I’d like to introduce you to Monique, a successful homeschooling blogger and mom. She has grown her blog to a full time income while also teaching her children! What a supermom! Below is her process and story, let me know what you think.

Do you homeschool? Do you blog? Would you love to combine both topics?

Read on to find out how Monique makes money with her homeschooling blog.

How to Make Money with a Homeschooling Blog

Can you imagine that a homeschool mom could make money off of her tiny blog?

I started blogging in 2010 where I’d share our weekly report. Yes, this is what I called it. I’d share what we did in our homeschool that week and included horrible pictures with bad lighting of my kids and their school work including awkward inanimate objects like a math block.

It wasn’t pretty.

My friend had a personal blog and I wanted to share our journey with her and my other friends did not live close to us anymore.

I’m pretty sure I had a total of 6 readers, my sister and my friends, that was all. I had linked my curriculum lists that I made each year for each child and I took me two years before I received the first Amazon affiliate payout since you had to meet the $100 threshold. I had adsense but was earning pennies a day.

I began to network in Facebook groups and found some larger bloggers to follow. I watched how they wrote posts and how they titled them. I saw the products they were selling and I set out to one day be like them.

I started writing posts that would help my readers. The  best thing I learned was how to create printables. My goal was  to become the top place to look for printable learning activities, this was huge because I was only learning at the time.

I guest posted on larger sites and I began to share my freebies on large homeschool sites that promoted freebies and that’s what made my traffic spike. It was wonderful. I got a boost in affiliate and ad income and by then was with an ad network so I was definitely earning more than I would have been with adsense.

I realized that I couldn’t give all of my freebies away for free so I began capturing their emails in exchange for receiving my freebies.

I now make what I made when I worked full-time as a lab technician.

And I do it all from home, while homeschooling my 3 kids.

 How my blogging goals evolved over time

• Can I get reviews for homechool curriculum that we needed?
• Can I get paid for curriculum reviews and sponsored posts?
• Can I make $500 a month?
• Can I make $1000 a month?
• Can I make enough to cover all of our bills?

Although, I had built up my email list, I still wasn’t earning more but was paying quite a bit more for my email service. It wasn’t until I took off my RSS feed and I started sending out customized email newsletters was I able to make more money from blogging.

I was connecting with more moms and they started emailing me back asking me questions and replying to my questions.

My list has grown to 25,000 subscribers.

I prune my list often to get rid of people who aren’t clicking on my emails.

My current income is made up of ads, products, affiliate income and sponsored posts. Because I’m in Canada I don’t get a lot of sponsored post opportunities. So that pushed me to create my first product 2 years ago.

My First Product Idea – a Membership

People kept asking me why they had to opt-in everytime for my printables so I created a membership where I housed all of my free printables, they had to log in, and they were able to download all of my freebies for a ridiculously low price.

I then added a “premium” tier where I shared exclusive printables that weren’t on the blog. I did change the structure of the membership and continue to add more content to it. The Learning Lab is my best seller these days after adding an eBook, Homeschool Planning for the Unorganized Mom, and more printable packs and t-shirts.

Traffic – Emails + Pinterest

I now email my list 3 times a week and I know I can count on a traffic boost for each email. And an affiliate product boost if I mention them in my newsletter.

My biggest sources of traffic for my blog are Pinterest, referral and email. My blog was not an overnight success and while I was learning to implement everything on the blog and grow its traffic I supplemented my income with graphic/web design work which I love.

Advice for New Mom Bloggers

For new bloggers starting out who are becoming overwhelmed with all of the things you have to do to grow your blog, my best piece of advice for you is to focus on only 3 things. For me right now, that’s products, email and Pinterest. Am I on Instagram and Facebook? Sure am, but it’s all automated or I only share when I have time. It’s not consuming any of my brain power and I’m not stressing about it.

I know where my time is best spent and SEO and Pinterest is where I get the best ROI, I just don’t have time to focus on everything.

Because I learned how to create printables, I was able to create my own products and mock ups to promote them. I also turned that into a side business and designed printables and graphics for other bloggers.

If you have a gift, you may want to consider offering VA services to supplement your income.

---

Monique is a self-taught graphic/web designer, blogger and homeschool mom to 3 kids. You can find her sharing educational resources on Living Life and Learning and sharing design tips on Monique B Designs.