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$15,151 in March – My Monthly Online Income Report Plus Traffic Stats

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 99 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Welcome to March’s online income report where I show you how I make money online. It’s time to look at this month’s update and track how I did.

If you are wanting to start a blog of your own, read my post How To Start a Cheap WordPress Blog. It gives step by step instructions on starting your own blog at a super affordable price. You can also get a free domain by signing up through my link. Plus, you can email me at any time and I can help you along the process so that you can launch a successful money-making blog.

Background information on my monthly online income report.

If you are new here, you might be wondering why I would want to publish my online income reports each month. If you are not new here, you can just skip to the next section 🙂

This all started out as my side 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 (that was a fixed amount and boring anyways).

However, I left my day job as a financial analyst towards the end of 2013 and now my monthly income reports consist of the several different ways I bring in an income each month.

Many people have asked why I would ever want to publicly post my income each month. Some think I’m crazy, and some are glad I am 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 and promotions at your full-time job. If it weren’t for others publishing their monthly income reports each month, I don’t know if I would have ever tried side hustling. This is why I like to publish my income reports. I want to help others see 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 see what areas need improvement. It’s also entertaining to go back to older income updates and read about the interesting things I did to make money. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?
  • 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 – My Favorite Income Bloggers that showcases many awesome bloggers who are kind enough to share their income with the public each month. Just a few years ago, I didn’t think making money online was possible at all. Now, I realize that it is possible!

I know I say this every month, but it is the truth. Life is great now that I’m my own boss. I look forward to each and every work day and it is an amazing thing. Work and life balance is a real thing for me now and I truly love waking up each morning.

Above is exactly 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.).

Also, if you have any questions about making money online, you can always send me an email and I always reply back. If I haven’t covered something in this income report, I highly suggest you check out my other reports as well because I have covered A LOT of topics, including reader questions I have received. I am unable to put everything in this single post because this would then become one messy whale of a post.

 

March Income ReportHow was my online income in March?

March was a normal month for income. It was definitely a good month and I am very happy with it.

Like I said in the post Should You Outsource Tasks To Make Life Easier?, I’ve been outsourcing more yet my income is still steadily increasing, so I am very happy with how everything is going.

I have been working on making more of my income passive (you can read more about this in the Affiliate section below) and this has been great because I have had much more time to focus on more important areas when it comes to Making Sense of Cents.

April should be an even better month as I am in the process of selling two more of my websites. That will be the end of me selling websites though, as I plan on keeping all the others I currently have.

Anyway, in March I made $17,051 in business income, before expenses.

EDIT July, 2016: I recommend checking out my online course for bloggers, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I earn around $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing and I share my exact strategy and tips in this very informative online course. If you’re a blogger, then you NEED this course.

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 $3.49 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting. In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free blog domain (a $15 value) through my Bluehost link if you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting. FYI, you want 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. 

Related articles:

 

My Monthly Online Income Report

The number above is for the month of March and before any fees and expenses (some fees and expenses that lower the amount above total around $1,900, which includes virtual assistants/staff writers for my other websites, technical assistance on my websites, giveaway expenses, PayPal fees, etc., however, this does not include taxes) being taken out. After expenses and fees, I made approximately $15,151.  I could run my website for as low as just $25 per month but I outsource a lot so that I can have more fun while I’m traveling 🙂

Below are some of my other monthly side 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 extra income page you can find all of my monthly income reports from the past few years.

 

Blog news.

I am in the process of selling two more websites and I’ve already noticed how beneficial the extra time is after selling the first website. Yes, I probably could have just outsourced the tasks from the other websites and possibly made money that way, but I do still believe this direction is a better option for me.

I won’t lie, I was a little lazy with my blog this past month. While I did still write several articles and network a little, I forgot about other areas. I barely did any interviews, I didn’t reach out to any publications, or anything like that. That is something I plan on changing in April.

I still need to go through many, many of my posts here on MSOC and fix the formatting, change the pictures to Pinterest-worthy images, and more. I have probably only done 15% of my posts so that means I still a lot more to go!

Top new posts on Making Sense of Cents last month:

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 $3.49 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting. In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free blog domain (a $15 value) through my Bluehost link if you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting. FYI, you want 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. 

 

Traffic on Making Sense of Cents.

Many of you have asked if I would start sharing traffic stats here on my monthly income reports. It’s something I’ve never done before and honestly it scares me a little to do so! Not sure why, but I guess if everything else is already out there then I might as well include this as well.

I’m not sure if I will post this every month, as looking at stats isn’t always helpful. I know many, many bloggers who receive less than 50,000 monthly page views who make MUCH more money than people who receive over 500,000 page views each month.

So, as you can see traffic doesn’t always directly relate to how much money you might make.

What matters is how much work you put into it and if you are trying the correct ways (to make money) that actually work for your exact blog.

If you are a new blogger or you are thinking about creating your own blog, I want you to know that it is possible to create a blog that people will read. I know many of you often wonder about traffic stats and whether anyone will read your blog, but if you produce posts that people want to read and you spend time marketing your blog, you will be just fine!

To get back on point, traffic on Making Sense of Cents has grown significantly over the past few months. I still can’t believe how much traffic has grown. Much of it has to do with Pinterest and getting my name out there as much as possible.

I do need to start working harder on retaining all of these Pinterest readers. My bounce rate is the highest it’s ever been. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be, but I would like to be somewhere less than this!

Below are my traffic stats for March of 2015.

Monthly Income Report

 

EDIT: In more recent income reports, I have been including featured questions from readers. Below are some of the questions that have been asked.

 

Wes’s website.

I’m feeling horrible about this lately. I’ve been so focused on my website and helping my sister over at FITnancials that I haven’t been helping Wes.

 

My plans for my website, online income, and making money online:

  • Create a product(s) to sell – One thing I feel like I’m missing lately is that I want to actually create something I can sell through Making Sense of Cents. Whether that be an ebook, a course, or something else, it is something I think about nearly every single day. I have many ideas, but I’m not sure what to pursue right now.
  • Promote more – I have been doing much better when it comes to promoting, especially on Pinterest. Pinterest alone brought around 54,000 clicks to my blog just in the month of March! This is slightly lower than what I saw in February so I am hoping this starts to increase in April and future months again. Also, keep in mind that just a few months ago I was only receiving a few hundred visits a month from Pinterest, so this is a huge jump.
  • Accept more interviews. – Like I said above, I wasn’t too active in March. I did see one interview go live on HuffPost – Can You Profit from Buying and Selling Websites?
  • Stop being shy – This is one of my goals for 2015. I am such a shy person, and it’s something I need to work on if I want to grow my business.

 

Staff writing.

In March, I worked on a few staff writing jobs.

Staff writing is something that has slowed down in recent months in terms of income categorized below, as most of my staff writing is now bundled into blog management as well, in case any of you were wondering. This is because with some of my clients, they have me manage their websites and write for them as well, all for one flat fee each month. I just wanted to explain this as I know some of you had questions about it.

 

Update on my blog and social media management services.

Blog and social media management is still a service I enjoy providing to my clients. Nothing new in this area happened last month. My income in this category is down for March, but that should just be a one-time thing and I’m hoping in future months it goes back up. This is because for some of the websites I manage, my pay is based on a commission-like structure.

If you are wanting to start a blog of your own, read my post How To Start a Cheap WordPress Blog. It gives step by step instructions on starting your own blog. You can also get a free domain by signing up through my link.

Related articles:

 

Affiliate income.

March was an amazing month for affiliate income. I earned around $10,000 in affiliate income just in the month of March.

Definitely my best month ever for affiliate income.

I won’t see the payments until May and/or June for most of those, so you won’t see those amounts reflected in my monthly income reports until then. I am extremely excited about how much my affiliate/passive income has jumped in the past few months, especially with how little work is needed.

Passive income for the win!

I did a quick revamp of my recommendations page. Check it out and let me know what you think of it! Any tips on making it even better?

EDIT July, 2016: I recommend checking out my online course for bloggers, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I earn over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing and I share my exact strategy and tips in this very informative online course. If you’re a blogger, then you NEED this course.

March online income

Business and extra income in March ($17,051, before expenses)

  • Staff writing – $750
  • Managing websites and social media for clients, as well as blog coaching- $3,565
  • Website-related (From the 5 websites I own – advertising and partnerships) – $6,826
  • Affiliate income (from Bluehost, Republic Wireless, etc) – $5,910
  • Website sale – $0
  • Selling items from our home – $0
  • Miscellaneous (not related to blogging and online income) – $0
  • Mystery shopping – $0

March Income ReportOne question I am asked nearly every time I publish my monthly online income report is whether or not I can further break down my income. I have never fully broken everything down line by line, and I do this mainly to protect myself and those I provide services to.

Keep in mind that a majority of my income comes from private clients I work for so sharing their name and what they pay me wouldn’t be the correct way to run a business. It also wouldn’t help you much either, so there wouldn’t be a point for me just to share someone’s name.

Most bloggers who completely break apart their income have most of their income coming from affiliate links instead of freelancing services. When more of my income comes from affiliate marketing, I will start breaking it apart more. I have a feeling that will be VERY soon so stay tuned!

Also, when you see my monthly income each month please keep in mind that I work for myself. This means I have to cover taxes (which are over 30%), health insurance, and all other benefits/expenses that an employer might provide.

Comparisons and 2015 online income total (after most expenses, but before taxes)

  • Total extra income for March: $15,151
  • Income in February: $23,758
  • Difference: -8,607
  • Total in 2015: $54,305

How did you do in March? What are your extra/business/online income goals? Why do you work towards making extra money?

 

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 $3.49 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting. In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free blog domain (a $15 value) through my Bluehost link if you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting. FYI, you want 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. 

Related Posts

About Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, a blog about personal finance and traveling. She discusses how her business has evolved in her side income series. She paid off $40,000 in student loans by the age of 24 mainly due to her freelancing side hustles. Click here to learn more about starting a blog!

Comments

  2. diane @smartmoneysimplelife says

    You must be REALLY happy with the way things are going with your business?!

    Sharing your income and traffic stats must be very scary because you never know what others’ reactions will be but, I’ve got to tell you, it’s damn inspiring to me and I’m very glad you take the time and the risk.

    Awesome work and I hope it continues for you.

    Reply

  3. Petrish @ Debt Free Martini says

    Michelle thank you so much for sharing. I always get so motivated when I read your monthly income progress. I am planning on leaving my job in exactly a year and I am really working hard to build my blog to the point to get some type of income. This gives me hope

    Reply

  4. Nicola says

    Very inspiring, as always! Thank you for showing your traffic stats, it’s always interesting to see what other, larger blogs get 🙂 your affiliate income is looking great – well done you! Here’s hoping April is just as good for you 🙂

    Reply

  11. Gina Horkey says

    Michelle, you continue to inspire me! Thanks so much for continuing to share your income reports. I love that you shared your traffic numbers as well – very healthy. You should be so proud. I think that selling 2 more websites makes sense. Keep it up!!

    Reply

  12. Alexa says

    Don’t feel bad about the bounce rate! My stats are shockingly similar to yours. My bounce rate is right around 78%, pages visited is 1.47, and time on site 1:38. Before I started getting a lot of traffic those stats were WAY better. I’m thinking it just comes with the territory as I’ve heard a lot of other people talk about their bounce rate being in the 80% with a bunch of Facebook and Pinterest traffic.

    You’re making me want to work on affiliate income. That is amazing! Big congrats to you!!

    Reply

  14. Allison @ Frugal on the Prairie says

    Michelle, you are such an inspiration! I look forward to every month’s report with a lot of anticipation. It’s like the next chapter in “Michelle’s Reports for Ideas and Inspiration.” (Obviously, you are far more creative than I and would have a better title. But you get the point…) Please, please publish an e-book. I will pre-order right this minute!! 🙂

    Reply

  16. ReTully says

    I was just wondering if you had an article on how one who has a blog that is making money pays taxes on all of that? what things can be used as a deductible for your blog business??? do you have to have a business license??? That is the one aspect I’m completely unsure of when it comes to starting up a blog, and since I’m about to make my new blog one that I plan on growing into my business I could use any advice or read anything from fellow bloggers about keeping all that straight 🙂
    Thank you!

    Reply

  17. Shannon @ Financially Blonde says

    Congrats on a great month Michelle! I hear you on the time you gained selling the website. I got rid of a few side projects last month and while I was concerned about letting go, I actually did better income wise because I was able to focus on more profitable activities with my freed up time.

    Reply

  19. Kayla @ Shoeaholicnomore says

    I need to do some things to my site to make it better, like adding images to old posts, etc. to help me get more traffic, but it’s hard to find time to do it since I’m always working for someone else – either at my FT job or for one of my freelancing clients since those gigs pay immediately. I know I could make more off my site if I worked on it more, but its hard to find the time since the return on the time invested won’t be immediate.

    Reply

  21. Courtney says

    Congratulations and Thank You. It is always inspirational to see your monthly income reports. I always find something I want to work on for our own site.

    Reply

  22. Brie says

    I love your monthly income reports, they are so encouraging that lots of hard work can payoff!

    I am new to Google Analytics and was wondering if anyone knew a trick to separating out those spam clicks that artificially inflate the traffic from referrals?

    Reply

  26. Erin @ Erin's Inside Job says

    Always love reading these and the transparency of you and some other bloggers I know who share their income. It’s something I would like to do eventually, but maybe when I start making more than like $10? Although maybe publishing it would make me work harder to try and improve as I go along. Who knows

    Reply

  29. Jennifer says

    Your transparency is very cool & brave — a way of holding yourself accountable as well as lends a lot of credibility to your statistics. Your income is easily understood, can you provide details of your monthly expenditures including estimated federal (including income & social security) and state taxes? What about health insurance, disability, life insurance, retirement (401k). For a better understanding for those of us who using your experience as part of our decision making process, the information regarding the above will provide context and a greater understanding. Thanks in advance

    Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      Thanks Jennifer!

      It’s really hard to estimate taxes as every person is different once you take out expenses, the state you live in (state taxes vary), deductions, credits, and more. In general, taxes are around 30% to 35% of your business income after expenses though.

      Health insurance in our new state (Colorado) is around $336 a month I believe for the both of us. That’s for a catastrophic plan meaning that we don’t get covered until we spend around $7,000 annually.

      We don’t have life insurance or disability insurance currently, but that is something we plan on adding eventually.

      For retirement, we just save/invest as much as we realistically can. I do not have a 401k, I have a SEP instead.

      Reply

  30. Gen Y Finance Guy says

    Looks like you had a another great month. Sounds like you are in simplification mode, which will allow you to focus more on your core site. This should really free up a lot of your time so that you can create that digital product.

    Your traffic is awesome. Do you ever look at your traffic broken down by channel?

    The reason I ask is because when I look at my Google Analytic’s reports I like to look at it by channel, because I expect each channel to act differently.

    My overall traffic is a fraction of yours (4,000 monthly visitors) with a bounce rate around 50%. However, I expect email traffic to perform much differently than referral traffic for example. People that click over from email are likely just coming to read the latest post and move on with their day. Where referral traffic likely coming over to figure out what my site is all about and will look at more pages. So their time on site goes up, bounce rate goes down, and page views go up.

    Maybe Pinterest traffic is like that. With 54,000 visitors in March that makes up 1/3 of your traffic and could really be impacting the bounce rate. But it might not be anything to worry about if that is just normal behavior for that particular channel.

    As far as my March. It went pretty well. Our net worth passed the $200K for the first time ever. So far in 2015 we have increased our net worth by about $20K or about 11% vs. 2014.

    Traffic to the site continues to grow. I am pleasantly surprised that after only 6-months I have been consistently getting over 3,000 visitors for the last few months now. The last 30 days indicate that its now growing towards 4,000, so that is encouraging.

    Just have to keep writing and getting out there like you said.

    Blogging is more work than I thought but is definitely really rewarding. I am more motivated than ever to start making enough money to break away from the golden handcuffs of my 6-figure corporate job.

    Thanks for all the transparency and motivation.

    Cheers!

    Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      I think Pinterest users usually just read the one post they clicked over for, and that’s why the bounce rate is so high. I need to do more research and think of different ways to keep them here 🙂

      Reply

  31. Katelyn @ Diaries of a Wandering Lobster says

    Congrats on yet again an awesome month! I managed to make an extra $1,700 by selling some stuff, teaching fitness classes, and some freelance writing. I’d love to hear some tips from you on Pinterest. I’m competely clueless when it comes to it. I better start studying it!

    Reply

  32. Lena @ WhatMommyDoes says

    Thanks for pointing out that March was up, too! 🙂 We seem like we have similar goals, but I don’t have as much time to work on them (one of my goals this year is to find the balance being a SAHM and working on my blog). I love the challenge of both! 🙂 My traffic isn’t as high as yours, but I’m working on that. I plan on killing it with some new content over the next few months.

    I, too, have a goal of publishing a FOR REAL ebook by the end of the year. By the time FINCON rolls around would be nice. 🙂 Do you have a goal date in mind? I tried publishing a small ebook on Kindle and it was so easy, I am really kicking myself for not doing it sooner. Once I had the book ready, it literally took 15 minutes plus a few hours for them to review and approve it for the store. I was blown away!

    Reply

  34. Little House says

    This is very impressive. I think it’s terrific that you share your income and break down how you did it. I’ve been blogging a while now, but have lost steam recently. I’m hoping that as my schedule calms down in the next month or so, I’ll get back into it. It takes really wanting to do it to make money doing it, if that makes sense. Keep up the great work!

    Reply

  35. Thomas @ i need cash ASAP! says

    Awesome Michelle, thanks for sharing your traffic stats. As a new blogger that’s something I find super interesting. It looks like you had a couple of spikes during the month, did some of your posts get some strong social traffic or go viral? I had one post hit Reddit, not even that high, but it drove 4k views in just a few hours.

    Reply

  38. Naveen | planetnaveen says

    Michelle,

    What a terrific income report and a fantastic month ! I am following your blog from Mattew’s mention in his roundup-reports (matthewwoodward)

    Love reading the stuff you write here ! Keep up the great work !

    Reply

  40. Fig says

    I actually think your income breakdown is perfect. It’s detailed enough to see that you make money in a variety of ways and there is no need to break it down further.

    I’ve been working on going through old posts as well and it’s amazing how many posts need work on my site! I definitely didn’t start blogging for anyone but myself and it’s painfully obvious. Trying to improve all the posts is taking work but I think it will be worth it. I’ve already seen a big bump from Pinterest which is nice!

    Reply

  41. sharon says

    I have just read about your income and you explaining the reasons why you published. Its very nice that you have done so. For someone like myself who is so new to this platform it really is inspiring and it leaves me so much to consider but at the same time excited once I have made a decision.
    Thank you.x

    Reply

  44. Gaurav Tripathi says

    Many Congratulation for your great success 🙂 You have done an excellent job here, thank you so much for sharing this very inspiring success story,

    Reply

  46. Marie says

    Hi. I want to start a blog and I want to ask if you have any tips to make a successful blog just like yours.

    Thanks in advance 🙂

    Reply

  47. Haile Clark says

    I have so many things I want to blog about but I don’t know how to choose. Have you heard of any blogs that focus on multiple topics being successful? Any tips on what I should do?

    Reply

  49. Clarissa says

    I’m just starting out as a blogger and haven’t exactly found my niche yet but this gives me hope. Gotta keep going! I love seeing other people doing what they love. Keep up the good work!

    Reply

  50. Heather says

    I’ve been reading your stuff for about a year now and I am still finding new information! I think you should do an ebook about finances, like the stuff you learned in school that can help everyday people who no nothing about retirement, investments, etc. Also on the shy part, I feel the same way, you just got to not other-think and give yourself one realistic goal about becoming less shy!
    -Heather

    Reply

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