Months 1-6: Minimalism Blogger Income Report

Written By Ema Hidlebaugh
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My full legal disclaimer is here if you fancy some light bedtime reading :)

Becoming a minimalism blogger was so much more involved, fascinating and complicated than I ever imagined.

One of the most helpful resources for me as a new blogger was finding blog income reports that other bloggers had very generously taken the time to compile.

They’re called blog income reports but I was mostly interested in the other behind the scenes info - lessons learned, blogging strategies and what blogging courses they recommended.

So whilst my income is $0.00 at the six month mark I still wanted to put this blog report together, & pay back the kindness of all the bloggers who came before me and let me know what to expect.


Month 1

Month 2

Month 3

Month 4

Month 5

Month 6

Results

Lessons Learned

Future Goals

Conclusion

Month 1 - February 2021

General Notes

  • I went back to work after parental leave at the start of the 2021. I expected to feel absolutely exhausted every minute of every day - but the opposite happened! Taking the time to use my brain during the day actually energized me and I was able to be a much happier and more fun Mum. Willow was 19 months old at this point.

  • After about 6 weeks of getting used to our new routine, I felt ready to take on a new creative project.

  • Minimize My Mess was 9 months old on Instagram and I was getting into the flow of posting daily content.

  • I did a poll in my Instagram stories asking if people were still interested in reading blogs. 59% of people responded with a big fat “no” ...which for some reason I took as a positive sign to start one - ha!

  • The deciding factor for me was when I realized that whilst I don’t seek out specific blogs to read, I was actually reading blog posts almost every time I looked something up on Google.

Tasks Completed in Month 1 of Blogging

  • Buy domain - I did a brief review and chose Domain.com. I think it would have been a lot easier to just buy the domain via Squarespace. Adding DNS records to connect the two was confusing.

  • Set up website - I went with Squarespace because I love the professional look you can achieve without having to code

  • Sign up for Google my business

  • Set up Google Search Console

  • Linked Google Analytics to my site

  • Wrote 3 posts / 8.5k words:

Blogging Resources I Discovered in Month 1

Blogging Stats - Month 1

  • Domain authority: 0 - Your DA is a score out of 100 that represents how much Google trusts your site, mostly based on how many other websites link back to you. The more backlinks you have, the more trustworthy you are (DA pulled from Ubersuggest)

  • Visits: 17

    • From direct (clicking on a link, bookmark, or typing the web address in): 12

    • From Social: 4

      • Facebook: 2

      • Instagram: 2

    • Referral (sent by another website, or Google mobile): 0

    • Search (from search engines such as Google, Bing, etc.): 1

  • Email list sign up: 1 (I’m pretty sure this was from my Mum, lol. If you want to join my Mum & co and receive weekly emails, click on the pink box below!)

  • Email sign up conversion rate: 5.56%

  • Number of keywords (ranking in top 100 in Google): 0

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Blogging Expenses - Month 1

Blogging Income - Month 1

Zilch :)

Month 2 - March 2021

Tasks Completed in Month 2 of Blogging

Blogging Resources I Discovered in Month 2

  • I signed up to HARO as a source and got into the habit of reading the emails they send every week day to see if there’s anything I can send a quote for.

Blogging Stats - Month 2

  • Domain authority: 0

  • Visits: 232

    • From direct: 93

    • From Social: 19

      • Facebook: 20

      • Instagram: 85

      • Pinterest: 3

    • Referral: 0

    • Search: 30

  • Email list sign up: 18

  • Email sign up conversion rate: 3.38%

  • Number of keywords: 4

Blogging Expenses - Month 2

TOTAL $0

Blogging Income - Month 2

Zero :)

Month 3 - April 2021

General Notes

  • I did a round up of all of my favourite 79 quotes from industry thought leaders. I reached out to everyone featured to thank them for their inspirational words, and was so honoured when Courtney Carver of Be More With Less & Project 333 fame responded! She was even generous enough to include my little minimalism blog in her weekend favourites email, which caused a 64,850% increase in traffic!!!

Tasks Completed in Month 3 of Blogging

Blogging Resources I Discovered in Month 3

  • I signed up for lifetime access to Neil Patel’s keyword research tool, UberSuggest. I love that it’s a one off payment and how regularly they add new features.

  • I joined my first free online summit - sorry, I don’t remember the name of the first one - but they are run all of the time as they are great ways for businesses to grow their email list and provide value for free. The premise is that the free ticket usually includes 2-8 speakers a day. Their talks are available to watch for 24 hours or so. Each speaker usually offers an opt in bonus if you sign up to their email list. If you want to pay for VIP membership, you get extended time to watch, and usually some extra digital products thrown is as a bonus.

  • My favourite speaker was Monica Froese, a digital product expert. She also has a podcast so I started binge listening to it. She really made me rethink the purpose of a blog and made me feel empowered to start turning this into a business.

  • I upgraded from the free version to the pro version of Canva. Canva is an app / website where you can easily create graphics and documents. This is definitely a luxury because I could have made the free version work for longer - it’s so good. However, the Pro version saves me a lot of time though so I’m happy I upgraded. My favourite features are the background remover, being able to save all 6 of my brand colours, being able to resize images for different platforms, and being able to organize using folders.

Blogging Stats - Month 3

  • Domain authority: 0

  • Visits: 2498 (A huge jump up based on Courtney Carver sharing my post!)

    • From direct: 455

    • From Social: 590

      • Facebook: 130

      • Instagram: 439

      • Pinterest: 13

    • Referral: 1388

      • BeMoreWithLess.com: 1387

    • Search: 64

  • Email list sign up: 104

  • Email sign up conversion rate: 3.01%

  • Number of keywords: 32

Blogging Expenses - Month 3

  • Lifetime membership with UberSuggest keyword tool - $290 CAD

  • Canva PRO subscription - 17 CAD

  • TOTAL $307

Blogging Income - Month 3

Naught :)

Month 4 - May 2021

General Notes

  • I decided to stop promoting blog content on Pinterest, Facebook & Twitter as the ROI was not worth it. I like to keep things as minimal and easy as possible in every area of my life, so it was lovely having less to do!

Tasks Completed in Month 4 of Blogging

Blogging Resources I Discovered in Month 4

  • I invested in the Stupid Simple SEO course by Mike Pearson. It was a bit of an impulse buy, but overall I’m pleased that I did it. I knew a lot of the information already at this point but after months of second guessing myself, it was so nice to have a detailed process laid out for me. And there was one SEO keyword trick that was a game changer. The thing that really made the cost worthwhile is being able to join the Facebook group for students. It’s very active and informative - I check it out every day. Another big bonus was the clarity the course gave me- I can forget all of the little things for now, and just concentrate on creating content. I have given myself a target of writing 100k words by the end of the year. You can watch a free SEO training by Mike here.

  • I bought the Email Marketing Fairy by copywriter, Kate Doster. I love how she writes, and all of her free courses so buying this email marketing template bundle was a no brainer. I love her message about it being a privilege to be on your list. Unsubscribes are expected, and are a good thing! You want to be serving your people with your email list. It’s helped me be a lot more authentic and not worry about unsubscribes.

  • I signed up for the Empowered Business Box subscription by Monica Froese. I found the Canva templates helpful but the other templates were for Elementor or Leadpages, neither of which I use, so I cancelled my subscription after 3 months. It was especially helpful to have a sales page template though, it helped me set up an opt in page for my capsule wardrobe freebie. I’ll be able to copy and tweak that page for any future offering so it was well worth it. I think that Monica sells specific templates too, so she will be my first stop for anything sales funnel / tripwire related.

  • This was the first month I used the outline method to write blog posts, and it made a big difference. It cut down on procrastination and distractions. I did my keyword research as usual, then wrote everything out that I wanted to mention in bullet point form. Then I go through and cherry pick which point I was to write about next.

  • Somewhere around here I learned to manually check keywords in google to see what sort on content came up. Google basically shows us what sort of content they value the most for that keyword. If the first page is full of physical products to buy, Youtube videos, etc., it’s unlikely that my listicle blog post is going to rank well.

Blogging Stats - Month 4

  • Domain authority: 3

  • Visits: 650

    • From direct: 333

    • From Social: 218

      • Facebook: 29

      • Instagram: 180

      • Pinterest: 6

    • Referral: 41

      • BeMoreWithLess.com: 30

    • Search: 56

  • Email list sign up: 43

  • Email sign up conversion rate: 3.41%

  • Number of keywords: 266


Blogging Expenses - Month 4

  • Empowered Business subscription box - $34 CAD

  • Email Marketing Fairy - $36 CAD

  • Stupid Simple SEO Course - $617 CAD

  • Canva PRO subscription - $17 CAD

  • TOTAL $704 CAD

Blogging Income - Month 4

Nowt :)

Month 5 - June 2021

Tasks Completed in Month 5 of Blogging

Blogging Resources I Discovered in Month 5

  • I really enjoyed learning about the keyword golden ratio by Doug Cunnington. I added it as a column in my keyword research spreadsheet to help me prioritize what topic to write on next.

  • I started to binge watch the Income School channel on YouTube. It reiterated that I should be concentrating on writing content above all else right now, and validated that slow growth is normal.

  • Another tidbit I learned was that it’s a good sign when Quroa / forum / Reddit posts are ranking on the first page of a keyword. There’s a chance that a quality piece of dedicated content could rank in it’s place.

Blogging Stats - Month 5

  • Domain authority: 3

  • Visits: 613

    • From direct: 324

    • From Social: 148

      • Facebook: 2

      • Instagram: 132

      • Pinterest: 13

    • Referral: 68

      • BeMoreWithLess.com: 10

      • Google mobile: 54

    • Search: 72

  • Email list sign up: 61

  • Email sign up conversion rate: 4.75%

  • Number of keywords: 654

Blogging Expenses - Month 5

  • Empowered Business subscription box - $34 CAD

  • Canva PRO subscription - $17 CAD

  • TOTAL - $51 CAD

Blogging Income - Month 5

Nada :)

Month 6 - July 2021

Tasks Completed in Month 6 of Blogging

Blogging Resources I Discovered in Month 6

  • My favourite free online summit so far has been The Big 3 Summit by Kate Doster. I think she brings out the best in everyone because every speaker was on the ball and sharing really actionable tips.

  • There were two speakers that I really needed to hear. The first was Hope from Under The Median. She shared all about setting up her YouTube channel and was so warm and encouraging that I added creating a YouTube channel to my to do list!

  • The second speaker was Carly Campbell who spoke about Pinterest in such a refreshing way that it revived my interest. Everything I’ve read about Pinterest told me that I had to pay for Tailwind and share as many pins a day as possible. Carly gets great success from manually pinning once a week and shares straight-forward, clear advice. I signed up to her Pinterest template subscription on a whim, but I’m so pleased I did! She provides a vault of Pinterest training and info, and there’s a great facebook group included. I’ve seen Carly answer nearly every question with a personalized, in-depth video.


Blogging Stats - Month 6

  • Domain authority: 5

  • Visits: 955

    • From direct: 472

    • From Social: 310

      • Facebook: 22

      • Instagram: 260

      • Pinterest: 22

    • Referral: 58

      • Google mobile 46

    • Search: 115

  • Email list sign up: 82

  • Email sign up conversion rate: 4.44%

  • Number of keywords: 530

Blogging Expenses - Month 6

  • Empowered Business subscription box - $34 CAD

  • Canva PRO subscription - 16.99 CAD

  • Pin Template subscription - $23 CAD

  • TOTAL - $74 CAD

Blogging Income - Month 6

Still $0!

Results

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Total expenses: $1388

Total income: $0

(…and that’s ok! I won’t be offering any paid products or services until I set up a business officially)

Lessons Learned in my first 6 months

I’m very much of the opinion that everything happens for a reason, and I’m happy with where I am, 6 months in. I still feel like a noob so I’m sure there are many more lessons to learn in the next few months and years.

If I had to nitpick, this is what I’d do differently.

  • Growth Rate Expectations - I wish I’d known that growing traffic is such a slow process. I was spoiled by lots of traffic early on from the iconic Courtney Carver sharing my post from her huge account. Seeing my numbers fall after that felt like a failure, when in reality things were still on course. Traffic from SEO can take 6+ months to start trickling in, and traffic from pins can take 8+ months.

  • Outline method - I love how much easier writing blog posts is since I started creating outlines to work from. I’m such a cherry picker so this method really suits my writing style.

  • SEO Course - If I was to start again, I would have skipped teaching myself SEO and just invested in the Stupid Simple SEO course right at the start.

  • Pinterest - I would have stuck with Pinterest this whole time, and just pinned when I was able to. Like I said, it can take 8+ months for pins to bring you traffic, so that’s traffic that I’ll likely miss out on from with my pinning break.

  • Monetization - I didn’t even consider making money with a blog when I first started it. I think a lot of that was imposter syndrome to be honest. Many experts, Monica Froese especially, have taught me that we should be making money for the knowledge and valuable information that we share. I’m relieved that I only got a few months in before realizing this, and was able to build it into my blog plans for the future.

  • Budget - I’ve spent over $1300 CAD on this blog in the first six months. I would be more intentional about this spending if I was starting over again by giving myself a budget of $200 a month to work with. I could have saved money but the software, education & templates that I’ve invested in have all saved me time. I’d suggest that any new blogger sets themselves a realistic monthly budget.

  • Distractions - I would concentrate less on the little things, and spend 90% of my time on writing.

  • Dedicated blogging time & space - In the first few months I would type away every night on the sofa, while we watched a show in the background. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t getting much done and it didn’t take long for me to feel burnt out. Now I sit a my desk to write on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and for a couple of hours on Sundays when possible. I’m more productive and things feel much more balanced.

Goals

  • Finish the How to Become a Minimalist in 3 Days challenge on Instagram and Tiktok

  • Write 100k words by the end of 2021

  • Set up a welcoming series of emails for my email list

  • Set up business

  • Create digital products to sell

  • Capsule wardrobe masterclass / IG live series

  • Guest post on other sites

  • Set up monthly email challenges

  • Continue sharing content via Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest

  • Start a YouTube channel

  • Offer capsule wardrobe package

  • Build up organic traffic via SEO & Pinterest

  • Create specific email opt ins for all popular posts

  • Set up ads

  • Start content reviews as posts hit 9-12 months old

  • Learn more about affiliate marketing

Conclusion

Overall, if you’re umming and ahhing about whether to start a blog, I would say get started! It’s not a get rich quick scheme by any means, but it’s given me such a wonderful sense of purpose in my life. It’s been absolutely exhilarating to write about topics that I love so much, and help a few folks along the way.

As a recovering perfectionist, it’s been a learning exercise to implement new things on the go, even when they might not be quite right, just yet. Don’t wait for perfection, you’re perfect as you are! Get started and then edit, pivot and build upon at a later date if needed.

I’m an open book so let me know know if there’s any other information you’d be interested in seeing in future minimalism blogger income reports.

If this was helpful for you, I’d be so grateful if you would share it - as you can see, every visit counts!

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Ema Hidlebaugh http://www.MinimizeMyMess.com
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