Can A Blog Make Money on Auto-Pilot : 1 Month Experiment

True independence in life is achieved when you are earning money on auto-pilot.

Money is not everything, but it’s quintessential to get on with your day-to-day life activity. Six years back, when I started blogging, I never knew that blogging could be one such profession that can give financial independence.

On an average, I earn about $7000/month from my blogs, and this was the first time in the last 6 years, from 1st December 2014 to 28th December 2014 ( almost one month) that I was away from blogging and any online work.

I Made Money on Auto Pilot Blog
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I was busy with some personal events, and I comprehended that this is a good time to evaluate if an idle blog could make money for me.

Most of the profession/business I know of requires your presence in one form or another.

In most of the jobs, you can take leave for a limited number of days but after that it’s always unpaid leave.

Full-time blogging is same as a business and one month of blogging vacation gave me enough data to evaluate blogging in the terms of making money on auto-pilot.

Do consider the fact that this blog  (ShoutMeLoud) is a six year old blog with a community of more than half a million users.

In this article, I will share about how much money I earned in December 2014 without any work and how it affected the blog traffic. I will also share my observations and learning in the appropriate section below.

Traffic effect on the blog after one month of inactivity:

I stopped working on ShoutMeLoud from 30th November, 2014, and I was getting decent traffic back then due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. What I was really interested to see, how traffic will go down after the Cyber-Monday, as there will typically be no action ( including no comment moderation) on the blog.

Note: 83% of ShoutMeLoud content is evergreen content.

Here is the traffic chart from last month (1st December till the date):

December traffic stats for blog
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Here is the breakage on the Weekly Traffic:

  • Week 1: 138,478 views
  • Week 2: 133,035 views
  • Week 3: 129,781 views
  • Week 4: 123,322 views

As you can notice, traffic decreased over time but it was not as high as I expected. On 29th December, I published this post, and traffic again went back to normal.

The major reason for the change in traffic was the loss in social media and returning visitors traffic.

Overall, one thing that is clear now is that traffic drop will not be so high for an inactive blog with evergreen content.

Now, let’s look at the income report for December 2014.

Blog income report after one month of inactivity:

Unlike my other income report, here I’m reporting how much total sales, ad revenue I generated into my account in the month of December. The final figure may change, and I will get an exact report in the month of March 2015 (When I will be paid for all affiliate sales).

The majority of ShoutMeLoud revenue comes from Affiliate Sales , Direct advertisement and a chunk is from Google AdSense or other ad networks revenue. Here is what my December income looks like:

In Indian currency, that’s about five lack 43 thousand. I ignored a few other small affiliate transactions in the above report.

This month I missed out mostly on services such as Blog consultancy, WordPress SEO service, and a few more due to my inactivity. If I have to compare this income with other businesses, I’m satisfied with the income my blog generated without being active.

There is no denying that income will drop if I keep the blog inactive for a couple of months. Overall, taking one-month complete break hardly affected the blog revenue (October income report was $7788).

For me, this data is valuable as I feel it would encourage you and others to jump into blogging and take it as a serious career options.

Do you have any blog that is also generating revenue on auto-pilot? Let me know your experience and insights on the same. If you enjoyed reading this case study, share it with others on FB, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

44 thoughts on “Can A Blog Make Money on Auto-Pilot : 1 Month Experiment”

  1. aamilsahib0078

    Harsh, you have a delightful blog, first time into it and really liked the content here. Many congratulations on your persistence of 6 years paying off and you are earning money even when you are inactive. You have used the correct phrase to describe it, “earning on autopilot”. Like an airplane once get stable in air can fly on autopilot, similarly a blog once established can generate value even when inactive atleast for some time. You are an inspiration for other potential bloggers, God bless!

  2. Victor Ome

    Hi,

    Are you saying that autopilot blogging could be encouraged? I thought Google will get mad at it?

    Please I need advice on this, because sitting down to write an article for hours ain’t cool for the eye.

    Thank You

  3. Aias

    OK… That was interesting.

    But please tell us about the monthly expenses too, i.e. hosting services, email marketing services, other paid services, paid plugins, etc. you know! Even an annual expenses report would be most helpful, because at the end of the day, what matters is what’s left in your pocket… if you know what I mean.

    Thanks for sharing.

  4. Kushal

    Good to learn about your traffic and income report. They are great Harsh. 6 years of your sweat finally showing up in your pocket. You are Inspiring.

  5. Susmit Mukherjee

    Hi Harsh,

    Just wanted to let you know that I have always been inspired by your blogs and have myself started blogging since December 2014 (funny thats the time when you were actually away from it).

    However, I did not really go for a micro-niche topic. I followed my interests, which are music and movies. I am mostly writing about latest releases and news, and I realize that missing out on such contents on a daily basis would actually show me very little traffic on the days I miss adding content to my site.

    I have just crossed 740 visitors through the first month, and I am getting a significant global traffic to my site as well. I am not doing any off-page SEO, but a bit of social media, a lot of Google Trends and on-page activities.

    I would be very grateful if you can share your feedback on my blog, only if you have the time for it.

    Thank you for the inspiration – I have been associated with the digital arena and content since 2009, but it was only after I started following your blog that I decided to seriously do something on my own.

    Best wishes for your married life and a Very Happy New Year to you!

  6. Myra Kirbi

    Harsh, you have a delightful blog, first time into it and really liked the content here. Many congratulations on your persistence of 6 years paying off and you are earning money even when you are inactive. You have used the correct phrase to describe it, “earning on autopilot”. Like an airplane once get stable in air can fly on autopilot, similarly a blog once established can generate value even when inactive atleast for some time. You are an inspiration for other potential bloggers, God bless!

  7. Prabhu

    Whao! No Adsense ads but you still earn $550. Are there any invisible ads on ShoutMeLoud??

  8. sourav deb

    i always read al your contents 😀 and i m proud to say that i m really inspired frm your shouthing technique 😀 thankx bro for nourishing us with such wonderful contents 😀

  9. Matthew Upton

    I do agree with you that we can make money from blog on autopilot. I’m building my own blog to do that like you

    Btw congrats for you wedding

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