Blog and home income report October 2017: How I made over £2000 working from home
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Welcome to my new MEGA monthly income reports where I share the exact amount of money I make from home each month from my blog and home.
I was sharing a home income report and a separate blog income/stats report, but now I’m going to combine the two!
I share these to show how much money can be made from home by a normal mum of two (ages 2 and 5) around mum duties and with some hard work and dedication. Before realising I could make money online and from home, I had little idea I could really make a full time income from my online activities. I believed my only options were to return to my previous job after my first maternity leave or to be a stay at home mum. I had no idea there were other options available to me.
I won’t lie. It’s not been an easy ride to get to this point and I also have no idea if it will continue. The lack of security is one very off putting thing for most people with being self-employed, but there are so many money making avenues nowadays I believe anyone can do it. I’m working on diversifying my income nowadays so I have more than one stream. That way, if one lets me down for a month, another should fill the void.
My target was £1500 for October and it will be for November too. £1000 would be my minimum. That’s a bit more than I could earn working five nights a week or about the same, depending on how many hours I worked. Only problem with working all those evenings in an employed job is I’m exhausted the next day and miss out on family time.
I gave up my last part time job in May 2017 to concentrate on earning from home and make money from blogging. Once I’d earned more than my employed wage for six months I decided it was time to chase my dreams and go for it! In my last job I worked from 5-8.30pm every evening Monday to Friday meaning I dashed out during dinner time, missing our family meals every evening, returning home after the children were in bed meaning I missed every bath time and bed time. It also left me no time to work on my own business in the evenings unless I stayed up really late and then felt tired every single day. My original aim was to make £1000 per month from home. In my best month this year I was able to make over £3000 from home!
Reuben is now in childcare 18 hours a week and I’ve upped that to 21 hours from next week. This gives me some dedicated business time without kiddies around. This helps me so much now and means I don’t have to work every evening as I know I have some time in the day. It is still difficult sometimes as I really need to be working 8 hours a day to get everything done and not 5.5 which is the maximum I get. Once Reubs starts school (two years to go) I’ll be able to have a much more normal working week.
Blog & Home Income Report: October 2017
This is my total before any expenses, income tax, national insurance or anything else. Here’s the breakdown:
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Over £2000 which is fantastic. Read on for a full breakdown!
Blog Income £1760.13
If you’re returning, scroll down to see the income report and stats. If you’re new, read on to see why I share my income and how much I really work on my blog!
‘If you’re wondering how much money I make from blogging, read on. I share all with you in my monthly blog income reports. These are a great resource for me to look back on and also for anyone who is interested in what I earn from blogging or what can be made.
It’s not to show off, but to show how much money can be made online from a blog. It’s important to note this is my full time income. I left my employed job and I work on my blog all the time. Like, ALL the time. It’s my passion and my focus. I have no personal social media or any distractions. I also have no social life, or very little! I devote all my spare time to my blog and website. It’s my obsession.
If I am on my phone or laptop, I am always doing something blog related. I put in 30-40 hours a week at the moment whenever I can. I sacrifice evenings with my husband to work on my website. He is now used to me not listening to him as I’m so engrossed in my laptop or phone! Once both my children are at school then I’ll work out a better work routine if my blog is still making enough money. I hope to then work in the day only and have my evenings and weekends back, if possible!’
One thing I never mention is how long it took me to monetize my blog. I always get asked how long it takes and my answer is really ‘how long is a piece of string?’
I didn’t monetize mine for three years. It was a part of my original retail business and I never knew about making money from it. I could have made money a LOT sooner if I’d have known, but I was chasing the dream of being a shopkeeper and not a professional blogger. I didn’t even know pro bloggers existed. Once I found out I changed my game plan!
That doesn’t mean it would take someone else three years.
Many bloggers set up with the sole purpose of monetizing and they make money within a couple of months. I’ve even seen bloggers share income reports after one month!
It also depends on your dedication.
If you’re going to only work 1 hour a week on your blog, you’re probably not going to make money as fast as someone who works 100 hours a week.
Monetizing a blog means your blog is a business. It takes just as much hard work as running any other business.
It also depends how many opportunities you apply for and how many you get. You might need good stats to apply for some which can take a few months to build. I actively look for work EVERY SINGLE DAY. It’s my job. It’s my income. It’s my only income, so I need the work and I need to be on it finding those opportunities.
Blogging definitely isn’t for everyone and running a business by yourself also isn’t for everyone.
I do often get the impression people think I don’t do very much and the money just magically rolls in, or that’s what many people think of bloggers in general.
My favourite quote goes along the lines of ‘entrepreneurs are the only people who work 80 hours to give up working 40’
It fits the life of a professional blogger very well too!
So here is my blog income for October 2017:
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Blog - sponsored/review/giveaway |
1679.4 |
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Referrals |
80.73 |
Blog Posts £1679.40
Not my best this year, but not bad! I charge for all blog post collaborations, even if it’s a giveaway or review. Many bloggers don’t charge for all these, but I put in just as much time and effort as any other blog post, so I charge.
Don’t work for free! I get emails daily from companies expecting me to offer my services for free. It’s taken me five years to build up my audience and it can take more than a couple of hours to write a blog post. If I accepted all these offers of work for free then I’d not make any money! I personally think it’s a bit cheeky of large companies to expect access to all my hard work without putting any value on it at all.
Referrals £80.73
My referral money is from Profit Accumulator and Nutriseed - two companies I use and thoroughly recommend.
I also have some money in my Awin account, yippee! But it hasn’t been paid yet, so this may be in one of the next income reports. I really need to make more of them and spend time applying to brands. I have won £200 from a competition they ran once and also got a sponsored post by advertising my services in their market place.
Sign up to Awin as a publisher here for access to 6000+ brands affiliate schemes!
Blog Stats:
Not too shabby, my stats are remaining pretty steady for the year. I had been dedicating a couple of hours or more of my time daily to my Instagram and Twitter, but I’m going to chill a little. It can get so overwhelming trying to keep on top of it all every day. I don’t want to get obsessed with the numbers and maybe just let the accounts be. I’ve no idea if they really help me that much anyway as I mostly work on sponsored posts which care about my DA, not my social followers.
Relevant blog posts:
4 ways to make money from your blog without Google ads
How I’m going to make £1000 a month as a Mum working from home
4 ways to find paid blog opportunities
How I save hours every week scheduling tweets with Social Oomph
4 ways to improve your domain authority (DA)
Matched betting £70.81
A pretty poor month, I was hoping to reach £100. I would have if I’d have concentrated a bit more. I lost out on two free bets at the start of the month. One day it was Monday and all of a sudden it was Thursday and my free bets only lasted 48 hours. I was just so busy and every week felt like it flew by. It’s best to check matched betting every day so this doesn’t happen as many offers/bets have time limits. I was gutted I missed a couple. But oh well. Last month I made over £200! I’ve also made over £3000 this year in total!
It’s a great way to make extra tax-free cash from home if you can spend a little time most days checking the offers and completing some. You’ll need to be organised too and keep a record of all the offers you’re completing and your profits.
I highly recommend using Profit Accumulator for matched betting as a beginner. They have so many guides and walk you through the whole process in the first few offers. If you are stuck you can ask a question in the forum and someone will get back to you. They also have a 30 day money back guarantee on their memberships, plus you can try the first couple of offers without even signing up to anything.
Click here to try Profit Accumulator today!
Previous matched betting posts:
I’ve made £300 tax free cash from home in 2 weeks and you can too!
£753.62 Matched Betting Profit Month One (and silly mistakes)
Not sure about matched betting? Make £40ish now to see if it’s for you!
Matched Betting Profit 2 Months: £1341.81
Matched betting profit after 3 months: £1706.81
Mystery tasks £4.00
I’ve only done a tiny bit of mystery shopping. I have earned a bit more, but I’ve not cashed out, so I’ll only include the figures in my income reports that have actually hit my bank balance. I’ve been concentrating more on eBay and the blog so ignored a lot of tasks.
Apps I use are Streetbees, Roamler, Task360 and BeMyEye.
You need an invite code for Roamler. Read this blog post for a great way to get a roamler invite code.
LR shop sales £58.14
A few sales in my online fashion boutique this month which is great news! There are lots of new scarves in stock and great Christmas present ideas.
Personal eBay £111.17
Time to declutter and get rid of the children’s summer clothes as they’ll not fit them next year. I continue to have 200+ items on eBay and a clutter free house!
Resell £66.93
I’ve only listed 38 resell items so far since September and I’ve sold 11 so far in total, this month I sold 7. Imagine if I could 10x the amount of resell stock I have! I just need to find a dedicated day/time to go to the charity shops to source stock and up my game!
I decided to try something new last month as I love selling on eBay and online, so it seems perfect to resell. I bought a few items from the charity shop and I’m selling them on eBay.
I used to think it was a bit immoral to buy things from charity shops and then profit from them, but I’ve had a change of view. I think it’s a win-win situation. The charity shop makes money and the more I sell, the more I’ll return to buy more things.
Plus it’s more eco-friendly to reuse goods. The other option would be to only buy new stock from wholesalers and line their pockets instead. I’d much prefer to support a charity.
Top Cashback £8.13
I LOVE Top Cashback! I check it for everything we buy.
Here are a few things I’ve got it on: Formula One MOT, gift cards from Zeek, Holiday Inns booking, our First Choice holiday, Very shopping, Car insurance, comparing car insurance, eBay, photo books, supermarket shopping, Flybe flights, car hire, home insurance.
As you can see, you can earn cashback on so many different things. Not just online shopping. I even got over £2 just for doing a comparison search for car insurance.
In 1.5 years we’ve had over £600 back on our normal household shopping.
Sign up now and save on all your online purchases!
Top Cashback blog posts:
How to earn cashback on things you already buy!
Today I saved BIG on my car insurance and MOT. Here’s how…
That’s all until my next reveal next month. If it’s over £1500 I’ll be pleased.
Thanks for reading :)