Last March 9, 2016, this blog celebrated its first birthday. Woohoo! Happy Anniversary to us! I have learned so many things in the first year of blogging. I inspired, enlightened and helped lots of people through my articles.
This blog received an award, generated almost 1M page views and was able to earn more than $1,000 of extra income. Not bad for the first year, right? See how I did it below.
My first year of blogging
As I mentioned, I launched this blog last March 9, 2015. I really want to start a blog even before but the plan came to reality only on that date. My initial goal that time was to share my learnings upon discovering my passion in personal finance. No formal blogging goals and plan, just to help and inspire others while documenting my journey to financial freedom.
That time, I already knew that blog can help you earn extra income but don’t know how to do it. I read lots of blogs online and watch videos about it but starting and running them on your own hands is another story. I just applied what I learned. And also, part of starting this blog is to learn and explore earning money online and in blogging.
12 months have passed, I can proudly say that I learned a lot. It’s a success. Not only I was able to inspire and help other people from sharing valuable personal finance tips but also able to earn more than $1,000 of extra income from this blog. Let me share you my journey in the first year of blogging on this article.
Lots of people inspired
As you might have read, there are more than 150 articles on this blog (161st for this post) and most of them inspired and helped other people. I am proud that this blog helped them in terms of budgeting and saving tips, basic of investing, earning more money and proper money mindset. I received a lot of good feedback and comments that somehow I touched and enlightened their lives.
Here are some of readers comments and feedback.
My first post also got shared hundreds of times on social media from the day it was published. It was also one of the most commented articles published on the blog. You wanna know what that is? That’s the best investment that could give you more than 1000% return. Here’s the screen shot.
Up to know, I still share that article whenever appropriate in social media and other online forums. I personally believed that investing in ourselves first is the first step to financial freedom. As what Benjamin Franklin said, “investment in knowledge pays the best interest“.
It’s also flattering to know that in some little ways I was able to spread financial literacy through this blog. I hope more Filipino bloggers share the same advocacy to educate and inspire other Filipino to start taking charge of their finances. This way, we can reach more and more people around the world and hopefully in the coming years, we can see more financially educated Filipinos around the world. I firmly believed that financial literacy is the first step in achieving financial freedom.
As a newbie in the blogosphere and in the finance industry, I am very proud of this accomplishment. I never imagine that I can be an instrument in my own little way to help and inspire other people. If you’re one of this blog’s follower, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart!
I improved my writing skills
Another great result of this blog was it helped me improve my writing skills. Just a little bit. But hey, I’m on my way!
When I started this blog, I don’t know if I can finish a single article. I don’t know how to express and write the ideas on my head. But as I persist and continue blogging, that bring results and good improvements in my writing skills. You see? I told you, I’m on my way. Ha!
Right now, once I feel the momentum, my hands keep on typing and running on the keyboard to share the ideas on my head. I can now write 2,000 words for a single article without getting bored. That’s one of my achievements in the first year of blogging. It’s true that when you established a habit, you’ll be good at it. Try yourself to see!
First blogging award
Another milestone of this blog was its first blogging award. Actually, it’s also my first award as a blogger. Every year, Ms. Janette Toral(founder of digitalfilipino.com and an e-commerce advocate in the Philippines) conduct a search for growing and influential blogs of the year in terms of readers and followers online. And I’m proud to share that we’re part of the Top 10 winners. Yeah boy!
As mentioned, this is the first award I received in blogging. So happy for this simple accomplishment. You can read more about that in this article. Cheers!
1 Million page views
As a result of sharing valuable personal finance tips to fellow Filipinos and other readers, this blog generated almost 1 million page views in its first year. Not bad again, right? Page views are the number of times pages and articles viewed on this blog. It is true that once you share and provide valuable things on your blog, people will naturally come in. Here’s a screenshot of the traffic report of this blog for its first year.
Not only that, search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others really like this blog because of its value and helpful articles. More than 60% of the traffic were organic and came from search engines. If you’re into blogging, you’ll love this! This is what we called SEO(search engine optimization).
As I continue to share valuable and helpful information, I am confident that this will grow more moving forward. I will also apply all the blogging lessons I learned along the way to continue growing this blog. Join me on this journey.
$1,000 of extra income
In line with the accomplishments I shared above, one of the best milestones of this blog is the extra income it brought to me and my family. In a span of one year, this blog that you’re reading right now brought us more than $1,000 of passive income. Yes, that’s true! Here’s the screenshot of this blog’s Google Adsense earnings for the first year.
Google Adsense is just one of the many ways you can earn from you blog. If you follow my 5-part blogging tutorial, you can see that there are so many ways to earn money online in the Philippines.
As I shared on my Facebook page, this blog now pays our bills with some other stuff. That’s the beauty of blogging and online business vs. traditional business. Imagine I was able to reach, help and inspire many people in the comfort of our home. That’s why I fell in love with blogging.
I have other monetization plans for this blog in the future, in fact, I launched a simple advertising option on this blog to earn additional income. But of course, the advertisements should also be related to personal finance and should be helpful to my readers. I rejected and will reject other ads that will not contribute value to this blog and its readers. If you have a blog, you can follow this strategy too.
Moving on, I’ll continue sharing valuable personal finance tips to fellow Filipino and other readers.
Update: We’ve reached the $4,900 earnings. I revealed the secrets and details here. Check out!
Blogging goals. What’s the future of this blog?
I have lots of things going on in my mind related to this blog. Sometimes due to the overload of ideas and information, I wasn’t able to do anything. That’s one of the challenges I need to overcome. Another goal is to continue sharing valuable articles and information that can help fellow Filipinos in their financial freedom journey. More tips, ideas, and hacks on how we can improve our financial situation.
Another goal is to continue sharing valuable articles and information that can help fellow Filipinos in their financial freedom journey. More tips, ideas, and hacks on how we can improve our financial situation.
If you want to learn and start your own blog, you can check the 5-part tutorial I made here.
I started this blog as a hobby, experiment or learning stage. After a year, I can feel that it pushed the passion inside me to help and inspire more people. To learn more and to share more. With that said, I promise to get better at this for the benefit of others and in return for myself too. Join me as we conquer this exciting field of the blogosphere and financial freedom. Let’s blog and grow rich!
If you’ve been reading this far and been following this blog from the start, I owe you all these accomplishments. I owe you big time! And again, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Happy anniversary to this blog, cheers!
Congrats!! 🙂
Thank you Chen! 🙂
Congratulations Bro! Amazing hehe
Thanks Abe!