How Much I Earnt In 2023 With My Niche WordPress Blog
Is Blogging Dead?
As soon as I started digging into the rabbit hole that was niche blogging, I knew it was the direction change I wanted to take with my business, I don’t believe it’s dead. At least not yet!
I’m a health and fitness coach by trade but I love to write. Writing on this platform and then transitioning to my own niche blog has changed my business.
Whilst many people go the route of going all in on just one platform and not wasting time and costs associated with setting up and maintaining a WordPress blog, I felt it was the diversification I wanted to take.
Putting all your hopes and dreams into one platform that can be taken away at any moment is risky.
However, with diversification comes a diversion of time and effort. Working on multiple platforms has its challenges and slowing progress is one of them.
To go back to the beginning of my blogging journey you can read about the early phases and the actual process of setting up the blog here:
I’ll admit I was shocked to see that was published back in August of 2022. I can’t quite believe it’s been around 18 months and I still have only managed to publish 102 articles to that website.
Whilst this isn’t going to be one of those overnight success stories of how I’m now generating 5 figures a month.
This is a story of slow and inconsistent progress, and yet there are still many lessons and maybe even a little bit of inspiration to be taken.
I wish I had created more content over this time and sure these numbers may have been way more impressive if I could get on, and sustain the ‘write and publish every day’ bandwagon.
But I’m in a phase of my life where I am just not willing to hustle myself into the ground. Every time I try that it seems my parenting skills take a nosedive and my kids get the shit end of that stick.
No money or success in the world is worth them growing up with the memory of an always working, always tired, very shouty and grumpy mother.
I have had a lot on this last year. I am working a part-time job alongside all of my other jobs which include being a mum, looking after a household whilst my husband works away a lot. I have 2 kids who do competitive sports, we are undergoing a house renovation, I blog, teach fitness classes, coach clients online and work to maintain my own health and fitness.
It’s a lot, I am also undergoing some minor health issues, so I’m tired most of the time!
I aim to write in the mornings before the rest of the household gets up as I find I don’t have the mental capacity in the evenings to write.
Once the house renovation is complete I am hoping I will have a little more time, though I will be then adding our small AirBnB into the mix. But the goal is that I will eventually let go of my part-time job.
For now, I’m grateful for that jobas it keeps on putting food on the table and my money stress levels down, whilst I work towards making online work my full-time income once again.
The Monetisation Journey
I published my first article on the new site on the 1st of November 2022, with little idea about what I was doing or where the site was going.
I turned on some ads again not knowing what to do or who to use and earned a whopping £0.01 from WordAds and £2.07 through Amazon Affiliates.
I told you this wasn't a big money story, and yet those first few pennies are not to be dismissed, they were the proof that money could be made.
I went on a mission to learn more about effective blogging using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). How to format blog posts and get them ranked on Google.
I bought Sophia Lee’s Perfecting blogging (affiliate link) course and followed her method and got to work.
Whilst some people advise waiting to get into a bigger advertising agency such as Mediavine until you turn on ads, her advice made more sense to me.
Turning on ads early means that you can start earning money immediately.
Seeing the pennies starting to come in is super motivating to me. It also serves to get your audience used to seeing ads on your website.
Adsense
In March of 2023, I applied for and turned on Google Adsense on my website.
If you clicked on this article to see how much a niche Wordpress can earn, here is the reality of my earnings.
9 months = £872.24.
Depending on who you are maybe you are thinking it’s really not worth it for the effort.
However I can continue to see the potential, the site is growing and I am using the same content to repurpose across multiple platforms.
As you can see from this graph of the last 12 months, (though there was an issue with transferring over to the new G4 tracking and so it’s not showing August) when my site really started to take off thanks to one article getting a top spot on Google.
Though there are some general peaks and troughs, I have been happy with this growth for the amount of articles that are on there.
This same content also earns money on this platform as well as on my Youtube channel (I’ll update you on how much that channel has earned there in my next article).
It’s now driving daily sign-ups to my email list and has helped to increase sales on my online fitness coaching programme.
Adsense income is just one part of it, I’m slowly working towards increasing my monthly sessions to be able to get into Mediavine which is my main goal for this year.
The requirements for that are 50k sessions a month and I’m currently around halfway there.
Google’s Revenue Per Mill (RPM) the amount you get paid per 1000 views varies, but for my website, it usually lies around £10-£15.
I believe Mediavines is higer and so working towards getting that higher rate per view is the goal for me right now.
I have a few articles that are ranking on the first page of Google, 80% of those earnings are still coming in from one article. Having all earnings coming from one article is risky business.
I need to have my traffic more widely spread across many different ranking articles to be able to get into a bigger advertising agency.
Affiliate
This section feels like it’s barely worth writing. Despite my efforts with affiliates, the results have been disappointing.
No matter how many video’s I watch or articles that I read telling you how to make £1000’s with affiliates, that has not been my experience.
The problem?
I have been sharing mainly low-cost products, just the things that I use and have experience with and have them peppered them into my articles.
This is mainly Amazon Associates and a supplement company whose supplements I use and love.
I have always just used the Amazon Associates UK, and like I said have earned pennies. I have since just added Amazon US and it seems that our American friends are more likely to click and buy (also having a much larger audience) as this is already has a higher conversion rate.
It’s still only a few dollars to date, but I hope that this too will grow. This also made sense as most of my Google traffic is also US-based.
I’m not giving up on this area just get, I think it’s more of an ethical issue as I refuse to promote crappy products. I want to build trust and authority with my audience and only share products and brands that I truly love.
But as I have worked with some brands on an affiliate basis, it’s leading me to consider if I may change to doing an upfront payment for reviews and when writing researched and SEO-optimised blog posts for a specific product.
The reason I haven’t been doing this again is personal values. I turned down one brand collaboration because I didn’t like the wording and the expectations that came with the agreement/contract.
I want the freedom to give a real and honest opinion, and I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of brands that aren’t willing to do that.
So I’m still very on the fence about this and the direction I want to take in this area.
It’s certainly not the overnight money maker a lot of people will sell you in their courses that it is, but I will still include affiliate links where it feels right, and for the products that I truly love and believe in.
A lot of products and services will have affiliate programmes, so I would always say that if there are companies that you buy for regularly see if they have an affiliate plan.
Affiliate plans I use are:
Big Lessons
Focus on SEO
This has been such a huge game-changer for me. I used to stress about constantly posting on social media or wasting money on Facebook ads. Now I have a steady stream of clients coming into my funnel who are looking for exactly what I am selling. Now I post on social media without the pressure.
It’s just really for fun, when it feels good to do so and to be able to connect with an audience that is growing steadily on automation because they found my article floating around on Google. People are finding me, rather than me having to go searching for them. This feels far more aligned with how I want my business and my life to run.
See the below article for my SEO strategy.
Go Evergreen
Evergreen articles will keep on earning money over time and hopefully for many years to come is so powerful. I certainly sprinkle them in with different styles and some seasonal-type articles.
But the things that people type into Google week after week, year after year will be the ones that generate the most money.
My best-performing articles so far are product or diet reviews.
Pinterest Is King For Blogs
As I mentioned above I now use social channels such as Facebook, Instagram and more recently TikTok when it feels like fun and don’t rely on them for the top of funnel.
I feel like they are my business cards and a little bit of a deeper delve into my work and my business.
I had a recent client tell me she found me through my blog post, then followed me on Instagram before signing up.
In her words:
I’ve been reading your stuff, watching your instagram videos and I really like your philosophy and what you’re all about.
TikTok is also an interesting beast. Though I’m fairly new here, I am finding that this account is the one that is growing most consistently as it also works well with SEO. I have also found that TikTok videos will also show up on Google searches as well as native searches from within the platform.
All of the social platforms have a place, but it can also be a little overwhelming not to mention time-consuming.
I’m just one person and do absolutely everything myself, so it make sense to focus a little more on Pinterest as it’s driving the most traffic to my blog and it also takes up far less time as you don’t get lost in a scroll that can be so easy to do on the other platforms.
The most important metric I look at in Pinterest is how many clicks I’m getting through to my website. That is currently standing at 4.4k clicks which is roughly 10% of my monthly website traffic.
I predominantly use Sophia Lee’s method from her Perfecting Pinterest course (affiliate link) with a few changes as all platforms are constantly updating the algorithm and best practices change.
Utilise Video
If you want your blog post to rank on Google it helps to also have your content in video format, we know YouTube is owned by Google.
If you have a video on your blog post it’s likely to show up higher in Google search, and you also have access to an audience that uses YouTube as their main source for search.
I don’t produce videos for all of my blog posts, mainly because I find video extremely time-consuming and it’s certainly an area that pushes me out of my comfort zone. Undergoing a house renovation has also not allowed for ideal filming conditions with lots of noise being made above my head.
I am more comfortable and feel I am better at writing than I am on video, and no one can hear the hammering of workmen in the words that I write.
But it’s an area I will keep on working on, as there have been a few months when my YouTube income has outperformed my blogging income.
As I’m using the same content just in a different format (the blog post becomes my video script), I need to keep on practising to get better at video and making the time to create that content.
Courses & Resources That I Use And Love
Some of these are affiliate links because that just makes good business sense, but these tools are the ones that have helped me get this far, and to feel solid with a strategy that works.
Courses
Sophia Lee — Perfecting Blogging ($139) and Perfecting Pinterest ($139) courses as a bundle price for $249
SEO Tools
Rank IQ — I LOVE this tool. It makes finding ranking keywords super easy, especially for beginners like me. I also use it when finding my own keywords and the AI will help you chck off all of the words and phrases that Google wants to see. Brandon’s podcast the Blogging Millionaire is also a great how-to guide to use alongside RankIQ
Ubersuggest — So many SEO tools that I have looked at seem so complex and my brain just does not work that way. I used the free version of Ubersuggest for the first 6 months but then upgraded to the paid version to get more search queries. The paid upgrade also comes with a lot more tools and data. I like that it constantly analyses your site and gives suggestions and recommendations to help generate new content or fix things that are dropping rankings. It also has an AI tool. I do sometimes use this to help flesh out content ideas, but most of the articles I write myself and my highest-ranking articles have no AI involvement.
I hope this was helpful and maybe inspire you to keep on going with your blogging journey. I’m excited to see what 2024 will bring.