Travel Blog Income Report Year 1 (Aug 2015 to July 2016) — Loss $428.85

I started my travel blog, Trevallog, in August 2015. At that time, blogging was a new shiny thing. Travel bloggers were still writing diary-like blog posts. Quitting one’s job to travel the world was the common theme amongst popular bloggers.

There were no prominent Asia travel bloggers when I googled. I had nobody to look up to, hence I followed mostly US bloggers, such as Steph of Twenty Something Travel, Alex of Alex in Wanderland, Kristin of Be My Travel Muse. It was these women who showed me that it’s indeed possible to be a full-time blogger. So, I followed their footsteps and signed up for TBS course, the first travel blogging course that is now defunct, sadly.

My first year in blogging was literally my baby steps. I was learning the bolts and nuts of running a blog. During this period, I was working full time, 6 days a week. I had really limited time for blogging but I still tried to find time.

In May 2016 (my 10th month blogging), I decided enough was enough, if I want my blog to grow, I need to invest a good amount of time. So I left my full time job to blog full time even though I made nothing from it yet. I lived off my savings and prayed hard that my blog would take off in 6 months.

In May, June and July, I worked hard every single day, grinding and hustling, keep producing content, learning how to edit and optimize photos, learning how to schedule social media postings.

I envisioned my blog earning $1000 at the end of 2016 (Month 17). Did it happen? Read my Year 2 income report for the honest answer. Meanwhile, let’s dive into the juicy details!

Year 1 Revenue = 0

Not. a. single. cent. earned.
Only. twelve. months. of. hard. work.

Year 1 Cost = US$ 428.85

• Domain bought from wordpress.com including domain registration, domain mapping and private registration = US$26.
• Travel Blog Success Main Course = US$225.55
• Travel Blog Success Partner Course (Blogger to Byline & Bloggers, Brands, and Tourism Boards) = US$177.3

Total cost = 428.85

Total profit / loss = (US$ 428.85)

Total blog posts = 64

Total page views = 2,986 (average 8.18 views/day)

Good Decisions

Investing in Travel Blog Success (TBS) course and its associated courses was the best decision I made in my first year of blogging. Through this blog, I learned so much about the bolts and nuts of travel blogging, travel writing, freelance writing, blogging monetization methods, and so many other lessons. Since this course is now defunct, I can’t recommend it to you. There’s a similar course called Superstar Blogging by Nomadic Matt, but honestly I don’t find much value in it (probably because I’ve already learned a lot from TBS).

Going with wordpress.com instead of wordpress.org. TBS course highly recommended that bloggers use wordpress.org because wordpress.com and blogger.com have a lot of limitation in terms of customization. As a newbie, I was so afraid to use wordpress.org because I had no idea about self-hosting and I didn’t want to hire a developer just to set up my blog for me, because if I did so, I had to rely on that developer for every changes that I want to make in the future.

I decided to go against the tide and use wordpress.com. I loved it so much that I kept renewing my subscription until my fourth year of blogging.

Lesson Learned

A great photography skill is not just good to have, it’s mandatory. Nobody will trust a blog with blur or tilted photos. Upon learning that Adobe Lightroom is a favorite editing tool for many bloggers, I set out to learn Lightroom. From May onwards, I started editing all of the photos that I post on my blog and I was really proud of how they turned out.

Mistakes made

Because this is my first year in blogging, I am bound to make many mistakes. In fact, I keep making mistakes in years to come. So, if you’re afraid to make mistakes when starting your blog, don’t be. We all make mistakes all the time. That’s how we learn. Here are my stupid mistakes.

I literally copy-pasted every article from my old blog at Blogger.com to this new blog at wordpress.com. I didn’t even bother to upload image on wordpress server. Later, I realized that I may have duplicated content and hence not getting any organic traffic. I then quickly deleted my old blog at Blogger.com.

Not knowing how to optimize image size. This is every blogger’s nightmare. I uploaded the full size images, thus my load time was terrible.

Not knowing SEO. I heard about it, but didn’t understand it. I thought it was some technical stuff that can only be done if my site is hosted on wordpress.org. I continued writing narrative articles with snippets of travel information inserted in between paragraphs.

Achievement

Even though I made zero dollars in my first year of blogging, I did have several small wins worth celebrating.

Some articles surprisingly turned out well and continues to get traffic even until today, such as Universal Studios Singapore rides, Hong Kong Airport guide. Apparently if you throw many things on the wall and hope something will stick, they will.

I gain some following on FB & IG due to consistent posting. I never went viral though. Sadly, I stopped focusing on social media in my second year and my followers count became stagnant.

Conclusion

Looking back, I was surprised I didn’t give up in my first year of blogging. I was making zero dollars, spending hundreds, and put in so many hours only to get an average of 8 pageviews a day!

Well, blogging is indeed a labor of love. You need a tremendous amount of passion to make it work. You need to pay your dues in your early days.

Before you start your blog, ask yourself this: will I continue blogging even though I don’t make a single cent in my first year and my traffic is less than 10 pageviews a day? If your answer is yes, then you know you can weather any storm 🙂