About three months ago, I decided to end my hiatus from blogging and start posting Monday – Friday. I have a few other sites where I post, but 95% of my daily posts are on RyanWaggoner.com.
I originally started blogging just for the sake of improving my writing and building a personal brand, but after I started getting some decent traffic, I decided to try some monetization. Thirty minutes of setting up Adsense and I was done. I had already been messing around with Amazon, but I started getting more serious about it.
Since then, my income has been steadily climbing each month. It’s not enough to pay my rent or anything, but it’s getting to be enough for a few nice dinners out. October was my biggest month yet:
| Adsense | Amazon | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| August | $0 | $41.40 | $41.40 |
| September | $78.13 | $18.15 | $96.28 |
| October | $104.90 | $80.33 | $185.23 |
So not too bad. No, I can’t live off of it yet, but it’s healthy growth and I’m excited to see where I can go from here.
Unfortunately, the outlook for November isn’t looking so rosy. Because of our launch of 21times on Nov 1st, I haven’t had the time or energy to really devote to the site like I have for the last few months. However, I’m streamlining a few other things in my life so that I can continue to work on this site and see where it’ll go. Lots of folks make a living on their blog; why not me? I’m in no rush, either…I don’t mind growing slowly for five years.
But growly slowly for the long-term isn’t really actionable, so I’ve got a three-pronged approach for the next couple months to see how I can improve upon these numbers:
- Go through the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog ebook from Problogger (loads of good stuff in here)
- Seek out some guest post opportunities (I was on Lifehacker a couple months ago and it brought some good traffic)
- Experiment with other monetization strategies, including affiliate programs and direct sponsorship sales.
If you have any suggestions on how I can improve the value of my blog to you, please post in the comments!