August 2015 Monthly Online Income Report – $740

August was my best month yet for earning income and I’m excited to share what I’ve been up to! You might have noticed that I renamed this to my monthly online income report. Originally these monthly posts started off as solely blog income report, but now that I am moving towards a freelance career, it makes more sense to change the title.

This is my sixth online income report to share! This report only includes income I received from the month of August. I don’t include any money that is pending. If the money isn’t in my bank account, it doesn’t make it in this report.

My journey to blogging and making money from my blog has been a slow, but steady one. I started blogging almost a year ago, but didn’t get serious about my blog until January of this year. I made the smart decision to stop treating this blog like a hobby and turn it into a business.

If you are thinking about starting a blog, this tutorial will help you start a blog today. You’ll also get a FREE domain name for a year! I was able to quit my job and blog full time, all within my first year of blogging. I am really glad I took a chance and started a blog! I invested around $140 to start my blog using Bluehost, and I made $13,000 in 6 months of blogging. That’s the best return of investment ever!

Along with getting hosting for your blog, you’ll also need a theme. While you can get them for free through WordPress, I prefer these:

In March, I had my first online income report! Since then, I have been slowly making money each month.

So what’s different this month versus previous months? While it’s been months in the making, I recently announced on this blog that I plan to transition from full time employee to full time freelancer.

A couple of months ago I started freelancing in addition to my full time job. Since I made money freelancing in July and in August, I decided I would document and post everything on this blog.

Every month I share my online income report. In August, I made over $700 from working online. Here's a breakdown of my online income report and where the money came from!
This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure for more info.

Online Income Report

  • $705 Freelance Income
  • $35 Affiliate Income
  • $0 Google Adsense (Even though I haven’t met the $100 threshold yet, I managed to make $41.46 in 1 month. This is so exciting!)

Grand Total: $740

This amount is the grand total and before I deduct taxes. Right now I am putting away 30% of each paycheck I earn. I still have to meet with an accountant to go over the best way to operate, but for now I feel like 30% is a solid amount to save.

If you want to keep track of your online income (which I highly recommend) check out Freshbooks! It’s what I’ve used to track business income, expenses, invoice clients, and more. Click here to learn more about Freshbooks.

Affiliate Income

Rakuten: Hello, free money! This is my fave company I use when I shop online. I start here before shopping any online sites. It’s free cashback on every purchase and the money gets deposited into my PayPal account. It’s really hard to turn down free money. I’ve made almost $750 since signing up, which is crazy.

Ibotta is another free cell phone app. You use it after you go grocery shopping and use your receipt. It’s basically a rebate app, so you can earn anywhere from 50 cents to $5 off everything you buy.

My favorite part about this app is that it’s not always brand specific, like a lot of coupons are. So you’ll be able to scan “any brand of bread” for 50 cents off, etc. If you do coupon – you can STILL use Ibotta and get a rebate. For the diehard couponers out there, this will often result in getting an item for FREE. Crazy, right?

If you want to grab the Ibotta app and start making money off your grocery receipts, click here to get started. You will receive a cash bonus of $10 when you scan your first item! 

This is how I earned my freelance income:

My freelance income is fairly diverse because I got to work with different clients on different projects. Here’s what I worked on with my new freelance business:

  • Pinterest management
  • Pin design
  • Pinterest consulting

These are all services I recently added to my ‘Hire Me’ page.

I absolutely love this aspect to being in the online space.

I am a really visual person, and I love connecting with bloggers and companies who need help with creating photos for new blog posts or updating old photos for previously published content.

I did a lot of digging and even wrote a post about all the different job boards I found.

The job boards I searched included a huge array of career fields, so I think it’s possible to find almost any job online these days. Eventually I found a group specific to my career niche that matches clients with professionals.

Get excited because I FINALLY hit the sacred $100 threshold Google Adsense requires to be paid.

Even though I will be receiving a check for $104.14 for August, I am not counting it until next month’s online income report because I haven’t actually received the payment. So for now, I count this as zero income.

Here’s a breakdown of my expenses:

  • $19 Apps like PicMonkey, Board Booster, etc. (2019 Update: Instead of Board Booster, I exclusively use Tailwind). 
  • $120 Coaching

Total Expenses: $144

Last month I wrote about how annoyed I was to pay for Google apps, as many readers mentioned they use it for free.

I have an upgraded plan so my email address matches my domain name. This means I can add something like advertise@my domain name for companies interested in advertising on my blog instead of it filtering in with client emails.

I have small expenses with monthly service subscriptions and apps that are vital to my business. What I don’t have listed in these expenses is Tailwind, which I purchased a couple months ago. I already paid for this for an entire year, so I don’t count it in my monthly expenses.

By the way, Tailwind is completely changing the way traffic comes to my blog from Pinterest. If you want to increase your pageviews, sign up with Tailwind!

Finally, to help ease the transition to freelancing full time, I started working a business coach. 

I wanted help on how to ramp up my freelance career (while still working full time) and what steps I needed to land jobs. This has been worth every penny and I landed a client within a couple days of our first meeting!

I don’t really see my expenses increasing anytime soon. I’m on a DIY budget for now and need to do the majority of work myself. I do like to keep Fiverr in my back pocket for one-off jobs, like technical help, since tasks are $5.

If you are thinking about starting a blog, this tutorial will help you start a blog today. You’ll also get a FREE domain name for a year! I was able to quit my job and blog full time, all within my first year of blogging. I am really glad I took a chance and started a blog! I invested around $140 to start my blog using Bluehost, and I made $13,000 in 6 months of blogging. That’s the best return of investment ever!

I am really excited to see where September takes me. I have four weeks remaining at my full time job, so I won’t be limited with my freelance work. Right now I simply don’t have enough time working full time, freelancing, blogging and prepare to move across the country.

Have you ever thought about leaving your day job and becoming a freelancer?

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31 Comments

  1. Congrats on reaching your income goals. I just started income reports on my blog.

  2. Kimberly Nida says:

    So inspiring ! I really would love to do blogging and freelancing on the side and one day be able to stay at home and do it full time! Would love SD one help in really how to get started!

    1. Hi Kimberly, I’ll shoot you an email for some starter tips!

  3. That is an impressive jump in July too! I hope it keep heading up 🙂

  4. Congrats! So encouraged to see that this can be an option for you in the future. What do apps like PicMonkey help you do?

    1. PicMonkey is a great way to make images for your blog and Pinterest and it’s FREE (unless you upgrade which isn’t necessary). I actually do the majority of my freelance work in Canva now, which is a similar program.

  5. Way to go! That’s a good chunk of money to earn in a month. You are definitely on your way to full time freelancing!

    the pinterest management sounds interesting. I’ll have to look more into that! 🙂

    1. I’m having a lot of fun with offering this service. It’s something different for bloggers and let’s me be creative 🙂

  6. Thank you for being so open about your progress! I’m looking to get into the freelance world (on the side for now of course) and your income reports and information about how you got to where you are, really help. Very inspiring 🙂

    1. Thanks Nicole! It’s been a slow, planned process for me 🙂

  7. Great income report, it must be so exciting and nerve racking giving up your job. Carrie is brilliant and I hope to do some coaching in the future too. I wish your every success in your new path ?

  8. Congrats on the great income this month. I’m on the fence about hiring a coach but it sounds like it was really worth it for you!

  9. You’re making such awesome progress! I love seeing your income reports and working with you to grow your freelance business. Keep up the great work. I’ll be here cheering you on every step of the way!

    1. Ha, it’s so exciting! Thanks!

  10. Kristin, Way to go on the extra income! You are inspiring me to continue to improve my blogging and look for extra work. Saving 30% should be more than enough to cover for taxes. I would love to chat about your Pinterest Management with you when you have time.

  11. You are doing awesome, Kristin!!! So is your plan to start freelancing FT right when you move!? If so, that’s super exciting!!!

    1. Yes! I won’t be looking for a new job when I move – 100% freelancing!!

  12. This is great progress! I hope to begin making some income from Goal Digging to Happiness. But for now I need to focus on improving content, better pictures for post, and increased traffic.

    1. I focused on my content, pics, etc. until I really liked my consistency and what I was producing. Once I felt comfy with that, I ventured into the scary world of trying to actually earn income 🙂

  13. Way to go, Kristin! It’s really fun to watch as you transition to Freelance work. Thanks for letting us all be a fly on the wall 🙂

    1. Thanks Janeen! It’s definitely been a sloooooooow process 🙂

  14. Congrats on the income and transitioning to location independent work!! Getting a coach is a great investment and I’ve heard such great things about Carrie 🙂 Working FT and blogging does actually limit how much freelancing you’ll be able to do and I’ve experienced that first hand. I’ve played around with the idea of leaving my FT (since I know I could get way more freelance work done) but I’ll probably stick around for a while due to some big news I’ll be sharing with everyone soon.

    1. I hear ya Chonce! I am turning down work because I just can’t do it all. It’s definitely hard to balance everything. Can’t wait to hear your big news 🙂

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