I made about $348,000 with my online business in 2020 and in this video I’ll do a recap
of all the income streams and you’ll see what worked better during this crazy year
and which income streams didn’t perform that well!
Here are some of the reports in my payment processors and in my course platform. Since
my income comes from different sources, and I also live in Portugal but all my income is counted in
US dollars and then converted to Euros, currency conversion fluctuates from month to month when
I withdraw money to my company bank account. So, I can’t show you a pretty number in any software
that matches exactly $348k US dollars, but you can see in my accounting program a graph of the
revenue for each month and by the end of the year, the total in Euros is a little below 300,000.
And this is actually not the number I wrote in my list of goals for 2020,
but I like to challenge myself with the goals which I hardly will be able to reach,
so at any time of the year I feel that I need to do an extra stretch
to get closer to my crazy goals that keep growing every year by the way.
Hi! I’m Anastasia of anastasiablogger.com and on this channel I share my tips on Pinterest
marketing, blogging, and online business in general. If that’s what you want to learn,
then subscribe and hit the bell button to get notified when my new videos go live!
2020 was a very difficult year for a lot of people and I wanted to share this annual income
report in particular to inspire you and show you what is possible so that you stop hesitating
if you are still thinking if it’s worth starting your blog or your Youtube channel,
or your online course, or any kind of business online for that matter.
In the middle of the pandemic when so many people lost their jobs, when businesses had
to close their doors, there was a fast and significant shift towards online platforms.
Universities and schools worked online, fitness and yoga trainers were giving their
classes online, for the most part of the year restaurants had to use online orders and delivery,
we had to buy clothes and shoes online here in Portugal as all the shops were closed.
For my online biz, it was mostly growth but let’s dive into the income
report details so you can see which areas suffered because definitely the pandemic
had a negative effect on some areas of my business.
So I made almost $50,000 with advertising income on my websites and on my Youtube channel.
I started with ad income because it was the one that had quite a drop in 2020 because
when lockdowns started and businesses were closing doors, in the light of the unknown
advertisers majorly cut their budgets.
This affected RPM (revenue for a thousand of visitors
on my blogs and on Youtube channel as well).
You can see on this graph how RPMs went down around April
and that is not typical for other years.
Normally, RPM gets a little lower in the summer months
but even though, it’s not a drastic drop like it happened around April of 2020.
I also have to admit that during 2020, I reduced the amount of ads on my main blog
anastasiablogger.com. Basically, I removed them from all the blog posts that cover
blogging and Pinterest tips because although that content could get higher RPM, for me it
was obvious that I can make more money if I improve user experience on those pages
by removing the ads, and focus on selling my own or affiliate products in those articles.
I don’t know where you are at right now in your online income journey so I thought it
was important to give you a better perspective of how your income streams can change and evolve
over time. That’s why I mentioned here that I intentionally reduced
the amount of ads on my website to give a priority to other income streams.
By the way if you are thinking about starting a blog right now, I can recommend you an affordable
hosting provider which I used when I started my blog. I’ve partnered with these guys and they
offered a special pricing for my audience, you can check more about it in the description below
this video. I’ll just tell you that this offer includes a free domain name for the first year,
and the hosting for a Wordpress site that will cost you just $2.95/mo.
Moving to my next monetization method, I also made a significant amount of dollar
dollar bills with affiliate products – I made over $64,000 with this income stream last year.
A lot of other bloggers send traffic to affiliate networks like Amazon, RewardStyle,
CJ Affiliates, Shareasale and others. They just add links in their content depending on their
niche for example, it can be home décor items, health and weight loss products,
clothes and shoes for fashion niche and so on. This is one way to go, I personally
never had patience to write content around multiple low-cost products in one blog post.
So my strategy is to promote products in the online business space and that involves
actively creating content, email campaigns and sometimes even hosting webinars to promote them.
I guess, it’s really a matter of personal preference. I know a lot of people make
thousands of dollars a month with affiliate links in other niches, they like to be behind
the screen and consistently write articles around a wide variety of products. Each blog post like
this can have a dozen or more affiliate links. It’s one way to go about affiliate marketing.
But I like to invest my time into other formats like promoting affiliate products through videos
on my channel, email marketing and webinars. I can’t say that I spend
less time for these formats or that promoting products this way is easier.
It’s just another type of content and I believe that each one of us
should do what we are best at and what we enjoy most. If you do so,
you will never get tired of doing what you do to make money online!
The biggest income stream that really went up in 2020 for me
compared to previous years was my own products. I made about 223,000 with courses.
I have a Tailwind course but the majority of sales comes to my Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets course
that includes the Tailwind course as one of the modules.
One of the reasons for this significant growth is this Youtube channel! I have to thank all of you
guys for watching my videos and supporting my channel with your likes and comments.
By the way, if you are finding this annual income report interesting so far,
give me a like, it really motivates me to share and create more content 
On this note I’d like to mention here one of my great supporters
with a nickname Flor who owns an Etsy store with digital products called Bring Plan Clear Steps.
She recently emailed this and really made my day.
Thank you so much for your help with my new blog and especially with Pinterest.
I've watched all your YouTube videos. I learned a lot in the past months.
I use your tips to get more sales on my Etsy shop. I recently reached 230 sales selling
digital products (65 sales last month!). It would have been impossible without your help.
Recently I decided to start my blog. I gained a lot of confidence in my skills. I know
it will be hard to learn all about blogging (and learning how to write in English, as it is my
second language), but I know it is possible to reach my goals. I'll be forever grateful to you♥
I wish you the best of luck. Flor
Thank you so much for these kind words, Flor! I’m sure you will achieve
great results with all that you do – with your store and with your blog,
you have a great mindset for this journey and it usually is the main element that leads to success!
If anyone of you guys have something positive to say and want to get featured in one of my videos,
send me your feedback in the comments to this video!
Getting back to my income from the online course, it’s the Pinterest course you can check
what it’s all about if you click on this info icon in the top right corner,
but I’ll also give you a link in the description below this video.
Creating an online course this year is probably one of the best business ideas to pursue in these
times of uncertainty. Because you don’t need any serious investment to start this business.
And you can totally start selling your course without an ad budget, like I did
when I started offering my course 3 years ago.
To create a course, you’ve got to believe in yourself, and you’ve got to be willing to share
anything you know from your previous life experience, from your job experience, it can
even be a topic around on your hobby. Listen, I recently found a couple from the US who moved
to Portugal a few years ago, and they are very successful selling a $300 course that helps other
Americans move to Portugal. So you see, there are all sorts of online courses out there! If there is
a demand, if people need information about your topic, you can make money with that course idea!
In the past year so many people who provide services
or teach in person, like fitness and yoga instructors, all kinds of consultants,
psychologists you name it – all these people had to find a way to switch to online format.
And I know personally so many people affected by this, and they are simply stuck and afraid
to make a step into the unknown and package their knowledge or services in a course format.
They have never done anything online and it all seems so complicated to them,
so many questions pop up immediately when they think about an online course.
Where do host your course, how do you promote it, where can you find audience and do it fast,
how do you collect the emails and what should you write to your subscribers, how do you even
collect the payments…you know all that goes into an online course is a terra incognita for them.
But it’s really doable and I’m on a mission this year to share my experience in creating
and selling online courses with everyone who is willing to take a leap and do the work.
I invite you to check out my new program that can walk you through
the entire process and show you the stress-free way of selling courses.
I’ll give you a link in the top right corner and in the description below this video.
In 2020, I slowly but steadily reduced the amount of 1:1 services I provide to clients. For example,
Pinterest account management has been completely removed from my Work with me page.
I still made almost 13,000 with these services but it’s all from the only 1:1
service I still provide – a Pinterest account audit with 1-hour consultation though Zoom.
I couldn’t scale Pinterest management beyond my working hours and this actually one of the reasons
I think all service providers should consider an online course at some point, either as an
additional income source or maybe eventually even as a scalable replacement for your 1:1 service.
The last income stream was my eBooks that I sell on two of my sites. I made about $6000
last year with simple digital products ranging between $7 and $19 in price.
I had to make them once and they don’t require almost any support or maintenance.
It’s a truly passive income source and I recommend everyone who struggles to get
enough traffic to apply for premium ad management companies like Mediavine,
instead of writing new blog posts, stop for a while and do yourself a favor.
Spend a weekend or a week, whatever it takes, and create a simple eBook or printable,
set up some payment processor like Sendowl. And start monetizing whatever little traffic you get
as a beginner beyond the few ad dollars that you might be getting from Google Adsense.
By doing this, you will also learn your first valuable lesson about building an email list,
you can start building your list even with people who bought these small low-cost digital products.
Remember if someone bought from you once,
they are more likely to say yes to you again when you have another offer.
So I hope that the biggest lesson of this income report for you was that you should not
doubt about starting a business online no matter how complicated it may seem to you
when you are just a beginner. You can see how my income has grown in just a few years.
Is it a good result? Well, I am pretty happy with it.
Definitely some people were able to achieve much more impressive income reports and maybe even in
shorter time. And I definitely am looking up to them and working my way up to seven figure
years. But you know we are all different, we have different goals, ambitions, needs and priorities.
Maybe you only need like an extra $1000/mo to be satisfied with your online income.
I received an email like this from a guy who said literally all I need is an extra
$1000 a month form my blog, to put it into a savings account for my daughter’s college.
And there is space for everyone online, this guy will make up his way to $1000 months
with his blog probably like in a year or so. And then he just needs to keep working
on it part-time to maintain the level or maybe grow it a little bit over time.
I know another successful mom blogger who makes it clear – I don’t have a plan to make a million next
year. She probably makes above 20 or 30k dollars a month with her blog and she is pretty happy with
it. She says, I have my kids and they are my priority, I will only work on this online biz
for as long as I enjoy it and as long as it doesn’t take too much of me from my family.
So when you think about starting your online business,
be honest with yourself about your goals and expectations and just stop dreaming,
start acting. You will figure it out along the way and you’ll thank me later.
Well, I’m done for today and if you want to check out my other videos that will help you understand
better the context of this income report, like how do I get traffic to my website,
how exactly I monetize this traffic and so on, I’ve hand-picked a few videos on my channel that
will help you learn more. Check them out here and there. I’ll see you in the next videos!