There may be affiliate links or adverts within this post. This means that by purchasing a product through this link, I will earn a very small commission. This is of no extra cost to you, and you are under no obligation to buy. All opinions about any products are my own and I only recommend products I am passionate about. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. For more information please visit our 'Disclaimer' page.
This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
Welcome to the first of many blog income report! You know what that means, it means that Eclectically Ema passed its first month. I originally planned to try and post this at the end of the first week of August so, as you can see. It’s a bit late and I apologise.
There has been a lot going on at the moment what with packing to move to a new house, going on holiday. I have then spent the last two weeks moving into my new house and our internet connection is causing us nothing but problems right now all while getting more and more pregnant as the weeks fly past, all while trying to keep up with a 2 and-a-half-year-old. So, as you can probably see, my posting schedule has slipped a bit and honestly, it has really frustrated me! Only now have I had a chance to sit down and unveil the first in a series of monthly income reports for you all.
So apart from this report, each monthly report will be posted at the end of the first week of the month.
Why do a Blog Income Report?
Before I became serious about blogging, I used to read other bloggers income reports and be amazed that they were able to make thousands in a month. All from working from their computer at home. I used to think…
WOW, that must be so much easier than working a 9-5!!
I now know that I am completely wrong. I absolutely love blogging and creating and marketing. It is HARD work, and although I may not sit down and work from 9 am to 5 pm five days a week like the majority of people. I am squeezing in time here and there in the evening, at weekends and even when I pee…which is an awful lot at the moment! So, the hours add up, but if you want to make it successful then you actually enjoy putting the effort in.
I have also learned and honestly deep down I already knew this but making thousands does not come in your first month.
While reading other bloggers income reports gave me the inspiration and motivation to seriously pursue blogging. The big bucks take time and 100% dedication, AMAZING content and a little bit of luck if you want it to happen quickly. The number one rule is that if all your after is the money. Then blogging is NOTfor you. You should do this because you love doing it.
These reports are really important for bloggers. It holds them accountable for what they have or has not done, it provides motivation for the following month, even if the previous one has been dreadful or out of this world. They show the rest of the world that you can be a blogger and you can be successful, for actually very little start-up cost.
So What’s Different About my Blog Income Report?
My income reports are for the small-time blogger, the person who’s thinking about starting a blog or looking to go self-hosted and start being serious about it. It’s to show you that, it is possible if you put in the work. My income reports are there to motivate you and inspire some perseverance.
I am soon to be a mum of two! Which means I can’t pour every waking second into my blog as some others can. I am here to prove though, that you can gain traffic and even income from your blog. It may take a little longer than others, but I have other priorities that will always come first, as you might have too.
You Need Your Own Hosting Provider
If you are looking for an amazing host for your blog (or website) then I totally recommend Bluehost. I am using them now and I have not had a single problem. Importing my existing site into them was easy, and seamless. Their dashboard is the simplest thing I have ever used (definitely compared to my last hosting provider) and the cost is super low! ($3.95p/m or £3.10 p/m!!!!).
Bluehost is actually recommended by WordPress, which means that the support team knows everything you may need to ask as well as working perfectly in sync with it. To top it all off, it comes with a free domain name for the first year, the essential part of a blog, that makes you individual, unique and professional.
Related:Self-host your blog with Bluehost | In less than 15 minutes
Grab your FREE ultimate guide on getting started with Bluehost. This step-by-step ultimate guide will show you how to set up an account with Bluehost from start to finish. There is also bonus content showing you how to migrate your existing WordPress.com site to your self-hosted domain. My free guide to you has made it as easy as pie. Click the image below to grab your free ‘The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide on Getting Started with Bluehost‘
Goals from last month
As I have said, this is the first month’s income report. So while I didn’t have any goals this month, I have made sure to get my site to a point where I am happy with it for now, and it works in the way I want it to. I have also done a lot of reading about marketing, CSS, email lists and obviously income reports among many other things.
What worked for me
My writing schedule of posting once a week has worked out pretty well actually. I originally wanted to be able to post twice a week, but that became unrealistic with everything else I have to do at the moment. There’s no saying it won’t happen in the future though.
Some weeks I have managed to write more than one post which enabled me to be able to have posts scheduled a couple of weeks in advance. This gave me a chance to relax a wee bit on holiday which was nice.
Social media was a learning curve! Although I have used Pinterest for years, I have never used it as a traffic source. This meant a lot of reading up on different strategies. I think I’m starting to figure it out….slowly.
Instagram is easy enough to post to, I researched my hashtags. I downloaded VSCO on my phone and started to visually brand my feed.
Posting consistently is something I have struggled with. I am trying once a day, but sometimes I wonder if my life is really interesting enough to share my day-to-day and this is why I haven’t been posting every day. There are some cool holiday snaps on there at the moment if you wanna take a peek, click the feed in my sidebar.
Twitter is a slow burner, it’s not really something I’m concentrating on currently. This will come with time!
My email list is set up using MailChimp. MailChimp is free up until a certain amount of subscribers. This is great for new bloggers like me, but it does have its limitations.
I had mixed feelings about monetisation. Do I do this from the start? Or do I wait until my traffic picks up? What a dilemma! If I didn’t use affiliate links or ads on my site from the start, then I could miss out on income right from the start, but if I do this right from the start are people going to think I’m just selling out?! In the end, I decided to monetise right from the start, I knew my page views were going to be low anyway In my first month, so I didn’t really see anything to lose. I’m still unsure about whether people think I’m selling out and I assure you I most definitely am NOT, but this is my job and what I love doing.
To start with, any money I might earn is going to go towards paying to keep my site up and running and doing what I love. I know I’m probably not going to greatly benefit from any income from my blog right now and that’s ok.
On to the Traffic Part of the Income Report!!
As you can see my daily page views were pretty low all month. The majority of my traffic came in the last week, this is where I started using tailwind properly and consistently!
I’m still amazed that nearly 550 people visited my blog and took the time to read it, this amounted in 1064 page views in a month. My only aim for this month was to have a bounce rate of under 50% and that I did. My bounce rate was 44.08%. For those of you who don’t know, a bounce rate is the percentage of users that click onto your site and have no interaction with the page at all and then click off of it. So to know that over 225 users read my content is very exciting to me!!
If you missed any of this month’s posts, here they are starting with the most popular.
First Trimester in Pregnancy | How you can survive using my top 9 tips(545 Page Views)
Second Trimester Joy and 10 Things you should do.(137 Page Views)
Bandelettes | Do They Beat the Chub Rub?( 129 Page Views)
10 Life Lessons You Need To Know( 8 Page Views)
Self-Care | 20 Free and Frugal Ways to Practice It.(0 Page Views)
As you can see from the numbers above and the topics I wrote about. There were some posts that were much more popular than others. I used this month as a little test to see which topics gained some traction. I have also read on other blogs, that a lot of posts can take 4-6 weeks to start gaining traffic. It’s all down to the promotion and ultimately, Pinterest.
Pinterest was a learning curve but has been my biggest source of traffic. For now, this is the only social media traffic analytics I’ll be including. I started to use tailwind seriously at the end of the month, which sent my blog traffic and Pinterest analytics through the roof (compared to what I had been used to at that point) You can see this from the 3 images below. I will be writing a post about how to use tailwind in the next couple of months, so be sure to come back and read it. Tailwind really has been a lifesaver.
Related: Tailwind is Made for Mum Bloggers, Here’s Why.
This proves that even pinning 6 times a day (a mixture of original contents and other content) can work. Plus the great thing about tailwind is that the scheduler optimizes the times it gives you to schedule posts. This means that your audience sees your content as it’s synced to your Pinterest account and optimized for when they are online.
Outgoings
Hosting:
This is paid in full for the entire term that I have selected, so I will only post this once as It won’t be a reoccurring cost each month.
Bluehost: $97.56 (£76.64) p/y
Income reports
I didn’t make any income this first month.
I did join an affiliate network called AWIN. They have thousands of brands on there that you can join so that you can use their affiliate links to help generate income for your site.
If you’re looking to monetise, I really suggest using AWIN. All your affiliates are kept in one place and your clicks and commission are shown quite simply. Perfect for a beginner. They also have every question in their help section that you could think to ask, so an answer is never far away if you do get stuck. Click through to AWIN using my link if like.
AWIN is an amazing source for affiliate marketing. You can Join here!
I do earn a small commission for any services bought or signed up for with most of my links, but this does enable me to keep the blog running for you lovely lot!
Related:What Is Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers?
Goals for next months Blog Income Report
- To lower my bounce rate to below 40%
- Gain 2 more email subscribers
- Sign up to Tailwind Plus and get pinning!
- To increase my page views by 1000
- To have a way more organised editorial calendar of seasonal and evergreen content.
What the first month of self hosted blogging really looks like! #income #traffic #lifestyleblog #blogger Click To Tweet
That wraps up the first of many post about the blog income report. I would love to hear from you all either by email or in the comments below. Are you thinking of starting a blog? Do you already have one? What tips for a newbie blogger do you have for me? I’m all ears!!
While you’re here, why don’t you choose your favourite image from below and pin it for me? Share some love peoples!
