If you have spent any time looking at blogging income content, you have probably seen the big success stories: someone starts a blog and somehow makes hundreds or thousands of dollars within a few months.
That has not been my experience.
I have two blogs, and after a long stretch of staring at AdSense earnings measured in pennies, I finally crossed the $100 payment threshold. This is not a story about getting rich with passive income. It is a realistic look at what 20 months of writing, experimenting, learning SEO, making Pinterest pins, and waiting actually produced.
Key Takeaways
- Two blogs earned a combined $107.68 from Google AdSense over 20 months.
- Only Goats Farm grew from $1.09 monthly earnings to a best month of $11.40.
- Pinterest outbound clicks generally increased alongside traffic and AdSense earnings.
- One DIY pallet goat playground post outperformed every other leading search article.
What I Am Counting as Blog Income
I am only looking at Google AdSense income earned from ads displayed on my blogs. This does not include course sales, other businesses, affiliate marketing, or YouTube revenue.
My two sites cover completely different topics:
- Independent Teacher Academy, a blog about helping online teachers build businesses and make money teaching online.
- Only Goats Farm, my homesteading blog about goats, quail, gardening, DIY projects, and making money from a homestead.
That distinction matters because old AdSense records can include YouTube payments too. For these numbers, I ignored those older YouTube earnings and focused only on the income generated by the websites themselves.
The Reality of a Slow Blog Start
My teaching blog began earning AdSense revenue in January 2025. That first month made $3.05.
Then it got worse.
- February: $1.80
- March: $1.16
- April: $0.37
- May: $0.37
So no, I did not launch a blog and suddenly replace an income. I was not paying the mortgage. I was not buying groceries. Some months, I could not even buy a pack of gum with what the blog earned.
Could a blog grow very quickly? Sure. Some people do have that experience. But it is not the experience everybody should expect, and it definitely was not mine.
Only Goats Farm Started Small but Moved Upward
My homesteading blog began earning AdSense revenue in June 2025, starting with $1.09. The numbers were still tiny, but they began moving in the right direction.
- June 2025: $1.09
- July: $1.87
- August: $1.99
- September: $2.61
- October: $3.39
- November: $3.57
- December: $4.40
- January 2026: $5.24
- March: $6.44
- April: $8.13
- May: $10.45
- June: $10.69
- July: $11.40
An $11.40 month is obviously not impressive next to somebody making $10,000 a month from blogging. But that is not the comparison I am making. I am looking at the trend.
The homesteading blog went from about a dollar a month to around ten dollars a month. It is still small, but it is moving upward.
I have not been as active or consistent with the teaching blog, so these two sites are not a perfect comparison. Still, the difference in effort and traffic strategy is hard to ignore.
How Pinterest Affected Blog Traffic
One major difference with Only Goats Farm is that I have been using Pinterest to send people to the blog. I have not done that as consistently with the teaching site.
At first, Pinterest did basically nothing. Then the clicks started gradually increasing:
- November 2025: 15 outbound clicks
- December: 21 outbound clicks
- January: 80 outbound clicks
- March: 155 outbound clicks
- April: 224 outbound clicks
- May: 390 outbound clicks
- June: 398 outbound clicks
- July: 434 outbound clicks
In August, Pinterest outbound clicks fell back to 274. AdSense revenue dipped too, from $11.40 to $9.83.
I cannot say every dollar came from Pinterest because the blog gets traffic from other sources as well. But the pattern is there: as Pinterest started sending more traffic, earnings generally increased too.
Eight days into September, Pinterest had already sent 257 outbound clicks. My previous best full month was 434 clicks, so something was clearly happening. I just did not know how large the increase would become.
One Blog Post Can Pull Far Ahead of Everything Else
Writing a lot of blog posts does not mean they will all perform equally. One successful article does not guarantee that every future article will do well either.
Looking at July search traffic, one article completely outperformed the rest: 10 DIY Pallet Goat Playground Ideas. It had 137 known search views in the snapshot.
The next closest articles were nowhere near it:
- Signs That Your Goat Is Sick: 34 views
- Make Money Raising Quail: 33 views
- Profitable Cottage Foods: 31 views
- Virtual Fencing for Goats: 31 views
That is one reason blogging feels like such a long game. You do not always know which article will become useful six months later. Sometimes the post you spend hours on goes nowhere, while the random post you almost did not publish becomes one of your best performers.
Total Google AdSense Income After 20 Months
From January 2025 through August 2026, here is what both blogs earned from AdSense:
- Independent Teacher Academy: $22.35
- Only Goats Farm: $85.33
- Combined total: $107.68
That total is not a great hourly wage when I think about all the work involved: writing articles, creating Pinterest pins, learning SEO, building websites, updating content, and trying things that flopped.
If the only question is whether the earnings so far match the time invested, the honest answer is no. Absolutely not.
Why My First $1 Day Felt Like a Big Deal
A few days before reaching the payout threshold, another small milestone happened that felt surprisingly exciting.
On September 3, Only Goats Farm made $0.91 in one day and Independent Teacher Academy made another $0.13. Together, the two blogs made $1.04 in a single day.
Yes, it was one dollar. I know that sounds ridiculous. But after seeing a website earn 37 cents over an entire month, earning a dollar in one day feels very different.
Those tiny wins start raising bigger questions. Could one dollar a day become consistent? Could it become two dollars, then five dollars, then ten? Could a ten-dollar month eventually become a hundred-dollar month?
I do not know yet. That is what I am trying to find out.
Finally Reaching the $100 AdSense Threshold
Google AdSense does not send a payment until the account balance reaches $100. After 20 months and $107.68 in combined blog earnings, I finally crossed that threshold and received my first actual blog payout.
I did not crack some secret code for passive income. I wrote posts, published them, made Pinterest pins, experimented, watched things flop, and saw a few unexpected posts start getting traffic. Slowly, very slowly, the numbers started moving.
So, Is Starting a Homesteading Blog Worth It?
I am honestly still in the middle.
If I judge blogging solely by current AdSense income versus the amount of work I have put in, it has not been worth it. But blogs are strange because the work is not necessarily supposed to pay immediately.
An article written months ago can still bring someone to the site today. A Pinterest pin made weeks ago can still get clicked. Every useful piece of content becomes part of a library, creating another chance for somebody to find the blog later.
That is the part that keeps me going. I am finally seeing enough movement that I do not want to stop.
I cannot say blogging works for everyone, and I cannot say this has been a complete waste of time either. I can say the numbers are trending upward, and I am curious where they could be in another year.
What I Am Doing Next
I am going to keep writing, keep testing Pinterest, and keep tracking exactly what these blogs earn.
Maybe this turns into $100 a month. Maybe it becomes $1,000 a month. Or maybe six months from now, I will decide the work simply was not worth it. Either way, I would rather share the actual numbers than pretend every blog takes off overnight.
Using Automation to Keep Publishing
One thing that has made it possible to keep publishing on the homesteading blog without spending my entire life on it is automation.
After I finish writing a blog post, I automate much of what happens next, including scheduling Pinterest pins so I do not have to manually post every day.
For a small blog, consistency matters, but it has to be sustainable. I want to keep building the content library without turning every single post into a full-time manual promotion project.
Post your Comment About This Product