Blog Income Report September 2020

While it would be nice to make money the way the big bloggers do, I write because it makes me happy to share my knowledge. Blogging does have a few expenses, and I would feel successful if I were able to make enough money to offset those expenses. It may seem silly to do an income report on a month where I made no income, but I’ll tell you why I want to write these blog income reports.

Why I Post Income Reports

Looking at other bloggers’ income reports was really inspiring to me and contributed to me feeling like I could start my own blog. I personally love to read income reports of my favorite bloggers and watch their growth over time. Now that I have a blog, I want to contribute my income reports so that I can provide content that may inspire others to start a blog.

I also want to write out these reports so that I can see my own growth over time. Currently I am at the very beginning of my blogging journey and I cannot even imagine where this blog will take me. These monthly reports will be one way of looking back at my journey through data.

Posting these reports will hopefully help me to hold myself accountable for my goals. By including goals for the next month in each of my reports, I will be able to see where I should be focusing my energy in order to try to achieve those goals. I can also re-evaluate my goals and decide which of those goals are still worth pursuing for me as time goes on.

Income Report for September 2020 (4th Month Blogging)

Goals

It’s hard to know how much a blog is going to grow and at what rate. I want to set goals so that I am always striving to improve my blog and reach more readers. This month my goals were focused on increasing traffic to my blog, specifically using social media.

How Did I Do?

Goal

Actual

Met (Y/N)?

200 monthly page views on the blog

183

N

175 sessions on the blog

131

N

100 Pinterest followers

126

Y

150 Instagram followers

121

N

100 Twitter followers

89

N

Have 0 days where there were 0 sessions on my blog

0

Y

Make 1 affiliate sale

0

N

I met 2 out of 7 goals!

I am a bit disappointed in myself because I didn’t reach any of my goals. However, I know that there are reasons that led to that outcome.

I tend to get spikes in traffic when I post a new blog post, and I usually post 6-8 blog posts each month. This month I only posted 2. This is a record low for me.

My partner and I brought home a puppy on September 5th, and this puppy has affected my blog a lot more than I expected. Getting the puppy adjusted to his new life with us has taken a lot more of my energy than I expected and I haven’t spent almost any time on my blog this month. I just had no energy since I prioritize helping my partner and spending time taking care of our puppy. I have no regrets except that I wish I could’ve prepared more in advance so my blog wouldn’t take so much of a hit. I encourage you to check out our pup’s instagram @momo.is.dog

Moving into this next month, we are getting into a more comfortable routine with our puppy, so I should be able to spend more time on my blog, which I’m very excited about! This should also help my blog grow a lot more.

Traffic

Here’s a screenshot from my Google Analytics for the blog:

I can see that my traffic significantly lowers over the last few days of the month. I didn’t have time to schedule pins using Tailwind for those days, which is an interesting correlation. I suppose I need to have pins posting on Pinterest everyday.

Most of my traffic for this month came from social media, though all of my social media accounts for the blog are still fairly new so they don’t have a lot of reach yet.

From Google Analytics, I can see that 50.00% of my Social Media traffic came from Pinterest, 38.30% came from Facebook, 11.70% came from Twitter, and 0% came from Instagram.

I am in a few Facebook groups and I answered other people’s questions from those groups and linked a couple of my blog posts to give them more information. That’s how I got traffic from Facebook, especially towards to beginning of the month.

I really haven’t been active on Twitter much this month. I’ve posted maybe once per week, so I’m pleasantly surprised that I still got some traffic from Twitter. I’ll try to be more active this next month.

Pinterest

As Pinterest is my biggest driver of traffic, I wanted to go a bit more in depth about how my Pinterest account is going. My Pinterest account is still fairly new, just 4 months old, but I’m hoping that I can continue to grow and gain more traffic from Pinterest.

While the Monthly Viewers metric doesn’t tell much about how well Pinterest is working for blog traffic, it is interesting to see the reach I am getting on Pinterest. At the end of last month my Monthly Viewers metric was 44.5k, and at the end of this month it was 48.3k. This just tells me how many people see my pins, but I am glad to see that increasing a bit.

Link Clicks is a more useful metric for Pinterest as it tells me how many times people have clicked on my pins and went to my blog. The total amount of Link Clicks I got last month was 50. This month I got 46. That is around the same, so I am okay with that though I hope to increase that in the future.

I did end up purchasing Tailwind towards the beginning of this month. With my new puppy taking up so much of my time, being able to schedule pins was a lifesaver this month.

Blog Income

I did not make any money with my blog this month.

I haven’t had the time to promote my couple of affiliate programs yet, so this was to be expected.

Blog Expenses

I purchased Tailwind and I got an annual subscription for $119.88, which will renew each year.

Blog Posts from September 2020

Here are the posts I uploaded this month:

Ideally I would like to publish 6-8 blog posts each month, but this month I only published 2. Not publishing as many posts likely affected my blog traffic negatively because I tend to get spikes of traffic when I publish a new post. I also want to make sure I have lots of quality blog posts that I can promote, so my promotion strategy is more well-rounded and not overly repetitive.

This amount of posts is not enough for me to be happy with how I’m doing as a blogger. I want to write more and post more. I hope that in the next months I am able to get back to my ideal amount of posting.

Goals for Next Month (October 2020)

Most of my goals are the same as last month as I either want to maintain that goal or I didn’t reach that goal this last month. I have increased my Pinterest followers goals because I met the previous goal. I have also included a new goal of publishing 4 blog posts, to help get myself back on track with writing.

My goals are mainly focused on increasing my blog traffic. I believe that increasing my following on various social media platforms will help me to use those social media profiles to drive traffic to my blog, which is why several of my goals are about increasing my social media followings.

One thing that worries me about reaching my goals is that many of my blog posts are about the Disney College Program. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Disney College Program has recently been cancelled for the foreseeable future and we don’t know when it will return. This may mean that people won’t be looking for information about it as much for awhile, which may hurt my traffic. My plan is to make sure I am also posting non-DCP content.

Now that I do have a few affiliate links in a couple of my blog posts, I have a goal about making an affiliate sale and getting a commission. This won’t be a priority for me as my main goal is still to increase my traffic, but it would be nice if a qualifying sale would happen.

As you can see, my goals for the next month include growing my social media followings on various platforms. So if you like me or my content, I would encourage you to please check out my social media profiles below and perhaps follow me! Thank you in advance!

Check out my other Blog Income Reports:

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