Q1 Blog Income Report – How I Made £454 From Blogging!

2024 is the year that I will begin taking blogging seriously and finally make something of it! I really enjoy the process, making content and connecting with people. Honestly being able to do this as a full time job sounds like a dream to me. So I am giving myself a year to either make that possible or finally face the reality that it’s not going to work. And I will be sharing the whole journey with you including blog income report!

One way that I wanted to share the journey with you was through quarterly income & traffic reports. This is where I will be sharing all my actual numbers. To hopefully keep me motivated to stick with it and show you that not all content creators are making six figures. Far from it.

_{{Disclaimer – this post contains referral and affiliate links which means I may earn a commission if you follow the link and make a purchase. This comes at no extra cost to you!}}

Why am I sharing this?

I am a massive over sharer when it comes to money and side hustles. I’m obsessed with reading other peoples real numbers and feel very strongly about producing the content that I like to see on the internet in the hopes of finding like minded people. If you’re new here, this might seem a little weird. Sharing all the details about how much money I’ve made and spent on this blog. But this isn’t my first experience with sharing too much. I have shared my spending reports, side hustle income reports and saving updates on this blog for nearly four years now and don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon. Money is one of the biggest taboos out there and it shouldn’t be!

The best way to start tearing down this taboo is by being transparent and honest. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. Now with that in mind let’s get into it – my first ever blogging quarterly income report!

Ok before we get into income let’s start with traffic…

What did my traffic look like in Q1?

Sessions = 3676

Pageviews = 5550

That’s pretty high compared to my averages over the last year or so. Almost back up to 2022 levels, which was my blogging peak as it was just before I decided to change my domain name and essentially had to start all over again. I gained a good amount of traffic in February as I was doing a self-imposed 30-day blog post challenge, where I published a new post every day. The vast majority (~90%) of my traffic came directly from Instagram with a little bit from my newsletter and a tiny amount from google itself.

Did I make any money?

I did. Currently the vast majority of the income I make from this side hustle comes from referral schemes. Like the Robinhood free share scheme where we both get a free share worth up to $175 if you use my link. I did also make a little bit in affiliate income and from adsense which I got approved for at the end of January.

The breakdown looked like this…

Referral schemes = £398.68 (87%)

Affiliate commission = £49.37 (11%)

Adsense = £9.04 (2%)

Q1 income total = £457.09

Now this is income MADE in Q1 not necessarily income paid out. Typically affiliate commissions take 2-3 months from when the purchase was made to when I actually receive the money in my bank account. But I did receive some income in Q1. The below figure is the amount I physically received in my account in Q1.

Total income paid out in Q1 = £193.86

What expenses did I pay?

Running a blog has low overheads but it’s not free. I do have some some expenses to run this page and all things associated with it. I try not to take on too many reoccurring expenses but I am not opposed to investing money into making this business work. Here’s what I paid for in Q1…

Bluehost = £0 (I pay for my domain and website hosting annually so nothing came directly out of my account in Q1)

Flodesk = £45.09 (This is the service I use to host my email list – I love love love Flodesk as it makes email marketing super easy and the price doesn’t increase as your list increases!)

Google Suite = £13.80 (I pay for a domain associated email)

Meta Verified = £35.97 (I decided to opt into this scheme the minute it was released as a form of insurance for my instagram account which is where the majority of my audience are right now)

Buffer = £58.93 (This is a new service I am trying out in 2024 as I want to grow Pinterest as a traffic source and scheduling posts in advance is the only way I can see this platform working for me)

Total Expenses = £153.79

Profit?

I did actually make a profit from The Frugal Explorer in Q1! Both in terms of realised and unrealised profit. Meaning if we look at both income figures, paid and made, I generated a profit in both scenarios. Which I’m taking as a massive win!

But for the sake of this blog income report, let’s take MADE income as the figure in our profit calculations. As it’s a more accurate representation of how well the quarter went.

Q1 Profit = £301

I’m actually really happy with this amount as some quarters I’ve made £0 in profit from this side hustle. It shows me that there is definitely potential here and I am right to keep investing so much time into it.

What worked?

I got ads back

I had ads on my original blog and had earned around £42 from display ads over the year they were live. When I changed my domain, I didn’t realise I would loose the ads as I naively thought because I was transferring everything across they would transfer too. Nope. I was back to zero and lost all the progress I’d made. It’s taken over a year to get them back but at the end of January I was finally approved to show ads again with Google Adsense. I still haven’t hit the £60 minimum cash out amount but even getting them back is a massive win for this blog.

Rejigged my newsletters

At the start of the year I added a new section to my weekly newsletter which shares three articles to check out. This has been great in pushing traffic from my newsletter to the blog. Plus it gives me another chance to share posts I love.

Completed a 30-day blog post challenge

Considering I’ve been publishing articles on this blog for around 4 years now I don’t have a tonne of content. I have hundreds of unfinished drafts sat in my notion. I was determined to change this in Q1. And went so far as to challenge myself to publish a new article every single day for 30 days straight and I actually did it! This was a great reminder not to let doubt creep into the writing process and just get the content out there.

What didn’t work so well?

I’m very reliant on Instagram

The vast majority of my success and audience is over on Instagram. Meaning if I don’t share the posts directly to Instagram or link the content there with my blog content my traffic dips. This is biggest reason that I’m happy to pay for meta verified. It protects my account (to a certain extent) from being randomly deactivated. If I lost my Instagram, all my traffic would disappear overnight and take the majority of my income from this side hustle with it. I know I just don’t have it in me to start over. So one of my focuses in 2024, is to diversify my traffic sources – hence the investment into a good Pinterest scheduler. I’ve also gone back and SEO optimised all my old posts to hopefully increased my organic traffic from Google.

Adsense CPM plummeted

When my old domain was monetised with ads I was getting an average CPM of £3. Which means for every 1000 pageviews my blog got I would earn £3 in ad revenue. Some days this was as high as £20 and others much lower. But the general average across the year was £3. This time round my average is £1.80. Much lower. I’m not sure if it’s because this domain is still relatively new to the adsense space or if it’s down across the board. I’ll have to keep an eye on it.

What are my goals for Q2?

Make £1000 in revenue

I’m looking to double my revenue in Q2 from Q1. Nothing like a challenge to keep me motivated and striving to achieve. Bonus if the percentage from affiliates increases!

Finally reach the adsense payment threshold

My adsense balance is still not quite enough to hit the £60 minimum payment threshold and I would love to finally see this money hit my bank account. My current balance is around £53 so not far to go and I know cashing out is achievable in the next quarter. Who knows maybe all the work I’m doing on Pinterest will sky rocket my traffic and I’ll be able to cash out twice!! One can dream!!

Get prepped for the summer

I’m spending another summer working as a camp counsellor and last summer I made the decision to put all TFE things on hold and not even try to keep it going. Well this year I’m making the opposite decision as I am committed to making TFE work this year. So I want to get planned and prepped for the summer in Q2. This will look like batch creating a tonne of content and pre-scheduling it so the blog can almost run on autopilot and I can check in when I get the chance.

So there you go, my first ever blog income report! I am a massive fan of reading these so excited to finally have gotten round to sharing my very own.

Hope you enjoyed a very candid insight into my blog and it’s finances! I’m hoping to publish one of these every quarter to keep motivated and share my progress along the way!