Top Successful Bloggers And How They Make Money

1. Michelle Schroeder-Gardner -Top Successful Bloggers

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Website:- Making Sense of Cents– A Personal Finance Blog – Top Successful Bloggers

Website	MakingSenseOfCents.com
Site Age	5.5 years
Niche	Frugal lifestyle, savings
Total Income – December 2017	$126,260
Expenses – December 2017	$7,983.85
Net Income – December 2017	$113,276.66

This 28-year-old earns over $100,000 a month blogging and traveling full-time.  After earning two undergraduate degrees and a Master’s in finance, Michelle Schroeder-Gardner had racked up $38,000 worth of student loan debt. Top Successful Bloggers

She managed to pay it all off in just seven months, thanks largely to one key strategy: She shifted her focus to earning.

“I earned as much money as I could outside of my day job,” writes Schroeder-Gardner, who was making $50,000 a year as a financial analyst at the time.

“I mystery shopped and got paid to take surveys, but the biggest thing I did was I made an income through my blog.”

She started her blog, “Making Sense of Cents,” in 2011 when she was still in grad school but never intended on monetizing it. “I treated it more like a journal,” the 28-year-old tells CNBC Make It.

“It was all just a way to track my own financial progress so I could pay off my student loans and stop living paycheck to paycheck.”

“It took around six months to make my first $100 from the blog,” she continues, but “once I realized I could make money from it, it grew pretty quickly.”

When she wasn’t at work, Schroeder-Gardner was building a following, she says: “Any extra time I had would go towards growing my blog. Top Successful Bloggers

I woke up early in the mornings, stayed up late at night, used lunch breaks at my day job, and I even used my vacation days to focus on my blog.”

The Time and Effort Paid Off:

By 2013, she was bringing home an additional $10,000 a month from her blog. The extra income not only allowed her to pay off her loans but also to quit her job as a financial analyst.

Schroeder-Gardner has been blogging full-time since October 2013, when she left her day job. In 2016 alone, she made just less than $1 million. Today, she regularly earns over $100,000 a month.

There are three main ways her blog generates revenue:

1. Affiliate marketing, which is where the bulk of her income comes from, earns her about $50,000 a month.

2. Her affiliate marketing course, in which she teaches people how to make money online, earns her between $40,000 and $50,000 a month.

3. Advertising — including both sponsored advertisements with companies and display advertising — generates $12,000 to $23,000 a month.

Major Expenses

Being a blog about saving money, Michelle’s expenses are very low. She spent only  in virtual assistants, technical assistance, and other maintenance fees.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Michelle

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Post useful stuff in layman language

Many people struggle with debt reduction, credit cards, and income management because they are complex topics. But, Michelle was able to explain the solution to the financial misery in simple language. She was able to target a large audience in a short period of time by helping them manage their finance.

Start by focusing on one demographic

Michelle identified her audience – millennials that were struggling with student loans – and wrote content to help them reduce debt and earn income with side hustles.

She focused on small group and wrote relatable articles.

If you want to know more about finding your target niche, I have discussed this in detail in Point #7 of my post  Blogging Mistakes to Avoid in 2020

My Success Story
Blogging began as a hobby and has transformed into so much more than that for me. That’s the biggest reason that I want to show others how to start a lifestyle blog.

It has opened so many doors and presented many opportunities that wouldn’t have been there without this blog of mine.

Blogging has allowed me to do what I love and to stay at home with my babies (see: 85 Ways to Make Money Blogging).

It has allowed me to create my own schedule and express myself in ways I never knew were possible before.

You can see on our income reports here that we’ve been netting an average of about $20,000 in blog income every month this year.

3.  John Lee Dumas – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	eofire.com
Site Age	5 years
Niche	Entrepreneurship, online business & podcasting
Total Income – December 2017	$210,291
Expenses – December 2017	$66,798
Net Income – December 2017	$143,493

Eofire.com has been earning money since October 2012. John’s blog,  made a revenue of $69,879 with a net profit of $26,143 in its first year.

Eofire.com has grossed over 12.5 million dollars at the time of this post. John made a whopping revenue of $595,936 in Feb 2016.

He started with making podcasts for inspiring new entrepreneurs and now sells his own products, mostly online courses and ebooks.

Has produced over 1900 episodes of podcasts where he interviews aspiring and successful entrepreneurs. You can learn a lot about running your own online business in the podcasts.

The main source of income for John is his podcasts and books.

Takeaways – What We Learned From John

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Podcasting is great!

John is the pioneer of podcasting among entrepreneurs. If you can talk, podcasts can be a fun way to make money online.

The advertisement money on podcasts is really good. You can also learn a great deal from the interviews. It’s a win-win tactic. You create your content while you learn from the experts.

Become a brand

If you visit Eofire.com, you will notice that the whole tone and theme of the website is unanimous. John focuses on maintaining his brand.

Branding your website can help you gain the trust of the sponsors. You can land plenty of sponsors if you focus on branding.

 4. Pat Flynn – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	smartpassiveincome.com
Site Age	8 years
Niche	Entrepreneurship, online business & podcasting
Total Income – December 2017	$167,553.31
Expenses – December 2017	$39,647.21
Net Income – December 2017	$127,906.10

Pat Flynn is renowned among many aspiring bloggers. He has been an example of continuous dedication.

He has been blogging for more than 8 years now and he shares all of his journey on his blog smartpassiveincome.com.

The main theme of Pat Flynn’s blog is to teach people easy-to-use techniques for running an online business for passive income.

He is truly inspiring. If you want to run a successful passive income blog, Pat can teach you proven strategies.

Besides smartpassiveincome.com, Pat also runs Podcast, where you can ask any questions you have, a YouTube channel, and other blogs like GreenExamAcademy.com,   FoodTruckr.com,  and  SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com

He has also created a Podcast player if you are interested in podcasting.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Pat

Be consistent

If we look at the income report of Pat, we can see ups and downs but he never stopped.

He has been consistently blogging for more than 7 years. It is because of his dedication, he earned more than 2 million dollars in 2017.

Turn yourself into a brand

Like John, Pat also posts pictures of himself on his blog. You can get your own fan following if you build your personal branding.

He once even wrote about how a reader recognized him on a flight. He felt like a celebrity which only entrepreneurs who focus on personal branding achieve.

Create multiple sources of income

Pat has always diversified his income source to multiple platforms. From his blog to Podcast to YouTube channel, he has turned them into his income source.

The benefit is that you can receive a huge amount of traffic and revenue, and you will also build your personal brand.

You can learn more in detail about how you can create multiple sources of income in my previous post How to Make Money Blogging.

5. Lindsay Ostrom – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	PinchofYum.com
Site Age	7 years
Niche	Food Photography, Cooking
Total Income – November 2016	$95,197.34
Expenses – November 2016	$28,505.29
Net Income – November 2016	$66,693.05

PinchofYum.com is a giant food blog that talks about recipes. Lindsay Ostrom prepares delicious food, takes pictures of them, and writes recipes along with the pictures.

She has managed to make six figures by doing food photography. It was something that no one before her thought could be such a high earning niche. She has been an inspirational blogger for food lovers.

She gets tons of traffic from Pinterest and Instagram and has over 550k Instagram followers.

Major Expenses

About $19.5k is used as salaries for staffs and contractors. Besides salary, studio-related costs are Lindsay’s major expenses.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Lindsay

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Make use of social media

Lindsay brings over half a million traffic from Pinterest. And, because of her Instagram followers, she also gets a lot of direct traffic.

So, you shouldn’t miss social media if you want tons of traffic. If you have an image focused blog, it’s better to use image-focused social media.

Visuals matters

Lindsay’s life changed when she started taking better photos. She even sells her own course about taking good food pictures.

So, if your niche is related to images, you better take a photography lesson ASAP. There are also several other mistakes regarding the use of visuals in your blog post, which I discussed in detail in 7 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid in 2018.

It’s a long-term game!

Lindsay’s blog has been going strong for over 6 years. The number of years matter. She has had so many posts with so many pictures that every time she creates a new post, it multiplies her traffic and income potential.

6. Justin Weinger – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	SoOverThis.com
Site Age	6.5 years
Niche	Internet marketing
Total Income – October 2017	$86,474
Expenses – October 2017	$5,939
Net Income – October 2017	$80,535

Justin Weinger bought  in 2013 from Andrea who wanted everyone to get “so over” the rate race, debt, and financial irresponsibility. sooverthis.com

The blog doesn’t claim to be a guru for financial advice. Actually, the blog believes in learning from the mistakes and correcting them, not only financially but in other areas of life as well.

Justin shares his own journey from when he worked a full-time day job to gaining financial freedom by being as transparent as possible.

Major Expenses

His major expense is share split between his partners, writers, and technical services.

Takeaways – What We Learned From Justin

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Advertisements work!

Advertising is the oldest legit money making method that exists.

So it’s time you stop fixating yourself only on affiliate marketing and make thousands of dollars every month using ad sales through your high-traffic, authoritative website.

Private ad sales are much better

What AdSense makes up in being easy, it gives up by not being lucrative. When advertising, make the most use of display ads (e.g. banner ads) and private ad revenues; AdSense can stay to help you fill up unsold inventory on your website.

7. Jennifer – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	ShowMeTheYummy.com
Site Age	4 years
Niche	Food and recipes
Total Income – December 2016	$46,367
Expenses – December 2016	$2,185
Net Income – December 2016	$44,181

ShowMeTheYummy is a food photography website run by a couple, Jennifer and Trevor. Trevor is a professional photographer who now works on websites, marketing, and videography.

Jennifer started food blogging while Trevor was working a full-time job. It was later Trevor worked on the blog full time.

The site has been really impressive. The site was making only $28 in Nov 2014 and have been growing ever since.

Jennifer shows her page views and RPM on her income reports, which is really admirable. You can learn all about how to properly monetize your website from

Major Expenses

Jennifer’s expenses aren’t much since her husband helps her in technical aspects. Most of the expense was for the equipment she used for videography and photography.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Jennifer

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Watch your monetization

Increasing her RPMs from $3 to a whopping $65, Jennifer managed to earn $46,000 instead of $2,000 had her RPMs been the same.

Don’t be afraid to try new things

Jennifer goes a little bit outside her niche to extend her services and earn more profits. She talks about food photography and food videography on her blog instead of just food recipes.

8. Abby – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	JustAGirlAndHerBlog.com
Site Age	3 years
Niche	Home organization, DIY, and home decor
Total Income – December 2016	$41,700
Expenses – December 2016	$6,340
Net Income – December 2016	$35,360

Abby blogs about DIY, home organization, and home decor. She focuses on the small things that we miss when we organize our home.

She has been teaching her readers how to make their home look beautiful while also enjoying DIY projects.

Abby has been able to make whooping $35k per month in just 3 years of starting her blog. When she first released her income report in Feb 2014, she was making around $2k.

She then shared a goal of making 10k next month and surprisingly managed to make $13,887.

New posts are updated multiple times a week in JustAGirlAndHerBlog.com. She writes about simple things but in great detail.

Abby has her husband help her full time. So, according to her, the blog isn’t just a girl and a blog.

Major Expenses

Abby pays around $1.7k as affiliate payouts which is her largest expense. Besides that, her major expenses include virtual assistants, accounting, and consulting fees.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Abby

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Become a brand that your niche loves

Abby writes about home decor and DIY and her major audiences are moms. And, she has maintained a feminine theme on her blog.

This works great for her audience. So, when you consider branding your website, think about your readers.

Readers love pictures

Instead of simply writing long posts, Abby uses a lot of pictures to create visual DIY guides. These are easier to follow and bring in additional traffic through social shares.

Again, if you want to avoid some of the most common errors that people make while posting images, please read my previous post  Blogging Mistakes to Avoid in 2020.

Try a mix of styles for your content

Abby writes in-depth posts on DIY topics and follows them up with listicles and roundups from across the internet.

By writing a mix of authoritative and link bait content, she is able to get the best of both worlds: rankings and social media traffic.

Try a mix of styles for your content

Abby writes in-depth posts on DIY topics and follows them up with listicles and roundups from across the internet.

By writing a mix of authoritative and link bait content, she is able to get the best of both worlds: rankings and social media traffic.

9. Harsh Agarwal – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	ShoutMeLoud.com
Site Age	9 years
Niche	Tech Tips, Blogging and making money online
Total Income – February 2018	$40,055
Expenses – February 2018	$40,055
Net Income – February 2018	$40,055

Harsh started  in 2008 and has been posting his income report since Feb 2009 when he earned $434.

He started blogging as an interest but when he found out he could make money, he started posting aggressively. The result is, he makes $39k per month.

Harsh is one of those bloggers who gets a huge amount of traffic. He reports all his traffic stats in his income report. The blog receives more than 1.5 million pageviews.

has blog posts ranging from tech tips to creating blogs. He is one of the few survivors of Google’s algorithm change. He also has a YouTube channel where he creates video guides about creating blogs.

Major Expenses

He reports about $8.3k as team expenses. Other expenses include consultation and technical fees.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Harsh

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Long tail keywords

Harsh has been focusing on long-tail keywords, which has allowed him to get tons of traffic from search engines. A long-tail keyword is a full-proof method of getting more traffic from Google.

Try multiple income sources

Harsh has multiple blogs for different affiliate programs. For example, he has a separate hosting discount blog where he talks about web hosting.

Harsh has been able to create a brand by providing most of the commodities needed to start a blog through his different websites.

It is best not to stick to just one or two methods as there are so many ways you can monetize your blog.

10. Matthew Woodward – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	MatthewWoodward.co.uk
Site Age	5 years
Niche	SEO / Internet Marketing
Total Income – December 2017	$28,429
Expenses – December 2017	$2,711.57
Net Income – December 2017	$25, 718

Matthew writes about Internet marketing, link building, traffic generation, and SEO. He publishes fresh high-quality articles and case studies.

Matthew is regarded as one of the pioneers of Internet marketing. He has been writing about Internet Marketing and SEO since 2012. MatthewWoodward.co.uk

When he first published his income report in August 2012, he just earned around 600 dollars. The revenue has now increased to over $25.5k with total lifetime earnings of over a million dollars in just 5 years.

Affiliate marketing is his major source of income while he also does consultation sessions now and then.

Major Expenses

Matthew spent about 1.8k dollars in Facebook advertising which was used for developing a case study about the Facebook lead generation.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Matthew

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Affiliate is great

Unlike our other top bloggers, Matthew doesn’t earn through his own products or even ads. He is an example of how effective affiliate marketing can be for making money online.

Diversify affiliate products

Although he only writes about SEO and Internet Marketing, he promotes as many good products that are suitable for the readers. The advantage? Even if the audience doesn’t like one product, they will another.

Build authority

Matthew only writes about SEO and Internet Marketing. He has been doing so for a long time now. So, he has established himself as the leading authority in the niche.

11. Jon Dykstra – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	fatstacksblog.com
Site Age	1.5 years
Niche	Undisclosed
Total Income – April 2017	$26,241.35
Expenses – April 2017	Undisclosed
Net Income – April 2017	Undisclosed

fatstacksblog.com talks about making “fat stacks” through niche sites. Jon shares his lesson about creating successful niche websites.

As reported as Jon, he made 28k dollars in his first income report of June 2016 and has been making a similar figure ever since.

Jon doesn’t disclose his income sources nor does he talk about his monetization methods. However, he is mainly engaged in B2C and B2B affiliate marketing.

John does give a vague idea about his monetization method, his traffic, content volume, revenue pattern, and his audience. But, nothing much can be concluded from those.

Major Expenses

Jon doesn’t reveal his expenses. Though, he invests a lot in bringing paid traffic.

Takeaways – What Learned from John

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Bucks for bucks

According to sources, Jon was spending a huge sum of money to bring in traffic. He then converted the paid traffic while also increasing his organic traffic.

Spending money to bring in more money has been a model that has worked successfully for Jon.

Build a proven system

Jon’s content was so good that he made a profit even after bringing paid traffic. He is an expert on making proven systems and then boosting it with paid promotions.

12. Gina Horkey

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Website	horkeyhandbook.com
Site Age	3 years
Niche	Freelance Writing
Total Income – 2017	$127,496
Expenses – 2017	$70,218
Net Income – 2017	$57,278

Gina Horkey sells services. She is a freelance writer. She is living proof that if you are good at something, you can make money, even if you don’t have much experience. horkeyhandbook.com

 is about becoming or hiring a virtual assistant. VA is the main source of revenue for Gina. She also writes for some well-known publishers. She was able to earn $6.5k/month in her first year of freelancing career.

Major Expenses

She pays 22% of her income to affiliates of her own products.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Gina

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Freelancing might work

A shot at freelancing can change your life. Gina was able to grow from $0 to $6k per month within few months just by doing freelancing works.

Add services and diversify

Although Gina was making good money from just freelancing, she decided to launch her own products. That decision helped her make 3 times more money than she used to make while freelancing.

13. Kristen  – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	believeinabudget.com
Site Age	2 years
Niche	Budgeting, finance, making money online
Total Income – December 2017	$18,336
Expenses – December 2017	$1,965.22
Net Income – December 2017	$16, 371

Kristen started  in 2015 as a side hustle while also working a day job. She worked as a  designer before giving all her time to blog. believeinabudget.com

As the name suggests, started as a budgeting and financing blog but Kristen later turned it to online money making a guide so that like her readers could also do some side hustles to manage their finances.

Kristen made $66 when she posted her first income report. But, now is able to earn around 16k dollars per month.

Major Expenses

Most of her expenses are paying her affiliates. Besides, that VA works and professional services ($1,665) also burdens her income.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Kristen

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Use affiliates to sell more

Like Kristen, you can also use affiliate programs to promote your own courses. Even if it is a small course, you can still use affiliates to reach out to more people and make good money.

 14. Rose Atwater – Top Successful Bloggers

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Website	roseatwater.com
Site Age	4 years
Niche	Finance, family, and food
Total Income – December 2016	$9,416
Expenses – December 2016	$1,112
Net Income – December 2016	$8,304

Rose promotes her personal brand with sites like roseatwater.com and rosebakes.com. She primarily writes about managing finance, family, and faith in one site, and food and cakes in other.

Engages the user with her personal life and shares her experiences and experiments with budgeting. Has been able to get a good revenue by covering different niches.

Major Expenses

Being a blog about frugal lifestyle, Rose tries to lower her expenses as much as possible. However, Virtual Assistants make up most of her expenditure.

Takeaways – What We Learned from Rose

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Become a personal brand

Rose uses a similar theme on all her blog across multiple niches. This type of personal branding has helped her get regular readers.

Optimize your ads as per the content

Although Rose doesn’t have as much traffic as other bloggers who make revenue from ads, she has been able to generate impressive RPMs using ad optimization platform.