As part of a new blog series, I’m sharing my blog income reports. If you want to learn more about the strategies and investments I’ve made in 2021, you can read our blog income report for 2021.
In this blog income report, I’ll give you a summary of my revenue sources and expenses for January 2022.
There are two important things to note before we start:
- Most partners pay 1-3 months later. When I’m calculating my revenue, I only count what has been paid during the month. That said, the revenue found here may result from sales or revenue from the last few months of 2021. I’m counting my revenue this way because sometimes, a sale can be canceled which means it will not be paid.
- I own several websites, but most of my income comes from SEO services. This income allows me to invest more in my blogs so that I can get higher returns.
Website Portfolio
I currently own 7 websites:
- Gold project: Main website in the travel niche
- Silver project: This website (Nomad Life 101) in the travel and lifestyle niche
- Bronze project: A French website in a specific niche within the travel niche (ha!)
- Pink project: A multilingual website about a specific destination
- Yellow project: A lifestyle blog in a low-competition niche
- Turquoise project: A new lifestyle blog owned with my partner in a low-competition niche
- Gray project: A website that isn’t made for monetization (this one won’t be included in this report)
I recently sold the “Coral project” in December 2021 – read about my experience selling a website on Flippa here.
Blog Income Report January 2022
In this section, I’ll go over each project and talk about the income sources and expenses for January 2022.
Note, that most of my income comes from SEO services which won’t be included in this income report so that I can focus on blog income only. As I mentioned in the introduction, you’ll only find the income that has been paid during January because most partners pay 1-3 months later.
PSST. Want to track your blog income too? Get our blogging tracker that includes automated Google sheets to track your income and expenses.
Gold Project
Travel niche – Website launched in 2015
This blog is monetized in 4 different ways:
- Sponsors: $1,470.56
- Affiliate marketing: $1,513.73
- Ad display: $1,056.85
- Digital products: $0
For a total of $4,041.14
As the travel niche is still impacted by the pandemic, I had to shift my strategies and focus on different types of content in 2021. My traffic is slowly going back up. In fact, January 2022 was my best month ever in terms of traffic.
In the next few months, you’ll see that my affiliate income and ad revenue are going to increase. So far, it looks promising.
If you have a travel blog, you can learn more about the best affiliate programs for travel bloggers.
Silver Project
Travel and lifestyle niche – Website launched in 2017
This website is monetized in 4 different ways:
- Sponsors: 0$
- Affiliate marketing: $392.07
- Ad display: 0$
- Digital products: $6.92
For a total of $398.99
I joined Monumetric at the end of 2021, but as the network sends payments three months later, no ad revenue had been added to this report yet. It should start coming in March.
Bronze Project
French website in a specific travel niche – Website launched in 2019
This website makes all its revenue with Amazon. It made $81.76 in January 2022. As it’s in the travel niche, it’s obviously impacted by the pandemic and the niche is seasonal.
Note that no new blog posts have been published since 2020. The plan is to sell this website eventually.
Pink Project
Multilingual website about a specific destination – Website launched in 2019
This website has been growing in traffic, but it didn’t make any money in January 2022.
Note that no new blog posts have been published since 2020. The plan is to sell this website eventually.
Yellow Project
Lifestyle website about a low-competition niche – Website launched in 2020
This blog doesn’t generate income yet. Some blog posts are still not indexed (thanks to Google Search Console). The domain authority of this website is only at 7 which means that the website isn’t ranking well yet.
I didn’t publish anything on this website since 2021.
Turquoise Project
Website owned with my partner about a low-competition niche – Website launched in August 2021
This blog doesn’t generate income yet. Again, this website is relatively new and has about 30-40 blog posts currently. The domain authority is only at 4 which is quite low, but it’s been growing a bit.
So, we are giving the website domain time to grow before we publish new content again.
Blog Investments And Expenses
As I mentioned in my previous blog income report, I invest mostly in content creation. But, I did decide to experiment with something new in 2022.
Here’s the list of blogging expenses I had in January 2022:
- Tools and subscriptions: $217.33
- Virtual assistant: $1,010.14
- Content creation: $803.46
- Web story services: $465.86
- Accounting: $135.13
For a total of $2,631.92
Leaving me with a net income of $1,889.97.
If you compare with last year, I decreased my expenses, but I’m trying something new with the Google Web Stories. Last year, in January 2021, I had a lot of success with Web Stories but I didn’t like doing them at all.
So, in January 2022, I decided to try them again and my traffic increased. But, as I still don’t enjoy making them, I decided to outsource them. So, I’ll be trying this strategy for 6 months, and re-evaluate in June to see if it’s worth the investment.
Now, let’s see what I’ve learned in January 2022.
What I’ve Learned
Last year, I realized that the best investment for bloggers is content creation. As I now have ads on two blogs, the more content I have, the more money I make with ads.
But that doesn’t stop there.
More traffic = more income revenue + more affiliate sales
If you wish to learn how to increase your blog traffic by learning SEO strategies, check out the SEO course I created with my partner.
In 2022, my main focus is on content creation – I outsource some of it, but I also write a lot of content myself. That said, I also focus on optimizing the content I already have, and I’m working on improving my conversion.
By optimizing content I mean two things:
- Optimizing my content for ads (shorter paragraphs)
- Optimizing my content for SEO (making sure the content is still ranking as high as it can and that the content is still relevant)
Final Thoughts
And there you go, you have it – my blog income report for January 2022.
I’m confident that my current strategies work because I can see an increase in my blog traffic, ad revenue, and affiliate marketing. When I was compiling the affiliate sales for January, it looked promising for the next few months (remember I’m always paid 1-3 months later).
You can now read the blog income report for February 2022.
Looking for more blog tips and tricks? Read one of the following blog posts:
