After two years of casually blogging, I monetized my website.

I first bought this website back in 2020, when the pandemic just started, because I knew I wanted to kick my career as a writer into a new level. Back then, I didn’t think about blogging or social media content, I just wanted this Squarespace website so I could have a portfolio for my works.

I had gone through a nasty breakup with someone who told me I wasn’t ambitious (clearly he couldn’t see who I was properly), and so I had a fire lit under me. It wasn’t until a year later I began exploring the topic of SEO and took some classes, which meant I delved deeper into the world of digital marketing.

At the time I was also taking a gap year, which meant I had more time than usual to focus on myself and my writing. I decided I wanted to blog as a form of self-care, putting my thoughts and mini diary entries out onto the Internet for the world to see, but then I pivoted.

I realized I read and watched a lot, which meant I was forgetting the kinds of movies and things I was watching.

So I started writing reviews. To this day, my reviews aren’t for other people, despite the fact I’ve now monetized. It’s for myself. I want to remember what something was about without Wikipedia and have my own opinion written down on the Internet somewhere.

It took two years for me to realize I should monetize this site. More on that later, but at the time of writing this, in July 2023, I’ve been monetized for a month.

There were some hiccups, as I messed the code up for this site by trying to switch over to Ezoic, which was a mistake, so my revenue was impacted for about a week because the ads disappeared.

But before I go into this, I want to thank you, my dedicated readers, for reading. I know this is for myself, but I love seeing the loving messages I get outside of my work as a writer and critic driven by this blog. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside!

Here’s my monetization and SEO journey to make this website grow.

After two years of content strategy, I have now hit over 100,000 visitors.

I taught myself SEO mainly. I took a few courses here and there to learn the nuts and bolts of it, but I mainly learned how the search engines worked through trial and error. I format these blog posts in a very specific way for Google traffic, and I base my reviews around a structure I know works for Google and other search engines.

At the beginning, I had very little organic traffic through the search engines. It took about a year for me to consistently get fifty views a day, in 2022, and by early 2023, I was getting two hundred hits a day. Now, in July 2023, I am getting around five hundred hits a day.

Not everyone stays to browse around on the site, but that’s fine for me—I’m looking for growth first, then consistency.

As I mentioned, I mainly write reviews. I also do a little bit of travel writing as a form of diary entries, and touch upon career notes every so often. Those posts are mainly for me, but they get decent traffic and tend to be my posts that somehow end up on Google Discover.

Several of my posts rank at the top for Google searches and my Google Search Console told me that in the past year, I have had about seven million impressions on Google.

That’s pretty decent for someone who didn’t really blog seriously. I would take entire months off when in grad school and didn’t post anything, so I was impressed with that turnout.

Officially monetizing my website after two years of blogging.

It was in the spring of 2023, when I began hitting those bigger numbers, that I slowly realized I needed to monetize this website in order to pay for my various business endeavors. I started writing more blog posts when there was a lull at my job on campus, so I prepped posts for months in advance unless there was a time keyword or content that was hitting big right now.

A lot of my pages are getting indexed on Google within a day now, as my website is a bit older/established. In the beginning, it didn’t used to be like that. I also began watching a ton of YouTubers, specifically smaller ones, and I realized that I could be making money like that in a passive way with this kind of traffic.

So I applied for Google AdSense. The first two times, I was rejected from the Adsense program. During the time in which I applied next (which was three weeks later after the second rejection), I made a few more blog posts, then reviewed all the requirements. I made sure I made a privacy policy page, and then I got approved within two days after I ended up reapplying.

Then I started make money—it started really small, as in literal pennies, then it would jump up to two dollars a day. For Adsense, it all depends on clicks when it comes to the kind of money you’re making. You make more money on a Western person clicking, too, than someone in India or Malaysia.

I hit a small bump two weeks in because I wanted to test out Ezoic, another ad platform. They change your servers and the ads.txt, which is a nightmare to fix on Squarespace.

It shut off my Adsense even before the Ezoic had implemented the ads, so I ended up taking my website off Ezoic because I was mad and heard bad things about them on Reddit (make your own judgement, I’m sure some people had lovely experiences with them), and then I had to figure out how to fix the ads.txt file on Squarespace.

That is difficult. Don’t be like me. But because of that, I lost revenue as the ads were shut off since Ezoic put their ads.txt file in and I lost the Adsense ads for a bit.

Increasing my content strategy during the summer.

Once I was monetized, I had a bit more incentive to write more. I was also on summer break from grad school, so that meant I was reading a lot more and watching a ton of content outside of my work duties. I began writing three blog posts a day until I ran out of reviews to write, then pivoted a bit to write these kinds of posts while I began watching another movie or Korean drama.

I haven’t seen the income that would come with this, but my goal was to get as much content scheduled in advance because I knew that I was going to be in school and wouldn’t have time to write anymore. I’m writing this in early July, and I am already scheduled all the way up until the end of September. That’s probably when you’re even going to see this post. Hi, future person!

You’re probably wondering how I realistically watch and read so much. I work from home and freelance most of the time. I also read quickly and retain information really well because of my fields of study, so I can get through two hundred pages in about an hour and a half. I also don’t go on my phone or waste time.

When I work from home and am not in a meeting, I tend to listen to audiobooks, too. I probably would’ve done all of this without the blog even. But because of that, I have a stream of content always ready in the wings. Some things I don’t even do reviews of, either.

But the name of the game here is increasing views. The more views, the more ad impressions. The more impressions, the more clicks, which means more money. I also have been driving people towards my social media platforms, which has been an interesting experiment that’s in progress—especially because I hate social media with a passion.

My final earnings for the first month.

In the month of June 2023, I didn’t make much. That’s pennies, but from what I was reading online, the first couple of months on Adsense are always kind of slow because it’s establishing itself on your website. I also am not mad at that amount because of the fact I broke my Google Adsense code and didn’t have ads running for an entire week.

That happened right before vacation and I was frantically trying to fix it, and when I did figure out what to do, it ended up taking a day or two for the ads to come back on my website. So that thirteen dollars means I lost about a week’s worth of revenue in it, which means I probably could have made more like twenty dollars if I didn’t have that jarring loss.

I expect my July income to surpass my June income, especially as I get more content out. It’s a long-term game and I don’t expect to get rich off of this, but I would like to pay my domain and start my Etsy shop.

I originally wanted to expand so people could see my regular writing, as this is my author website, and I could have more exposure.

But now that I’ve monetized, it takes on a new meaning as well. I find this whole blogging thing to be really fun and I don’t take it seriously (I would never quit a job for this blog, let’s be real), and I’m very big on community and sharing the books/films/theatre I love. Let’s make space for that, shall we?

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