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Well, everybody. I am so excited to make this blog post. Here is how I have been doing my first month blogging.
I have officially been blogging for an entire month now and I am glad to say that I have already started earning a little money.
In this post, I will reveal all. Alongside my income sources, I will also be revealing how much traffic I received, how many email subscribers I have and my plans and goals going forward for the next few months.
There are a few reasons why I publish income reports and I want to share them with you:
- To hold myself accountable. This way I can motivate myself and it forces me to keep working on the site and remaining productive, even when I don’t want to be. We all have good and bad days however it is important that I remain consistent wherever possible.
- To track my progress. I want to use these income reports to track my progress over time and to see how far I have come. They also help me to find out what I need to improve and how I can do that. For example, if my traffic is low for one month I can use this information to work out why.
- To show you proof that making passive income online is possible. Another reason for writing up this income report is to prove to you guys that making money online is doable. That it is not pie in the sky. If you put the work and effort in, you will reap the rewards.
For those of you who are new to this blog, welcome! I hope you enjoy reading my articles and I hope you find them valuable to you. My name is Joel and I am a 16-year-old based in the UK writing about photography!
And one last important point I have to make… NONE OF THIS IS A BRAGGING GAME!
None of this has been written to brag, flex or show off to you my progress. I understand that people have been struggling with their income during this pandemic and I have no intention of using this to show off. This is solely to show you what’s possible with some hard work and a small blog. It is also so that I can be transparent with you, the reader, and keep you updated on what’s happening behind the scenes.
With all of that explained, let’s get into the bit you’ve all been waiting for.
Page Contents
My Income For My First Month Blogging: £31.50
First of all, let’s get straight into income!
This month, I earned the vast majority of my income from a blogging platform called Medium. Medium has a program called the Partner Program where you can earn money whenever people read your articles. You earn more the longer people read a specific article.
I primarily write about photography on this platform but I also dabble in writing about science, tech and marketing also.
Here is a screenshot showing my earnings from the partner program in January 2021:

As you can see, this is displayed in dollars. When converted into pounds, it totals up to £31.44.
Not bad for my first-month writing on the platform however and I am hoping that will significantly increase in February next month.
I wrote 15 articles that month, so it averages around $3.03 per article. That is pretty bad but it’s only starting out and it will definitely grow over time.
I would really appreciate it if you could give me a follow on my Medium profile. That way you can stay up to date with what I publish there and you can read some of my non-photography related articles.
So that’s the main source of my income out of the way. I have also republished some of my other articles to a website called Vocal.media.
You can also go and check out my profile there if you wish. You cannot follow anyone on the platform at the minute but that feature will hopefully be coming soon.
From republishing some of my articles to Vocal Media, I have earned $0.08, or £0.06 when converted.
This is basically nothing although I will take it as every little bit of money adds up!

As you can see from this, it is a smart way to earn a little extra cash while putting in very little extra work. If you are also a writer, I would recommend you check out this website. Just be aware there is very little internal traffic so you should try and use social media to get views on your articles instead of relying on Vocal to get you traffic.
This is all of the income I earned for my first-month of blogging. Just to quickly sum up:
- Medium: £31.44
- Vocal Media: £0.06
OK! So that way my income explained. I am very happy with my progress and, considering it was my first month, I was expecting to earn nothing. It is great proof that earning money online is doable and that it can definitely be done.
Next, I’m going to discuss how much traffic I have received and how I have received that traffic
Total Traffic For My First Month Blogging: 325 Pageviews
Wow!
I am definitely happy with this and it is great proof that at least SOMEONE is reading my content. It does initially feel like you are talking to a brick wall however I am very confident that my traffic to this website will build up over time.
Using Google Analytics to track my traffic efforts, I can see that I have had a total of 325 pageviews. In terms of individual readers, I have had 146 users visit my website. This means a user has on average visited 2 pages on my website.

My session duration is also pretty decent as well, coming in at just over a minute.
All-in-all, this is a good start. A lot of the work I have done in January involved building up a foundation of work in order to kickstart my blog. I am not expecting huge swathes of traffic yet and I am definitely working on this.
In order to gain this traffic, I used a few sources and websites.

As you can see, the vast majority of my traffic came from social media sites. This included Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
In the coming months, I will be ramping up my efforts with Pinterest as I believe there are a lot of my target customers and audience on there.
In the longer term, I will be working to target SEO. This will be done by targeting long-tail keywords, improving on-page SEO and reaching out for backlinks.
If you are unsure what the other sources of traffic are, I will quickly explain:
- Social: This is traffic generated from social media websites. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others.
- Direct: This is traffic gained by people directly typing Photoaspire.com into the address bar
- Referral: This is traffic from people clicking on a link to my website from another website. This other website cannot be a social media website otherwise it would be classed as ‘Social’ traffic
- Organic Search: This is the best type of traffic to get. This is done through ranking on Google and having good page SEO
On the whole, this is a good start. But in the longer term, I wish to build up my email list, which Is what I am going to be talking about next!
Total Email Subscribers For My First Month Blogging: 6 Email Subscribers
And last but definitely not least we have email subscribers!
This is the golden ticket to blogging success. If you can thousands of email subscribers who engage with your emails and content, you can definitely make a six-figure yearly income. This is the goal to beat!
At the moment, I am using a FREE 7-Day Photography Bootcamp to get people to sign up for my email list. This then helps to build up trust and authority with my readers.
After all, I want them to trust me and I want to ensure that my readers (you) get the best experience possible.

At the moment, I have a grand total of six subscribers. I am very grateful for this and I believe that getting email subscribers is the hard part. But, when you get it right, you can reap the rewards.
Email subscribers are like your closest and strongest fans and if they sign up for your list, it is a strong indication they want more content from you.
Next month and over the next few months, I will be working really hard to try and push my email list and to build up a loyal subscriber base.
But I have also planned out my goals and targets for the next few months and I will summarise these below for you. This is very exciting and I look forward to updating you on my journey blogging!
My Goals and Targets for the Next Few Months of Blogging
I believe that it is always important to have a rough plan that outlines my goals and plans for the next few months so that I can have a baseline to work for.
Here are some reasonable goals I have set that I will hopefully be able to meet:
- Feb 2021: £50 income, 400 pageviews, 7 subscribers
- March 2021: £100 income, 600 pageviews, 10 subscribers
- April 2021: £150 income, 1,000 pageviews, 15 subscribers
- May 2021: £200 income, 1,500 pageviews, 20 subscribers
In order to reach these goals, I will be writing more content, working on Pinterest and posting more to Medium!
And that is a wrap! I hope you enjoyed reading my first ever blog income report from my first-month of blogging. I hope you have enjoyed visiting my website. Hopefully, it has inspired you and I hope you took away something from this post.
Let me know in the comments what you thought of this and what you have taken away from reading this!

Photoaspire

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