Blog traffic and income report May 2018 - A Fresh Start on a Budget

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This year I decided to do something different with my monthly goals post and my income and blog traffic reports. I was feeling like these two posts each month were feeling pretty stale and I wasn’t excited to write them as much. At the same time, I love setting monthly goals and find it helpful to share my reports and goals each month.

It was just time to shake things up and make these posts more fun and interesting to write so that they are more enjoyable for you to read. So I began combining the two posts in a way. Sharing not only how my blog had done in the month prior but what I was hoping to accomplish in the current month.

Blogging has been such a positive experience for me. Even after doing it for years I still enjoy it and love the lessons I’ve learned from it and the people I’ve met. It’s also so amazing to be able to earn some extra money doing something I enjoy while at home. If you are looking to begin Making Money blogging here is what helped me have a major breakthrough and begin earning money on my blog and I know it can help you too.

Why do I share my blog income report each month? I have a few reasons

I have loved reading other bloggers reports and still do. I learn so much from them and hope to offer the same to other bloggers. I enjoy reading reports from bloggers bigger and smaller than me. I have learned a lot from bigger and smaller blogs.
It holds me accountable to my blog and continuing to grow my business. Even on months where my growth is smaller I still feel accountable to share
I also want to show that even as a long time blogger I am just starting to learn to grow my income. This way I can share this journey of blog growth and my making money from the early stages.

Income report may 2018:

May ended up being a pretty decent month mostly due to my ads. My traffic increased so my ad income did too. I did a lot of thinking in May on where to focus my attention on growing my income over the summer. I feel that I’m too spread out and need to focus down on one area to increase at a time. I’m hoping this new strategy will help me take things to the next level with making money blogging.

That is one of my overall goals with blogging to just keep improving and rowing and to try hard and only compare myself to what I have done before. As long as I keep growing and doing better than I am succeeding. Of course, I check out other bloggers who are making tens of thousands of dollars a month and even having six-figure months.

I’m not there yet but that’s ok I’m getting there and growing each year. Maybe this year I will hit the five-figure a month goal I have for myself. That’s what I’m working hard towards. I still have to remind myself that last year I didn’t even hit $100 a month each month and now I’m hitting almost a $1000 a month pretty frequently. That’s ten times growth. If I do that between 2018 and 2019 I will be hitting $10,000 a month. Which would be incredible.

I share this because I want you to know that it’s possible to make money blogging. It will take work and time but you can do it. I wasn’t sure if I would ever make money with my blog and I now am and you can do it too!

If you are a blogger I would love for you to check out my e-book Boost your Pinterest Presence. In this book, I walk you through how to use Pinterest to grow your blog and create pins that get shared. Once you get your copy I will also make sure to send you any updated versions of the book as I make them. Pinterest is constantly changing and I am always learning new ways to use it.

Mediavine: $630

Expenses:

Convertkit $29 This is the email subscriber that I use to send my newsletter and grow my list. When I was first blogging I used Mailchimp but as my blog and list grew I needed a provider that could do more. With Convertkit I can separate and tag my list as well as send out my FREE challenges.

Ivory mix: $12 ( technically it’s $24 for 2 months) – this is the best price I’ve found for good photos. You get dozens of new images to use each month and Kayla who runs the site constantly asks for what her subscribers want in photos so she creates what you need. I use these images in blog posts, landing and sales pages, social media and more)

Blogger’s Guide to Membership Site -$20- This is a great membership site. I’m a big fan of Terra from Uncork your Dork so when she put together a membership site with all her challenges and pieces of training I knew I wanted to check it out. I’ve done a few of the pieces of training in the membership site and next I want to go through the SEO training. There is so much valuable information in this membership that the monthly cost is worth it because I need to keep learning to grow my traffic and income.

Also a great benefit of this monthly membership is that you get access to all of her summit videos. Which is a great value and I can go through them at my own pace. Instead of having to stress out about watching them live.

Tailwind –$15 Tailwind is the scheduler I use when I do all my pinning on Pinterest. It’s my favorite scheduler that I’ve tried out and makes it possible for me to be very active on Pinterest. I cover a lot of why I love it and how to use it in my ebook.

Thrive architect -$67: This is a one time purchase and not a monthly charge. I liked using Instapage and have no complaints about them but my products are not bringing in enough monthly to cover the cost. So when I heard about thrive architect. Which allows you to build pages on your blog that I can create my sales pages on I was ready to make the switch. I’m still learning how to use this new plugin to create everything it can be used for.

Total Expenses: $131

Looking back:

Now that I’ve been doing income reports for more than a year! Which is crazy it feels like I just started sharing them I want to see how I’m growing.

May 2017-$248

My Blog Traffic in May

May’s traffic did better than April and I finally feel like my blog is getting back on track. This year has been so crazy for us with new jobs and moving. That I haven’t been able to get out as much new content or promote my blog like I should. So 2018 has been low for traffic so far. So I’m pleased to see that May was a decent month and that June started off well too.

I have quite a bit of summer content so that should get found on Pinterest in May as people prepare for summer. If you have summer posts on your blog I suggest you update them and reshare them on social media, especially Pinterest as now is the time people are searching for summer. I’m also beginning to update back to school content so it’s ready for when people start searching for it this summer.

What worked for my blog in May

1. Creating a new template for my Pins on Pinterest and updating lots of old posts with new pins. I also have begun to experiment with adding hashtags to my pins as I update them. I believe that this has been what has helped increase my traffic lately. Getting fresh pins out there and the hashtags.

2. I have been hard at work trying to improve my SEO this year and start bringing in more traffic through search engines. I think it’s starting to pay off. I still get way more traffic from Pinterest but the traffic from searches is beginning to go up. It’s a process of trying new things and seeing what works. My goal is to keep learning SEO and watch those numbers go up.

What didn’t work for my blog in May

sticking to a schedule: I was so overwhelmed and busy in my life in May. That working on the blog was kind of an afterthought. To get the most done I try to stick to a schedule to some level while working from home. I need to get back in the habit of creating and sticking to my to-lists and using Pomodoros to track my time better. This month I need to get back on track.

creating a lot of new content: Part of the reason for this is because as I said above April was a crazy month for me and blogging wasn’t as much of a priority. So I didn’t create as much as I would have liked to. Though I did have lots of ideas though and got them down on my calendar for new posts.

It’s so important to get new ideas down when you have them If you don’t they will probably disappear and you will forget them like I have done too many times. So have a notebook you jot things down in r an app on your phone like I do and when you think of a new idea get it down somewhere.

Here are my top blog goals and priorities for June 2018

to continue updating summer content and start on back to school posts. I see a lot of traffic around back to school and want to create some new content to start getting out there now so readers can find it over the summer.
To finish up my new landing pages that I’m creating with Thrive architect. It’s a long process of learning how to create with this new program and I need to continue working on it.
My big goal for 2018 is to get my email list to over 5,000 and right now I’m at about 1,000. So I’m going to begin putting a lot of focus on my list. Both in growing my list and nurturing it with consistent newsletters.

To help you grow your own blogs and start making your own income I wanted to include some resources. The best way to grow your blog is to be constantly willing to learn through reading and growing your knowledge.

The Best Books I’ve found on blogging that will help you take your blog to the next level:

Building A Framework ( check out more about this here.)
Blog, Inc.
How To Blog For Profit Without Selling Your Soul
#GirlBoss
You are a Badass

Other posts you might like:

Grab a copy of my new book to help you learn Pinterest to grow your blog traffic. This book will help you finally understand Pinterest. So you can start growing your blog on this amazing platform!

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