“So. What do you do for a living?” Has got to be one of the most common questions that people seem to ask when we first get introduced. It is a question that has been causing me an unnecessary amount of stress.

What do I say? I sometimes say I started a coffee shop, sometimes that I sell table tennis bats, sometimes that I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I sometimes say that I am a blogger.  But the problem is that none of these are really true, they’re all just part of a much larger picture.

My friend Ben Larcombe is, like me, in the position where he has multiple income streams that all kind of centre around a couple of blogs. In a recent post, he made the point that if he tells people that he’s a blogger, they assume that he makes money from blogging – which just isn’t really the case. In reality blogging is just the way he opens doors, builds an audience and creates the opportunities to make money elsewhere.

It probably won’t surprise you then to hear that this blog doesn’t really make any money. I have no advertisements and no endorsements. Rather my aim has always been to use it as a platform to help leverage other things that interest me.

But having said that, I do make a tiny trickle of income from affiliate links to products I happen to be talking about. It has been six months since I started this blog, here’s how it’s getting on:

Direct Earnings:

Amazon Affiliates:

December: £7.2
January: £1.84
February: £30.64
March: £4.36
April: £0
May: £8.11

Total: £52.23

Amazon gives me a small percent (about 4%) of every sale that comes from readers of this blog, which is mainly people clicking through the products I list in the toolbox or recommended reading pages.

Commission Junction

May: £47.11

Commission Junction is a platform where you can get affiliate links to multiple companies. I use it for 99 Designs (crowdsourced graphic design) and Bluehost (the WordPress hosting I use for £2.5 a month).

Affiliate Window

January: £5

Affiliate Window is another platform of affiliates. I use it for Etsy (buy and sell homemade stuff).

Oddsmonkey

January: £1.8
February: £2.1
March: £8.53
April: £11.2
May: £12.51

Total: £36.14

Oddsmonkey is a good cheap odds comparison site.

Rebel Betting

January:  €15.00 (£10.5)
February: €20.64 (£14.45)
March: €20.64 (£14.45)
April: 0
May: € 47.52 (£33.26)

Total: £72.66

Rebel Betting is a more high-end, expensive odds comparison site. It is paid in euros and I have converted to GBP at an exchange rate of 0.7.

Total Earnings

£213.14. 

That’s the equivalent of about £1.16 a day, or just under half of my daily coffee…

Indirect Earnings

See the direct earnings are rubbish – almost not worth bothering about. They’ll grow over time – but probably never enough to get anywhere near close to covering the time cost that I put in.

I’m not complaining though, there have been a lot of intangible benefits for which I am very thankful for:

• I have met quite a few amazing people who have contacted me, out of the blue, after reading the blog.
• I have reconnected with old business partners and friends who have got back in touch after reading the blog.
• I have been offered investment opportunities with some really impressive people and companies.
• I have greatly improved my writing – which is proving to be a huge benefit as I am attempting to write a half decent book.
• It has been a lot of fun.

 

By my reckoning, that makes this blog a success. See you all again in another six months when we can once again count the pennies from my paltry affiliate advertising. Adiós!