This is the first of a series of monthly reports I will write detailing the revenue and expenses from my blogs over time. In each, I will discuss the major events that occurred that month and my thought process on how to grow the business side moving forward.
My goal with the income reports is to be fully transparent and illustrate how I made/make money from my blog and research company, and how others can do the same.
For me, revenue and income from my blogging efforts means that I can support my family and amplify the change I can make in the world with my online communication.
A secondary goal is to show you the tools and resources I used along the way, so that you can get a leg up on your own journey. You can visit the GradBlogger resources page to see what tools I currently recommend. The income reports will include the tools I was using at the time being reported, regardless of if I still recommend them today, so it is good to check the resources page before making any final decisions for yourself.
The third and final goal from the income reports is to show you the process I went through to build my blogging business. What were the high points and low points, and what can you do to have more of the latter? Getting your blog to the point where it is the largest authority in your field is my goal, and I hope that by openly sharing my story I can help you achieve that!
2016 Income Report
The current income report in this post covers the period from June 21, 2016, when I bought hosting for my first website myDustExplosionResearch.com, to the end of 2016. In that time, the business only had one expense (the hosting fee) and generated no revenue. Although I bought the hosting and domain for my website on June 21, it was not until August that my website went live, with the first post on August 25.
To help you start your blog much faster than the two months it took me, I created the GradBlogger “Getting Started Mini-Course (GSMC)” which will have you up-and-running within 10 days!
Below is the receipt for my first-ever blog expense, a $35.40 USD hosting fee from Bluehost. After researching several options, I went with Bluehost as they appeared to be the longest running and most reliable solution. Later on, when I was stuck with technical issues, I found out that their customer service is handled over the phone with a real person and is top-notch, as well. As such, Bluehost continues to be my recommended provider for website hosting.
I bought my website hosting through an affiliate link from The Minimalists, as they provided several valuable posts showing me how to get started with planning my website and blog. From my purchase, The Minimalists received a commission payment from Bluehost for introducing me to their company.
This brings me to an important point and disclaimer about the links provided in the income reports. Some of the links (Bluehost for example) are affiliate links, and as such I will earn a commission if you choose to purchase through them. This commission comes at no additional cost to you, but is a way to help support gradblogger.com. We appreciate this help with our work, but encourage you not to purchase these products unless you feel they will help you achieve your goals!
Getting Started With Content
When I first started, I was pretty apprehensive about spending money on my blog (you will see this mindset change substantially over the next few years of income reports as I came to realize that I can spend money to save time with my blog and business – time, in the end, being the limiting resource! Although I was not spending much money, I was very busy practicing my ability to create written content.
Looking back at my post schedule it is easy to see the progression.
- August: Published 1 post;
- September: Published 3 posts;
- October: Published 8 posts;
- November: Published 20 posts; and
- December: Published 20 posts.
However, it is harder to pinpoint the struggles. I started off strong in August and September publishing four high-quality posts about my blog topic:
- Two Simplified Models of Premixed Laminar Flame Propagation
- Premixed Verses Non-Premixed Flames
- Introduction to Turbulent Flame Structures
- Code Flow Chart for Reactive Lagrange Routines in CoalChemistryFoam
Each post took a substantial amount of time to research, write, edit and create images for. The flowchart in the fourth post alone took about a week but fortunately helped my understanding for thesis work, as well!
This left me pretty burnt out overall and not wanting to write. The flowchart post was published on September 18 and my next post would not go up until a month later, on October 24.
Sweat Equity – A Limited Resource
At that point, I realized that I needed a better system if I was going to continue writing. Doing some research online, I came up with the concept of doing “Three Minute Paper” summaries, which streamlined my process.
So what did I do once I created this amazing process? Obviously, I doubled down on creating content and ramped up to posting five times per week throughout the rest of the year! You can read more about three-minute paper strategy in this post “How to Write 40 Academic Blog Posts in 56 Days”.
Writing over 40,000 words in just two months gave me some confidence in my ability to write a Ph.D. thesis, but… this time I had really did it in the burning out department.
In the following period from January 1 to March 28, 2017, I only managed to publish four new posts on my blog. This shows that you can go hard for a period of time but eventually the ball will drop. You need to make sure, for your sake and the sake of your blog, that you don’t push too hard for it to fail!
Traffic in the First Months
Although writing so much almost broke me down mentally, it did help generate traffic to my blog. For 2016, I had 14 unique visitors in September, 108 in October, 125 in November, and 167 in December. This is pretty small compared to the over 2000 visitors per month the blog had at its peak, but this felt like a lot of people at the time!
It would be almost a year and a half before myDustExplosionResearch.com hit its peak month of 2,149 visitors. I will explain the growth in detail in future posts and income reports, but I just wanted to share the overall traffic now so you know what things might look like in the beginning when you are just starting out!
Free Tools & Resources
Although hosting through Bluehost was my only expense in 2016, I used several free tools or tools with free options to run my blog. I created a free email list with MailChimp sending my first newsletter to two people (my mom and my aunt) on November 13. By the newsletter on December 27, I had a whopping 25 people signed up for the list!
By the end of 2016, I had also started working on my “social presence” (note that I am making gigantic air quotes right now). Starting with essentially zero followers on LinkedIn and no other accounts except a personal Facebook page, I grew my LinkedIn connections to 304 and Twitter connections to 172 by the end of the year. To do this, I used the free version of Buffer. This allowed me to create a small list of scheduled social media posts (about one per day), which I had to go back in and fill every weekend.
