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I am always looking for opportunities to grow our side income streams. One day in the future, I hope to replace our full-time income with money from a variety of income streams … of which most will be passive.
Those income streams that are not passive should at least be location independent. This means we don’t want to be tied down to a specific location in order to earn income.
The first significant side income stream that our family has been building for almost 10 years now is investing in dividend stocks. This year alone, we expect to make an extra $2,400 … just from dividend income. And next year, we expect to earn over $3,000 in dividend income.
This type of income is almost all passive in nature and doesn’t take any extra work on our part. The only problem is that it takes a good amount of capital to build any significant income from dividend stocks. For example, in order to earn that $2,400 in dividends this year … we had to invest around $60,000.
Our long term goal is to have $1,000,000 invested in dividend paying stocks that would generate at least $30,000 per year in income. That means we need to come up with another $940,000 of investments!
So how are we going to come up with this extra money to invest? The majority of it will need to come from other “income streams” that we are working to build.
The most promising side hustle that we are working on now is to earn blogging income.
Earning this type of income has plenty to like – the work can basically be done from any location in the world. It also has the potential to earn substantial income if you put in the work. While not guaranteed … the potential to earn over a $1,000,000 per year is there.
Lastly, the startup costs to earn blogging income are very low. Really, it can cost less than $100 a year to get a blog started.
So our new focus is to start building up one of our blogs where we can earn $5,000+ per month in sustainable income by next June (2018). If that goes well, then we may try and repeat that process into a second and third blog.
Here is a little bit more information about our first blog that we plan to earn sustainable income from in the health and fitness niche.
Health and Fitness Blog
Other than personal finance, my second blogging passion is health and fitness. That is why I started a blog on the topic over 3 years ago.
Unfortunately I haven’t spent much time on the blog since starting it and have written less than 20 articles so far. I didn’t have a plan or any purpose for the site … since it was basically just a hobby.
And because it has only been a hobby, the visitors to the site have been limited. With few visitors and traffic … I have not earned any income from the blog.
Total Earning to Date – $0
Instead of earning any income, I have actually had several expenses for the site including – domain name, hosting, and theme costs. So my heath and fitness site has actually been cash flow negative since I started it.
So just to be clear … even though I am starting this blogging income campaign with an existing site … it has very little traffic and has lost money.
Blogging Income – July Updates
Each month that I post these updates, I plan to share a few statistics. I hope that these increase over time and next year I can look back and see how much my site has grown.
Here are a couple notable stats for the site at the end of July (2017) –
- Age of site – approximately 3 years
- Posts – 14 articles
- July Pageviews – 406 (down from 646 last month)
- Highest Monthly Pageviews – 690 (January 2017)
- Email Subscribers – 0
- Income Earned – $0
- Pinterest Followers – 42 (up from 39 last month)
- Twitter Followers – 21 (down from 23 last month)
- Instagram Followers – 26 (no change from last month)
Note – For now, I am concentrating my social media efforts to mostly Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. I am planning to leverage the power of Pinterest to try and get a bunch of traffic right away. I also figure that Twitter and Instagram tend to be popular choices for sharing content on the Health and Fitness industry … so I will work to build up my following in those as well..
Out of the 3 social media networks, Pinterest will be the main focus starting out because of the potential for good traffic right away.
One last item on our updates, I only recently added email opt-in forms on the site. So I never had a chance to get any email subscribers until the end of July. I plan to focus a lot of time over the next couple of months building my list of email subscribers.
Blogging Income Goals for July
We set several high level goals for July for our Health and Fitness site. The goal is to eventually earn consistent income from this site of $5,000 per month by next June.
It was a really bad month for hitting our goals unfortunately. Here is a quick recap –
Goal #1 – Finish evaluating the remaining 10 articles on the site
The only action I took on this was reviewing one of those articles and deciding to make several updates to it. At a minimum, I need to get the other 9 completed in August.
Goal #2 – Finish that 3rd cornerstone article I didn’t finish in June
I was able to successfully finish this cornerstone article in July, so I feel good about that. This 2,160 word article on 20 Minute HIIT workouts provides a ton of useful information for my readers.
The post will help people who are short on time get a quality fat burning workout in under 20 minutes. Plus it is free and can be done from anywhere! I expect to get a lot of future traffic from this article and am ramping up my Pinterest pins for this content.
Goal #3 – Open up a Tailwind account and start building my Pinterest profile up
This goal was actually easy to complete … but I still did not finish it. I was hesitant spending another $100+ to get this account setup but I think I need to do it. Honestly … I have gone back and forth with this one.
But in the end … if I want to be serious about Pinterest … then I need an account like this to accelerate that growth.
Goal #4 – Research post topics and come up with 5 ideas for posts in August
I was able to complete this goal! Yeah!
Not only did I come up with 5 ideas for future posts … I have about 30 article topics I want to write on. I did all this research using Pinterest to tell me which existing pins from other sites are popular in my niche.
I am starting to realize the power of using Pinterest for blogging research. Now I just need to make the time to start writing content!
August Blogging Income Goals
Since I will be on vacation for the second week of the month, I will already be at a disadvantage for hitting my monthly goals. Plus, I haven’t hit my June or July monthly goals for a bunch of reasons.
But if I don’t find the time to put in the work … nothing will get done and I certainly won’t earn $5,000 per month by next summer.
So given that we will be on vacation for a week and I know not much will get done, I am going lite on the goals for August. But let’s see if I can actually get something done now!
Goal #1 – Finish evaluating the remaining 9 articles on the site
Just gotta get this one crossed off the list … even if it is for my own sanity!
Goal #2 – Open up a Tailwind account and start building my Pinterest profile up
This one is simple, just gotta pay the money!
Goal #3 – Write 2 articles of at least 1,500 words
No matter what else I am doing … I need to keep putting quality content up on the site. I have a list of 30 topics to pick from!
Goal #4 – Reach 50 Followers on Pinterest
I want to start setting goals like this each month for my social media accounts. Getting tailwind setup should help but I need to get 8 new followers.
It is time to start getting down and dirty with this site. But just after our family vacation!
Are you earning blogging income? What strategies are you using to grow your site and income?
