How Much Do Bloggers Make in their First Year?

If you’ve ever wondered how much bloggers make in their first year of blogging, I’m going to share my knowledge. The amount of money made by new bloggers depends on many factors. The main factors which determine a blogger’s first-year income are:

• how much prior SEO experience they come to the table with
• niche selection

First Year Blog Income

I’ll share my first year blog income with you all to give you an idea of how much bloggers earn in their first year.

Total Traffic

My traffic steadily increased during my first year or blogging. It looked like this:

• Month 1: 1,749 pageviews
• Month: 2: 2,316
• Month 3: 8,331
• Month 4: 12,792
• Month 5: 13,396
• Month 6: 17,481
• Month 7: 26,813
• Month 8: 28,430
• Month 9: 25,277
• Month 10: 33,259
• Month 11: 34,198
• Month 12: 36,868

In my first year blogging, I received a total of 240,910 pageviews.

Revenue

My blog revenue for the first full year as a blogger was $7,832. I had minimal expenses since I did everything myself including the writing. I think I was paying around $5 per month for blog hosting and that’s it!

Starting a blog might sound scary. You have lots of ideas and good content, but you don’t know where to start. You have to be patient, market your website, build an audience, and understand SEO… it seems to be a lot. But it’s okay, as you’ll learn as you go!

First Year Blog Lessons

Here are some tips to help you with your first year of blogging. You’ll soon realize it’s not as challenging as you thought.

Don’t Worry About Perfection

It’s easy to get caught up in perfectionism. Some people want to do everything perfectly right from the beginning, or they might as well not do it. As you start blogging, you’ll realize that things don’t work like this.

Do your best, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect. No one expects you to be the best blogger from day one. Instead, focus on the experience and learn from the mistakes you make.

Blog Design Doesn’t Matter That Much

With so many templates and features to choose from, we can get stuck in blog design forever. But trust me when I say that it doesn’t matter that much. Sure, you need to have an appealing website to prevent readers from leaving. But don’t obsess over every single detail.

Keep things simple, and you’ll retain more traffic than if you try too hard. In the future, if you need an expert to help you with the design and layout, hire one. Or learn in the meantime by yourself!

20% of Your Effort Will Get You 80% of the Results

The Pareto principle says that 20% of your actions will result in 80% of the results. In marketing, for example, this means that 80% of your profit will come from 20% of your investment. So you might want to learn how to leverage this rule.

It doesn’t mean that you need to work less time, but more smartly. Focus on the areas that matter the most to achieve results: copywriting, CTAs, and even ads. But as mentioned above, don’t obsess over little things like the font in the “contact me” section.

You Must Invest in Your Blog

I’m not specifically talking about money, but it’s a possibility too. If you start a blog, you need to dedicate time to it. And time is an investment. You need new ideas, content, market research to understand your audience, and more.

And sometimes, you also need to put some money into the game. Marketers and programmers know more than you do about the platforms and the target audience. Say you want to boost your online traffic and user experience. Then you will have to make an investment and hope for a positive ROI.

You Don’t Need to Spend Money on Courses

When we are amateurs, it’s easy to believe we need paid help from others. But you’d be surprised by how many free online resources you can find. Some people on the Internet share their wisdom without expecting anything in return. At least, not from us – who can say about ads?

You can search for information slowly, depending on what you need at that moment. You might not need to grasp everything about web design or CMS right now, so why would you spend your money on a course about it?

Blogging is a Marathon, not a Sprint

Building a blog is a process, a journey. You can’t do it overnight – if you do, there’s probably something off. Don’t stress too much about speed, and focus on quality instead.

We tend to focus on productivity and do things on autopilot without enjoying the journey. Your first year blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll learn new things every day, both from your niche and others. You’ll discover new WordPress features you didn’t know about and master your writing and content creation.

Sometimes taking the fast path leads us to failure. I hope these first year blogging lessons will come in handy for you. Enjoy the blogging!