that I’ve been asked not to publicly share the exact figure of for company privacy reasons, as well as some small affiliate earnings are mixed in here).
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – $24,947.00
Sponsorships and advertising – $16,400.00
Display advertising – $3,213.00

Total: $113,235.51

The income amount above is for the month of July and before any fees or expenses (some fees and expenses that lower the amount above total around $5,000 (rounded up), which include virtual assistants, Teachable course platform fee, technical assistance, newsletter expenses, PayPal and Stripe transaction fees, etc., however, this does not include taxes) being taken out. I also had expenses for the affiliates promoting my course, which totaled $4,826.25. After expenses and fees, I earned approximately $103,409.

Please keep in mind that I work for myself when you read my monthly income report. This means I have to cover taxes (which are over 30%), health insurance, and all other benefits/expenses that an employer may provide.

Check out The Ultimate Guide To Making Money Blogging for all of the different ways you can make money through a blog.

Below are some of my other monthly online income reports. I publish an online income update every month but only included some of them below as it would be a very long list. If you head on over to my income page you can find all of my monthly income reports from the past few years.

$672 extra in May (2012)
$6,523 in January Extra Income (2013)
$11,927 in October Income – I Finally Left My Job (2013)
$12,640 in January Income (2014)
$23,758 in February Income – My Monthly Online Income Report (2015)
How I Made $300,000 Online In 2015
How I Made $979,321 In 2016
How I Made $1,536,732 In 2017

Comparisons and 2018 business income total:

Total income in July of 2018: $113,235
Total income in June of 2018: $100,324
Difference from the previous month: +12,911
Total in 2018: $990,031

Blog news

Making Sense of Cents is doing very well and I’m happy with everything.

Next month, I’ll be attending FinCon in Orlando, Florida, and I’m super excited! It’s the only blog conference I’ve been to, and this will be my 6th time attending. If you’ll be there, tell me in the comments below what your goals are. I’d love to hear what everyone plans on working on while there!

July was another extremely busy month for us (I can’t wait until I can stop saying that, haha!). We closed on our sailing catamaran in May and have been working on something boat-related the majority of pretty much every single day. Things will slow down eventually, but there is definitely a lot of stuff to do when you buy a boat and move onto it!

It was a crazy month, which meant that not much work was done on the business.

And, I know that the craziness of living on a boat has only just started. Due to this, I’m working on getting further ahead with more content. I realize that we will be extremely busy moving aboard and getting the hang of everything, so being ahead in content is key right now so that I can focus as much time as I can towards #boatlife.

Overall, traffic for the month was around 500,000 page views.

Below are several other business and blog-related updates:

I am creating a new series where I will help readers with specific financial questions, and tutorials to go along with them. Topics such as: How to open a bank account, How to write a check, Finding an online bank, Building and creating an investment account, etc. What other topics would you like to see me cover?
I am thinking about adding some sort of group coaching session to my business sometime in the future. While I used to do individual coaching, my time was limited. Group coaching would allow me to help more people and to also create a great support group for bloggers.
My community group for Making Sense of Cents is continuing to grow. This is a Facebook group in which you can seek advice from other readers on all sorts of topics such as finance, blogging, travel, running a business, and so on. There are already over 12,000 members!
I released my How To Start A Blog FREE Course. If you’ve been wanting to start a blog, then check this out. I created this email course for those who are interested in starting a blog, but haven’t done so yet. The course is free, and over 40,000 people have already signed up. Thank you, everyone, for the kind emails about how great the course is. Glad everyone is enjoying it!
Due to how well my first free course went, I also created the free Master Your Money email course. It’s full of great money management lessons and financial worksheets (such as a free budget template), and I’m loving the positive response from this email course as well.

Just a quick note before we continue. I created a time-saving cheat sheet that can help you increase your affiliate income. Sign up below!

Popular new posts on Making Sense of Cents last month:

Featured Question: How can a blogger build relationships and network?

I feature one question from a reader in each monthly income report. Please leave a comment below if you have a question that you would like me to answer.

Networking is very important if you want to create a successful blog. Bloggers should be open to making blogging friends, attending blog conferences, sharing other’s content with their readers, and more.

However, I believe that many bloggers skip this area, which holds many of them back. Many bloggers see other bloggers as competition, and this is a bad thought for a blogger to have.

Networking can help you enjoy blogging more, learn new things about blogging, learn how to make money blogging, make great connections, and more. If you want to make money blogging like I have done, then you will want to network with others! After all, networking is the reason why I learned how to make money blogging!

Here are my tips to build relationships as a blogger:

Attend blog conferences and meetups. Attending networking events in person is great because that’s usually where you can build great connections with others. Every single year, I attend Fincon. It’s a great conference for a blogger in pretty much any niche, but it’s mainly for financial bloggers. However, the topics that are covered at the conference can be applicable to pretty much any niche, as there are experts from all industries there to teach you how to improve your blog in so many different ways. This will be my 6th Fincon and I enjoy it every single time! If you’re interested in going, you can learn more about it here.
Comment on blogs. A super easy way to network with another blogger is to comment on their blog posts, talk to them on social media, reply to their newsletter emails, and so on. This is so easy to do!
Share articles. I share other blogger’s articles all the time and every single day. I do this because there’s so much great content out there, and I want to help my readers find it! This is also a great way to show other bloggers that they have great content, and to help them promote their blog as well. This can be a great way to network with other bloggers as it’s something that other bloggers notice.
Be active in Facebook groups. There are Facebook groups for pretty much everything these days. You can join groups for bloggers, digital nomads, those who just want Pinterest tips, and so on. By joining Facebook groups, you can connect with others who are interested in the same things as you are.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to network with bloggers and other people in the blogging industry.

There are so many ways to network and to build relationships, and the best way is to be natural and treat it like building a “normal” friendship. You can start off really simply by commenting on a person’s blog and sharing their articles. Then, you eventually may want to just interact with them on social media, attend blogging conferences, and so on. You can build relationships with just those in your niche, somewhat related niches, or people who are doing things in life that you’re interested in.

The key is to be genuine and to give more than you take, which are the two main things I always tell people when it comes to networking. I receive so many emails every day from people who clearly aren’t genuine and it’s very easy to see.

You shouldn’t be emailing other bloggers and people in the industry demanding that they do something for you – that is just not how networking works. Instead, you should find ways that you can genuinely help them.

Past featured questions:

My plans for my blog and my business.

Plans and goals can help you run a successful business. I believe that working towards a goal can help keep a person motivated too.

Below are some of the areas I am currently working on:

Get at least three months ahead on Making Sense of Cents posts. I am currently less than one month ahead. I’ve definitely fallen behind ever since we got the boat! I plan on using August to catch back up in content. Being ahead in content makes life much more enjoyable because I can focus on other things knowing that the majority of my writing work is already done.
Grow Making Sense of Cents to 1,000,000 monthly page views. I would love to help more readers, see even more engagement, have higher traffic, and so on. I love my blog and I would love to see it grow! I’m hoping to see at least 1,000,000 monthly page views by the end of 2018.
Create two more products to sell. In 2016, I created Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, and that has completely changed my life and my business. I want to create two more products to sell in 2018 so that I can continue to diversify my income. I have some plans in store and I’m excited to finally start creating more products!
Grow to 150,000 email subscribers. I’m hoping to see at least 150,000 email subscribers by the end of 2018.
Work less than 20 hours per week. For the most part, I am working less than 40 hours per week. However, there are some weeks when I spend all day and night on the laptop, not even sure where the day went. Due to that, I would like to continue to work on a better work/life balance.
Have fun. Okay, so this isn’t really a goal that is quantifiable or something that I’ll track, haha, but I am really looking forward to 2018! 🙂

Affiliate income results.

In July of 2018, I earned $68,675 in affiliate income, as outlined earlier in this blog income report.

Earning affiliate income is something that I’m extremely grateful for, especially lately. We have been so busy the last several months and I haven’t spent as much time towards the business as I would normally like.

Even though I am spending less time on the business, I am still earning a great income each month and this allows me to focus on a better work-life balance.

I’m a very big fan of affiliate income, of course. It’s something that I enjoy due to how passive it can be. It makes full-time traveling much more enjoyable when I know I can bring in an income while having fun seeing new areas.

As I always say, blogging income is not dependent on page views. Even brand new bloggers can make money through affiliate marketing. If you know the correct way to promote a product, you can succeed at affiliate marketing. This is one of the main things I teach in my Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course.

My affiliate marketing course went live in July of 2016. I’ve already had over 5,000 people enroll in the course, and I’d love to have you as a student as well!

In the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, there are 6 modules, over 30 lessons, several worksheets, bonuses, an extremely helpful and exclusive Facebook group, and more. I go through everything that you need to know about affiliate marketing, such as:

A quick introduction to affiliate marketing and how it works
The benefits of affiliate marketing
The exact steps I’ve taken to earn over $500,000 from a single blog post
How to correctly pick affiliate products to promote
The steps to increase your conversion rate
80+ affiliate program ideas for different niches
How to build trust with your readers (this is a MUST!)
The required disclosures you need to know about
The major tool you need for affiliate marketing
The many different strategies to promote your affiliate links

My course is anything and everything about affiliate marketing. This course is perfect for you whether you are a new blogger or if you’ve been blogging for years, no matter what topic your blog is about, what country you live in, and so on.

I wrote this course so that it would benefit everyone, and there is so much to learn from it.

How was July for you? Are you interested in earning blogging income?

How To Start A Blog Free Email Course

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In this free course, I show you how to create a blog easily, from the technical side all the way to earning your first income and attracting readers. Join now!

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Author: Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Hey! I’m Michelle Schroeder-Gardner and I am the founder of Making Sense of Cents. I’m passionate about all things personal finance, side hustles, making extra money, and online businesses. I have been featured in major publications such as Forbes, CNBC, Time, and Business Insider. Learn more here.