How My Blog Made Over 1,000 Dollars in One Month
Hello everyone, my name is Kevin and I’d like to share my story of how I made over one thousand dollars in one month by blogging. I think the best way to do it will be to divide it into four chapters:
Chapter 1: A Novice in a Crowded Niche
I’ve been a student of fitness, weight training, and bodybuilding for over twenty years. I’m not a professional—just a passionate practitioner. I’ve trained a few of my friends and helped them get in better shape. I’ve also answered the questions of younger guys in the gym.
One night I had a conversation with a young man who was interested in putting on muscle. I told him some of the basics and cleared some of his misconceptions. Then it hit me: why haven’t I ever blogged about this?
I already had a personal blog with a loyal following (my personal blog is more about my spiritual journey and reflections). I had even authored a book. But I had never thought much about writing fitness articles. I decided to go ahead with it–I started strongandfit.net. I never thought about the fact that that the fitness niche was super crowded. I just knew I was passionate about this topic and I enjoyed writing.
Chapter 2: Adsense/Monetization
At some point I added adsense to the blog. I experimented with different arrangements and made some important discoveries:
1. A square ad directly above the content is the best placement.
2. The ad should be blended in with the colors of your blog.
Adsense was doing pretty well—I was earning about 200 dollars a month as traffic was growing. But there were two problems:
1. I had limited control over what appeared in the adsense ad. My blog exposes a lot of fitness scams, and sometimes the very product I was criticizing was appearing in adsense ads.
2. I felt like there were other ways to make the blog more profitable (turns out there were).
Chapter 3: Affiliate Marketing
The next big breakthrough came when I discovered clickbank products. They had some great workout programs I could sell. I eventually decided to switch entirely to affiliate advertising. There were two distinct advantages:
1. Affiliate marketing was much more profitable than adsense. Sometimes I make more in one day than I did in a whole month with adsense.
2. I had complete control over what kind of products showed up on my blog. I felt good about what I was selling (still do).
Chapter 4: New Year’s Resolutions
All these factors came together back in January. You guessed it—New Year’s resolutions. It was the time of year when everyone was thinking about making positive changes, such as losing weight or putting on muscle. Those who visited my blog were referred to high quality products and honest reviews. Many of them decided to invest in some of the programs I promote.
The end result was over a thousand dollars in one month.
Epilogue:
I’m still training at the gym and writing posts on over at strongandfit.net. Profits go up and down, but that is to be expected. But blogging has been an exciting journey, and I’ll keep writing with passion and integrity.
Kevin is the author of Strongandfit.net: Lose Fat, Build Muscle
Related Posts:
- How I Made Over 150 Dollars With One Email
- How I Got 500,000 Hits within Two Years
- Fill the Gap
- How I won the affiliate game without loosing my shirt!
- Putting Yourself Out There
Hey Kevin,
Thanks for sharing your experience. A goal of $1000/mth. place where a lot of new bloggers start. And this post can give a little insight on how the can start to get there. And it’s not with Adsense. I guess you could make it, but you pointed out some flaws that show how much of a hassle it can be. Affiliate marketing is definitely the way to go if you want to make some real money.
Thanks for the tips!
kevin, i am agree with free MLM Tips
Good Adsense tips, what you mentioned above I’ve tried and give effect to increase revenue
Thanks for sharing. I’m wondering if you’ve tried combining Adsense (or other) with affiliate links to see what, if any effect there would be on your monetization and CTR. Sometimes you’ll find that having a most wanted response, then a secondary, and sometimes even a third will increase your income dramatically, without impacting Adsense revenue at all. Other times, there’s a significant impact of one on the other.
it’s great tips , i learn more. I used to use just adsense before.
Daniela
Thanks for the great Info!
I think Adsense is sometimes over-rated! There are other alternatives out there…
Congratulations Kevin! this is a fantastic story and a inspiring one! That’s good that you can write with passion about what you love, good work!
I was wondering; The little thumbnail ads at the bottom of your page which links to blogs like 2leep. How that works? do you get more traffic that way? also it doesn’t matter if the ads are not related to your niche?
Thanks a lot!!
Adsense is not as bad as it is made out to be and besides, it depends on what sort of content you’re publishing. I mostly use Adsense on newer blogs to make the costs (it does) before switching over to better options.
~~ Sarah ~~
Thanks for the insights Kevin, its great to know that people are actually making the money out there and how you did it. Great tips.
Good and valuable tips Kevin.
It is true that using relevant affiliate links on your blog in the best monetization technique. Almost every blogger at some point in time moves over to affiliate marketing and starts integrating his affiliate marketing links into his blogs. Since he already built a standing for himself with his blog, it becomes easy for him to promote his affiliate links using his blogs.
Very good post-
I loved how simple and “to the point” this blog post was. It is also great to read of success in money terms.
I would like to hear how regular the blog is making ($$$) from then until now.
I’m new in this blog and this info is very beneficial to me.
Thanks for the feedback, guys.
Kurt, I have considered using both (adsense and affiliate marketing). But the problem I have with adsense is all the crummy stuff that comes through (scam products).
There’s also a chance that competing affiliate marketers may steal my commission by advertising through adsense on my blog.
But using both may work well for some.
Kevin
Strongandfit.net
Nice post anda thanks for sharing…
I am a newbie in internet marketing, so this post helps me the find the good ways to make money online. thanks a lot
Great Kevin, your story highlights that opportunities are EVERYWHERE and often right under our VERY NOSES if we only learn to look for them. So what comes next? $1,000 this month so I suppose you need to stabalise this so you generate the same or higher next month?
I never had any success with clickbank.
Great post Kevin,
Passion, that’s the point I am used to share to my internet marketing fella so they can also get more income from blogging.
Keep up the good work Kevin.
Hi Kevin
Thanks for this great post. Similar to yourself I started online ( a few years ago)with lots of ideas. Eventually decided to focus on things I new about consistently!
The result has grown amazingly and I have a number of sites with growing email lists. These enable me to add great value to my subscribers and they rreward me by buying our products and services.
Best Wishes
Denise
I agree with the comment about writing with passion and integrity. There are far too many people out there just basically spamming and copying content to drive the traffic. It is easy to see through these types of article. Sticking to activities I know works has kept me going as well as researching new methods. I find article writing and link building is the best use of my time but am continually improving in the way I do things.
“So what comes next? $1,000 this month so I suppose you need to stabalise this so you generate the same or higher next month?”
Well, I haven’t had anohter 1,000 month since January. I think fitness related sales go up about 60% for that month, so I’m obviously looking forward to next January/year.
But I’ve had some good months since then, so I’ll just keep posting and enjoying the journey. That’s one beauty of choosing a good topic–you enjoy it even if you don’t make money.
PS
If you are interested, I also have a blogging blog:
Beginner Blogger Tips
Earning a $1000 is a great target however I think you have to be real about this.
Folks who tell or preach to you that its easy are liars
It takes hard work and hard work and hard work to get up to that level.
Once you are there though it does get a lot lot easier.
Affiliate marketing is without thee best ways to start all this happening.
I haven’t used googleads or adsense, but using affiliates allows you to pick those that are consistent with the content of your blog.
Some pay more than others and that can influence your choices, so be careful that you don’t send a mixed message to your readers. Otherwise, it’s a great way to make some additional income.
Thanks for the post!
Though, I am not new to affiliate and blogging, I find this post very useful, since it would make me to test your concept about blogging with respect to affiliate products rather adsense, thanks and concerning your blog, do you accept guest posts?
Hey Kevin
Great story.
The monetising methods for your site sound great, i used the same on mine and they work well.
How did you generate the traffic?…i used article marketing to get around 100 visits per day to one of my blogs.
Some of the traffic comes direct from article directories but most comes from the article listings in Google now.
I think it would be good to do more blog commenting such as this to get more traffic.
For more revenue, collecting email addresses of prospects that you can follow up with good products later is good.
Good Luck!
I have not used much article marketing, though I hear it is an effective strategy.
A lot of my traffic comes from search engines. But I also use things like forums, commenting on blogs, and some banner exchange programs.
I think my search engine traffic will only increase as time goes by–I still have not hit the two year mark.
Hey Kevin,
you have a story that really inspire me. Just one question, how long did you write on your blog until you get $ 1,000 in 1 month. Thanks.
This happened after about a year of blogging. I usually tell new bloggers they need to plan to be in it for the long hall.
This is an uplifting tale. What it illustrates is that writing about something you love makes your blog sticky with people coming back to it