Blog Income and Traffic Report
Who I am and Why I started a blog
This blog income report post is about what I did during my third month of starting my blog to see how much I’ve grown from beginning to current time. First, a short introduction of myself. My name is Megan, I’m a licensed pharmacist that became a stay at home mom. My husband is a current resident and we have a 16 month old with a brand new baby that is currently in the NICU. Being at home all day can really become boring. As a new mom with no family nearby, I have been dealing with a huge shift of not only my responsibilities but also learning how to become a stay-at-home mom. This shift was NOT easy but I found myself slowly coming to terms with taking care of a tiny little baby mainly by myself.
To pass some time I would turn to Youtube and went back to watching a young lady who talked about how she became a blogger and why. Her blog is BySophiaLee and got inspiration to start her own blog from her dorm during college because of stay-at-home moms. These moms were holding down the house and running very successful blogs. I’m talking like over $20K a MONTH.
After watching her videos, I became interested in doing what she did. By that, I mean that I started a blog! I did watch a lot of other types of Youtube videos ranging from blogging, content creation, and content calendars. With this motivation of seeing how others can be successful if they just stick with it and are consistent with it, I made that dive to start blogging about motherhood.
What expenses I had
To start a blog you’re going to need to get a website url through a hosting company. I went with the typical Bluehost to start off and paid a lump sum for the full year of $47.88 so this was not part of this month’s expense. Disclaimer: The affiliate link through Bluehost can earn me commission with no cost to the user.
If you’re interested in getting started with a successful blog of your own – check out this post here. I give some of my favorite tips of where to start and the beginning of blogging.
In the future I want to purchase some courses directed toward SEO and Pinterest – BySophiaLee’s in particular, but for now I am sticking with gathering free information from Youtube videos.
In total, to start up the blog and how much I spent so far is – $67.88. This month was $0 of spending – that total is just what it cost for me to start up the blog.
What I made
- Amazon Affiliate – a whopping $3.44! Thank you to those that use my links to purchase items.
Stats
- blog posts this month – 5
- total blog visitors (past 28 days) through google dashboard- 352
- pinterest past 30 days (monthly views – 30.2 K & impressions – 30.56 K & outbound clicks – 418 )
- In the stats comparing this month to last month, I have doubled and tripled my numbers in all these areas!!!
If you’re interested in seeing how my stats have grown A TON since my first month, check out my month 1 of blogging blog post here.
This month’s summary
This month I found that it was harder to manage creating posts and keeping up with Pinterest content. I didn’t really create much content but I made sure to have one post a week scheduled for about one month out of when I was going to have my baby. This was to make sure that I stay consistent with the blog posts even when I didn’t feel up for it post op.
Amazon Affiliates
I decided to go ahead and look into the affiliate program. Currently, you need to have three purchases through your link for them to review your application and to accept you into the program. You have around 6 months to get these 3 purchases and I found that within the first two weeks of applying, I was able to be accepted. I only made $3.44 total for these purchases, but sometimes that first dollar is the hardest to get!
Pinterest was the main platform to get my content on in order to send people to my blog to start generating traffic. This platform (Pinterest) is a great tool because it is a visual search engine which allows for your site to be directly linked to the pictures.
For every blog post I created, I made 7-24 pins and started to schedule them through Pinterest. This takes forever! I’m still trying to figure out how to streamline it, if that’s even possible. I tried doing different types of descriptions, pictures, keywords, etc. on each of those pins so that way at the end of the month I can go back and see which ones did the best. I wasn’t expecting such a huge BOOM in my stats. From the end of last month, to the end of this month, there was a HUGE jump in engagement. It’s possibly due to Pinterest learning what my content is about, pinning around 2 pins a day consistently, and changing templates to get better engagement.
I keep messing around with different templates. I looked at some of these other successful Pinterest people and checked out their pins. You’re not going to know how their pins are doing BUT if they are ranking on the front of your keyword search, then I was looking at how they worded their title, the picture they used, how long their descriptions were, and everything of that nature. The goal is to set up pins that are similar in idea but with my own content in order to be successful through Pinterest.
Last Months Goals
- Get all my blog posts ready for up to 3 months after delivery – wasn’t able to do this
- Get my pins ready for scheduling, since you can only pin 1 month out – all pins were made and are in folders on my computer to be uploaded for one month out
- Create fresh pins for the past blogs I have – did this
- Look into amazon affiliate links – did this and was accepted into the affiliates program within the first two weeks
- Add pin board descriptions, keywords, and pictures – didn’t do this
What’s Next & Goals
- Have 2 pins a day on Pinterest
- Create a pin calendar to easily schedule and set up pins
- Continue to work on Amazon Affiliate Income