Second Month Blog Income Report

NOW, WHY AM I WRITING A BLOG STATS & INCOME REPORT:

Well I never thought I’d be writing one, but I definitely want to because:

• First, I think they are fun to read. it’s great to see what efforts people are making and what works for them and what doesn’t and get ideas for your own blog.
• Second, I wanted to be as transparent as possible. And going forward, these blog stats and income reports will be something in which I will be my most vulnerable and transparent self. I do not believe in hiding information and if I am learning something that’s working, I want to be as clear as possible. I think transparency is important to be able to build trust with your audience and here I am, writing from my heart, as I do.
• And lastly, I think writing a monthly stats and income report will help me be more accountable and treat this blog as a business, as I intend to do going in the future.

MY STORY:

“I can’t believe I am writing this post”. That’s something everyone says while writing their first month blogging report, isn’t it? And maybe that’s because it is a feeling that’s unbelievable for a lot of people.

For me, however, it isn’t unbelievable.

Because I have been waiting for this to happen.

I have spent hours working on my writing styles. And this blog is a product of sweat, tears and long nights and I am proud of the content that I write. I have never written any post, just for the sake of writing it. I write for the love of writing.

And I take my time with it.

In fact when I first started this blog, making money from this blog wasn’t my intention at all.In fact, the only audience that ever read it, were all my facebook friends or family and I never promoted it anywhere else. In fact, I didn’t even join any ad networks until recently. And joining affiliates was no where in sight.

But then, as I share in this post, I wanted to make a change.

I started helping a lot of people setting their blogs. And I thought to myself, this is something that I love doing, so why not turn this into a business.

If you want to start a blog too, Check out this post on how to start your blog in 8 easy steps.

And the next thought that came to my mind was “Is that even possible?”

And I immediately went on Pinterest to see and read about the viability of this idea, only to find hundreds of blog income reports and how people started making money in their first month blogging.

And I made a decision that I want to turn this beloved blog of mine, into a business and potentially help a lot of others in doing the same.

HERE IS MY FIRST MONTH BLOG INCOME REPORT IF YOU WANT TO READ THAT TOO!

Now coming onto stats:

As you know by now, I love analytics. I love analysing numbers and I knew that the only way to make a profitable blog as a business was going by numbers and analytics. I do not believe in trying anything and everything. I like trying things that seem to work for me.

And the only way to know that is through analytics. Whether it is Pinterest analytics to see what kind of posts perform well or it is which pins get more saves. Or it is Instagram analytics to grow my IG following, looking at what kind of posts my audience wants to see and what hashtags work best. I am pretty much a nerd when it comes to numbers.

So, I set up goals for myself. And that’s the way you should proceed too, if you are wanting to grow your blog into business. But, mind you, these goals should be SMART goals.
SMART goals are goals that are:

S-Specific
M– Measurable
A-Actionable
R-Realistic
T-Time Bound

It is something I learned in my management school and have applied ever since.

To see what goals I set for myself in my first month blogging as a business checkout this detailed post.

Now, let’s discuss how many I achieved and what all worked for me and what didn’t.

GOAL 1 : 4000 PAGE VIEWS: Success

I am so glad to hit 4k Monthly page views on this blog. The total page views for my second month of blogging as a business was 4786 monthly views. Not too shabby, right?

I am so stoked to have hit my goal this month. And I think it might be time for me to put things into top gear and set even bigger goals for the upcoming month. Maybe 10k Page views in a 1-2 months.

So what worked for me:

I started being more active on Pinterest and was pinning regularly. I joined a few Pinterest group for my niches and saw a growth in my link clicks through Pinterest. I made a lot of pins for my posts that were doing well last month and pushed them even more. One of my pins, even went semi-viral. I mean if I compare it to the impressions I usually get on my pins. This was the post that went semi-viral:

15 things to stop buying to save money

Goal for next month: 8k Page views. I am still a little skeptical to set 10k page views as my goal. But now that I think about it, I think I need to push myself out of my comfort zone, so let’s do 10k monthly views.

GOAL 2 : WRITE 10 BLOGPOSTS : Fail, I WROTE 7

The posts I published in the second month are:

17 Tips to cut your grocery bill in half
How to Declutter & Spring Clean your home
7 Questions to ask yourself while decluttering
Top 3 Tips to Declutter your Space
Money habits you need to adopt today
First Month Blog Stats & Income report
How to find new Content Ideas

I know I failed at this goal but I think 7 posts is still a big number. And also, in my defence, I was focussing on creating some other posts that I haven’t published yet. And I am really excited for these posts to go up.

Goal for next month: Continue writing 10 Blogposts each month

GOAL 3 : MAke an Opt-in & grow mailing list to 30:PArtial success

I created 2 opt-ins this month but I feel like I didn’t market them enough. I will get to that this month. My mailing list is still not at the 30 mark yet, but I am determined to get there. I am going to market the heck out of the opt-ins.

I am using Mailer lite for building the email list and I am loving the platform. It is super easy to make sing up forms or pop up forms. And I am loving the auto send mail option. And the best part is Mailer lite is absolutely free for your first 1000 subscribers. And even if you want to get the premium version, it is just $10 a month.

Goal for next month: Grow mailing list to 30 Subscribers

Check out Mailer Lite here and try for free.

GOAL 4: Write 2 posts with affiliate links:Partial SUCCESS

I wrote 2 posts that have affiliate links this month. But I consider it a partial success because I think I need to make some dedicated posts for affiliates. Perhaps a review kind of post or something. I haven’t joined any new affiliates though, because as I mentioned in my last income report, I don’t want to overdo it. I only want to promote the products that I personally use and that I truly find useful.

Goal for next month: Write at least 1 post around affiliate links : Maybe a review of a tool/service

GOAL 5: GROW TO 350K VIEWERS ON PINTEREST: Fail

I didn’t quite hit the 350k monthly viewers mark yet, but I came pretty close. For a few days I was sitting around 300k mark but then I didn’t pin anything for about a week and it came down to somewhere around 250k and is currently sitting there.

The main reason why I am not that bummed about this goal is that I have figured out what works for my blog and my pinterest account. And even with lesser monthly viewers, I am focussing on getting more link clicks and traffic to my website. Because the pinterest monthly viewers is a vanity metric and I am not really bothered with it.

But I still like going by numbers and I think I need to put in more efforts into growing my Pinterest account.

Also, I joined Tailwind PLUS. FINALLY. And I am still discovering tribes to join. But I am so excited to try tailwind PLUS because I have been in love with Tailwind for so long. But the 30 pins per month limit and the 5 tribes max limit were kind of a bummer.

So I upgraded. And honestly, I think it is worth the investment.
I now have 200 pins per month and I can join unlimited tribes. And I think it’s great because I am planning to join a lot of tribes and then market my content to different tribes according to the niche.

TRY TAILWIND for a month free, here! (Free for a month using my link! Otherwise free for just 100 pins, which honestly last only for about 4 days if you are considering pinning 25 pins a day)

Related: Pinterest Pining strategy

Goal for next month: Grow to 400k monthly viewers on Pinterest

GOAL 6: WRITE 2 GUEST BLOGPOSTS:PArtial Success

This one was a partial fail because I didn’t write any guest posts, mainly because I was super focussed on growing my own blog traffic. However, I have had talks with a few fellow bloggers and I have already written 2 that are yet to be published. I think they are going to go live next month. let’s see.

Goals for next month: Write at least 2 guest Blogposts

Goal 7: Keep joining relevant group boards: At least 2 : Success

I joined 3 new boards this month. And even though that’s not a lot, But I still want to focus even more on joining boards that are relevant and keep only those that perform well.

Goals for next month: Keep joining relevant group boards (at least 2 per month)

NOW COMING ONTO INCOME FOR THE FIRST MONTH:

In my Second month Blogging, I earned $140.60

I know, I know, it’s nothing when you compare it to bloggers who earn $10,000/month, but it’s something. And I couldn’t be more excited.

Now, Let’s talk about breakdown:

• Ad Income: $5.60
• Affiliate: $135

Before you laugh at that $5.60 made through ads, let me explain.

I joined Google Ad sense last year to put ads on the website because I thought it was the only way to make money. LOL. I definitely didn’t know much at that time.

But it turned out that I’d need great traffic to be able to make a substantial income from google ads. And of course I didn’t have that traffic then, I still don’t. Also, when I started google ads I didn’t quite like the look of the website. Something looks so spammy when websites have a lot of ads and I think it is such a big turn off.

And this $5.60 is because I wanted to see the potential so I ran ads on the blog for a week. Clearly it isn’t much. But then again, my traffic wasn’t great either. And I think the next time I think about putting ads on the website will be when I have enough traffic to join one of the premium ad networks like Mediavine.

i am hoping it happens soon and I am able to build this other income stream. Now, Coming onto the affiliate income. I am so happy with my affiliate income. Mainly because I don’t have any posts that are dedicated to promoting these affiliate products.

I included some affiliate links in a few posts and I am already seeing the results. I guess it also depends on the kind of posts you write. I always make sure that I am writing long form SEO friendly blogposts. That give people enough time on the blogpost to get to know me a bit, find value in my content, build a trust factor and then buy through the affiliate links.

Now, I know it is no where when you compare it to bloggers who make $10,000-$50,000 through affiliates. But I think it’s still a great start.

And I earned this income by recommending my favourite affiliate Blue host. Blue host is honestly the easiest hosting service to set up. And the affiliate program is amazing as well.

Strategy going forward:

AFFILIATES :Going forward, I am going to write a detailed post of affiliates which should amp up the affiliate income I earn through this blog. I am still not sure what kind of posts I will write, let’s see what I come up with.

PINTEREST: I am planning to experiment with both manual and automated pining through tailwind. I love tailwind and it has made my life so much easier but I think manual pining will help me understand the platform better.

I am also planning to join more Pinterest boards and maybe filter out the ones that don’t perform well.

COMING ONTO EXPENDITURES:

For the expenditure in my second month:

Hosting: $3.95 per month for Bluehost
Tailwind: $15 per month

NET INCOME: $121.65 , which is honestly not bad for my second month blogging as a business.

Can’t wait to write the report for third month. What other goals do you set for your blog?

Also, if you are still considering whether you should start a blog or not, NOW is the time. You too can write an income report for yourself. And even if it feels like it is impossible to earn through a blog in 2020, it is still possible and you can do it too.

Here is how you can start a blog in 8 easy steps. And if you aren’t making any money from your blog yet, do check this post to see that you are not making any of these mistakes on your blog. START MONETISING TODAY.

Have fun! till next time 🙂

xo
APRAJITA

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