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This Blog’s First Year Earning Report

Dec 1, 2015 | 8 comments

Wow, I can’t believe I have been writing plugging away at this site for a year now! That’s crazy. I had high hopes when I started, but I also have a history of getting excited about projects and then quitting shortly after the end of the honeymoon period. So let’s take a second to give me a big pat on the back for seeing it through.

At the six-month point I wrote up how much it has made. The total earning was £213.14 – or a rather dull £1.16 a day. Not great by anyone’s estimation.

It is now six months later and income has been growing. This period made four times more than the last. Let’s see the breakdown.

A quick reminder. I have no advertisements on the blog and I don’t write any posts with the aim for them to make money. What income there is is from affiliations with websites or products I talk about. Most services don’t have affiliate deals and so don’t earn me any money.

June

Total: £30.77

July

Total: £55.87

  • [easyazon_link identifier=”1515184498″ locale=”UK” tag=”thearbblo-21″]Amazon Associates[/easyazon_link]: £2.28
  • Oddsmonkey: £31
  • Rebel Betting: £18.82
  • Shopify: £3.77

August

Total: £82.52

  • [easyazon_link identifier=”1515184498″ locale=”UK” tag=”thearbblo-21″]Amazon Associates[/easyazon_link]: £1.55
  • Oddsmonkey: £57
  • Matched Betters: £20
  • Shopify: £3.77

September

Total: £109.54

October

Total: £225.71

November

Total: £416.70

 

Six-Month Total: £920.91

Year Total: £1,124.04

Analysis

What I find most surprising is that almost all of the income comes from just two posts: Matched Betting – Risk Free, Tax Free Profit and The Best Sports Arbing Software. They are my most popular and third most popular post respectively, but even so they shouldn’t account for 85% of the income. Oddsmonkey, Rebel Betting, Pure Profit, Profit Accumulator and Matched Betters are all introduced in these two professional gambling related posts.

Matched Betting is something that anyone can do and earns you a decent amount of money very quickly. It isn’t a business but rather is a quick way to make a few thousand bucks. Perhaps that is something that really appeals to people?

My second most popular post (Step-By-Step Guide to Creating and Selling a Physical Product) has had zero sign-ups to Shipwire and only one sign-up to Shopify. The post talks through how to create an outsourced e-commerce business which should be a lot more profitable than matched betting. But is a lot harder and takes a lot longer to get going. Maybe people are just attracted to the easy win? Or maybe there is something about the matched betting post that really encourages people to get off their arse and try it out?

If any of my posts have encouraged you to act or start a business please drop me an email and let me know what it was about it that gave you the push?

 

Going forward, if I want to increase the income from this blog I have a few options:

Increase My Portion Of The Pie

I currently haven’t made much effort to monetize the traffic coming to this site, which means there are quite a few easy wins.

  • I could start posting adverts on my low income producing articles. Google AdSense takes only a few moments to set up and would probably lead to about £2.5 per 1,000 views. That would instantly generate me roughly £60+ a month.
  • I could create an online paid course. A more advanced version of my most popular articles through a service like Udemy.
  • I could start offering paid consultancy. I currently get a few emails a week asking for advice. When I manage to reply to them I just give whatever my thoughts are for free, but if I were to offer a paid service I would be able to justify spending the time to give really detailed and researched advice. I could use Clarity to manage it all.
  • I could compile the blog posts in each category into books and self-publish them on Amazon. Then put adverts to my own books in the posts.
  • I could write some more professional gambling related articles. The matched betting post is a really only and introduction- I could write a lot more. For instance about Cashback, Casinos, Shop-Arbing, and anecdotes about my own experiences.

Perhaps the only one of those I will do (at least for now), is write some more professional gambling related articles. My aim is still to make this the best site I can and as people actually seem to like reading those post then by writing more I will be making my blog better.

Increase The Size Of The Pie

Instead of trying to make more money from each visitor to the site, I could instead try and increase the total number of visitors. So far I haven’t done much marketing so that means that it shouldn’t be too difficult to increase the traffic:

  • I could submit some of my best articles to be guest posted on other sites. Such as Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com etc.
  • I could apply to be interviewed on various podcasts. Such as Smart Passive Income, Entrepreneur on Fire, The Introvert Entrepreneur.
  • I could post links to my best articles on forums or bulletin boards relevant to the topic. Such as Reddit, MoneySavingExpert and LinkedIn Groups. I have had a lot of success with that on my other blog.
  • I could write and link more on Quora. I already have 1.3 million views on my writing on Quora, it shouldn’t be too hard to get traffic from there to this site!

I am much more likely to do these, but the problem is finding the time. Currently, this blog represents a small portion of my overall income and from a purely money making point of view it would be better to spend my time on other things. For instance growing the [easyazon_link identifier=”B016BQTCFU” locale=”UK” tag=”thearbblo-21″]the table tennis brands[/easyazon_link] or starting something completely new.

 

For now I think I will continue as I am. If income grows to over £1,000 a month then it might be time to reassess and start treating the blog as a business rather than a hobby…