Traffic & Blog Income Report – March 2015

During my 1st Year Blogiversary post, I asked you all if you would be interested in my doing both a Pinterest post (since 60% or more of my traffic comes from Pinterest) as well as an income report now that I am actually making some money!  Your response was overwhelmingly “Yes!” so I’m going to start doing these Traffic & Income Reports on a monthly basis!

I believe that more bloggers should reveal their income, as well as some stats about their traffic to inspire and encourage others, so I’m am giving monthly updates about my income and traffic statistics. This is my actual blogging income, folks.  Read on!

Let’s get started!

Traffic –

During March, I launched my The Pinterest Assistant, which provides affordable Pinterest Marketing services to business, brands, and bloggers.  The first stages have been going really, really well, but that also meant that my focus wasn’t really on this blog this month.  As a result, my page views are lower than they’ve been in 6-7 months, and I’m ok with that!

Retired by 40:

• Pageviews: 123,465 
• Unique Pageviews: 68,236 (+30,026)
• Bounce Rate: 53.74%
• Daily Pageviews/Visitor: 4
• Daily Time on Site: 3:45

Time –

In February, I did a terrible job of keeping track of my time, but in March I really wanted to keep track of how much time I spent on the blog fro two reasons:

1. I was working with my Pinterest Marketing test group.  In order to price my services correctly, I made sure to keep detailed records of time spent as a whole as well as on individual tasks.
2. I worked full-time during March, but during April I’m making the move to self employment – Yay!  This is the result of The Big Guy getting a job, and the insane amount of hours I worked during March.  See below:

So, without further ado, here are my hours for March:

• “Real” Job Hours: 160
• Blog Hours: 126.75
• Total Hours: 286.75

You guys, that’s 75-hours weeks.  Ya…..

But, if we calculate what I made hourly just from the blog, I made $12.76 per hour.

Less than months before, but bear in mind I was literally giving away my time to 7 amazing bloggers who made up my test group!  With that in mind, I’m ridiculously happy with March’s hourly rate!

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.

My New Favorite –

A lot of people (my family, mainly – haha) ask me how I make money blogging.  Now, I don’t have crazy 5-figure incomes like Michelle at Making Sense of Cents, or Cat who supports her whole family, including a husband in med school, but I do make a pretty decent side income.  And I do that in about 12 different ways.  So, each month I’m going to start briefly highlighting the newest way I’m making money.  Believe me, income streams change as often as each month, or even more often!

I have been SO looking forward to this week!  You know why?

Because Elite Blog Academy, the course that made my work-from-home dreams a reality, is giving everyone free stuff!

I’m so excited that I just cannot contain myself, and I wanted to remind you about how amazing these freebies are!

When you sign up to be notified when enrollment for the Spring 2016 class of Elite Blog Academy opens, you’ll get these amazing freebies instantly:

• The FREE Blogging Made Simple Course
• A chance to win FREE Elite Blog Academy Tuition
• 10 Steps to Take When Your Blog Post Goes Viral eBook by award-winning author and speaker Ruth Sokup
• 3 Elements of the Perfect Pin Video
• Work Harder, Not Smarter Video
• From Blog To Business Video

Plus, if you enroll in Elite Blog Academy February 22nd – 26th, and forward me your Welcome Email, I’ll give you more than $250 in Pinterest Marketing products:

• A copy of my book, Generate Traffic with Pinterest, a $16.99 value!
• A Custom Pinterest Marketing Plan, a $100 value!
• A Pinterest phone Consultation, a $150 value
• Access to me by phone or email, anytime you need me!

These bonuses are designed to build upon the framework found in Elite Blog Academy!  Not only will I be there during every step of your journey to building a successful blog, I’ll personally teach you how to market your blog on Pinterest – the right way!

I want to help you succeed in all of you blogging goals!

This month I’m also loving On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog! by Anne (Money Propeller) and Kathleen (Frugal Portland).  Between these two ladies, they’ve started more than 20 blogs, and they’ve done so through trial & error.  They wrote the book to help bloggers by taking the frustration out of blogging, from important first steps to working efficiently.  And believe me, they’ve seen it all.  The book walks bloggers through basic steps like how to set up your wordpress account, as well as tougher things like how to set up a gravatar account without having a wordpress.com account.

Check out their book today!

Pinterest Marketing –

Bloggers, want free Pinterest Marketing?

Head over to The Pinterest Assistant and enter into the giveaway for a change at 2 free months of Pinterest Marketing, Custom Pinterest Marketing Plans (with workbooks) and more!

Income –

Keep in mind, this is purely my income.  I have earned this, but I may not be paid on it for up to 3 months.  The actual income I receive is recorded in our Budget Updates on the blog income line!

This does not account for the 30% that I hold back for taxes.  Also, this does not take expenses into account – those will be covered in the next section.

Oh, and one more thing: If you love Canva like I do for it’s free, amazing design program, as well as affordable images for purchase, then click here to register for early access to Canva for Work – just another way that Canva is changing the face of online design!

Retired by 40!

• Ad Networks: $367.56
  • The Blogger Network: $283.68
  • Blogher: $68.88
  • InfoLinks:$15.00
• Affiliate Sales: $555.47
  • Commission Junction: $471.90
  • Tailwind: $38.25
  • EBA: $0
  • KDP: $5.62
  • Amazon Associates: $39.78
• Sponsored Content: $700.00
  • TapInfluence: $50.00
  • Clever Girls: $200.00
  • BlogHer: $250.00
  • Other/Misc: $200.00
• Total Income: $1,623.03

What is kind of amazing to me is that my page views this month were lower than ever, but my ad revenue from The Blogger Network was higher than ever!  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: if you can,  apply to The Blogger Network – you won’t regret it!

Expenses

This month brought quite a few expenses!  I actually cancelled my ViralWoot Account, started with BoardBooster (review coming soon, and you won’t want to miss it!) but then ViralWoot still charged me.  I’m still working on that situation, but keep in mind this is an above-average month for expenses!

•  Tailwind for my Pin scheduling.  You can learn more about how to schedule pins for only $10 a month here.
• Canva: $8.00 – I decided to stop wasting time searching flickr for copyright free images for all of my posts, and am instead purchasing them for $1.00 each through Canva.  This month was higher than normal, as I created images for both February and March so that I could concentrated solely on my Pinterest Test Group in March!
• MailChimp: $30.00 – I absolutely loooove MailChimp .  For those of us who are technically, and artistically challenged, this is the absolute best way to go for emails.  MailChimp is free up to 2,000 subscribers, and up to 12,000 emails a month, but in January I ran my 31 Days of Finances & Fitness eCourse, which resulted in 43,400 emails, and a $25 charged.  Well worth it, though!
• BoardBooster: $20.00 – I’m still using Tailwind, but this new BoardBooster is amazing!  It is literally a set-it and forget-it method of keeping your  content pinned to your boards at regular intervals.  Your first 500 pins are free, so you literally have nothing to lose!
• State of Missouri: Minor victory here – I now have an LLC!  So, costs for the LLC filing plus a couple of fictitious names: $66.50
• Fiverr: $5.50 I got a logo for The Pinterest Assistant from Fiverr, and I absolutely love it!
• Restored 316 Designs: $45 + $59.95 (genesis framework) Like the new theme?  I still need a logo, but I’m loving the clean, feminine look of my  new theme, and it was pretty cheap as far as premium themes go!
• Courses: $97.00 I took a course in March on some of the finer aspects of Pinterest Marketing.   There was a time when I wouldn’t have been able to admit that I don’t know everything about Pinterest (even though I wrote the book on it!)  But, I’ve reached the point where I’m ok with saying this, because my commitment is to providing the best affordable Pinterest Marketing services to my clients, and that means I need to constantly be learning!

• Total Expenses: $331.95

Some Highlights –

In March, as I mentioned before, I worked with an amazing test group of 7 bloggers for whom I donated my time, in exchange for feedback, some grace as I learn what I’m doing, and some testimonials.  While I did have to work out some kinks, I’m super excited to say that it was a success, and my Pinterest expertise can now be yours!

I’ve really tried to make my services affordable for everyone, including smaller bloggers, because I know how much of a time-suck Pinterest can be.  But, it can also drive tons of traffic to your site!  Check out The Pinterest Assistant for more info! (Oh, and my book is on sale right now for $0.99 over there!)

Also, I am now self-employed.  The Big Guy is now working outside of the home, allowing me to stay home and not only spend more time with our daughter, but pursue what I love!  If you’re interested, you can read more about exactly what prompted me to take this leap of faith here.

March 2015 Goals –

• Pick out and work with my test group – SUCCESS!  The test group has been pretty successful!  In fact, one blogger saw a 5% traffic increase in her first month!  This may not seem like a lot, but as with everything blogging-related, success on Pinterest takes about 3 months to really get going, so this is awesome!
• Track my Time – SUCCESS!  You saw my hourly rate above.
• Tweepi 2x per Week – FAIL! I didn’t even do this once.
• Implement eBook Sales on Website: SUCCESS!  I’ve got links to buy my book this site, as well as The Pinterest Assistant (and it’s on sale for $0.99 on the Pinterest Assistant right now!)
• Launch The Pinterest Assistant – SUCCESS!  Get access to all sorts of articles about how to market your brand on Pinterest, check out my services, or just check out the site and leave me some feedback.  I’ll take it all!
• Make $1,500 – SUCCESS!
• 10,000 Pinterest Followers – FAIL!  I came really close, and actually gained more than 900 new followers this month, but didn’t quite hit the mark.

April 2015 Goals –

• Set up business checking: Boring goals, but needs to be done
• Make $1,800
• 150,000 Page views
• Start commenting again on 5 blogs, 5 days per week
• Only work 40 hours per week – bahahaha!  I never thought I would put this as a goal, but here it is!
• Take Liz Benny’s Course – more on this to come!

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.

How was your month?  I would love to hear about it!

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