Here’s my first blog income and traffic report. I really want to share my journey as a black blogger and how I grow my blog to $5K months!
I’m not sure how long this will last or how often I’ll keep up with this but my goal is to share my month by month process and exactly what I’m doing to grow this blog.
I have been “blogging” since January 2017; however, I have NOT been consistent with this blog. I have written quite a few blog posts in the last three years but none of them have gone “viral” or gained more than roughly 100 page views. So this will be my first official month of me blogging for income!
That being said, I’m excited to share my income and traffic reports because I don’t see a lot of women that look like me share their journey in this manner so I hope this is helpful.
I want to inspire other black women to create a legacy from the comfort of their own home, and blogging is one way to do it. So I’ll offer myself as tribute to test out strategies and whatnot to build up this blog and my income in hopes that you’ll have the perfect blueprint to follow once you get started! Let’s dive into this month’s blog income and traffic report!
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Total April Blog Income
My blog monetization options are: membership/courses, affiliates, and ads.
Income
Membership/Courses – $70.82
Amazon Affiliate – $0
Mediavine – $0
Ads – $0
Expenses
Canva – $12.99 to create graphics
Mailchimp – free for my email list of less than 2K
Hosting – $11.99 with Siteground (use this link to pay $3.95)
Tailwind – $9.99 (paid for the year)
Profit – $60.83
April is officially my first month of “consistent” blogging! Social media is how I have built my personal brand thus far and is also where I have been selling my courses.
Only the revenue from my newest courses has been included because it aligns most with the revamp of my blog! I got sales purely from my existing audience who also read all of my blog posts (another reason why I’m including it in this report).
My goal is to get enough page views by the end of the year to sign up for Mediavine!
April Blog Traffic + Stats
Number of Blog Posts Sitewide: 79 (+2)
Pageviews: 428 (Up from 214 in March = 100% increase)
Pinterest Followers: 1314
Instagram Followers: 11197 (+)
Facebook Group Members: 984 – so close to 1K! (+59 –You can join the She’s a Creative group here!)
YouTube Subscribers: 570 (+37)
My page views increased by 100% this month and I couldn’t be more excited! Interestingly enough my page views goal for Q2 was 500 and I’m certain that with the growth I’m experiencing I will smash that goal in May which is great!
I’m sharing the basic stats of my social media profiles because I share my blog on all those platforms and in different ways, each platform is driving a little traffic to this blog.
What Worked this Month
So far, I feel like Pinterest is working! Pinterest is driving the most traffic to my website and I finally have a blog post that is ranking as my top view site instead of my Instagram links page!
This month’s page views is a big deal because I have never had this much traffic come to my website in one month (even when I was blogging consistently).
Another thing that really worked for me this month is niching down. I have clearly identified who my target audience is and what sort of content I need to be creating.
As of writing this I have niched down to wanting to help moms and service providers who want to build a personal brand to gain more clients and customers.
This means all my content will be either motherhood related (especially productivity as a mom) or business related content (how to build a brand, etc).
This clarity has helped me not waste as much time creating content and focus more on what actually matters.
Now to convert this to DOLLARS sis!
What Didn’t Work this Month
My schedule for blogging did not work this month! My goal was to bulk create blog posts so I could focus on creating pins in the beginning of May but that NEVER happened! I’m not sure how to create a schedule that is do-able now that I’m a mom.
Time has been my biggest struggle. I’m still trying to decide if I want to do 1 or 2 blog posts a week. I know if I can crank out more content that will give me a better chance to figure out what content resonates the best on the blog and how I can create more of it to grow this space.
Goals for May
- At least 4 blog posts (1/week)
- 645 page views (50% increase from April)
- Increase average session duration to 1 min (this will require longer, more in depth blog posts)
- Decrease bounce rate to 71% (currently at 73% but I really want to get it as low as possible)
Final Thoughts
I am seeing steady growth with the blog! Because this was my first month back and getting things kicked off, I feel like my numbers may be higher than normal.
I experienced an 100% increase in my page views this month but this is not guaranteed month over month (or maybe it is).
That’s it for this April’s blog income and traffic report! I’m excited to see what will happen in May!
