December 2016 Online Income Report: $12,581.87

Hey everyone! If you're new around here, I started tracking my blogging income through these online income reports mid-2016. This is a great way for me to keep track of how I make money through M$M, and it's also a cool way for you to follow along as well! I can't wait to look back on these several years from now and see the progress.

On a personal level - life is pretty freaking awesome right now. I'm starting to streamline a lot of what I do with the business, which makes it more efficient for me. I was able to spend a ton of time with my wife over the Christmas break and just enjoy life in general.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately now that the site just turned two years old. I can't even imagine where I'd be or if I'd own a business at all if I hadn't started M$M. If you're interested in starting a blog, I truly believe you should at least take a shot because it's so cheap. You'll meet a lot of great people, and you never know what it can turn into later down the road!

Take a look at my free blog setup tutorial. If you use my exclusive link in the guide you'll get a domain name for free! I also suggest signing up for my free blogging course below.

Here's how I made money online in December:

Digital Marketing Income: $4,689.95

If you’re new to M$M, I’ll just catch you up really quickly! When I left my job a year and a half ago to start working for myself, I wasn’t making much money at all. The site itself had made around $3 when I took the leap of faith.

A reader really liked my story and work on the site and became my first marketing client! This is a great way to make money when you first start blogging because the skill-set is identical to what you do with your own site.

I highly recommend that anyone who spends time blogging go out and try to find some marketing clients. It’s been a great experience for me so far.

Out of respect for clients’ privacy, I can’t name them on the site or list my rates for specific projects, but you’re always welcome to email me if you are an aspiring digital marketer and want tips or guidance!

MillennialMoneyMan.com Income: $7,891.92

This is the money that I made directly from the blog. I was really concerned at the beginning of the month because affiliate income was so slow. The cool thing about my business is that there are a bunch of ways to make money, and I had some great opportunities with sponsorships and staff writing last month.

Affiliate income: $3,126.20

Bluehost Blog Hosting: $1,700 (Take a look at my free blog creation guide to set up your own site in 15 minutes or less!)
LendEDU: $1,053 <- Almost 600 M$M readers have used this tool so far to research better student loan interest rates for FREE. (Bloggers, I highly recommend that you apply to become a LendEDU affiliate here).
Personal Capital: $200 (The free tool Coral and I use to track our net worth…love it!)
Uber: $48
Rakuten: $26.20
Online Surveys: $60
Credit Sesame: $9
Blue Apron: $30

If you are a blogger and want to figure out how to make affiliate income, you need to take the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course. This is THE most comprehensive affiliate course I have found so far. I took this course back in August, and saw my affiliate income jump from a few hundred dollars to several thousand per month!

Blog coaching: $3oo

This was the slowest month I had for blog coaching in a while, but it's totally understandable. People needed to save up for gifts! I was debating if I was going to even keep doing coaching, but people have asked me for sessions in the coming year, so I'll keep it going for a little while longer.

Sidebar Advertising/Sponsorships: $3,024.22

I didn't know this before, but December is the best month of the year for ad revenue! Unfortunately, January is the worst, so I'm sure I'll see a little bit of a drop off. I also had a few sponsored projects in December, which really helped make up for the drop in affiliate income.

Staff Writing: $1441.50

I managed to pick up a really great staff writing gig last month! I'll be doing more writing with this particular client over the next few months, and it's awesome because they just want me to write about $$$ and student loan debt. 🙂

Here's what happened in December for M$M

I really didn't have any big features or anything like that in December. The month felt slow, but turned out to be the best month my online business has ever had. Weird how that works right?

As far as traffic, the site had around 117,000 views overall. I've been happy to stay over 100,000 for about four months in a row now, but it's time to start pushing that number up! I've been much more active on Facebook so far in January, and I'm seeing my traffic hit 6,000-7,000 views a day because of it.

That would push me much closer to 200,000 overall for the month. One of my big goals for the year is to hit 300,000, which I think is possible. We are almost caught up on putting Pinterest images on all of the old posts on the site.

One we get that going and start joining group boards, I'm hoping that Pinterest becomes a good traffic generator for M$M this year.

New site design

I'm super excited about this - I've been talking to some web developers and almost have it narrowed down for who I want to use. I am going to feature these reports and make the site much easier to navigate. I've had tons of complaints about my crappy search bar, and also making past articles easier to sort through and read.

Salesforce Millennial Panel

This was basically my first panel speaking event, and it was so cool! Salesforce flew me out to New York for a convention they were putting on. I got to discuss reaching Millennials with an audience full of big bank representatives and financial service companies. It was a little surreal when they were asking me questions like: "Should we still be advertising at NFL and NBA games?".

I was a band director less than two years ago haha. Life is so weird sometimes.

Whether you've been with me from the beginning or just now found M$M - thank you! I wouldn't be able to do this without all of the awesome (almost 100,000) readers for the site!

You can look at my past income reports below:

November 2016 Online Income Report: $11,173.63 

October 2016 Online Income Report: $11,343.22

September 2016 Online Income Report: $10,127.27

August 2016 Online Income Report: $6,196.71

Live differently. Your bank accounts will thank me later. ~M$M