This has been a big year for Cash for Kat! Since it is the end of the year, I thought it would be nice to document some of the blog’s milestones and share some details about what goes on behind the scenes of running Cash for Kat.
In this post, we will be discussing my blog’s stats, income, and plans for 2021!
Cash for Kat’s Blog Stats
My primary goal for 2020 was to get into the habit of posting twice a month. The only month that I missed was in October, but I still managed to average at least 2 posts a month!
I first started posting in February, worked on learning marketing/SEO in May, and took some time off in August/September to build my sales consulting business. It has been a crazy year but I think that the results below really show that, if you can commit to posting monthly, things will start to compound quickly.
I have over 32 posts on this site and I am looking forward to more than doubling this number in 2021. I am already starting to see steady traffic from Google every month, though my main goal for 2021 is to grow this significantly.
This year I have had over 7,000 page views, 3,300 readers, 7 likes, and 99 comments. The crazy thing is that this blog didn’t have any traffic until I started utilizing my Twitter in May. A lot of these results came from the second half of the year!
Top Blog Posts
Here are Cash for Kat’s most popular blog posts from 2020. Click on the title if you would like to read the post and a new screen will pop up!
How to Save 1000 a Month: 10 Actionable Steps
This was the most popular post this year, which is why I’ve spent so much time Tweeting about it! It is also the first post where I spent a lot of time putting together useful visuals and graphs to really illustrate the concepts I was writing about.
I first saved $1k in a month while I was still in college. It was fun to break down the steps I took to get there and a lot of the comments show that others have been able to do the same using a similar budget.
I’m really proud about how this post turned out and I think it was the turning point from amateur blogger to, “Hey, I kinda know what I’m doing now!” I recently made it a sister post, Investing 1000 Dollars a Month Made Easy, which has been getting a lot of great feedback as well!
How to Make $100 in a Day
This is one of the first posts that really took off on the blog when it comes to comments. I was really happy to see this because most of my posts at the time would only get 1 or 2 comments and I was excited about my first feedback!
A community is finally starting to form and my posts are actually being read! I really doubled down on writing after this post and the results showed in July when I had my first 1k page views in a single month.
Quitting My Job to Travel the World at 23
This post was highly requested on Twitter and is part one of a 4+ part series. I traveled to 12 countries in 2019 before I ended up settling down in Cambodia, where I am currently living as we head into 2021!
The decision to travel was pretty spontaneous, so this post covers how I came up with the money to go within a month, the $299.40 one way ticket to Spain, and the first countries I went to.
I actually purchased the domain for Cash for Kat right before I left and started documenting blog ideas and initial posts throughout my travels.
That is to say, I have a long Google drive list of ideas for this blog and more that will finally be coming to fruition in 2021! Be sure to subscribe to follow my travels and financial journey, part 2 should be out soon.
Top Guest Posts on Cash for Kat
Here are Cash for Kat’s most popular guest blog posts from 2020. Click on the title if you would like to read the post and a new screen will pop up!
Zero to Full-Time Income with Kathrin
Kathrin from A Chat with Kat was the first guest poster I ever had on Cash for Kat. I thought it was really fitting that another Kat helped me kick off my blog!
I now try to have at least one new guest post a month on the site to help showcase a variety of voices. Kat is also a regular reader of this blog (hi Kat!) and I really appreciate the support she showed as I started out, so please give her site some love!
Property Investments in South Africa: A Local’s Experience
This guest post by Johannes van der Spuy is insightful for anyone looking to get into property investing, no matter the country! Johannes discusses some key things that you should keep in mind when you begin investing in properties.
I’m really excited to feature financial advice from across the globe! Earlier this year, I was looking into potentially buying a property here in Cambodia and realized how little information there is about investing abroad for expats.
As this site grows, I hope to feature more individuals who have taken the jump into global real estate investing!
How to Maximize Your Financial Freedom- Even in a Downturn!
This a recent guest post is by Matt at Millennial Mutiny and is already proving to be a Cash for Kat favorite with lots of readers every month. Matt shares some things that you can do to continue working towards financial freedom even during these strange times.
Top Blog Milestones: Income, Views, Features/ Awards
Cash for Kat’s 2020 Blog Income Reveal!
I’ve definitely received a few requests for me to reveal my income from Cash for Kat. Now that the year has finished and I’ve tallied everything up, here are the results!
I started my blog by treating it similarly to how I started my sales consulting business, which means monetization was always on my mind. From day one, I set up Google Ads and joined affiliate programs (CJ Affiliates and Amazon Affiliates).
Cash for Kat’s Affiliate Income
I actually made my first $25 the first month that I started blogging by writing an affiliate post that was about the free Grammarly Grammer checker via CJ Affiliates.
I was using the free version of Grammarly (affiliate link) long before I became a blogger and this was a tool that I knew I had to have as Cash for Kat grew.
I have a bit of a love/ hate relationship with this post. On the one hand, this post was great because it actually drives some traffic to the blog via Google. I also made my first affiliate sale thanks to this post because someone signed up for a free account, which earned me a whole twenty cents!
On the other hand, I am super embarrassed by this post because it is one of the first ones I wrote for the site. It is always hard to look back at your old work! I do plan on updating this post soon, so hopefully, it will start to generate more regular affiliate income.
Cash for Kat’s Ad Income in 2020
My final source of income this year was from google Adsense which, as of the time I am writing this, has earned me exactly $7.91… And half of that money came from December!
This one excites me because I can see how blogging income is exponential. As time goes on, it truly becomes easier. Of course, I wish these numbers were much higher but building my sales consulting business took up a good chunk of my focus in the middle of the year.
Now that I am more used to working for myself and have steady clients, I am able to devote more time to the blog every month. I am very excited for the new year and plan on bringing you tons of useful content and freebies, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!
Total Blog Income for 2020
So in my first year blogging, I have managed to earn a total of $33.11!
I’m pretty happy with this number because it covers my initial costs of hosting my site through Bluehost. If you are looking to start a blog in the new year, I definitely recommend checking out Bluehost because it has been pretty easy to use!
Since I was able to make some money in my first year, I’ve decided to start investing a little money into the blog for 2021. These tools will help me write more SEO optimized posts to attract new readers, better images to help illustrate my posts, and improve the overall user experience.
Cash for Kat’s Sources of Traffic
Even though I started blogging in February, I really had no clue what I was doing and was really writing into the void. I had basically no traffic on this site at all for the first 3 months and I wasn’t really posting things that would rank well on Google through SEO.
At some point in early May, everything started to come together. I had done my research and learned some best practices that would help me gain traffic, got used to adding ads and affiliate links, and generally felt ready to figure out a marketing strategy.
What Has Been Working and What Hasn’t
When I first started blogging, I had the foresight to claim all of the social media handles for Cash for Kat. I’m really glad that I did because I soon realized that Twitter was going to be a huge source of traffic for me.
Twitter and SEO has been working really well and are going to take up most of my focus for 2021. I will likely branch out to more platforms later in the year, but only once I am confident in my strategy for these two areas.
I’m not much of an Instagrammer and Pinterest was taking me too long to figure out. I did try both of these but realized the ROI just wasn’t there. I would really like to try Pinterest again later in the year because I know how powerful it has been for other bloggers.
Twitter Stats Breakdown
Right now, about half of the traffic on Cash for Kat comes from Twitter. The other way people find their way back to the blog is through my monthly newsletter, Facebook, and Google Search.
Cash for Kat’s Features and Awards
It was super exciting to get my first features this year! This was not a milestone that I really expected, but it was one of the most exciting because I could see my blog starting to take on a life of its own.
When you first start blogging you have a lot of questions: “Am I doing this right?”, “Why is no one reading this post?”, “What kind of content would people want to read?”
It is really challenging at first because you don’t really see the efforts of your writing for months. Things like traffic from google, comments, and likes all take a while to start seeing consistently.
Being featured by another blog is such a huge source of validation for a new blogger. It’s like, “Wow, people are reading my blog, liking it, AND sharing it!”
Top Features
I was featured on Personal Finance Blogs twice! The first time was for their July 13th Feature and it included my post on Saving $1,000 a Month: 10 Actionable Steps. The second time was actually a week or two ago! Their December 21st Feature included my recent post on Investing 1,000 Dollars a Month Made Easy.
Both of these features sent over a hundred new visitors to Cash for Kat, which was super exciting to see! As I get better at including subscription links in my posts, I hope to see more of these visitors turn into loyal readers.
Katie from The 20 Percent has been kind enough to feature me three times! Once for her Money Bloggers take over series, which is small snippets of advice from a variety of sites. I love reading these every month and highly recommend you check them out!
The most recent time was for, Your Top Christmas Money Saving Tips, where I discuss various ways you can give experiences and memories as affordable yet sentimental gifts. I also made an appearance in her 2020 year in review post, which was super kind of her and is another fantastic read!
Awards
I was also nominated for the #AwesomeBloggerAward, which was a really fun post to write!
This post really helped me break out of my shell and I am getting more comfortable and more comfortable with writing about myself on the site.
For some reason, I felt like people would just want useful content and I focused on writing those kinds of posts instead of talking about my own experience.
Now I realize how silly that was and am making more of an effort to share my personal story, which I why I started talking about the year I took off to travel!
Cash for Kat’s Plans for 2021
Here are some of the more long term blogging projects that I’m working on in the New Year. Of course, all of the other goals mentioned in this post are a top priority as well.
These are more of the habits and projects that I will be focusing on in addition to my typical blogger goals.
Posting Schedule
I have big plans this year since I finally have insight from Google about what is working for my blog. My goal is to double down on my posting so that I can gain more traffic from Google and build an active community.
I have been spending a lot of time growing my sales consulting business, but I am getting used to the workflow and should be able to establish a more consistent schedule. I will be posting much more frequently in 2021!
New Cash for Kat Freebies!
Over the course of 2021, I want to create at least 4 new freebies to help my readers save money and make money. If you want to be notified when these become available, be sure to subscribe!
I already have a few freebies that I share on my site. The most popular one is the cold email templates that I created that resulted in the first client that paid me over $2,500 a month. Since I began using these in July of 2020, I have earned over $15,000 from my sales consulting clients!
My other one is my Subscription Removal Checklist, which helps you to keep track of what subscriptions you have and see how much they cost you monthly/annually.
I actually used it just last week and realized that half the people on my Netflix account weren’t watching regularly. So I downgraded our plan and will save $40 next year for that 5 minutes of effort! Name me one job that pays you $40 for 5 minutes of your time. I’ll wait.
Automating Cash for Kat
As you might know, if you follow me on Twitter, I am a huge fan of automating work. Anything that I can do in advance and schedule to go out automatically is the best thing ever.
I pre-schedule cold emails to go out in the San Francisco timezone for one of my clients, I schedule my monthly newsletter for this blog, and I auto-schedule the tweets that promote my posts.
Automation is super freeing because your income is no longer tied to your physical/mental presence. You might be having a cup of coffee at a beach when your first Adsense dollar for the day comes in thanks to the email blast you had set up!
Improved Automation process for 2021!
Getting better at automation for Cash for Kat is what is going to allow me to hit my posting goals and develop a more consistent schedule. I really believe that creating organized systems is what allows you to scale your blog like a start-up.
Right now, it takes me about 8 hours to write one post for the site which is clearly not scalable. A lot of this was due to me having no idea how to make graphics on Canva efficiently, optimize the post for SEO, and add ads. Now that I am more familiar with how these things work, I will be able to create new posts faster and more reliably!
That’s a Wrap on Cash for Kat’s 2020!
It has been an amazing year of personal and professional growth, despite everything that has been happening in the world. I am hopeful for 2021 and will continue to keep all of you up to date with what is going on with the blog and my business as they both grow.
Thank you so much for reading this far and following me along on this journey! I can’t wait to see where 2021 takes us!
If you have any questions about my plans for 2021 or the blog stats, please feel free to ask them in the comments section.
What went well for you in 2020? Have you set any new goals for 2021?
Kathryn Rucker is a sales consultant and content writer. With 7+ years of sales experience, she is passionate about helping businesses and individuals grow their sales pipelines by improving their online presence.
She has been traveling full-time since 2018 thanks to the location and financial independence she has gained from her business, Kat Rucker Consulting Group. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
Kathryn Rucker is a sales consultant and content writer. With 7+ years of sales experience, she is passionate about helping businesses and individuals grow their sales pipelines by improving their online presence.
She has been traveling full-time since 2018 thanks to the location and financial independence she has gained from her business, Kat Rucker Consulting Group. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
Hi Kat! 🙂 Thanks for featuring my guest post on here!
It’s nice to hear that Google Adsense is working for you! I will have to look into it because I’m not really earning income from my blog at the moment, even though I sometimes get over 100 hits per day. This could be a project to tackle during my self-isolation time!
Thank you so much for collaborating with me!! You should definitely look into monetizing! I’m sure you will be making $30+ per month, which is so exciting!! Let me know if you need any help getting it set up 🙂 and take a look at the other ad networks once you pass 10k+ page views a month, I’ve heard the pay rates can be really nice for somewhat passive income! Hopefully, I will get there later this year!