How I Made $4,878.18 In February 2024 As A Stay At Home Mom

I seriously can’t believe I’m able to make over $4,000 in one month blogging as a stay at home mom! Here’s how I did it..

Hello and welcome to my second blogging income report!

Let me introduce myself really quick before we get into the nitty gritty.

Hi, I’m Angie! I’m a 27 year old stay at home mom of three little ones. I have one kid in 2nd grade, one in pre-k half time and one who still stays home with me. 

If you’re reading this, there’s a fat chance you’re also a stay at home mom or a mom in general who is looking for ways to gain or increase your income.

I’m SO glad you’re here and here’s why..

First, let me give you a brief backstory as to why I’ve decided to share blogging income reports.

When I had my first baby I was only 19 years old ?

Do I regret it? No.

Do I recommend it? Also, no. 

But, being only 19, I hadn’t accomplished much yet. I had my GED and that was about it since I had only finished two semesters of college when I gave birth and quickly fell into motherhood. 

Right away I knew I wanted to be a stay at home mom and due to circumstances it really made the most sense since we only had one vehicle and didn’t have family/friends around to help with childcare, pick up, drop off, etc.

Well, I blinked and when I opened my eyes it was suddenly 7 years later, I had two more kids and was STILL a stay at home at the age of 26.

I was starting to feel.. behind.

I had slowly come to terms with the fact that I was nearing my late twenties and didn’t have much to show for it.

It was around this time I also realized exactly how trapped I was. 

If my relationship ever ended for any reason or if he were to suddenly pass away, I would be really screwed. 

My previous work experience? Not much. A hostess job I had in high school. That’s it.

I had to face the music that I didn’t have any contribution to a future retirement, I had an 8 year gap in my “work history” and had never had any sort of “real, adult employment”. 

I didn’t have a resume, I didn’t have interview skills, I didn’t have a plan for my own future finances, I didn’t have a degree.. I was fully dependent on my partner. 

If any of this is sounding familiar, I’m beyond glad you’re here. 

Blogging has given me a sense of freedom and independence that I firmly believe every woman needs to have and I want every woman to know about it.

You’re not stuck, you’re not dependent.. you do have options. 

Here’s why blogging is the perfect fit for stay at home moms:

1. You can still be a stay at home mom – You don’t have to uproot and change your familys entire life and schedule to start a blog. Work from where you already are!
2. Freedom to create your own schedule – Let’s face it, if you’re a stay at home mom, everyone and everything depends on you being available. Blogging works around your schedule rather than you working around its schedule.
3. Blogging is (somewhat) passive – Similar to my last point, you’re not on a ball and chain when it comes to your blog. It’s okay if life gets crazy and you can’t show up for a while. Once your blog is established, you can literally make money in your sleep. Things like ads & affiliate links are up and running on your blog 24/7 and continue to make you money even if you don’t as much as touch your laptop.
4. There’s no limit to how much money you can make – I first learned about blogging through BySophiaLee (more on her in a second) when she shared how she was making $30k/month while being a full time college student. I quickly found out bloggers are making anywhere from a couple hundred dollars a month up to tens of thousands a month. Insane.
5. Anyone can do it, it doesn’t require a degree – Let’s be brutally real here, being a stay at home mom is a huge sacrifice. Even if its your dream come true, there’s still sacrifice involved. If you’re like me and one of those sacrifices was your education, it’s going to be okay. Blogging is something anyone can do!
6. The start up costs are extremely low – If you’re a stay at home mom on the internet looking for ways to make money and landed here, you probably don’t have thousands of dollars laying around to start up a business with. Luckily starting a blog is extremely inexpensive.. 

How to start a blog (for cheap!)

In order to start your blogging journey you really only need three basic things. Thankfully, none of which cost very much!

1. WordPress

If you’re serious about going into blogging for profit, you need to be on WordPress instead of Wix or Blogger.

Please note that there’s a difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. You’ll want to be on WordPress.org in order for your site to be self hosted.

You’ll often see websites started under WordPress.com as websitename.wordpress.com which doesn’t look very professional. Even if you purchase a domain to get rid of the WordPress.com part of your URL, you still don’t own it.

The easiest way this was explained to me was that creating a hosted website it like renting a space on the internet & creating a self-hosted website is like owning a space on the internet.

This might seem insignificant but is extremely important for growing a profitable blog!

Self hosted is required for many ad agencies, best for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes and gives you complete control of your website.

WordPress.org is basically just a software and requires you to have a hosting service like Bluehost

2. Bluehost

There are tons of different hosting providers out there but I recommend Bluehost.

I started with Bluehost and am still with them as of the day I’m writing this post. 

Bluehost isn’t top of the line when it comes to hosting providers but they’re good, have a great support team and most importantly don’t cost an arm and a leg. 

In fact, they offer plans starting as low as $2.95 a month! They also give you the first year of your domain name for FREE. 

In the beginning of your blogging journey you won’t be making thousands or even hundreds of dollar right off the bat so keeping your start up costs low is so important.

3. Website theme

Choosing a nice looking theme is so important!

When people come to your website, the first thing they notice, even before they get into your content, is the way the website your looks!

If it doesn’t look professional and looks outdated or sketchy, they’ll immediately exit out.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to be website builders to have a clean, nice looking blog!

You can find tons of beautiful, low cost themes online or on places like Etsy!

My blog theme that I’ve had since the beginning and still currently use at the time of writing this have, is from Etsy seller StudioSaroya.

I purchased my theme for under $25 and is still one of my best low cost investments for this blog!

Additional (worthwhile) investments..

All in all, you can start up your blog for well under $100.

Name another business you can start up for less than that.. I’ll wait lol

But, If you’re seriously serious about blogging and in the headspace of “this is plan A and there is no plan B, I have to make this work” I highly recommend paying for cheat codes.

By “cheat codes” I mean courses. Which by all means are cheat codes.

If you can invest in a blogging course it will save you months of time. Yes, months. 

These courses will give you a roadmap of what to do (and more importantly what not to do) so that you’re not wasting time trying to figure out stuff on your own.

A few months after I decided to start my blog my favorite (and extremely successful) blogger BySophiaLee launched her own courses – Perfecting Blogging and Perfecting Pinterest.

To this day, this is the number one best investment I’ve made. Period. I refer back to these courses all the time!

Perfecting Blogging

Perfecting Blogging walks you through everything you need to know about blogging. She goes over how to pick your niche, how to find blog posts worth writing about (that readers are actually searching for), SEO basics and even lets you follow along as she writes a blog post herself.

To this day, this is the only blogging course I’ve ever taken and it’s gotten me this far.

Once thing I did learn the hard way was don’t expect to use this course as a “just advice”.. Follow it as closely as you can.

I made the mistake of thinking I could just loosely listen to her course but still do things the way I wanted and that it would still work.

Well, it didn’t.

My first blog failed miserably and it wasn’t until I made this blog and decided to really take notes, get serious and follow her game plan, that it actually worked!

Perfecting Pinterest

Almost any blogger will tell you that getting in Google’s good graces to where they show your blog posts on the first page is a long and hard game. 

The fastest way to get traffic to your site (and start earning money) is by using Pinterest!

Perfecting Pinterest walks you through everything from how to set up your Pinterest account the right way, to how to create pins and how/when to post them.

It’s no coincidence that BySophiaLee gets and maintains well over 10 million Pinterest impressions a month.

This girl seriously has a strategy for everything she does. She’s not just winging it. She knows what she’s doing!

Believe me when I say, BySophiaLee’s courses will take you far!

Sophia doesn’t just tell you what to do, she actually shows you exactly what she’s done to be as successful as she is. I’m talking screen recordings of her computer – everything!

Better yet, it’s not a one and done course. Sophia and her team update the course pretty frequently and keep you updated if anything has changed in their strategies.

Plus, when you purchase any of her courses you get access to her private Facebook blogging group with tons of other bloggers in all stages of their blogging journey (you’ll definitely see me in there – I’m pretty active).

You have bloggers in there who haven’t even launched their blogs, to bloggers with full on blogging businesses making well over $100k a year.

Useful Resources That Are Totally FREE

As mentioned, I know a lot of people don’t want, or can’t, afford to spend too much money in the beginning. 

If you can’t invest in a course quite yet I highly recommend that you dig into free resources.

YouTube is a great resource for beginner bloggers!

My two favorite YouTube channels for blogging are “BySophiaLee – Perfecting Blogging” (of course) and “Income School”. They both share SO much useful information for free on their channels!

Seriously, YouTube is such a great search engine!

February 2024 Blogging Income Report

Okay, let’s dive in.

This month I made $4,878 blogging as a stay at home mom!

Here’s where the money came from: 

• Affiliate income
  • Amazon Affiliates – $263.71
  • LTK – $62.46
• Advertisements
  • Mediavine – $4,552.01

Total blogging income: $4,878.18

What are these sources of income?

• Amazon Affiliates – Amazon is one of the most popular affiliate programs to join because almost everyone shops on Amazon and they have almost anything you could ever need. When people click on your Amazon affiliate links and make a purchase, you earn a small commission.
• LTK – “Like To Know It” is another popular affiliate program. LTK allows you to link to and earn commission from a number of popular brands and stores. 
• Mediavine – Mediavine is a premium ad agency. The ads you see displayed on my blog posts are served by them. They do have a minimum requirement of at least 50k sessions (not pageviews) to your blog before they will consider your application but the wait is worth it because they pay very well. I’ve been with Mediavine since September ’23 and this is my 3rd payment from them. They pay Net65 which means they pay 65 days out from when you earn. This means the money I received from them this month was actually earned back in November. You can see how much I earned from them in my very first month here!

Please note, this is my income before expenses and taxes.

Blogging expenses:

• Canva – $0
• Keysearch – $13.60
• Lasso – $0
• Bluehost – $0

What are these expenses?

• Canva – an online tool I use to edit graphics and make pins
• Keysearch – a keyword research tool to help me find target keywords for my posts
• Lasso – a new service I needed to buy in order to continue to show photos of Amazon Affiliate products in my posts due to changes in the way the Amazon Affiliate program runs.. thankfully this is a once a year expense.
• Bluehost – My hosting provider

I pay myself 50% of my net earnings, set aside 30% for taxes and put 20% towards business savings.

The reason the only thing I had to pay for this month was Keysearch is because all of the other expenses are once a year expenses. 

How did I make this happen?

All of my revenue sources pay out months later so all of this income was earned in previous months.

Medaivine income was earned back in November and Amazon income was earned back in December.

The last 3 months of the year are considered Q4 and are the most profitable times of the year for bloggers. Ad rates and affiliate commissions skyrocket around that time of year. 

I have several seasonal posts that do very well in October and November. 

Last year I had a post do extremely well in November ’22 so this last year (’23) I decided to create a “part two” of sorts and it preformed even better than I had hoped.

The really cool thing about blog posts is that they often continue to gain traction long after they’ve been posted. For example, I had a post do really well in January 2022. Last year in 2023 it more than doubled in page views from the previous year. This year (’24) it doubled again from 2023!

SchoolRunMessyBun launched in January 2022.

That means I’ve officially entered year 3 of blogging and I’m so excited about this year! This will be my first year and a “full-time” blogger under a premium ad agency and I think the future is very bright for this blog.

? I say “full time” in quotes because I definitely don’t feel like this is a full time job, nor do I put in “full time” hours into it but it is my source of income at this point. (I also understand that many wouldn’t consider $4,000/month full time pay.)

This is exactly what I love about blogging though, I can still be a mom/partner first and a blogger second. The majority of my time every day is still consumed by my children, family and household.. and I like it that way.

While I don’t plan to post blogging income reports every single month, I will continue to update here and there. In the beginning of my blogging journey I obsessively read tons of income reports and it really motivated me to stick with it so I hope these reports do the same for you!

⭐️ My overall goal with sharing these blogging reports are to inspire people, especially moms/sahms, to take the leap.

Earlier I shared my story about how stuck I felt being a stay at home mom, being dependent on someone else for my survival and I wish I had known about blogging a long time ago.

I know many mothers are longing to stay at home with their babies but can’t afford it or are worried about being dependent on their partner.

Earning money through blogging can help solve all of the above! 

Seriously, I want to shout it from the roof tops: “Moms! I found a way you can make money at home and be a total “girl boss” who makes their own hours and it’s NOT an MLM trap!”

I don’t want to become a blogger who only blogs about blogging but as you can probably tell, I’m extremely passionate about this and helping other women (and men too) so please don’t hesitate to reach out and I will try to help where I can.

Take the leap, do it!

See ya next time,

-Angie

THAT’S HOW I MADE $4,878.18 BLOGGING AS A STAY AT HOME MOM

Previous income reports:

• How I Made $792 In December Blogging As a Stay at Home Mom