2022 Income Report – Making Money as a Blogger

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How much can you really make as a small time blogger? Well – the range is big. What I’ll tell you here is how much I make as a hobby blogger and my sources of income in this 2022 income report. 

While this place is for everyone, behind it, (like many blogs), is just one person – me. 

I started this place over five years ago with the goal to celebrate those within the locs community and provide support/community.  Not much has changed with that goal. 

But what about the money? 

Like many bloggers I had hoped I would make some money at some point. From what I read, it seemed more worthwhile to focus on content rather than ads, and that’s what I’ve mostly done. But I recently monetized the blog. Here are the results. 

2022 Income Report

I’ve grossed $449.61 in income in 2022, which all came from blog ad revenue. Thus, I’m not exactly bringing in the big bucks. But I am happy to say my revenue covers my revolving expenses. My hosting and domain costs were the majority of my expenses. A small amount of my 2022 expenses were file storage, which I use for images as well as storage for filming LocsLife YouTube content. 

Expenses Breakdown

For the majority of 2022 – I used Siteground as my host, which gives a highly discounted rate your first year. In 2022, I decided to renew with Lyrical Host (LH) given positive recommendations I saw and issues I was having with Siteground (ie., constantly getting locked out of my blog due to their anti-bot system and broken CAPTCHA). 

I unfortunately had to pay overlapping hosting fees with them and Siteground as the transfer process took longer than expected. That was mostly my fault given how close to my Siteground renewal date I chose to go with LH. The price upfront is more expensive with LH over Siteground, but so far, I’ve found it worth it. 

On the plus side, working with Lyrical Host has been good so far. They transferred my WordPress site free of charge (while with Siteground it cost me $20). Moreover, they volunteered to assist with making any necessary updates for my ad partner with the new host. If you want to give them a try – you can use LOCSLIFE10 referral code for 10% off your first hosting plan payment. 

Earnings & Pageviews

As you can see in the chart below, I’ve had a lot of growth from January to December in both earnings and pageviews. Unfortunately, about 5% of my pageviews in July August were fake users from Seychelles and Czechia. These spam views appear to have escaped Google’s spam filters at the time, and were common among many bloggers. Thus, I knew there would be a decrease after that was taken care of by Google. The drop was bigger than I expected, but other than the slightly shorter month in September, perhaps some of it was just randomness. On the brightside, pageviews have been picking up since then.

In terms of revenue, it has been a steady increase throughout most the year. In the fall, my RPM (Revenue/Pageviews*1000) started to really outpace itself relative to prior months. However, in the winter it started to stabilize back to before, which led to December earnings falling slightly short of its recent about $50/month averages.

Context Behind the Numbers

Knowing the metrics behind a blog is half the key to comparing blog revenue. As for me, I am ending just shy of 10k/30 days pageviews and a bit over 7k sessions/30 days. So what did it take me to reach these numbers?

December 2022 30 Day Lookback

I have been blogging for about 6 years and produce around 10 articles/year. However, I didn’t start making any money until 2021, which is when I first decided to monetize the blog. 

As you can see I doubled my pageviews and my monthly revenue figures along with it by the end of 2022. The reason for this success mostly came from two things:

1. Writing content that ranks well on Google; including my most popular article – What Does This Number of Locs Look Like?
2. Sharing on social media (namely Pinterest)

Both of those things will be cornerstone for 2023. However, I still have other goals for the upcoming year. 

2023 Income Report Goals

As noted for my revenue, I receive 100% of it from blog ads. Diversifying into sponsored ads and affiliate revenue would help increase revenue – even at the same level of page views. Unfortunately, I don’t have large followings on most social media platforms due to lack of prioritization (it’s not my favorite thing). Thus, sponsored content isn’t much of an option currently for revenue. 

For the coming year I’d like to focus on three things:

• Locs Life content (here and on YouTube),
• Affiliate links for brands/products I use or write about 
• Lastly, my social media presence outside of Pinterest (if I feel like it/have time to be honest!) 

I’ve already been able to around double my monthly earnings through the year. $50/month isn’t retirement money by any means of course. But I’m excited to see where things go. 

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I hope this 2022 income report helpful for those looking to start a blog or we’re just curious about the inner workings. There is a ton more to say on the topic – from picking website names, how to optimize SEO and picking an ad partner. If you’re interested to see what the process has been like for me, let me know!