Free 2015 Blog Tracker Download + 2014 & 2015 Blog Income and Goals

Welcome to my cliche year in review!  I already did one for our finances, so now it’s time for the blog!  Earlier this year, I committed to complete transparency with regards to how much money this ‘lil site of mine earns, as well as how I’m earning it.  This transparency has been given in the form of Blog Income & Traffic Reports.  In keeping with this theme, let’s take a look back at 2014 in order to set goals for 2015 and develop SMART goals to get there!

Some of the year’s highlights:

• Featured On:
  • Zillow
  • Rockstar Finance
  • The Globe & Mail
  • Feex
  • Living Well, Spending Less
  • The Things I Learned From
• Most popular Posts:
  • 21 Things Frugal People Don’t Do! – 23,000 Unique Views (32,000 pins on Pinterest)
  • 5 I’m Giving Up To Get Out of Debt – 18,000 Unique Views
• Total Page views
  • Total Page views: 530,000 (250,000 in December alone, thanks to tripling my page views)
  • Highest Ever: Friday, December 5th, with 47,278
• Total Unique Viewers: 163,729 (from 168 countries!)
• Total Income: $2,749.24 (67% in November & December)
• Acquisition: Just my largest 3 referrers :-)
  • Pinterest: 57%
  • Facebook: 19%
  • Search Engines: 2%
• P.S. You can view Retired by 40!’s entire annual report here

If you want to start your own money-making blog, you can do so very cheaply.  I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own in about 10 minutes, and very cheaply, with prices starting at only $3.95 a month.  This low price is only available through my Bluehost link, and when you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting, Bluehost will even throw in a FREE domain name (a $15 value).  Again, this pricing + free domain name is only available through my link, and if you want to make money with your blog, then self-hosting through a company such as Bluehost is essential.

A Freebie for ya’ll –

Before we dig into the meat of my 2015 goals, I want to give ya’ll something I’ve been working on.  If you don’t know by now, I’m an accountant.  Loving numbers, precision, statistics, and graphs just comes with that territory.  With that in mind, I’ve created a free 2015 Blog Tracker download.

• An Income Tracker, with an automatic percentage breakdown that tells you how much of your income comes from freelancing, ad revenue, affiliate sales, and direct advertising.
• An Expense Tracker
• Net Income Calculation, with a graph for easy reference
• Page views, Unique Page Views, Bounce Rate, Time on Site, Alexa Page Rank and more, all with customizable graphs to help you track your growth
• Social Media tracker to watch your followers grow, also with a graph for easy reference
• An overview page with graphs for income and page views, as well as net income calculation for quick reference
• And it’s FREE!

It’s not a perfect spreadsheet, as it’s still a work in progress.  But, it’s yours, and it’s free!  Download it now!

 Download your 2015 Blog Tracker in Excel Format

Download your 2015 Blog Tracker in Open Doc Format

Also, once you’ve used it, either leave me a comment, or shoot me an email at retiredby40blog (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know how I can make it better!

And now, it’s time for goals!

Goals: All of my goals for the year are based on 10% growth per month.  They may seem pretty lofty, but with some hard work, I can reasonably expect 10% growth every month.

 Social Media Growth Strategies

• Concentrated on 1 social media outlet per day.  Automate all else
• Need to determine the best days and times for each social media.
• Still looking for contributors for my Strategies to Save Money Board.  email me if interested!
• Come up with a twitter sharing schedule like I did for Pinterest
• Pinterest sharing schedule starts January 1st!
• Figure out Google+ (not very specific, I know, but I’ll get a plan together)
• Delete pins – post on why coming soon

 Social Media Growth Goals:

• Pinterest: Surpass 15,000 followers
• Twitter: 12,000 followers
• Facebook: 1,500 followers
• Google +: 600 followers
• Email Subscribers: 400 subscribers
• Bloglovin: 250 followers

 Writing Goals/General Goals:

• Publish an ebook – this is my big goal for the year.  I have a couple of things in the works, but I want it to be perfect.  Expect to see polls on both the topic and the cover once it’s done!
• Redo (writing and images) 1 post per week
• Still working on EBA.  It’s awesome, but I need to finish it.
• Pitch 3 companies for sponsorship
• Stop wasting time searching for images.  Use Canva to get them for $1.00 a piece.
• Revamp my Media kit & Advertising page
• Work on Ten Minute Savings.  December has left this poor blog sorely lacking in attention.
• Start an LLC

 Pageview/Income Goals:

• Average 14,000 page views per day by 12/31/15, or 434,000 per month.  (This number is based on 10% growth per month)
• Make $15,000 (was $10,000 but as I saw my income go up, I decided to raise my goal!) total from the blog in 2015
• Publish gift guides for every major holiday – on a budget, of course!
• 31 Days of Finances & Fitness
• + Another Free eCourse at some point in the year
• SEO: Come up with 4-5 keywords that I want to rank in, and hit them hard!

2015 is going to be great!  Not only am I excited about what the year will bring for me personally, I’m super excited for everything that is going to happen here on the blog, and so very grateful for all of my fantastic readers!

Here’s to 2015!

If you want to start your own money-making blog, you can do so very cheaply.  I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own in about 10 minutes, and very cheaply, with prices starting at only $3.95 a month.  This low price is only available through my Bluehost link, and when you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting, Bluehost will even throw in a FREE domain name (a $15 value).  Again, this pricing + free domain name is only available through my link, and if you want to make money with your blog, then self-hosting through a company such as Bluehost is essential.

Tell me about your blog or general goals for 2015 – I would love to hear them!

*This post may contain affiliate links

Linked up

You May Also Like:

Traffic & Blog Income Report – November 2014 Traffic & Blog Income Report – January 2015 Traffic & Blog Income Report – February 2015 Traffic & Blog Income Report – December 2014 Traffic & Blog Income Report – March 2015 Traffic & Income Report – September 2014 – My Actual Blogging Income How I Make Money Blogging: September 2015 Blog Income Report Traffic & Blog Income Report – April 2015 Traffic & Blogging Income Report – October 2014 August 2015 Blog Income & Traffic Report