March was yet again another great month for me personally, filled with a healthy amount of time away from my computer and a few days each week dedicated to filming video content for the massive overhaul I completed with Built to Blog. I continue to be super grateful that I don’t need to work all day/every day, and I’ve still been creating a lot of space for self-discovery, reading, trail running and rigorous exercise. On the blog, my top-line statistics were all down a bit (aside from revenue). Income came in at $35,218.31 and I brought in 106,006 readers—with 149,830 unique sessions.
Taking a closer look at the numbers for March… blog income was up significantly over the previous month. I’m still seeing consistent commissions from my guide about how to start a blog and ramping up longer-term oriented gains with other monetized articles. During the month of March, I relaunched my comprehensive blogging course, Built to Blog: How to Get Your First 10,000 Readers and Earn Six-Figures Blogging, packed full with all new content, updated lessons and more material than ever before. You can join the waiting list for an invite to the next enrollment period.
Overall, I generated $35,218.31 in blog income during March of 2021—while once again spending very little time in actual work mode, which shows me just how much my blog has been one of the most rewarding investments I’ve ever made… and something I’m continually very grateful for.
Expenses remained super low for the month while I focused on my Built to Blog course relaunch, with profit for March coming in at $33,586.40.
The Forecast ☀️: For April, I’m expecting blog income to dip a good amount, coming down from this month’s surge in course enrollments, landing my revenue somewhere between $16,000 – $20,000. I’m anticipating I’ll stay in that general range over the coming months, while staying focused on updating my most important content, implementing SEO improvements and keeping a cadence of new content coming out with the goal of rebounding my traffic over the coming months. Business expenses will remain light for the coming months.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind. When you use one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep all of my in-depth content free of charge for readers (like you).
Now, on to the details of my March blog income report…
Blog Income in March 2021: $35,218.31
In these monthly reports, I track my total income every month, including each individual source of that income, and associated expenses with running my business. This is the good and the bad.
Next, I break down the traffic to my blog which heavily impacts my income, including what’s performing best and how I’m working to drive in more readers. I also cover how many email subscribers I’m at, the number of new subscribers acquired during the month, and what that growth trajectory looks like.
Finally, I cover updates on any other side projects I’m working on for the month.
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Now, let’s do this.
Blog Income Breakdown for March 2021
Gross Income
$35,218.31
Built to Blog Course Sales
$17,989.63
Freelance Clients & Sponsorships
$0.00
Affiliate Earnings
Bluehost
Elementor
Kinsta
Dreamhost
HostGator
Liquid Web
Namecheap
HubSpot
CreativeLive
Amazon (Business Books)
Udemy
Flexjobs
Shopify
SolidGigs
Survey Junkie
ConvertKit
Skillshare
Teachable
Adobe
Bonsai
Stencil
Contena
Food Blogger Pro
OptimizePress
Visme
Wix
WP Rocket
Weebly
Hunter
Automattic (WordPress)
GreenGeeks
GeneratePress
Freshbooks
Designrr
Twinword Ideas
WP Engine
SiteGround
JustRemote.io
Buzzsprout
GoDaddy
$17,228.68
$9,400.00
$221.50
$0.00
$4,773.95
$400.00
$0.00
$37.26
$0.00
$93.26
$147.22
$240.09
$465.78
$29.00
$379.65
$39.00
$121.80
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$241.25
$7.50
$0.00
$7.00
$138.60
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$8.70
$42.52
$102.72
$200.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$20.00
$63.94
$47.94
$0.00
Expenses Breakdown
Total Expenses
$1,631.91
Web Services: Hosting & Storage
Kinsta
SmartWP Hosting
RightBlogger Hosting
Dreamhost
Google Drive
Cloudflare
$488.23
$300.00
$25.00
$25.00
$10.95
$19.98
$107.30
Online Tools & Subscriptions
ConvertKit (Pre-Paid Annual)
Teachable
Bluehost (Test Website)
Adobe Creative Cloud
Calendly
Quickbooks
Zoom.us (Video Conferencing)
DeBounce (Email Verification)
Simplecast (Podcast Hosting)
TextExpander
Apple (Storage & Apps)
$389.88
$0.00
$99.00
$0.00
$52.99
$10.00
$30.00
$14.99
$0.00
$30.00
$0.00
$152.90
Professional Services
Freelance Writers
Technical Consultant
WordPress Development
Rev (YouTube Transcriptions)
Business Insurance
$131.41
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$131.41
Travel, Office Supplies & Misc
AT&T Service Plan (iPhone)
iPhone 12 Payment Plan
Internet (Comcast)
Amazon (Office Supplies)
Health Insurance
Transaction and Processing Fees
$622.39
$113.35
$43.66
$0.00
$41.88
$423.50
$0.00
Net Profit Breakdown
Net Profit
$33,586.40
Now, on to my blog and email-related statistics for March 2021.
2. Blog Stats for March 2021: 149,830 Sessions and 145,438 Total Email Subscribers
March saw a bit of a drop in overall traffic compared to the previous month, hovering around some of the lower readership numbers I’ve seen on my site in at least a few years. While I’ve mentioned a few times recently that this is due largely to increased volatility in some of my key organic search rankings (fueled by several major Google algorithm updates over the past year), I’m now spending most of my work time on experimenting with technical SEO tweaks and exhaustive content updates to halt the decline I’ve been seeing… which seems (for now) to have slowed in pace.
I’ve mentioned in the last couple of income reports that I’m carefully monitoring this activity, but it’s also important for me to hold the context that short-term volatility has always been the norm within this extremely competitive niche, and I know exactly what works best for maintaining high-ranking content over the long-term… which is comprehensive, useful content 😊
Ultimately, I’m grateful that I can zoom out to see a clear pattern (with 8+ years of traffic history) that peaks and valleys are the norm. With that in mind though, it requires a healthy dose of proactivity and willingness to experiment in order to rebound from the low points. I’m continuing to implement some key SEO improvements that I can identify—of which I rely in part on Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool for actionable insights and specific fixes—while regularly updating my key articles to make sure they stay fresh and helpful for my readers.
As we’ve talked a lot about in these reports, I’m the first to tell you that blogging is a long game… and short-term punches can’t discourage you from investing in creating resources that’ll lead to a brighter future. One of my takeaways from this decline I’ve seen, is that I need to more thoughtfully diversify traffic sources (away from primarily Google search) and revenue sources (away from affiliates as my top channel).
Here are my top 15 most trafficked posts from March, ranked in descending order of which drove the most readers:
- business ideas
- make money online
- how to start a blog
- freelance jobs
- best remote jobs sites
- free blogging sites
- how to name a blog
- business books
- remote job
- how to freelance
- how to pick a blog niche
- blog post ideas
- make money blogging
- work from home jobs
- blog layout examples
Throughout the past month still, readers to my 25,000+ word guide, How to Start a Blog and Make Money have remained surprisingly steady—which still holds rankings in organic search for competitive terms like how to start a blog, how to blog and such. As usual, when more readers land on that guide… more are joining my free course, How to Build a Blog in 7 Days and they’re offered an opportunity to join my more comprehensive paid Built to Blog course that’ll help level up their blogging skills even more.
In March, I actually didn’t publish any new articles (for the first time in years), as 100% of my time went to relaunching my Built to Blog course & filming impactful new content to keep the course fresh & relevant for students.
I’m continuing to find that the majority of my time spent on content goes toward maintaining my existing library of 300+ articles. It’s a lot of work updating and expanding these guides on an ongoing basis, so new long-form content will come a lot slower this time of year as I focus mostly on 2021 content updates for the next couple of months.
This is all with the continued mission of signaling to Google (and other search engines) that my blog’s niche is clearly focused around the topic of blogging and I’m expecting that intense focus to keep delivering more readers looking for tactical blogging advice over the long-term… this is an investment for the long game!
2. Email Subscribers
I’ve used ConvertKit to manage my email subscriber community and deliver my emails for several years now and I absolutely love the product.
March saw the addition of 2,310 subscribers to my community with my total email list growing to 145,438 subscribers.
This was an uptick in email subscriber growth from February, which is a positive signal for now. Email list growth is directly impacted by a few of my key articles getting less traffic than than they’d received in previous months (due to the many Google algorithm updates, which sent fluctuations in organic traffic), so I’m expecting fluctuations to mirror my traffic rises and dips over the coming months.
As with previous months though, most of my new email subscribers came from the influx of blogging-related content and free downloads I have across my site (like my blog business plan, blogging books, outreach email templates and blog post templates)—which is my ultimate goal to remain focused on, as that’s the niche I’m all in on serving for the years to come.
A significant chunk of my new subscriber growth continues to be fueled by my free course, Build a Blog in 7 Days which is well-optimized for both affiliate revenue—and for offering my more advanced paid course (Built to Blog) for those looking to get more hands on help in growing their blogs.
That’s it for my March 2021 blog income report
As we touched on in the beginning of this report, I’m predicting blog income to hover around the same general range I’m in right now for the next couple of months, landing somewhere between $16,000 – $20,000 in March as I experience fluctuations in traffic and corresponding affiliate payouts that are directly related to the volatility in traffic I’ve been seeing for the past several months.
If you’re looking for some additional reading to help grow your own blog, I’m always updating my ultimate guide to building and scaling a profitable blog right here that I’d love for you to read 😊
Wow, great job Ryan! I have truly benefited from your content as I’m sure a lot of other bloggers have so all your growth doesn’t come as a huge surprise tbh. Also, this is such a well-written blog income report – I appreciate all the super relevant detail such as the breakdown of your expenses. Thanks so much for sharing!
You’re very welcome, Vicki! Thanks for following along (and for the kind words) 🙂
Thanks, Ryan! Your site is an inspiration for us the new “Bloggers” and thanks to your content and from some other bloggers, we are starting to see the results, quite fast actually.
Woo! Love to hear that, Marcos 👏
Thanks for this, I started my blog last year but I am discouraged already, the Google algorithm update recently has affected me, what do I do ??
Hey John! I’m right there with you on the frustration with algorithm updates… there’s simply sometimes no clear “reason” why something goes up/down in search rankings at least right away. Short-term fluctuations are very normal, but a sustained decrease is usually indicative of something that can be improved… possibly improving content quality, better matching of user-intent on your posts, or nailing your SEO best practices. I’d start with following along on these posts to see if something technical from an SEO standpoint could be improved first:
https://www.ryrob.com/blog-seo/
https://www.ryrob.com/on-page-seo-strategies/
Hey Rob,
It’s Calvin again 🙂
I have subscribed to your list and definitely never regret doing so.. been reading your content over the past months.. getting so much value from it.
And I have taken some of your advice and put it into action..
Thank you for your time and effort in putting out the best for readers.
Keep pushing!..
Love to hear that, Calvin! Thanks for following along and wishing you luck with your own blog growth as well 💪
Wonderful report once again!
Ryan, you have over 145 000+ email subscribers, that’s A LOT!
I know that you’ve worked hard to get to that number.
Do you have any tips for us “beginners”, who only have about hundred or thousand email subscribers?
Thanks for your time!
Ah, thanks so much Lukas! 🙏
Do you mean tips on growing your email list—or to better monetizing your subscriber list?
Great tips for beginners on how to grow an email list, thanks Ryan.
🙏
I need to register to this
🙏
This is just incredible… and you can sense that it is all authentic, genuine, and real information from just a good person… I just really started to look into your blog and into you and just… wow. I am unsure if you have a mentorship program or something like that you can direct me to? Ill be enjoying looking thoroughly through your website today… I just would love to learn more from you and just discover more about how I can develop my own blog and actually successfully accomplish doing that!
Thank you so much for sharing all of this… A gem.
Christy Jo
Ah, thank you so much for the kind words Christy—I try very hard to make these reports as open and authentic as possible so it means a lot to hear you’re seeing that 🙏
I don’t have a mentorship program at the moment, I’m sorry to say! The best way to get some of my help with your blogging journey right now is through my course, Built to Blog (the waiting list link to sign up for notifications when I open doors again is right here: https://www.ryrob.com/courses/built-blog/). In the meantime though, please do keep poking around with my content & free resources… many of which can be found here: https://www.ryrob.com/best/
This is massive Revenue out for any blogger. Also loved the fact that you include expense too in that Revenue sheet. Atleast you are giving all honest information for your readers which is a sign of skilled level blogging.
Definitely, seeing it feels motivated and inspiring as we as push me forward to start my own.
Thnaks for sharing
Yes indeed! Honesty and transparency are key, in my experience 🙂 good luck with your blog too!
Ryan, I am looking for something that is not too difficult for a 77 year old senior citizen to comprehend and make some money to help support my Lady Rosey and myself. This program seems to do just what I want but I know nothing about bloggers. I also want to get debt free and then do some traveling before my Lady Rosey and Il walk through the Gates of Heaven into our next life. God has been guiding me to get the right program. I sure hope He is right with this one. I have been “taken in” by too many of those so called “get rich fast” gimmicks. Hope this one will not be added to my list. I have never did any blogging so I will need lots of help to become a successful blogger!!!
Nice post! Please what affiliate program can a writer using blogger (not WordPress) use?
As long as you’re simply using coded affiliate links to promote a product or service that your audience is interested in, then you should be fine with promoting just about any (reputable) affiliate program from a Blogger-powered site!
Hey Ryan,
Don’t know if you ever had a comment from a reader from Brazil, but here I am!
Your report was so inspiring that I read it 3 times already the past couple of days!
I’m a blog owner myself for 4 years now and my blog has seen a good amount of growth over the past months. I want to get to next level and following advices from successfull bloggers like yourself is my way now.
Thanks for that! I would love to get some feedback on my work. If you have sometime to talk would be great to hear from you by email or here in the comments.
Congrats on the post ( and I’m planning to buy your course next month)
Best Regards
Welcome, Carlos! And thank you very much for all the kind words 🙂 I really appreciate that.
Sure, I’d love to check out what you’re up to—want to drop me an email? I’m ryan@ryrob.com.
Thanks so much, Ryan. Your site is such an inspiration and hope. I am just starting and was a bit confused, but you have shown so many possibilities for me as a new beginner. Very simple but profound
Thanks, Cynthia! 🙂
Ryan,
Thanks for all of your great posts. I have learned a lot. May I ask you about the business insurance you mention? I’m interested in getting insurance in case someone doesn’t like something I post and I get sued. (My site is meant to be very positive, but you never know if/when someone will take offense.) Does your insurance cover that? Are you willing to share some of your knowledge of what someone might need? Thank you in advance.
You’re welcome, Rick! I use Hiscox for my primary business insurance ($1M liability protection) and I’d say that should be about all you need in order to cover yourself in the event of some honest mistakes you may make, being thrown into question by another party. Generally though, it’s pretty unlikely you’ll ever be sued by someone who simply doesn’t like a post on your blog… that would be immediately thrown out of any legal system (in the US) and would be an insane waste of resources for someone to bring litigation about something they simply didn’t like. So, I wouldn’t worry about that… think more about things like accidentally using copyrighted images in your blog posts.
Hello sir am nnabugwu felix from Nigeria I have been one of your subscribers for over 3years now, I want to start a sports related blog any advice sir, I will really appreciate your honest advice thanks buddy.
Of course! Glad to hear that 🙂 I’d recommend reading through my (free) guide on how to start a blog here: https://www.ryrob.com/how-start-blog/
Hi Ryan, This is the very detailed breakdown of your earning reports, thanks for sharing this.
You’re welcome!
Great job Ryan! I’m just trying to earn some extra income with with a few hours I have left of the day. I am in healthcare and would like a change .
I’d check out these sites and see how you can utilize some of your skills/interests to align with one of the roles on these sites:
https://www.ryrob.com/freelance-jobs/
https://www.ryrob.com/remote-jobs-websites/
https://www.ryrob.com/work-from-home-jobs/
Hi,
Great article. I am curious about a couple of more aspects.
1. What is the distribution of blog visits between desktop and mobile?
2. Also what percentage of total blog visits are from your subscribers clicking the link you sent in email. Because a lot of your traffic must be coming from fresh searches done on Google rather than through email link you send.
These inputs will really help me strategise my own blogging journey. 🙂 Hence i would highly appreciate your help.
Cheers
Thanks, VJ! Awesome questions. Today my site sees about 60/40 favoring mobile visitors and by far the vast majority of readers come from organic searches every day—I really only send 1 email/week to my audience 🙂