She Makes $120,000 a Month Blogging
Tags: beginners, blogging, webdev, programming
Published: 2024-03-13 20:33:57

If you thought blogging was dead, think again.

**Sophia Lee** was a struggling sophomore, looking for a job that could help pay her way through college. One day, she stumbled across a Pinterest pin that caught her interest. A mother claimed she made **$10,000** per month blogging.

![i don't believe](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bvfrin3rft546kkxhepk.gif)


**Sophia had a blog.**

It was the typical one. Sporadic writings when something happened in her life. Only her family knew of it and visited it.

She had no idea you could make money with blogs.

But once she got that idea, she went all in. She wanted to make it big with her blog. And her strategy worked.

Today, five years later, she’s making $120,000 a month blogging.

## Year #1: Focus on Fast Income
First, Sophia deleted all her original blog posts.

This first year, she focused on fast income. As a student, she had little time to write blog posts. And she needed money, fast.

She felt that the easiest way to make fast money with a new blog was with ads.

So her goal was to get accepted by an ad agency. She discovered that for that she needed page views. She chose Pinterest for this purpose.

After all, that’s how she’d herself discovered that you could make money, blogging.

Her second focus was to learn as much about blogging as possible. As fast as possible. That gave her an easy choice.

She could figure it out for herself, which would take a couple of years. Or spend $100 on a course and be making money in a couple of months. Take note of one thing here…

She did NOT have the mindset of, “Let me take this course and do nothing.”

She put what she learned at use immediately. That’s where she behaved in a different way than most people. Determined progress.

To earn money for the courses, she took babysitting gigs.

And every time she learned something new, she would follow it to a T for two months. After that she would adjust. This is another wise piece of advice.

Use it as is for two months, then tweak and adjust.



## Year #2: Focus On Affiliate marketing and SEO


![Affiliate marketing and SEO](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ridg3bhirnhl3ug4tq61.png)

This year, Sophia focused on affiliate marketing, mainly from Amazon Associates.

Sophia advised against doing affiliate marketing the first year. Maybe because you need more traffic to make it worth it. Maybe because it takes more time.

She didn’t say.

When you do affiliate marketing on a blog, it means you need to do SEO. Search Engine Optimization.

This was another topic Sophia had to learn.

Now she masters it, but she wasn’t born with that skill. Notice how all the way through, she learns and implements. Learns and implements.

**Then tweak.**

## Year #3: Focus on Email List and Social Media


![Email List](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/15t3sihrpa4mn0cs80fq.gif)
Sophia didn’t understand the importance of an email list until now.

I would switch this to the first year. Unless you really don’t have the energy. An email list will become your most important asset.

Sophia said to make sure with everything you posted to be extremely helpful.

Keep the reader in mind at all times.

Don’t write about yourself. People don’t care about you. They care about themselves.

Focus on them.

Sophia also started on social media. She chose Instagram and YouTube. Both good places to find traffic.

Once again, she focused hard.

That meant an Instagram story every day. A YouTube video once a week. All that was extra work, though.

Because of all the extra workload, Sophia started to hire.

She had to. She hired part-time freelancers to help her with her blogging. Now she had a team.

## Year #4: Focus on Course Creation

![Course Creation](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dbwz30rgbcrp3hh6xtse.jpg)
In Year #4, Sophia began to create courses and focused on this part of her business.

There is good money in courses. Digital courses. Especially when you have the experience and the knowledge you teach others.

She also started a second business.

One she’d wanted always. An interior design business. Plus, she began to be more risky in her choices.

But she made the money now to be able to be risky.

## Year #5: Focus on TikTok and Hiring Full-time Employees

In Year #5, Sophia decided to focus on TikTok.

![TikTok](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bduf52rjtre3ldu1q2bf.png)
She also started more new business ventures. And she switched from hiring part-time employees to full-time employees.

It helped her with her work-flow.

Why would she prefer full-time employees? Because, like she said, part-time employees do other things as well. When you have someone full time, they are more focused and more involved with your business.

## Could You Make $100,000 a Month in 5 Years?


![mr bean no](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/exdq01fyq64e2202kpci.gif)


Why not?

You now have a 5-year blueprint to follow. You know exactly what worked for Sophia, year by year. And right now, she’s making $120,000 per month.

Not too shabby.

If you’re not sure if blogging is for you, though, why not start with a small project first?