$5000/Month From Her Personal Finance Blog

Sara Conklin is the founder of Frozen Pennies, a personal finance blog where she teaches people how to save money, get out of debt, and live a frugal life 👌

She started the blog in 2018 in her mid-40’s, initially as a way to document “a self-imposed spending freeze where, for a year, she spent only on the things she needed.”

Sara shared in a recent interview….

Right now, I’m bringing in about $5000 per month between Mediavine, my products, a little bit from affiliate income, and YouTube revenue. The majority comes from Mediavine, and YouTube is right behind that…

I aim to double that by the end of this year through traffic and selling my financial products (including a book).

Sara works on her business full-time, putting in 8-10 hours on weekdays and more time on weekends. Her site gets ~60,000 pageviews per month, with 100,000+ pageviews in peak months 📈

At first, the blog was just a bit of fun for Sara, but after ~18 months she started to get serious and learned SEO by “taking all the SEO courses” 🤓

That seems to have paid off, as she writes…

SEO is my number one strategy for getting traffic.

Sounds like Pinterest is also big for her business…

Many are wondering if Pinterest is still worth it. I genuinely believe it is. It’s different from 2019 […] but it still works. 

Ultimately, Sara aims to make more money from selling her own products 👇

Everything I do is a marketing tool to get people on my list. SEO, Pinterest, YouTube, and blog posts are all marketing tools for my list…

I email my list twice a week with valuable tips and tricks. Then I just started emailing every three weeks with a special flash sale. It’s going well so far.

She has ~6,000 newsletter subscribers 💌 and manages the business with the help of a VA and a Pinterest manager.

Sara’s advice for aspiring bloggers…

This is not a get-rich-quick scheme; it takes years to make a decent living…

If you want to blog as a hobby, that’s really great, and I love that for you. 

But if you want to make money, then treat it like a business. And don’t expect millions to roll in for the first 3 to 5 years.