153: How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger

My Blogging Income Streams Today, I’m going to talk about my income streams. In episode 150 I talked about how I make money blogging and broke it down by percentages. Today I want to follow that episode up with the context. People may think that my report seems big and unattainable. People also have a tendency to compare themselves which isn’t a fair comparison because it is just a snapshot at the end of a journey. In today’s episode, I am going to walk you through the last 13 years of my life, and through the timeline of how I have added income streams over that time. Update: I've continued this mini series of posts with one more in episode 154 in which I talk more about how to grow your blogging income further. In Today’s Episode How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger Note: you can listen to this episode here on iTunes (look for episode PB153). November 2002 - I get an email from a friend that says, check out this blog. I liked what I saw, and I began blogging. I had no idea that you could make money from blogging. I just did it because I enjoyed it. I spent a whole year learning about blogging. I wrote a lot of content and got better as a writer. I built traffic to my site. I built engagement with my readership. Years 2 and 3 - I started experimenting with monetizing. I built a second blog where I reviewed digital cameras. The reason I began experimenting with monetizing was that my blogs were costing me money and taking up a lot of time. Google AdSense - Text based ads that I started putting on my blog. I was earning a few cents a day. Amazon Associates Program - Link to products on Amazon and I earned a few cents a week. I was mostly linking to books. I learned that if I was going to make more than a few cents a day, I needed to grow my traffic. Optimizing income streams. Optimized AdSense - more ads, change size, change position and colors. Better placements and calls to action with Amazon affiliate ads. With those 2 income streams, my income became close to full time. Now, I’m going to talk about ProBlogger and Digital Photography School Years 4 and 5 - I added a few more income streams. Direct ad sales - Advertisers were targeted my site. I knew Google took a cut, so I reached out directly to advertisers. $20 a month on first one. Other affiliate programs Promoted eBooks and products for other blogs Added other advertising networks. Yahoo and Chitika At first, I thought it would decease my AdSense, but it held study. Light bulb moment - my income will increase with adding income streams ProBlogger Book Published by Wiley ProBlogger - 6 Figure Blogging Course Years 6 and 7 - I added 3 more income streams Paid speaking Experiment with some consulting - Blog Coaching - didn’t really suit my personality Adding in the ProBlogger Job Board - small income at first, it has grown over the years and it gets 4 - 7 new jobs a day Years 7 through 11 - I really focused on building products. First one was an eBook - For Digital Photography School - It took me 4 months and I had to learn about shopping carts and everything else involved. It sold $70,000 in the first 11 days. This was a culmination of years of building engagement and putting it all together. Launched an eBook on ProBlogger A brand new income stream in a few months. Having my own products opened my eyes to a whole new world. We have since launched 35 eBooks. A membership site on ProBlogger - a closed community with webinars etc. Not a lot of engagement, and I didn’t feel like I was contributing a lot of value. May tweak this idea in the future. 2007 - First ProBlogger Event - These have a lot of expenses, but they are an income streams. Printables on Digital Photography School Years 12 and 13 - The last two years. Extending the idea of eBooks and creating products