I Built a Blog to $400 a Month in Two Years — Then It All Crashed!

Learn How to Start Your Own Blogging Side Hustle and Avoid the Pitfalls I Didn’t See Coming!

You might be thinking about starting an online business to make some extra cash and improve your life. 💓

Whether you’re trying to pay off debt, save for something big, or just want a little financial freedom, a profitable side hustle can definitely help.

But here’s the tough part — building an online business is hard.

Whether starting a blog, an e-commerce store, or writing for platforms like Medium, you need the right skills and a lot of time to make it work.

So, I want to share with you my blogging journey — all the lessons, mistakes, and wins along the way. Buckle up!

Disclaimer: This story contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support!

The Start of My Side Hustle Journey…

I’ve been obsessed with making money online since 2012.

Back then, I believed it was possible to earn cash online, even though no one around me was doing it.

I gave it a shot, trying to build something that would make me money.

But, I failed badly. Why?

Well, a mix of:

Not having the right info,
Not taking action,
getting scammed by sketchy “make money online” schemes.
Etc.

Honestly, I thought making money online would be easy, like passive income that just rolls in without much effort.

But, I was totally wrong!

I’d share an affiliate link once and check my dashboard for weeks, waiting for the cash to pour in. Yeah, that didn’t happen. 😂

Instead, I got frustrated, real quick.

But things changed… eventually.

My First Successful Online Hustle!

Things really turned around for me in September 2019. My friend and I decided to team up and start a blog.

Here’s what we did:

Choose a niche: After some research, we landed on Jiu-Jitsu. Why? Because we’re both passionate about it, and there weren’t a ton of blogs in that space at the time.
Buy a domain: After checking availability, we settled on jiujitsu-news.com. It sounded catchy and fit our niche perfectly.
Get hosting: We chose Namecheap because it was affordable and reliable. Price comparison is key here — don’t just jump at the first option.
Build the blog: We decided on WordPress.org because it gives more control and flexibility. My friend’s a developer, so this part was a breeze for him. For me? I just sat back and let him do his thing. 😂
Create content: This is where the real work started. Writing blog posts that attract traffic takes time. I had to dig deep into research and learn how to write engaging content which is not an easy thing for me. But, I forced myself to sit down, write, and improve with each post.
Monetize: Once we started getting traffic, it was time to monetize. I’ve got the choice to put ads on the site using platforms like Adsense and Ezoic. I could also also dabble in affiliate marketing, reviewing products to earn commissions.

Easy money? Not exactly, but with consistency, it started to add up.

The Wins and Struggles

Let me tell you — this journey wasn’t easy.

Starting as a complete newbie with no experience was overwhelming. And setting unrealistic expectations? That was even worse.

I went into this thinking I’d be able to quit my job and make $1,000 a month within no time. HA! The reality check hit hard.

I was grinding for more than six hours a day on this blog and only making pennies at first. It was frustrating as hell.

But things started looking up when I switched to Ezoic. Suddenly, I went from earning pennies with Adsense to a few dollars a day.

I’ve made an all-time earning of $3133 on Ezoic.

Screenshot of all time Ezoic earning created by the author

My Amazon associate earnings started to grow too.

I’ve made over $1290 on Amazon in 2023

Screenshot of my 2023 Amazon assiciate earning created by the author

I’ve only made over $122 on Amazon in this year

Screenshot of my 2024 Amazon assiciate earning created by the author

Things were going great. Until they weren’t.

The Crash 😔

In August 2023, my blog got hit by a Google Core update, and my traffic dropped by 20%.

No biggie, right?

But then September rolled around, and BAM — another core update wiped out 70% of my traffic.

By March 2024, another Google update knocked my organic traffic down to zero.

I tried everything to recover, but nothing worked.

Imagine that: four years of hard work gone in an instant. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I learned some valuable lessons:

Diversify your traffic: I focused way too much on SEO and Google traffic. I should’ve built other traffic sources, like social media or an email list.
Know when to sell: At one point, my blog had over 24,000 page views a month and was making $400. I could’ve sold it for over $10k, but I didn’t. I was so focused on hitting that $1,000 per month milestone that I missed the chance.