If you're wondering whether blogging can provide an income that is passive (earn money while you sleep?? Yes please!) then you are in the right place!
This article will show you exactly how we made over $150,000 on our blog in 2021 almost completely on autopilot!
I remember when I started blogging seriously in 2016, I dreamed of making $2,250 a month from my blog because that would replace my husband's income and allow us all to stay home together with our baby son.
I put it so many hours of hard work, especially during that first 6 months... but I made it to that goal very quickly! I was manually pinning every day, creating new images, writing new posts, trying to figure out how to make emails work, creating products, and testing sales pages...
The days were long as I tried to figure out how to make money blogging (mostly) on my own.
Flash forward to 2021 and it's a completely different picture. In fact, since mid-2019 I haven't done much on my site at all, yet it continues to grow in income, SEO rankings, domain authority, and page views!
So I wanted to share with you what AModernHomestead.com brought in for 2021 without a single finger raised from me!
My Passive Income Report 2021
First, you're probably wondering, how much did I earn on auto-pilot? I'll put you out of your misery and tell you that I earned $153,000 in 2021 without any effort!
An amazing number that is up 11% over last year!
What Does This Number Include?
This calculation does not include money from my food line, or my blogging courses/products. It includes everything I made through A Modern Homestead outside of that!
AD INCOME:Â Right at 49% of my income came from the ads served on this site.
PERSONAL PRODUCTS: All of my products (not including the blogging book) brought in 45% of my income in 2021. This was a huge jump from the 30% of my income that products made in 2019.
PERSONAL PRODUCTS: Between Amazon, and a few high dollar affiliate items (like this freeze dryer), as well as a few smaller dollar items, like organic seeds I made a decent amount, though it was a lot less that in years past... 6% of my income instead of the 25% I've made in years past! This is likely due to the fact that I was pushing my own products more, and because several of my best performing affiliate companies closed their affiliate programs in 2021.
My Thoughts on the Growth
I am ecstatic that my income and page views grew during this season of hands-off-ness... Though I am aware that I wouldn't be able to walk away forever and have it continue to grow.
That's one of the amazing things about blogging, once you have things set up, it will effectively keep going without you... at least for a while!
I have another friend who took most of 2021 off from her blog and still grew 17% over her previous best year ever! This is completely due to the amazing automations she had worked to put into place.
Ok, so how did you do it?!
First, please note this is not something that you can suddenly do if you have a brand new blog. You need content and some decent SEO work in place to be able to step away like this and see growth.
However, putting the systems in place NOW will help you get to this point much faster than if you constantly try to grind day in and day out only to completely burn out and walk away (don't do that!!).
So, which system did I have in place?
🌿 SEO: I spent a lot of time in my early blogging days learning the craft of writing for SEO. It was a lot to digest, since everyone has a different opinion, but it was time well spent and well worth the effort when you look at the results!
Don't just write whatever you are thinking about from day to day, put the thought behind it to make sure you are building a catalog of content that will help show Google that you are an authority on a subject, and will help your ranking grow quickly.
You'll also want to make sure that your site is set up properly for indexing - if Google can't index you, it doesn't matter how great your content is, you'll never rank for anything. Double check that you are set up correctly by following this easy guide to setting up your site maps!
✨ If you want to short-cut the SEO learning curve, I have a really simple and easy to follow course that will break SEO down into easy pieces that you can start implementing right away! Get Crystal Clear SEO today!
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🌿 Emails: This is something you can have in place really early in your blogging life - it doesn't need as much time to stew as SEO juice does! Make sure that you have emails set up on an automated schedule so that if you have to walk away, the people who have trusted you with their email addresses still feel taken care of.
Having a year of automated emails is a great goal to have, but even if you have 2 months scheduled out, then you will be able to step away in an emergency without thinking about your blog!
My direct from email traffic accounted for 25% of my page views and brought in 30% of my income in 2021!
✨ The easiest way to set up your automated email system is with the Truly Evergreen Newsletter System and if you grab it by Wednesday night (1/26) you can save $50 off the course price! Use the code: PLANAHEAD2022
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🌿 Product Funnels: This is straight magic y'all. MAGIC. Having a product funnel in place means that every time someone signs up for a freebie on my site, they have the option to purchase a small product from me that will help them on their journey (related to the freebie they were interested in). Then, if they purchase the small item, they have a chance to buy a larger item at a steep discount.
And you know what? 5-30% of people (depending on the freebie) took that offer in 2021!!
All I did was create the product and set up the funnel... and it made money for me day in and day out, without any additional work on my part!
THIS IS SO IMPORANT! It doesn't matter what niche you are in, a freebie and product are absolutely things that you need to have set up! In fact, I was telling someone in the blogging group this week that my first $1300 a month product was in place and making money when my blog was only about 6 months old! At that point people were trusting me to give them real information on a topic they needed help with, and they were willing to pay $9 for me to walk them through the information.
You can do the exact same thing! Gardening? Chickens? Canning? Knitting? YEP!
✨ If you don't know where to start and need help finding which products make sense for your audience, creating the products, and getting them into a funnel, then I recommend grabbing the Crystal Clear Products course asap!
This course will walk you through every piece and will help you launch products with confidence! You'll even get my proven 4 email launch series to use for your own launch!
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Bottom line:Â You absolutely can create passive income with your blog that is not tied to your daily efforts! You can walk away for a year, take a long vacation, enjoy time with your family, and NOT stress about your page views or income.
I know that may seem impossible from where you are right now, but putting these systems into place for your own site is very achievable. Start today!!
✨ JOIN NOW ✨