Did you know you can make a legitimate and somewhat stable income from blogging? In 2024, content creation is paying more than ever and that includes blogging! Through adverts, affiliate links, and sponsorships, there are tens of thousands of bloggers earning upwards of 6-figures from their websites. And I plan to be one of them.

Almost daily I come across the question ‘Is it too late to start a blog?’. That’s exactly what I want to find out. I launched my blog in February 2024 in the niche of Freelance Writing from my current home in Tokyo, Japan. I don’t have a team or any pre-existing web presence or audience, so this is my real-time journey from (hopefully) 0 to 100,000 dollars.

First let’s catch you up. I’m on a journey to grow my blog to become an extra source on income to make money online. I’m sharing my monthly progress, goals, and failures in the form of 30-Day Challenges.

Month 1: How to Start Blogging in One Month

Month 2: Level Up Your Remote Work Routine: The 30-Day Blog Challenge

Scaling my Blog to Monetization

To scale a blog to monetization you need to consider a few key statistics:

• Traffic: Monitor metrics such as total page views, unique visitors, and traffic sources to understand your blog’s reach and audience growth over time.
• Engagement: Average session duration, bounce rate, and pages per visitor session which assess how engaged your audience is with your content.
• Email List: Your email subscriber number, email open rates, and click-through rates.
• Social Media Metrics: Stats like follower growth, engagement rates, and referral traffic from social media platforms.

These are the elements that will determine whether you qualify for ad revenue and affiliate programs. Popular ad management sites like Mediavine.com will often have minimum average monthly page views to qualify of anywhere from 5k to 50k per month, so this is the initial analytic you should be watching.

My goal is to monetize my blog in under 18 months. To do so, I am creating smaller monthly challenges, with a medium goal of reaching 5k monthly views in 6 months.

March Blogging Challenge Results

Last month I started my Monthly Blogging Challenges with my March Blogging Challenge. I aimed to improve my writing routine, build a backlog of posts, and grow my blog audience. Here’s how it went.

Month Two Rules:

• Write one new blog post every weekday
• Post three times a week on my blog
• Post once a week on LinkedIn
• Upload to Pinterest every day
• Record weekly stats

How it Went:

March was, without a doubt, a huge success for me. I (mostly) stuck with my writing plan, shared 12 new Blog Posts, and have almost 2 week’s worth of posts ready to go. I missed a few days of blog writing due to a public holiday and a busy schedule, but overall I found myself falling into a great writing routine.

Going into March, I had planned to write in the mornings, however, I quickly realised that I was more productive in the early afternoon so switched up my schedule to write after lunch.

The Results:

February 2024 Stats:

• Total Views: 194
• Total Visitors: 78
• Total Likes: 35
• Total Subscribers: 12

And now, my blog stats for March 2024:

• Total Views: 162
• Total Visitors: 73
• Total Likes: 94
• Total Comments: 3
• Total Subscribers: 30

All in all, I’d call this a success! My engagement has gone way up with likes and gaining my first few blog post comments! I’ve also almost doubled my blog subscribers which is a huge jump!

What Worked: Pinterest Posting and sticking to a strict writing regime

What Didn’t Work: Creating 5 posts a week didn’t feel sustainable and posting to LinkedIn still feels like a challenge

I had a lot of fun making pins and sharing them on Pinterest and have already begun seeing some new blog traffic from the site. My method of posting often and consistently seems to be paying off, although we won’t see any true results for another few months.

I am still struggling with posting on LinkedIn but stuck with my goal of 1 post per week. I’ve had an unlock that the issue isn’t with LinkedIn, it’s with my network. As a result, I’ll be working to grow a more diverse and larger LinkedIn network to feel more excited about sharing with them.

Month Three

Moving forward after March’s success, I want to reduce my weekly blog post writing to hit 3x posts a week to ensure quality over quantity and avoid blog post burnout. My goal is to continue diversifying traffic and client leads, as well as potential income streams wherever possible. Now that I am in a great Pinterest routine and am happy with pin templates, I’ll also have an additional 2 hours a week to commit to new blog growth strategies.

This brings me to…

April Blogging Challenge Guidelines

• 3 New Blog Posts a Week
• 2 Pins Posted Daily
• 1 Substack Newsletter a Week
• 3 Facebook Posts a Week
• 1 LinkedIn Post a Week
• Record Monthly Stats

How to Grow your audience with Substack

Substack is a Newsletter platform that allows writers to grow their audience without content becoming SEO-dependent. In my post, What I’ve Learnt from 30 Days of Blogging, I discussed my thoughts on writing clickable vs meaningful content. If growing my blog is my priority, then my posts have to be search-engine-optimised with trending topics and strategic content.

This leaves me with a creative gap. I love writing longer-form, reflective pieces that share my personal opinions and stories and that just isn’t what the Google algorithm is looking for. To help meet this creative need, I want to launch my Substack in April.

Not only do I hope it’ll be creatively fulfilling, but Substack also offers a paid subscriber model for your audience to opt into payments in exchange for more content. As with my blog, I want to play the long game with the hope of building my Substack to be an additional stream of income by 2025.

My final reasoning behind launching a Substack is, of course, to help find a new audience to drive traffic to my blog.

To join the journey and receive a different type of content from me, consider subscribing to my Substack here: https://gonetravellingproductions.substack.com/

Why you need to post on Facebook to grow your blog:

I’m a 20-something creative. To me, Facebook has been useless for years at this point. I haven’t used or posted to my personal Facebook in over 6 years and never thought I would be redownloading the app in 2024.

The truth is that Facebook is still the portal to a huge audience. Not only this, but it is home to some of the most useful blogging, writing, and freelancer groups on the internet. In March, I unexpectedly stumbled across a few of these groups that share information and self-promotion opportunities to get clicks and engagement with your posts. I experimented with interacting with these posts and the results are instant: click for click, follow for follow, and like for like. In other words, this is a great way to get some early traction to your blog whilst improving your Domain Authority and Search Engine Result Page rankings.

I’m far from being willing to post all over my personal Facebook, but in April I plan to continue interacting with at least one post a week to share my blog through comments.

What Happens Next?

To hold myself accountable, I’ll be checking in monthly up to the 6-month mark to track progress and share my best blogging tips and hacks for scaling your blog to monetization. My hope for April is to get higher views and engagement and get my Substack launched.

If you’re ready to commit to the 30-day challenge, drop a link to your blog below so I can hold you accountable in return!