{"id":17781,"date":"2024-02-09T15:40:54","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T15:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/the-road-to-a-500-month-blog-how-to-grow-a-money-making-blog\/"},"modified":"2024-05-24T19:39:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T19:39:18","slug":"money-making-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webmonkey.com\/money-making-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road To A $500\/Month Blog – How To Grow A Money Making Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most popular posts I have ever written on WebMonkey was my post on The Road to a $100\/Month blog.<\/p>\n

That post was an amalgamation of everything I learned in my first 8 months of blogging, and I highly recommend starting out with that post if you are relatively new to blogging.<\/p>\n

However, if you've been stuck in the $100-$300 range of monthly blogging income like I have been for the past few months, I hope that this post will provide some insight into how I managed to get over the hump and continue to grow.<\/p>\n

Let's get to it!<\/p>\n

Current Blog Traffic – Growth, Stagnation & More SEO:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I've always focused on growing organic traffic as a means to generate revenue on this blog.<\/p>\n

While Google's landing page environment is changing and pushing organic search results lower than ever before, the point remains: quality content that provides an incredible user experience is key.<\/p>\n

Since writing my $100\/month blog post, most of my time has still been dedicated to content creation.<\/p>\n

Back then, I had written a total of 34 posts and roughly 93,000 words. Since then, I have written an additional 39 posts and essentially doubled the total word count on WebMonkey.<\/p>\n

Here is how my traffic has broken down:<\/p>\n

\"blogging-traffic\"<\/p>\n

Between a mix of algorithm updates that both benefited and hindered my position in the SERPs, I experienced a fair amount of traffic fluctuation since August.<\/p>\n

However, with the exception of January (my best month ever), I've struggled to generate the same sort of monthly traffic as I did in August.<\/p>\n

Solid content, some basic SEO, and obtaining new backlinks has kept organic traffic numbers fairly steady, but it is clear that things will have to change moving forwards.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, while things have been fairly stagnant\/the same in the traffic generation department, I've made some major changes in how I make money by blogging, and this will hopefully open up opportunities to grow WebMonkey at an even faster rate.<\/p>\n

Making Money With A Blog – How I Ramped Up Revenue:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I've always relied on Adsense to generate most of my blogging income, with affiliate income, sponsored posts, or other revenue streams mostly taking a back seat.<\/p>\n

If you've read my Yearly Blog Recap or latest Quarterly Income Report, you'll see the formula has been fairly consistent…make $100-$150\/month from Adsense, and maybe make another $50-$100 in affiliate income from random links on my blog on a good month.<\/p>\n

This was a great strategy for monetizing a fresh blog, but after doing some reading\/thinking I decided to really step things up in the income department.<\/p>\n

The main changes I made over the past 2 months include:<\/p>\n