Summary

A blogger reflects on their first year of blogging, detailing the initial investment, revenue generated, and the journey to gaining traffic, ultimately concluding that blogging may not be the best side hustle for quick earnings.

Abstract

The blogger began their journey with a modest investment of $60 for a domain and hosting, focusing on SEO-optimized content to drive traffic and monetize through affiliate links, ads, and digital products. Despite low morale and minimal traffic in the first few months, persistence paid off as traffic began to increase significantly around the 5th and 6th month. The blogger eventually earned$ 47, mostly from affiliate links, and while they have yet to fully recoup the initial investment, they plan to continue the blog. However, the blogger advises that blogging is not an ideal side hustle for immediate financial returns, suggesting it's more akin to a long-term business venture.

Opinions

Blogging requires patience and consistent effort, as significant traffic and revenue may take months to materialize.
The success of a blog is not guaranteed; many bloggers do not achieve substantial traffic or earnings even after a year.
Despite the slow start, the blogger believes in the potential of their blog and plans to reinvest in it, indicating a positive outlook on blogging as a long-term endeavor.
The blogger suggests that readers who enjoyed the article support them by becoming Medium members, indicating a preference for platform-based revenue streams in addition to the blog's direct earnings.
Blogging is characterized as more of a startup project or business rather than a quick side hustle, emphasizing the blogger's view of blogging as a long-term investment rather than a short-term financial solution

How Much Money I’ve Generated From My Blog in Its 1st Year

Should you start a blog as a side hustle?

I started a blog 10 months ago. My total initial startup cost for my blog was around $60. I bought the domain and a year’s worth of hosting.

If you don’t already know, money can be earned in a number of different ways from a blog. The main methods I wanted to focus on were:

Affiliate links
Ads
Selling my own digital products (books, etc.)

The way I decided to do this was by writing posts that were search engine optimized (SEO). I’d write posts designed to rank higher on Google and hopefully those readers would use an affiliate link or click on some ads.

Sounds simple enough, right?

Sadly, many bloggers have this same thought and aren’t successful enough to get their sites enough traffic for any of it to work.

After my first few months, morale was low. Like really low. Just as low as my traffic was.

As you can see, after months of publishing my site’s traffic really hadn’t started to move.

My only real tip for anyone looking to grow their site’s traffic is to keep publishing. Even if 3 or 4 months go by without much of an increase, keep writing and posting stories.

It takes time for a fresh site to really start ranking on Google. Many bloggers don’t see significant results even after a year of writing.

I held out and kept publishing content and too my surprise, the next 3 months treated me much better.

As you can see, the traffic really started to pick up around the 5 and 6-month mark. The motivation of seeing this spike in traffic was all I needed to really start publishing a lot more.

I hadn’t started to add any affiliate links to my site until this point. I created a few optimized blog posts with affiliate links and let them loose into the world.

Here’s how the traffic is looking today.

As you can see, traffic is flowing in to the site on a daily basis. The more I publish, the more traffic I get.

And with it comes the moolah, the green, the dinero. So far, I’ve earned a whopping $47 from my blog. That’s $13 away from breaking even!

I earned:

$40 from affiliate links
$7 from ads (I just added ads onto my site last week)

If you want to see how I started getting some affiliate sales, check out the story below.

How I Multiplied My Blog’s Affiliate Income 10X in 3 Months

I almost gave up on affiliate revenue, but something changed

medium.com

The cool part about all of this is since I broke even, I’m going to double down on my blog and pay for another year of hosting and the domain.

The sad part is it hasn’t been the best side hustle.

Is owning a blog a good side hustle?

Honestly, I’m going to have to say no. A blog is great, but not as a side hustle if you need to earn money quickly.

It could take years before you start earning real money from a blog. It’s more of a startup project/business than a side hustle — in my opinion at least.

🔴 I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you’d like to support me as a writer, consider signing up to become a Medium member. It’s just $5 a month and you get unlimited access to Medium.

Read more stories like this by subscribing to The Side Hustle Club’s newsletter.