Do you ever dream of leaving your career and working from home instead? Yes? Then you’re in the right place.
After a two-decade-long career, I recently left my job and career as a nurse, and decided to pursue my dream of blogging. If that’s something you’ve been thinking of doing too it’s great to have you here!
Why am I sharing my income and expenditure reports?
I’ll rewind a little here – I got married and moved from the UK to the USA this year and found myself feeling a bit lonely and wanting to connect with others. That’s how the idea of starting a blog was born. I’m only one month into this adventure, and I wanted to document everything in real-time to help inspire other women who might be in the same boat.
BUT I have actually ZERO skillset in the area of blogging at all and if that’s something you’re dealing with then this income report is going to be a heck of a lot more relatable than the one’s that are making thousands of dollars barely a couple of months in!
So, that being said, one of my favorite things this past month has still been to watch YouTube videos by other creators about different stages of blogging and those fascinating blogging statistic videos. There’s something so reassuring about seeing someone else’s data and knowing they’ started just like me they’ve all had to start from scratch at one time or another.
I’m not going to share why I picked certain hosting or domain options, I have more details about those things HERE, I just want to keep these monthly updates based solely on income and expenditure / overall lessons learned.
Let’s start a Clickbait Rebellion!
I thought it would be fun to share with you all, in real-time, where I’m at every month for at least the first two years (I’ve made a promise to myself that I won’t give up until at least 2 years have passed and so I’m committed to giving this a good try!).
Many of the creators whose videos I’ve watched are either well-established, sharing historical data and a story now quite , or are experienced bloggers starting a “new” blog, which isn’t the same as the raw, from-scratch experience I’m having. So here we go—here are my actual, real-time blogging stats for Month 1!
Month 1: The very start.
Essential Blogging Startup Costs
– I went with a GoDaddy domain (not affiliated), [ad] BigScoots hosting, and initially a free theme: $58
My entire essential startup costs were just less than $100 for the month. Be encouraged—you don’t have to spend a fortune to begin this journey. If you’re not a total novice like me, this could truly be all you need to invest to start your blog.
Other Costs
– Canva Pro annual membership (Not affiliated), 1 month ChatGPT (not affiliated), 1 month subscription for WordArt.com (not affiliated), then I moved to a Professional WordPress theme and the ‘Styling Kadence’ short course from [ad] Restored 316 Designs – wish I’d done this from Day 1 it made such a difference in my site speed, blogging course by Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone YouTube channel (not affiliate) which helped me find a community of similarly minded women who either were blogging or were starting from scratch like me: $496
Since I started from zero prior knowledge, I invested in a course from a content creator I follow and a professional WordPress theme. This made things easier than using a free theme and was worth the money!
Equipment Costs
$0 – I didn’t buy anything at all to start this blog.
Current equipment: Embarrassingly old [ad] iPhone SE and [ad] an iPad Pro with [ad] a Magic Keyboard and [ad] Apple Pencil Pro all available to purchase on those links from the Amazon website.
I still can’t believe I started a blog on an iPad! Yep, that’s really it—no fancy equipment here. Still using my iPad today to write this article and I’m not planning on purchasing any laptop until probably the next Prime day sale in a few months if I’m still committed to writing posts and blogging etc.
Posts Published
4 (felt more like 400 though, gosh it’s so hard at the beginning)
I only managed 4 posts in the whole of the first month. I concentrated entirely on learning the steps needed to blog. While many content creators say to post straight away, I REALLY struggled with learning how to start a website and use WordPress. To avoid massive overwhelm, I made my first month a blogging education month, and I have zero regrets about that.
YouTube
– N/A
– Not thinking about this until at least month 6. It’s just too overwhelming right now.
Podcast
– N/A
– Not yet set up.
Ad Revenue
– $0
I don’t have the mental bandwidth to think about monetizing at this stage. I hear such confusing things about jumping into Google AdSense or waiting to join a paid ad agency like Ezoic/Mediavine. I need more time to learn about this before making any decisions.
Sponsorship Revenue
– $0
– No sponsorships at this stage.
Affiliate Revenue
– $0
– No affiliates at this time.
Email List Subscribers
– $0
– I haven’t set up an email list yet and really don’t plan to for a few months because I don’t think I’d have the time to dedicate learning how to set it up and manage it, write emails etc.
Monthly Website Sessions
– 31
– Entirely driven by Pinterest, as I didn’t have a blog article published until the end of month 1.
Pinterest Impressions
Ok so I have literally only been on Pinterest for 6 days at this point because I only just published my first blog posts less than a week ago, so bear that in mind with these figures:
number of impressions – 872
– So encouraged by this! The power of Pinterest has really surprised me, and I’m excited for the potential when I start producing more content. That’s a lot of impressions for not many pins or blog posts.
You can read more about my current Pinterest Journey HERE!
Biggest Struggles of Month 1
Honestly—everything! I went from zero IT/website skills to setting up a website. It’s been challenging but incredibly rewarding.
Biggest Wins of Month 1
– Teaching myself everything from scratch and working entirely from the ground up on my dream to start a blog.
– Learning so much about how to set up a blog from free sources on YouTube and learning how to use Canva and Pinterest to create pins that will hopefully drive traffic to my blog.
– Joining Facebook groups has been a lifesaver. I joined the Restored 316 Designs community when I purchased a WordPress theme from them and the Facebook group for the blogging course I took from Lisa Bass of the Farmhouse on Boone YouTube channel.
Aims for Next Month
Posts & Organization
– Publish my next four blog posts (one a week).
– Create a content calendar to keep track of what I’m doing and plan future content.
Real-Time Blogging Stats: Month 1 in review
Encouragement and Community
Good luck on your journey starting a blog! Don’t worry if you can’t match the speed and energy of some of the larger content creators’ recommendations on YouTube. Everyone’s path is different, and it’s okay to take it slow and steady.
Please comment below with where you’re at on your blogging journey. Share your own blogs here and any tips you’d like to share. Also, let me know if you’d like to hear a podcast or watch a YouTube series about how to start a blog from scratch in the future. Let’s support each other and grow together!
