This month my resolution was to make more money from my blog.  I’ll admit that I got off to a very slow start.  I’ve had a huge upheaval in my life that’s led to me reassessing myself and my goals.  I realised how much time and effort I was putting into my blog, and I felt that it was disproportionate to the amount that I was getting out of it.  So I decided to slow down and give myself a break.

When I wrote about my uneasiness and bloggers malaise, something wonderful happened.  I got quite a lot of feedback from my readers.  In particular, I got a fantastic email from one of my long-time readers that listed a whole bunch of simple tweaks that I could make to improve my blog.  I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that.  When you’re a blogger, you’re in charge of everything that happens on your blog.  While that can be an amazing thing, it can also be incredibly hard.  It’s very difficult to try to improve your work when you’re constantly trying to guess whether people are enjoying your content.  Without feedback from other people it can be so hard to try to gauge how well you’re performing or identify areas where you need to improve.  So I really appreciated getting that little bit of constructive criticism.  It gave me a boot up the bum to really look at how I’m doing things around here.

What I decided is this: I want to keep blogging and I want to make some money from my blog.  But I don’t want to be killing myself to try to do that.  I’m not afraid of hard work, but I want to make my time and effort count.  I don’t want to be pouring my energy into something that doesn’t yield results.  So what I need to do is work smarter rather than harder.

I identified the areas where I currently make money on my blog.  And I looked at some of the things that I’ve tried that haven’t been successful.  My verdict: stop trying to make the unsuccessful things happen and keep working on the things that have been successful.  Pour your energy into these areas, make them bigger and better.  Develop ideas and experiment, but don’t get too hung up on trying to do All Of The Things.

So, currently I have a few income streams on my blog.  The ones that I’ve found to be successful are: my e-books, my etsy store, writing sponsored posts and selling sidebar ads.  These are the areas that I’m going to work at developing.

I came up with a plan that included tasks which require less effort, but are more targeted towards my goal.  And then I set aside time to work on these tasks.

And the results?   I had my first ever commission sale in my etsy store.  I sold quite a few e-books.  I nearly finished a new product that I plan to market on my blog and I secured a new sponsor.

So overall, I’d say that this month’s resolution was something of a success.

Do you make money from your blog?  Do you find it easy or is it a bit of a struggle?