It's been a while since I did an updated Blog Income Report, and now that we're into the third month of the year I thought it would be a good time to chat about how blogging business is going as well taking the opportunity to introduce you to one of the new platforms I've been earning money through on my blog.
As I've mentioned before, I don't write these posts in an attempt to brag about income and I'm aware that there are many bloggers who make far more than I do but I find this style of post motivating myself and I like to let newer bloggers know about the potential money that can be made so that they know not to sell themselves short like I did when I first started monetising.
So far, 2017 has been a slow and steady year for blog work - January felt like it got off to a dry start which is to be expected with businesses winding down over the holiday period, but thankfully it started to pick up again mid month and February was one of my best months income wise so far.
My totals for the year so far are:
January - £1300 plus £100 in vouchers
February - £2030 plus £150 in vouchers
March (to date) - £1350 (this also includes a £300 payment for a newspaper interview, so is not strictly all from blogging!)
These figures do not include the value of any items sent to me for review, which I have tried to reduce dramatically this year anyway.
I have noticed a shift so far this year in the work that I'm doing this year, I have taken on fewer traditional sponsored articles and have instead concentrated on more involved campaigns that include elements like video, Instagram and social media campaigns - this means that there is a lot more work involved and so the articles are taking more time to produce, but it also means that the payments are significantly higher and I prefer this - the work is much more interesting for me and allows me to be more creative, and the higher payments mean that I can take on less work and free up my time slightly more.
This month, most of my work has come from new contacts rather than from repeated work from past clients which is great as it helps me to build a database of potential contacts to work with in future- I have also been introduced to a new platform that connects bloggers with brands looking to pay for content, which I'd love to tell you about.
Blogfoster UK aims to take the fuss out of working with brands by acting as the middle man - so often as a blogger you find that the majority of your time is spent emailing contacts, chasing leads, chasing up payments, sending over drafts for approval, waiting for client feedback, writing invoices, keeping accounts and so on - it can be time consuming and energy draining to say the least.
With blogfoster UK, a dedicated blogger team acts as the go between - so you are given a clearly defined brief with a set of tasks to complete (given in a very handy Checklist style which makes it extremely easy to follow), and the blogger team do the rest - they consult with the brand, and basically do all of the "extras" for you - you don't need to send invoices or chase for payments. All you need to do is complete the task at hand, and blogfoster UK will pay you directly - your payment will then be transferred to your bank account 4 weeks later.
Now I won't lie to you and pretend that this service is the first of it's kind - I have come across quite a lot of similar concepts before and I always dismiss them fairly quickly as they are often not very user friendly and rarely offer fair rates to bloggers. But I am pleased to say that blogfoster UK is different - they use a unique Insights system which enables them to track your blogs traffic and your social media reach, meaning that they have an accurate reflection of your blogs value and can offer you a suitable price per post based on those things.
I've found their Insights system to be extremely accurate (and also very informative too, far more user friendly than the analytics tool I usually use!) and the prices that blogfoster UK offer are in keeping with my usual fees too - they are not out to short change bloggers at all, their prices are very fair - making it very worth while to sign up with them!
The system is very user friendly, and the sign up process was very straight forward - if you are hoping to start making money from blogging or perhaps just looking for access to regular well paid work, then I highly recommend signing up to blogfoster UK - I have already seen a boost in my earnings as a result!
*This is a collaborative post but all words and opinions are my own
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