Blog and home income report February 2018

Posted on 9:00am Friday 2nd Mar 2018

Welcome to my monthly income report where I share exactly how much money I have made from home. It’s great for me to see where I’m earning the money and also to inspire others who want to earn from home. There’s a lot of debate of whether people should share income reports, but personally I love them! When I wanted to monetise my blog I read them and they inspired me to push forward and go for it. Without ever reading an income report of another blogger I wouldn’t have even known it was possible to make money from my own blog.

In my best month so far I was able to make £3210 from home and I wasn’t far off this month. This month was my best month moneywise for purely blog income though, so that’s great news.

Just so you know, if you are new here, I blog full time. Well, around my children. Reuben my youngest has 21 hours of childcare a week and then I blog as much as I can around this. I give up most evenings with my husband to blog, if I’m not at the gym. Sometimes I get up early to work and I work weekends. I never have a full day off. My laptop comes on holiday with me!

There are bloggers who say they work 2 hours a week and make millions, but I’m not one of those. I work hard every day. My husband Ben says I’m always working. I put in around 40 hours a week, but this can vary from 30 to 50 depending on my workload and our plans.

I’ve been blogging for five years in April. I didn’t monetise for three years and I only went full time one year ago, so four years in. Hopefully that puts things into perspective for you. There are bloggers who set up their blogs with the sole purpose of cashing in and they make money a lot quicker. That was never originally my intention with my blog so I got there slower than others might.

Making money from blogging is totally possible if you’re prepared to treat it like a business and put the hard work in.

As well as blogging, I make money from mystery shopping, website testing, eBay selling and also cashback. I’ll share all of these totals below.

Blog & Home Income Report: February 2018

These are my totals before any expenses, income tax, national insurance or anything else, so my total turnover for the month. My yearly business expenses are usually around £4000 and vary each month. I also save around £400 per month to cover my yearly tax, national insurance and student loan repayments, as well as save for a pension. I have a handy Excel spreadsheet that does all the calculations for me – I love Excel!

If you are planning to make money from your blog then it becomes a business and you must register as self-employed with HMRC and complete a self-assessment tax return every year. Some people choose to hire an account who can offer advice and complete the tax return on their behalf. If not, you must keep meticulous records of all your incomings and outgoings, balance your books and remember to calculate and save the correct amounts needed for income tax, national insurance contributions (class 2 and class 4) and any student loan repayments.

Here’s the breakdown of my home income for February 2018:

Blog £2399.40

This is my best ever figure for blog only income so far. This includes running giveaways, collaborative blog posts and reviews. I charge for all of them. The only time I don’t charge is if a review item is high value and I really want it or if I can do social shares only and really want the item. Blog reviews can take around 2 hours of my time so I have to value this time. Any free time I have should be spent with my children, not promoting or benefiting other companies. So for this reason I always put a value on my time. Plus it’s taken 5 years of slog to get to this point. I’m not going to give away my hard work for nothing. If a company wants to work with you then it’s because you can add value to their company. Even a review with a link will help benefit their SEO efforts. If they want to work with you, there’s a good reason. I’ll never dictate to another what to charge though and if you’re happy working for free, then do it!

Referrals £30.05

Pretty low, I’d love to get this to £100 per month regularly. Passive income is the way forward and something I need to work on. I have money in my Awin account, but it needs to clear before I can cash it in. It goes through a pending process, sometimes for a few weeks.

Matched betting £201.81

A great result for matched betting as I expected to only continue making £100 per month using it as a side hustle. There is lots more to be made if you can put more time in and learn more tactics than I have.

I 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 to see that it really does work.

Roamler / WhatUsersDo / Receipt Hog £45.90

Ooh this is a good result. I made over £10 mystery shopping with Roamler. I also started website testing and made £20 in January which was paid in February. I know I have £45 due in March for the tests I completed in February too. See my blog post link below for what exactly it is. I also cashed in £15 with Receipt Hog.

Fashion boutique sales £56.44

This is the total sales from my online fashion boutique . This used to be my main focus, but I don’t do much with it at the moment.

Personal eBay and Facebook Marketplace £270.13

A great result, but we did get a new TV so I sold our old one for £75 which bumped this up a lot. Having not bought a new TV for 8 years, they had changed quite considerably! I sold three things on Facebook Marketplace and I’m going to try this a little more. There’s more profit to be made as there are no fees. I bet they start charging one day though as they realise they could be charging seller fees! I still have 165 items left to sell on eBay and I add more as the children grow out of toys and clothes.

Resell £51.46

I still haven’t bought any new stock and not sure if I will continue with reselling. I just don’t have the time to focus on it. Perhaps it will remain a tiny side hustle if I ever spot a bargain that I think I can resell.

Top Cashback £2.79

Not a huge amount, but I have around £60 pending, just waiting for it all to clear. Each retailer has a different timescale for checking and clearing cashback, so sometimes it sits in pending for ages!

Click here to get money back on your shopping too!

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. I didn’t have to even buy anything.

In 1.5 years we’ve had over £600 back on our normal household shopping across mine and Ben’s accounts. I don’t include his in my blog post though.

FEBRUARY 2018 GRAND TOTAL: £3057.98

Blogging £2399.40
Referrals £30.05
Matched betting £201.81
Roamler / WhatUsersDo / Receipt Hog £45.90
Fashion Boutique Sales £56.44
Personal eBay & Facebook Marketplace £270.13
Reselling on eBay £51.46
Top Cashback £2.79

A really fantastic start to the year and hope it continues!