As part of a blog income series, I share my blog income reports. If you want to learn more about the strategies and investments I made in 2021, you can read our blog income report for 2021. This year, I changed up my strategy after a lot of testing last year. While I’m still testing new strategies, I’m investing most of my money into one thing. Keep reading to learn more!
In this blog income report, I’ll summarize my revenue sources and expenses for May 2022.
There are two essential 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 that month. That said, the revenue found here may result from sales or income from the last few months. I’m counting my revenue this way because sometimes, a sale can be canceled, which 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 to 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 started 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 sold the “Coral project” in December 2021 – you can read about my experience selling a website on Flippa.
Blog Income Report May 2022
In this section, I will go over each project and talk about the income sources and expenses for May 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 May 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: $833.74
- Affiliate marketing: $2,594.96
- Ad display: $1,777.54
- Digital products: $0
For a total of $5,206.24
Sponsors can vary a lot from one month to another. For example, I had made over $2000 with sponsors in March, while the amount was relatively small in April. In May, it increased a bit, it looks like brands don’t really have a budget these days with the current economical crisis. This is why diversification is so important. I still had income coming in from affiliates and ad displays.
Now that many destinations have reopened, the pandemic doesn’t impact my website as much as in 2020 and 2021. My traffic is quickly going back up. In fact, May 2022 was my best month traffic-wise. It increased from 104,000 to 111,000 pageviews monthly pageviews.
You’ll see my ad revenue increasing over the next few months.
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: $305.43
- Ad display: $130.02
- Digital products: $0
For a total of $571.48
I joined Monumetric at the end of 2021. In March, I started receiving payments from them as they typically pay around 3 months later.
Bronze Project
French website in a specific travel niche – Website launched in 2019
This website makes all its revenue with Amazon. It made only $136.03 in May 2022. As it’s in the travel niche, it’s still a bit impacted by the pandemic, and the niche is very seasonal.
Note that no new blog posts have been published since 2020. The plan is to sell this website eventually. That said, in April, I decided to go through all the blog posts to optimize them for quick wins. I use Google Search Console to do so, and I hope to see revenue growth over the next few months.
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 May 2022.
Note that in May, we published 12 blog posts on this website. We also had a few affiliate sales in May that should be paid out in the next couple of months.
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. The domain authority of this website is only at 6, which means that the website isn’t ranking well yet.
We published 5 blog posts on this website in May. Our goal is to start publishing more content on it from now on.
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 currently has about 30-40 blog posts. The domain authority is presently at 7, which is relatively low. All the content was indexed during February, so I’m hoping to see an increase in organic traffic soon.
We are giving the website domain time to grow before publishing new content again.
Blog Investments And Expenses
As I mentioned in my previous blog income report, I invest primarily in content creation. I hired two new writers, so my content creation expense went up. In May, I also had to pay for tools subscriptions and I decided to try new tools too, resulting in more expenses.
Here’s the list of blogging expenses I had in May 2022:
- Tools and subscriptions: $2,251.61
- Virtual assistant: $794.91
- Content creation: $2,893.50
- Web story services: $402.91
- Accounting (including Companio): $29.89
- Pinterest designer: $180.61
- Blog management: $756.67
For a total of $7,410.10
Leaving me with a net income of $0 because I had more expenses than income in May. In reality, I still had a net income from SEO services.
I spent more money on content this month, and I can see a nice increase in my traffic. As a result, I get more money in ads and more affiliate sales. This is the reason why I decided to hire more writers. As part of the process, I tried a bunch of writers and only kept the best ones.
You may have noticed that the tools were crazy expensive. Here’s an overview of the subscriptions I needed to renew, or that I wanted to try:
- It was time to renew Convertkit. I used the yearly plan to save money.
- I decided to sign up for Grammarly.
- I decided to hire an agency for link building. This is a test, and I’m still waiting to see the results so that I can evaluate if it was worth it. I’ll keep you guys posted in a few months.
- And after a free trial on Jasper, I decided to sign up. Jasper is basically an AI tool, like a content assistant. During the free trial, I was able to write a lot of blog posts faster than I usually would. I love how many different types of templates they have, so it was a quick yes for me!
Now, let’s see what I’ve learned in May 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. In May 2022, we published 54 articles on my main website, 14 articles on Nomad Life 101, and 17 articles on smaller sites.
I also focus on optimizing the content I already have, and I’m working on improving the 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)
There was a Google Core Update at the end of May, so I’ll keep an eye out on my rankings to see if they were impacted.
In June, I’ll be traveling, so our team won’t publish as much content.
Final Thoughts
And there you go, you have it – my blog income report for May 2022.
I’m confident that my current strategies work because I can see an increase in my blog traffic, ad revenue, and affiliate marketing.
Looking for blog income reports? Read one of the following income reports:
