How I Made Full Time Blogging Income in 2015: I Made Almost $37,000!

Since writing my How to Start a Food Blog & Make Money With It page, I’ve gotten more and more interest and questions regarding how to make money blogging!  And I promised in this post that I’d be sharing how much money I make… and here it is!  Today, I’m going to give a quick run-down of How I Made Full Time Blogging Income in 2015:  I Made Almost $37,000!

I know many of you might be wondering why I would share something as personal as this and the bottom line is – I like to help and encourage others.  And I like to know well,  cold hard facts!

I follow several blogs that post their monthly income and I’m always fascinated by it.  After talking it over with my husband and making sure he was okay with me being so open, I decided I’d like to jump on that bandwagon and do some sharing myself… 

UPDATE:  I’m currently sharing my monthly income reports for 2016 over on my personal blog… click HERE to read them!

Oh… the blog that that really drives me to keep on keeping on?  Pinch of Yum.  They earn more in a month than I earned in a whole year… talk about inspiration!  (and of course I have to give props to their other website: Food Blogger Pro which has helped tremendously with my income growth!).

Also, I first read this post, How Much Do Bloggers Make?, by Amy Lynn Andrews way back when I first started blogging and I’ve never forgotten it.  I’ve absorbed so much information and help from Amy over the years (on all blogging topics, not just making money!) that I often credit her for my blog success!

Some of you may be thinking right off the bat that $37,000 is not full time income.  But for me, it is.  I live in Mississippi where the cost of living is low and I make more money than many, many full-time workers here.   No, my income is not through the roof – our family of 8 couldn’t live on it – and we’re not “rich” because of it… but any way you cut it, I’m extremely grateful for it and know that I’m  blessed beyond what I deserve.

Oh and I have no idea what the “average” blogging income is.  But I know for a fact that I make less money than a lot of really famous/popular bloggers and significantly more money than other bloggers.  I’m somewhere in the middle and I’m good with that (while also always striving to do better)!

Even though it’s not six figures (but maybe one day!!), my blogging income allows me to stay home, homeschool my kids, and continue to do something I love – which is cake, of course!  It also gives us breathing room in our budget and we’ve been able to stay debt-free through some really difficult times.  Beyond that, I’ve met some amazing people, built a community of cake friends and continued to learn and grow as a person.

So anyway… if you want the details, the nuts and bolts of how I earn money blogging, please click here and check out that post.

Today, I’m just going to give a brief breakdown.  And as I mentioned in my “How to Start a Food Blog and Make Money With it” post, this is only blog income – it does not include my income from real-life cake orders from my home bakery.

Also, this report is gross income.   I don’t have a breakdown available at the moment, but my expenses totaled around $11,000 in 2015.  Expenses include my domain & hosting (minimal), my design work, a WordPress developer (to help fix my blog after it was hacked), some paid plugins, my virtual assistants, camera equipment, props for photography, ingredients for recipes, etc.   God willing, I won’t have to pay for a designer or WordPress developer in 2016 and that alone will save me close to $3000.

Maybe next time I’ll work up a report of my expenses but for now I can tell you that my net income was just over $26,000.

One last thing then we’ll get to it.  Blogging is not the path to take for fast money!  Here is my income since the day I started RoseBakes.com (in January 2012):

• 2012 :      $  826
• 2013 :      $  8638
• 2014:       $ 16647

And now…. 2015!    Here’s the breakdown of my blogging income:

#1  Ad Income:

• Adthrive:                                $9527.20
• Adsense:                                 $2495.89
• Vibrant Media:                      $1894.34
• Lijit /Sovrn:                           $1262.68
• Pricegrabber:                        $1099.79
• Gourmet Ads:                        $ 863.90
• Connexity:                              $ 660.29
• Burst Media:                          $ 257.42
• Rhythm One:                         $ 147.38
• DigitalPlus Media:                $ 103.13
• Blinkx:                                     $  87.51
• Conversant:                           $ 28.90

TOTAL:                                  $18,428.43 (50% of my total income)

#2  Affiliate Income:

• Shareasale:                             $7937.76
• Amazon:                                  $4490.07
• Centerpoint Media:               $ 727.50
• Ultimate Bundles:                 $ 473.07
• MySavings Media                  $ 200.71
• Commission Junction:         $ 119.61
• Bluehost:                                 $ 150.00
• Rakuten / Linkshare            $  85.64
• Ebay Partner Network:        $  62.60
• Pinch of Yum:                        $  27.55
• PG USA                                   $  12.09
• Humbled Homemaker         $      .19

TOTAL:                                  $14288.79 (39% of my total income)

#3  Sponsored Post Income

• Collective Bias:                       $1415.01
• Linqia:                                      $ 460.00
• IZEA:                                        $ 225.00

TOTAL:                                  $   2100.01 ( 6% of my total income)

#4  Contributing Writer Income (to another blog)

• CakeJournal.com                  $1644.62

TOTAL:                                  $   1644.62 ( 4% of my total income)

#5  Social Media Income (being paid to post, tweet, share, etc.)

• BlogHer                                  $ 400.00
• SheKnows                              $   50.00

TOTAL:                                  $    450.00 ( 1% of my total income)

TOTAL INCOME for 2015:  $36,909.85

And that’s it peeps!!  How I Made Full Time Blogging Income in 2015!!   Do you have any questions?  Is this something you’d like to see more of?  Leave me a comment!