New Blog’s Income Report Study

Hey Folk's. 

Have you ever been curious and wondered about A New Blogs Income Report and how their income is distributed?

My Buddy Mike Beatty from Make Time Online has just completed a tremendous and vert extensive detailed case study on this exact subject, examining the income distribution for new blogs across multiple niches. 

Time to hand over the remainder of this rather excellent guest post and case study to Mike.

Is your niche mentioned? - What is your income distribution like? 

Comment below!

New Blog’s Income Report Study​​​​

Chances are you have seen a blog income report before. Even if you’ve never read one, then you have probably seen the headline of something like this:

“How I Made $1.5 million From my Blog Last Year”

These headlines can be quite overwhelming and leave you feeling like…

Well, this blog income report study in 7 niches helps to break down these complex income reports. And in doing so reveals the road map for how to turn your blog into $1,000+ income every month.

The Story Behind the Study

You’ve probably seen a blog income report before that has really inspired you.

You know, the ones where a blogger has started earning thousands of dollars in a few months.

Or when they earn more money in one month than you’ve ever earned in your life.

However, there is a side to blog income reports that people don’t talk about as much.

It’s the side where you are left feeling inferior or demotivated. If you’re like me, you’ve read how “some blogger” has made 6 figures in their first year! All this when you’re still struggling to get a few hundred people to even read your blog after months of hard work.

This is not how blog income reports should work!

But when you really dig in you can actually see other bloggers leaving a trail to their success.

So shall we?

The Aim of the Study

This study was created to find exactly how real people have made money from their blog quickly.

It was not interested in how bloggers earn 6 figures a month. These types of blog income reports are great for motivation and to know how far blogging can take you.

But realistically they are pretty useless for someone that is yet to make consistent money from their blog.

So the sole focus was to find how new bloggers start making decent money every month. 

Blog Income Report Criteria

Here are the specific criteria that needed to be met in order for a blog income report to count in this study:

• The income must be below 6 figures a month (51 out of 57 reports were below $10,000 per month)
• The blog needed to be relatively new (created or worked on for no more than 5 years, ideally less than 2 years)
• The income needed to be higher than $1,700 (anything below this showed a pretty random income distribution)
• There must be at least 5 income reports for each niche

So after studying hundreds of blog income reports, 57 were selected for the study.

The 4 Income Distribution Methods

A common question that people ask is "how does blogging make money?" 

There were 4 main income distribution methods measured in this study:

• Ads- any income from placing ads from ad networks on the blog.
• Affiliate Marketing- any income from someone buying a product through a link on their website (or from their email) for somebody else’s product.
• Own Products- selling their own ebooks, courses or any physical products.
• Other- Any income from freelance work, sponsored posts or any other monetisation method.

This meant that it would become clearer as to how every niche actually starts making money from their blog.

A big question needed to be answered:

“Would every niche be the same, or would there be significant differences in income distribution between each niche at the start?”

The 7 Niches in the Study

There are hundreds of sub niches but pretty much every blog can fall under one of a few niches.

For this study it was broken down into 7 “niche” categories:

1. Food
2. Healthy & Fitness
3. Lifestyle
4. Mommy
5. Marketing
6. Personal Finance
7. Travel

The Mommy and health & fitness niche can easily be a sub niche of the lifestyle niche.

However, there were enough studies that clearly fell into one of these brackets to give them their own category.

In fact, these 3 niches did tend to follow the most similar pattern out of any of the niches. So in hindsight it may have been possible to categorise them all under the lifestyle niche.

Now, I can almost hear your mind asking for…

Some of the Key Findings

First of all, it was clear to see that it is 100% possible for blogs to make money without “blogging about blogging”.

This is a common myth about blogging in todays world.

Some of the super big players like Neil Patel, Amy Porterfield and Pat Flynn are prominent in the blogging world.

And surprise, surprise… they all blog about blogging!! 

However, this study specifically found blog income reports that do not focus on blogging about blogging.

It is clear to see that blogging niches other than marketing can make some great money too.

Another finding was that the bloggers income distribution certainly changed over time.

Towards the start of their journey many bloggers made most of their income from ads or other income methods. Once they earned over $40k per month they started getting more income from affiliate marketing or their own courses.

*note this is not the case in every niche! i.e. marketing kept a pretty consistent income distribution even as their blogs grew*

Some of the niche specific findings were that food bloggers really focus on getting a lot of traffic to their blog and monetising with ads.

Specifically, using Pinterest to get a lot of this traffic.

Marketing blogs, on the other hand, hardly got any income from ads. They mainly focussed on affiliate marketing and creating their own courses much sooner than in any other niche.

Ad Networks  Findings

As you can see in the infographic above, the best ad networks for any blogger to get onto is AdThrive or Mediavine.

Mediavine requires 25,000 monthly sessions.

AdThrive requires 100,000 page-views per month with the majority of the traffic coming from the US.

Typically Mommy bloggers or food bloggers aimed for AdThrive as their ad structure suited these types of blogs a lot more.

This means that if you are not achieving this level of traffic yet your sole focus should be on achieving this (unless you are in the marketing niche).

But How Do They Get This Traffic? Welcome to Pinterest

So many people are intimidated by Pinterest when they first look at it (you can’t see but my hand is up in the air right now).

Yes, I used to be one of those people.

It just looks like pretty pictures everywhere and it makes no sense how it actually helps your blog.

But here’s the truth…

As of this writing (September 2019) Pinterest is still the best place to get traffic quickly to your blog.

FACT.

This traffic has some great advantages to it:

You get to apply for better ad networks that can literally help you see 3-5 times more income from your ads

It helps your blog to become more recognised by Google, improve domain authority and rank better.

But… it doesn’t work as well in every niche out there.

Here are some of the insane traffic generators on Pinterest:

• Food
• Home Decor
• DIY & crafts
• Fashion

This is closely followed by:

• Parenting
• Travel
• Health & Fitness

But if these topics don’t fit in your niche don’t let that put you off. It also works for budgeting, gardening, how to make money and pretty much anything else you can think of to some extent.

No, not every niche will give you as much traffic.

But chances are you can write about one of those topics above somehow i.e. personal finance- low cost recipe ideas, travel- best recipes in certain cities etc.

So yes, almost any niche can get traffic on Pinterest. You can learn more about how to use Pinterest for beginners here.

What This Means for New Bloggers

There is no one size fits all approach to blogging as you can see it’s very different for every niche.

However there were some glaring takeaways from this new blog’s income report study:

Every blogger needs to hustle a lot at the start (find other ways to make money i.e. Freelancing, sponsored post opportunities, writing a lot of great content etc.)

It’s crucial to get traffic to your blog to start making money. Every blogger in this study got traffic to their blog. Find a way that works and learn more about it.

The quickest way for a new blog to get traffic is from Pinterest. It has a search function similar to Google but it doesn’t care how old your domain is (remember- some niches do better on Pinterest i.e. recipes, DIY crafts, home decor, fashion etc. so if you can tap into this content and make a link with your blog, then awesome for you!)

These bloggers found the posts that were getting the most traffic and made more content about this including finding affiliate products that support this content.

To start making serious money these bloggers would then create their own product of a better version of the affiliate products they were already selling.

Are you beginning to notice that you have to be able to find what works for you and your blog?

If you are a travel blogger then it’s likely not a good idea to create a product and try to sell that in your first few months. Writing a book about your travels or blogging journey could be a great move further on down the road though.

However, if you are a personal finance blogger, chances are you should have a few affiliate marketing products that you can write some great reviews about and then promote these posts like there’s no tomorrow!

New Blog’s Income Report Study Summary

There are so many takeaways from this study that it could be easy to feel overwhelmed again.

This is not what the study was made to do!

Just by following the path that is laid out in your niche can be the difference between making 4 figures a month within your first year. Or not making a cent.

You do not need to reinvent the wheel.

In fact, it’s wise if you don’t!

Find what is already working.

Find what people are already searching for.

And use the road map to guide you to getting more traffic and more success with your blog.

P.S. This video may help to find more great content ideas that can help you drive more traffic to your blog!