Side Income Report for June 2019: How I Earned $54,923.08 Blogging (on the Side) This Month

During the month of June, I saw another small dip in side income, ending at $54,923.08. Traffic also tapered off a bit with a combination of recent search algorithm updates and the usual summer slump for blogging & business-related content, dropping me down to 377,000 readers and just over 462,000 unique sessions. Overall, it was still an incredible month!

It’s a mixture of emotions, but I’m excited to share that I’ve finally left my day job at Close. It’s been a long time coming, as my side income from blogging has been outpacing my FT paycheck for almost a year now, but I wanted to plan a mutually beneficial, slow transition out from the team. Working remotely with Steli, Ramin, Madhav and Brianna on the marketing team at Close for the past two years has been an amazing learning experience and I’m super grateful for my time with them. I can honestly say I’ve never had a better job in my life, and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back if things ever change in the future.

On the more personal side of things, Shelly and I spent a lot of time traveling for three-day weekends with family & friends last month, while checking out wedding venues with any remaining free time we had. We’re getting close to deciding on a venue for our 2020 wedding, so we’re pumped!

Now, letโ€™s dig into the numbers… last month saw another slight dip in side income from May, which still landed me at the very top of my forecast range thanks to solid affiliate commissions from my guide about how to start a blog and another consistent month of sales for my premium blogging course, Built to Blog: How to Get Your First 10,000 Readers and Earn Six-Figures Blogging.

Overall, I generated $54,923.08ย in side income revenue during June of 2019.

In response to the (many) search algorithm updates, I’m ramping up content production related to “blogging” content on my site. That translated into hiring more freelance writers than ever and I’ll be keeping them busy for the next few months. With my sustained writer expenses, profit for June came in at $47,513.44.

The Forecast ๐ŸŒค:ย For July, I’m expecting side income to take a pretty big hit, landing around $40,000 – $45,000 as I’ve seen a pretty dramatic shakeup in my organic search rankings over the past month. I’m expecting this drop to deepen over the next couple months, but for this to be a relatively short-term fluctuation that I’ll be able to overcome within the next few months. Expenses should remain pretty steady as I cut back on a few less-essential activities and double down on more writers.

Now, on to the details of my June side income report…

Side Income in June 2019: $54,923.08

In these monthly reports, I track my total side income every month, including each individual source of that income, and associated expenses with running my side businesses. This is the goodย and the bad.

Next, I break down the traffic to my blog which heavily impacts my side income, including what’s performing best and how I’m working to drive in more readers. I also cover how many email subscribers I’m at, the number of new subscribers acquired during the month, and what that growth trajectory looks like.

Then I talk about my podcast download numbers for the month, and which episodes performed best.

Finally, I cover updates on any other side projects I’m working on for the month.

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Now, let’s do this.

Side Income Breakdown for June 2019

Gross Income

$54,923.08

Course & Book Sales (Built to Blog)

ย  ย  $3,060.58

Freelance Clients & Sponsorships

ย  ย  $5,074.66

$45,772.30

$41,280.00
$365.83
$0.00
$311.04
$0.00
$0.00
$2,839.87
$87.00
$196.13
$289.15
$86.40
$0.00
$18.50
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$298.38
$0.00
$0.00

Carbon Ads

$1,009.15

Podcast Sponsorships (Side Hustle Project)

$0.00

 

Expenses Breakdown

Total Expenses

$7,409.64

Web Services – Hosting and Storage

Kinsta
OptimizePress (Renewal)
MoneyTalk Hosting
Dreamhost
Google Drive
Amazon Web Services
Pichi Image Optimizer Tool
GoDaddy Domain Purchases
Cloudflare

$898.13

$352.19
$0.00
$10.00
$107.79
$9.99
$0.00
$24.99
$393.17
$0.00

Online Tools & Subscriptions

ConvertKit (Pre-Paid Annual)
Teachable
Bluehost (Test Website)
Adobe Creative Cloud
Calendly
Quickbooks
Zoom.us (Video Conferencing)
Apple (Storage & Apps)
Rev Video Transcriptions (YouTube)

$235.93

$0.00
$99.00
$0.00
$52.99
$10.00
$0.00
$14.99
$40.95
$18.00

Professional Services

Freelance Writers
Wordpress Developer
Infographic Designer
Virtual Assistant
Podcast Producer
Business Insurance

$4,648.60

$2,961.35
$650.00
$0.00
$0.00
$950.00
$87.25

Advertising

Quuu Promote (Pre-Paid Annual)
Pinterest Ads
Blog Advertisements

$554.84

$0.00
$118.85
$436.00

Travel, Office Supplies & Misc

iPhone X Payment Plan
AT&T Service Plan (iPhone)
Internet (Comcast)
Health Insurance
Transaction Fees
Office Supplies
Gas & Fuel
Uber and Lyft ๐Ÿš–

$1072.13

$56.16
$107.39
$86.46
$371.34
$10.00
$169.96
$83.46
$187.36

 

Net Profit Breakdown

Net Profit

$47,513.44

 

Now, on to my blog, email and podcast-related statistics.

2. Blog Stats for June 2019: 462,370 Sessions and 109,925 Total Email Subscribers

How I Made $54923 Blogging on the Side in June 2019 Google Analytics Screenshot Traffic

After an insane five month growth streak, my blog traffic finally plateaued, dipping below the half a million monthly reader mark with the organic ranking shakeup I’ve experienced in a few of my top keyword phrases.

I was down in Sessions from May by almost 21%, returning me to March-April traffic levels. On top of that, I also dropped down to 581,376 pageviews.

Almost all of my top articles saw dips in traffic during Juneโ€”due (I think) entirely to a shift in organic search rankings during the month, as a result of Google’s ever-changing search algorithm releasing at least two or three updates. Though I’m taking a hit right now, I’ve been talking to some of the best minds in SEO and I have a good idea of how to best recover in the months to come. It’ll take time to recover, so I’m tightening my belt and focusing on doing just a couple of things extremely well over the next few months.

Overall, I’m still up more than 81% in growth year over year compared to June of 2018. That increase is tied to my most trafficked posts still continuing to deliver strong traffic from organic searchโ€”coupled with increased activity on Pinterest that’s resulted in more readers.

Here are my top 15 trafficked posts from June, ranked in descending order of which drove the most readers:

June saw my first real dip in traffic this year to my 25,000+ word guide, 10 Steps to Start a Blog on the Sideโ€”which still remained in the top few positions in searches for competitive terms like how to start a blog,ย how to blog, and other related terms. Some of the traffic dip is seasonal, but my rankings have been getting tested quite a lot for these terms with the recent algorithm updates.

Still, as more readers land on this post, more are joining my free course, How to Build a Blog in 7 Days and are offered an opportunity to join my more advanced, comprehensive paid Built to Blog course that’ll help them level up their blogging journey even more.

Also in June as I push into more “blogging” content, I published two new pieces for my growing audience of bloggers:

My plan is to continue publishing a much higher volume of in-depth content for bloggers throughout 2019 with the goal of clearly signaling to Google and other search engines that my blog is primarily about blogging, in order to show that my site is most authoritative on that topic area.

2. Email Subscribers.

How I Made $54923 Blogging on the Side in June 2019 Email Subscribers ConvertKit

I useย ConvertKit to manage my email subscriber community and deliver my emails.

June saw the addition of 5,393 subscribers to my community with my total list size growing to 109,925 subscribersย ๐ŸŽ‰

For the first time all year, I saw a sizable slow down in new sign ups (again due to the shifting around in organic traffic rankings). Overall, I’m still seeing a meaningful number of new email subscribers come through, largely in my “blogger” cohort. Much of my new subscriber growth continues to be fueled by my new free course, Build a Blog in 7 Daysย which is well-optimized for both affiliate revenueโ€”and for offering my more advanced paid course (Built to Blog).

3. Podcast Downloads for June 2019: 22,066 Downloads

How I Made $54923 Blogging on the Side in June 2019 Podcast Downloads

My podcast, The Side Hustle Project is still remaining steady with solid monthly growth.

With 22,066 downloads, last month saw a sizable gain above May’s figures.

Here are the episodes that went live last month:

June brought my total download numbers for the show to 314,352 downloads!

If you’re not a listenerย yet, give it a try right here ๐Ÿ™‚

That’s it for my June side income report.

For July, I’m predicting side income to take a pretty big hit, landing around $40,000 – $45,000 with the dramatic shakeup I’ve seen in organic search rankings over the past month. I’m expecting this decrease to deepen for another few months, but I believe my lower search rankings are actually in a relatively short-term fluctuation period that I can recover from within the next 3-4 months. I’m anticipating a return to the $50k revenue mark before the end of this year.

And hey, I promised to share the ups and the downs here right?!

I strongly believe in showing you not just my highlight reel, but also shining a light on the punches I take.

Though I’ve seen an incredible amount of success with my blog this year, I’m still in the middle of a lifelong learning experience.

Iโ€™ll keep sharing what I learn along my journey back to rebuilding my organic search rankings.

If you’re looking for some additional reading to help grow your own blog (on the side), I recently launched a 24,000 word free guide to building and scaling a profitable blog right hereย that I’d love for you to read ๐Ÿ˜Š

Blog Side Income Report $54,923 Blogging on the Side of my day job Ryan Robinson ryrob June 2019 Income Report

Hi I'm Ryan Robinson

Blogger, podcaster and recovering side project addict. Head of Content at Close. Join me here, on ryrob.com to learn how to start a blog, make money blogging and grow a profitable side business. Be sure to try my popular free keyword research tool & AI article writer tool, as well. Somehow, I also find time to write for publications like Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Next Web, Business Insider, and more. Letโ€™s chat on Twitter and YouTube about our feelings (and blogging, of course).

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21 replies to “Side Income Report for June 2019: How I Earned $54,923.08 Blogging (on the Side) This Month”

  1. So I was checking out Michelle’s blog from MakingSenseOfCents.com recently and noticed she put out a blogging report how she earned over $100,000 blogging for June 2019. I’m glad you and Michelle are hitting the numbers in terms of improved search engine rankings and increased ad revenue. Your definitely keeping me inspired to keep my content marketing strategy going at full strength. In fact, after I implemented a few new things to the website such as Cloudflare and creating more evergreen content, my SEO and ad revenues continue improving. Had I not stumbled upon you, Michelle and others stressing the importance of creating quality content frequently and you and Michelle keeping the topic of sight hustling and blogging your way to millions of fresh in my mind, I probably would’ve fell off the bandwagon long time ago and would’ve been way off course with working toward achieving the goal of “side hustle millionaire” status.

    I’m also glad to hear that you’re [leaving your day job] at “Close.”

    How long have you been on your day job for you don’t mind me asking, Ryan? ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
    • Thanks, Shawn! Appreciate the kind words, and yep it’s definitely a journey of experimentation.

      I worked at Close for 2 years! Before that, I freelanced for them (and other clients simultaneously) as a content writer. My last FT gig before Close was working on marketing of the business class catalog at CreativeLive, where I got to meet a lot of the guests who’ve come on to my podcast too ๐Ÿ˜‰

      Reply
  2. Hey, great update!

    According to the Google Analytics stats your blog has a pretty darn high bounce rate.
    Also, the number of sessions per user is quite low, so is the avg. session duration.

    Is there a certain reason behing all those numbers and/or how do you think you could fix them (bring them up)?

    Reply
    • Yep! Awesome questions too.

      The short answer as to the biggest contributor to high bounce rate, low sessions per users and low-ish session duration is that almost all of my highest-trafficked articles (business ideas, freelance jobs, how to start a blog, etc) are on VERY top-level, high volume search terms.

      Think through the mindset of the average person Google searching for “business ideas” or for “freelance jobs”… these kinds of terms generally bring a large number of people to my blog that are in the research and looking for advice/inspiration/ideas phase. If they don’t either (1) click on one of the first handful of options I suggest or (2) immediately/quickly find something that piques their interest, they usually take off relatively quickly.

      I’m working more right now on trying to better match my content for the search-intent of the readers who land on my site and also publish more tutorial-based content, where the people who show up are here to follow a step-by-step progression to accomplishing something.

      Reply
    • Thanks, Joseph! Over time, you can definitely start laying the foundation for building a blog like mine. It’ll take a lot of focused effort, time, building relationships and working super hard to promote your content <3

      Reply
  3. Hello Ryan,

    Great to see this numbers!!!! Congrats for leaving your job at Close. I am sure they will miss you. Lastly I wish you the very best as you and Shelly prepare for your wedding!!!!!! Thank you for this break down which helps and encourages people like us to stay focused.

    Reply
  4. Hey Ryan,

    Your blog is quite an accomplishment and I applaud you for that.

    After blogging for over two years on online business, blogging, marketing and freelancing, it takes lots of discipline, consistency, patience and sheer determination to start and consistently grow a blog at this pace.

    Your income reports are both inspirational and encouraging. I am shocked that almost most of your earnings come from Bluehost (not even from your own products)

    I am in the process of creating my first product but I decided to master affiliate marketing. I believe there is a lot of skills that us content creators can learn while doing affiliate marketing which we can then apply down the line when dealing with out own products

    Thanks for great insights.

    Reply
  5. Is it even possible to do affiliate marketing without great content? I thought they went hand in hand. Iโ€™m older and have been very successful in old school traditional corporate roles. Iโ€™m really interested in digital marketing but wow!! So so much to learn!

    Thanks for the transparency and breaking it down, Ryan!

    Reply
    • Sandy,

      Content is the life and blood of any blog or website and helps anyone to go from employee to business owner using the process known to many as affiliate marketing and blogging.

      Reply
  6. This article ticks all the boxes to inspire you to learn more on how to grow a blog with quality content. And whatโ€™s possible as a side hustle. A real learning curve.

    Reply
  7. Hey Ryan! Great to see your progress each month. Your results are fantastic after SO MUCH effort.

    Question: Which affiliate marketers do you follow or learn from?

    Thanks.
    Have a great day!

    Reply
  8. Hi Ryan,

    $41,000 was from Bluehost as an affiliate. How did that business model work? I’m not looking to copy it, but I’d like to see how an agreement like that could apply to my business.

    Best,
    Kristen

    Reply
    • Yeah, great question!

      The short of it is that I have a 25,000 guide to starting a blog (here: https://www.ryrob.com/how-start-blog/) that ranks pretty well in organic Google search results for searches related to getting a blog off the ground. When someone reads that guide and signs up with the hosting company I recommend in the guide, I get a commission from that hosting company in exchange for referring them a customer.

      Reply