Last Updated on April 20, 2020
Last year, when I started this blog, I already had my own company, but its purpose was totally different from the actual one. I was supplying training programs (such as selling skills, presentation skills or personal development).
After discovering blogging, and after learning lots of things about internet marketing, online income, website development, pay per click campaigns management, or social media, I found myself at the end of the first 8 months being able to deliver all these for other companies. I started to offer such services for free, to a few friends of mine, helping them develop their online presence. After the first results, I became quite confident in my skills, so I started to promote my new services by offering free SEO analyses. Very shortly after that I got my first two clients.
Although I wasn’t yet making a full living out of that and of the blogging income, I saw the potential and kept on going with both blogging and internet marketing services (it is true I got a little bit in debt, but that’s not a very serious issue).
Eight months later, namely in October, the things have really started to move, the income from blogging raised at $540, the indirect income was $2000, plus I secured $10,000 for the next three months, from internet marketing clients.
I’m not very fond of making my earnings public, but I publish them every now and then, because I noticed my readers are a bit curious about this blog’s financials. This is a review of both direct and indirect earnings I made from blogging since I first heard the word “blog” until October:
Direct income comes mainly from AdSense and Text Link Ads. The October increase is due to some sponsored reviews, plus a couple of private ads.
As you can see, indirect earnings are already much ahead of direct ones. However, without trying all kind of things with my personal blogs and campaigns, I would have never managed to gather so much knowledge to put in the indirect projects.
Thanks to blogging, it became possible to start a business. Thanks to people, learning was possible. Also thanks to people, experimenting was possible. I take this opportunity to thank my online professors and my readers for helping me become location independent, and for giving me a new trade to make a living from.
“Thank You” image credit: Dominik Gwarek (kikashi)
Very nice, looks like you are doing well for yourself.
I wish i could do half as well as this, my blog seems to go unrecognized though. I wonder if its my content? Though i don’t think its that bad…
Thank you Joseph. Maybe people don’t know your blog exists. How do you promote it? I’m going to take a look and I’ll tell you what I think.
Wow, you’re going great.
Even I’ve started to earn from blogging, but the best part is learning from mistakes 🙂
I’m also trying to diversify my presence and income… let’s see how things to go.
I’m still trying to make a buck and have done precisely that, I made a buck but not much more 🙁 I’m learning though and while it may be tough going, its rather fun as well.
Thank you, Shankar. I’ve also learned from mistakes, and as you can see, the direct income is not yet so great. Luckily I decided to use the knowledge and apply it to other people’s sites. If you are interested, I can write some more detailed articles on this topic, so you can see what programs I used and how. Unfortunately, I might have done something really bad in Google’s eyes, as my PR dropped to 2 (from the 5 I had in January, to 4 in April).
😆 You are funny, bluefrogx! Take the funny side of things and learn: you’ll be better. My first blogging attempt (which was on a blogspot blog) also brought me $1.7 for some 10 days of work.
I have gone through the post and was a great and interesting post on how to start a business with a blog. Thank you for such an useful information that i am in need of making some extra income and this helped me a lot better.
Thats awesome!
what are the indirect methods?
how do you market your SEO services?
Indirect methods are SEO and web design services for the clients. I find the clients mainly via word-of-mouth. I did several projects for free, and those paid off: I was recommended to other business owners who needed such services, but this time I got paid.
Some clients just found my business website in Google, asked for a meeting and I got the jobs.
A third way was to tell all my friends what is my current business. As some of them run their own advertising agencies, I’ve got some more jobs through them.
Another method, which failed miserably, was to call my former business partners, suppliers, distributors, and tell them about my services. None of them was willing to ask me to pitch for jobs they had available, as they probably had already set their deals and there was no desire or no room for change.