I can’t believe it’s been six months …
I’ve never done a traffic and income report, but I always enjoy reading them, so hopefully you will, too.
I love blogging. I wish I had more time for it and more time to spend with my kids. There are two reasons I wanted to blog to begin with, and those are always before me. One, to encourage mamas through motherhood and in their walk with God, and two, to make a little side money for my family.
Goal number one has been doing fantastic, but goal number two has been lagging.
I started my blog using siteblog.com, and then after two months I completely recreated it on WordPress.com (That’s why if you go through my archives, you’re confused because it looks like I’ve only been blogging for four). Then I realized that no matter how much traffic I have I’ll never generate income unless I switch to WordPress.org, as you can only use WordAds at the .com site, and those pay you peanuts. So I switched over to .org, which is why not everything is peachy keen. Including my broken permalinks ?
I’ve been pleased with the overall trend of my stats. A few months ago one of my articles, 6 signs you might be a good mom took off. I was thrilled when I received over 1300 page views on one day. Since then I’m still getting lots of views from that post. A bit later, Why God lets you wait got real popular. It is currently responsible for about half of my page views. A few weeks ago I posted 7 baby products that shouldn’t exist, and I got a spike in stats for that post as well.
At the time this article was published, my blog had 35,453 views from 150 countries. Last month I had over 10,000 views.
95% of my referrals are from Pinterest, so I focus on pinning and repinning my stuff (you can read some of my tips here) and creating great pins, and just pray Pinterest doesn’t change their algorithm!
I didn’t really have goals for page views, but here are my social media goals:
By now I’ve learned that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter do next to nothing as far as referrals go, so I’m growing my IG and Twitter followings in hopes of landing sponsored posts (remind me why Facebook is useful again?).
So how have I done? I got a little lazy on Twitter. I’m close: 4748 followers as of now. Instagram I did a little better than I expected: I’m at 3364 now. Facebook is obviously my weakness: it’s hovering just below 300 (that’s my Blog’s FB, not my personal). Pinterest was so hard in the beginning, but now I have about 2150 followers.
I haven’t landed any sponsored posts, although I’ve been applying. I think it’s harder when your numbers are low. I’ve started an affiliate partnership with Learn and Master, though, although I’ve yet to see any commission. And, of course, Amazon. I’ve made just over $5 from the Amazon Affiliates program.
I have scored some free snacks, a free pair of inescapable pajamas, and a book, though. Still gotta finish reading it and write that review …
I love the actual writing part of blogging. That sounds funny, but to be successful, you don’t actually spend most of your time writing. I never run out of ideas. I have a massive growing list of potential post topics. So this month I took a quite a bit off blogging (I usually post twice a week) and spent that time working towards generating income. I think I’ll do this once a month until things start rolling.
There’s not a ton of pressure on me to start bringing in extra cash (I do that already with my other WAHM job), but when you spend that much time doing something, and let’s be honest – even though it’s fun, it’s work – you want some tangible reward for your effort. I’m thrilled so many people are reading my stuff, but for the next six months my goal is to start bringing in at least a couple hundred bucks a month, and not have to deprive my family to do it. Prayers would be awesome, thanks!
If you liked this post, you might be interested in Versatile Blogger Award.
