Success Stories

How Dale Makes $5k+/Month Flipping Blogs and Inspiring Others

September 19, 2022

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Dale started blogging to earn some extra cash while she was in college. Little did she know then that she was embarking on a lucrative entrepreneurial journey.

After she graduated, she continued blogging. Not only did she grow her primary blog, Blogging Her Way, but she ended up acquiring others and then selling them for multi-figure exits. She's also documented her blogging strategies in courses and ebooks. Eventually, she quit her day job to travel the world, and now she's living life on her own terms.

Keep reading to learn more about:

Exactly how she got started
The other types of blogs she's acquired and sold
Her blog flipping process
The course she created
Her income breakdown
Dale's marketing strategies
Her views on Pinterest
How she approaches SEO
The content creation process
Her favorite tools
Dale's greatest challenge
An accomplishment she's proud of
Her biggest mistake
Advice for other entrepreneurs

Contents

Meet Dale
Why She Created Her Site
Buying and Selling Blogs
Dale’s Sales Success and Courses
How Much She’s Making
Dale’s Top Marketing Strategies
Dale’s Views on SEO
- Link Building
Her Email List
Content Creation
Achieving Current Revenue
Traffic Numbers
Her Favorite Tools
Dale’s Greatest Challenge
Her Main Accomplishment
What She Wishes She Knew When She Started
Dale's Main Mistake
Her Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

Meet Dale

My name is Dale, and I’m the founder of Blogging Her Way. I started my first blog when I was a college student. At the time, I was just looking for a way to earn some extra money.

Soon, my blog had grown to a $1,000 a month business. This allowed me to quit my part-time job and focus on blogging. I started two more blogs while I was still in college. By the time I graduated, I was earning around $3,000 a month from blogging.

After college, I worked in consulting for a year and a half while continuing to blog on the side. At the end of 2020, I quit my job to blog full-time and travel the world for a year. I am so grateful that blogging has allowed me to pursue my passions and live life on my own terms.

Why She Created Her Site

Blogging Her Way was my first site, and it actually started out as a web design business. I planned to offer web design services to bloggers. However, after a few months and several clients, I realized I was much more interested in the blogging side.

I started my second blog (a travel blog) to test out the strategies I was reading about from other bloggers, and then I was able to document my own results on Blogging Her Way.

After starting my travel blog, I started several other blogs in the lifestyle, travel, and college niches. I have now started and sold ten blogs, acquired and sold two blogs, and several other blogs I plan to sell in the future.

Buying and Selling Blogs

I have sold blogs anywhere between six months and three years after starting them. Usually, I will sell a blog when I feel like I’ve reached my potential with it and want to focus on other projects. And these blogs typically sell in the 30x-40x multiple ranges.

So far, I typically acquire blogs directly from sellers. I find them either in Facebook groups or in my community and on my email list.

When acquiring a blog, I look for blogs that are already getting some traffic but are under-monetized. Two of the blogs I acquired were actually started by other full-time bloggers who simply didn’t have the time to dedicate to an additional site.

This way, I can come in and make some minor updates. Then I start monetizing the sites immediately with ads and affiliate links.

After I buy a blog, I audit the current content and update the blog posts that are getting the most traffic. The goal is to optimize them for affiliate sales and display ad earnings. Besides that, I have taken a hands-off approach to the blogs I bought. I'm letting them run passively until I earn back my investment. Then I will dedicate more time to growing them to sell again eventually.

Dale’s Sales Success and Courses

I sold my first blog, a lifestyle blog I started in October 2018, for $4,800 after working on it for a few months and getting it to the point of earning about $150 a month from display ads and affiliate marketing.

Since then, I have sold more blogs, some for multiple five figures. I have worked with a broker (Chelsea Clarke at BlogsforSale.co) to sell some blogs. Others I have sold independently, finding buyers through my own email list.

I created my course 30 Days to Blogging Success to share what I have learned with aspiring bloggers. My course is designed for beginners who want a step-by-step roadmap to follow when starting a blog so they don’t have to figure everything out themselves. This is also the process I follow when starting a new blog, so it’s very streamlined.

I also have several ebooks I created to help new and establish bloggers:

How Much She’s Making

My total income fluctuates depending on how many websites I am earning from. I usually have two or three I’m working on and earning from at any given time. My income is also a lot higher in the months when I sell a website.

From Blogging Her Way, I earn around $5,000 a month. This comes from selling my courses and ebooks, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships on my blog and newsletter.

You can see below that some of my top income sources each month are sales of my online course and ebooks:

I also earn from affiliate sales, and I work with around 20 different affiliate partners on Blogging Her Way:

On my other sites, I mainly earn money from display ads and affiliate marketing, with the occasional sponsored blog post.

For example, here are the Amazon affiliate earnings and Mediavine display ad earnings from a lifestyle blog that I sold last year:

Dale’s Top Marketing Strategies

Pinterest is my top marketing strategy. Although the platform has changed a lot in the past couple of years, and it’s no longer the goldmine it once was for bloggers, it’s still my main traffic source.

Since Pinterest is mainly used as a “visual search engine,” it's a great way to get traffic, even though the platform now focuses on keeping users within Pinterest instead of sending them to external websites.

Organic search makes up about 25% of my traffic, while Pinterest accounts for double that amount.

Another strategy I use that is often under-utilized by bloggers is email marketing. My email list on Blogging Her Way is a huge part of my business. I think a lot of people are scared of “annoying” their subscribers by emailing them too often or being too salesy. I have had a lot of success with regular promotional emails for my own products and affiliate products. Not once in five years has anyone complained about it!

Other than that, I’m a big fan of having an affiliate program for my digital products, as a lot of my sales come through affiliates. I also use tripwire pages to make sales immediately after someone signs up for my email list.

Dale’s Views on SEO

SEO is not my main focus since the majority of my traffic still comes from Pinterest. However, I have been focusing on it a lot more.

This is especially true for a new site I started in 2022 that I’m trying to grow solely through SEO. With that site, I focus on targeting low-competition keywords and creating long, detailed content.

Link Building

I have not focused much on link building, but I have obtained some backlinks organically and through guest posting for other websites.

Her Email List

I have an email list with over 7,800 subscribers, and it is a huge part of my business. Since Pinterest is my main traffic source, that is primarily how I’ve grown my list. I have several free opt-ins, which I share with sign-up forms all over my website.

It has taken me five years to grow my email list, so it has definitely been slow and steady growth. I send at least one email a week, but sometimes two or three.

Many bloggers are worried about sending too many emails and annoying their subscribers. I have to say that I have never received any complaints about the frequency. As long as you're providing value, I think it’s fine to send multiple emails per week and make several sales offers.

Content Creation

I don’t have a rigid process, a content calendar, or anything like that, but I like to outline new posts using subheadings for all my blogs. After I’ve published a new blog post, I will go in and add internal links to other relevant blog posts and share it on Pinterest and Twitter. I also share new blog posts in a weekly email newsletter on Blogging Her Way.

When I start a new blog, I aim to publish as much content as possible in the first six months. Usually, this is not hard because I have tons of ideas and topics I want to write about. Once I’ve built up a solid content base, I will decrease my publishing frequency.

Depending on the site, this could be anywhere from one to four blog posts per month.

Achieving Current Revenue

It has taken me almost five years to get where I am. After starting my first blog in September 2017, I started earning $1,000 monthly in six months. I started having consistent $3,000 months in early 2019, and $5,000 monthly in 2020.

Traffic Numbers

Currently, I get around 15,000 pageviews per month on Blogging Her Way. My other niche blogs are monetized more with display ads and have received 50,000 to 75,000 pageviews per month.

Her Favorite Tools

My number one tool is ConvertKit, which is my email marketing platform. I love ConvertKit and could not run my business without it since email marketing is a big part of what I do.

I also really like SendOwl for selling my digital products. It’s a very simple platform that is affordable and user-friendly, and I’ve been using it to sell my digital products for nearly five years. I also use it to run my affiliate program.

And finally, a useful tool that helps me a lot is Canva. Since Pinterest is still a big part of my traffic strategy, I use Canva to create graphics to share on Pinterest to promote my content. It’s a great free tool that I get a lot of use out of.

Dale’s Greatest Challenge

Personally, the biggest challenge I have faced as I’ve grown my business is SEO. Pinterest was so easy and consistent for me when I started blogging that I didn’t focus on SEO much.

Now, I feel like I have a good grasp on SEO but I’m still not seeing the traffic I’d like from it, and I know that it’s something I need to master to scale my business.

Her Main Accomplishment

I’m very proud that I was able to change my own life in such a profound way through blogging. I was able to pay off my student loan debt in just nine months, quit my corporate job to travel the world, and then move back to New York and live in my dream apartment, all thanks to blogging.

But more than that, my biggest accomplishment has been helping other women start a blog that changes their lives, too. I have received emails from students who have followed my advice and built a profitable blog.

Knowing that I helped a stay-at-home mom gain confidence and earn an income from blogging, or inspiring another college student to start a successful blog that she was able to make her full-time job, is incredibly rewarding.

What She Wishes She Knew When She Started

I wish I had known that most of my blogging misconceptions were not true!

For example, I wanted to start a travel blog for years, but I was convinced the only way to be successful was to also be on Instagram, and that held me back because I don’t like Instagram and didn’t want to have to use it for my business.

Of course, that turned out to not be true. When I started my travel blog, I was able to grow it through Pinterest and SEO instead and earn money from display ads and affiliate marketing.

Before I started blogging, I thought it would be hard to stick to a schedule and produce consistent content. Then I started blogging and realized I’m an extremely prolific writer and can easily write 20 blog posts per month, so I had nothing to worry about.

Dale's Main Mistake

My biggest mistake on my entrepreneurial journey is lacking long-term vision and patience, especially when it comes to selling sites.

I have some “seller’s remorse” about a couple of sites I've sold. Looking back, I wish I had held onto them for longer. At the time, I wanted to sell them to focus on other projects or because I was tired of them, but I had not even had them long enough to reach their full potential. I view it as a learning experience, though, and I won’t make this mistake again!

Her Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

My biggest piece of advice would be to focus on what you’re good at and what feels right for you, and don’t force yourself to do anything just because you think you “should” be doing it.

This goes for everything:

From choosing a niche (it’s always easier to create content about something you’re interested in than a topic you chose just because you thought it would be profitable). To how you do business (if you don’t like making videos, skip TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube and focus on awesome blog posts and email newsletters instead).

And finally, remember that blogging and building websites are a long-term game, but as long as you build a solid foundation and stick with it, you will be successful.