Blog Income Report: How I Earned $1,651 in My First Four Months Blogging

Based on Quarterly Blog Income Report: Q1 2020

Wow, can you believe how much I have earned in only my first four months blogging? When I totaled the numbers in my quarterly blog income report, I was in complete awe and shock! I am honestly so proud to have been able to make money blogging.

So how did I do it? I asked myself the same question. So I went back to review my analytics to help me gain some insight. And to my pleasant surprise, I was happy to see that many of what I had learned and implemented, was working.

But of course, nothing is perfect so there are a few good takeaways I found to help me improve for the next quarter. I’ll be sharing both the good and the bad, with hopes to help you improve your blog as well!

If you haven’t visited my blog income report yet, click here to see the full report breakdown.

Disclaimer: Please note this post may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a commission if clicked at no extra cost to you. Though the opinions remain my own

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So from the chart below, we can assume my actual blog page views was about 10-15% less, which I am still extremely happy about! And keep in mind that I only launched in mid-November 2019 and then took the month after to learn and gain strategy insight that was later implemented.

But don’t worry, in a bit I will cover what helped and what didn’t help me achieve the results that I did this past quarter in my blog income report.

Traffic Referrals

It’s no surprise that the majority of my traffic came from social media (roughly 82%).

However, I was surprised to see that my Pinterest referrals had increased compared to where I started at the beginning of the quarter.

• Pinterest: 55%
• Facebook: 44%
• Other: 6%

Pinterest actually ended up being the lead referral to my blog! 🎉 This was a HUGE win as I have been working extremely hard to keep up with the new Pinterest algorithm.

Top 5 Posts:

To be honest, I had no idea how many blog posts I had published this quarter until I checked just now. 😅 And whoa, I was busy! I published a total of 22 blogs this past quarter!

These were my Top 5 blog posts for the quarter:

• Working From Home Pros, Cons & Tips
• How To Work From Home With Kids
• Bride-Not-To-Be Thanks to the Coronavirus
• All About Bloggers Sharing Threads
• Easter Basket Stuffers & Gift Ideas

And I gotta say, when I saw these top posts, I had to do a double take. Why? Well, because March was the month that I published the least number of posts. However, the posts I created this past month really took off with 4/5 making it to the Top 5 for the entire quarter!

So let’s see how and why this happened, along with the deep diving to see what helped me achieve great results and what held me back from achieving more.

If you haven’t visited my blog income report yet, click here to see the full report breakdown.

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What Worked & What Didn’t?

Wow! After reviewing all this data and my blog income report, of course I’m going to look back to see what worked and what didn’t work. And I’m sure that’s why you’re also still reading right? 😅

Don’t worry, I am glad to help in any way I possibly can. Even if that means becoming an open book and sharing with you my blog financials, wins and losses.

Here is my list of top 5 things that helped me achieve great results and the 5 improvements or changes I will be making this quarter.

What Worked?

By far, the biggest contributor was Pinterest combined with Tailwind.

You’ll see in the charts below that there is an increasing trend in all my Pinterest analytics. And if you recall, Pinterest changed their algorithm late February making us all revamp and update our pinning strategy.

Well, I think I adapted fairly quickly and even saw my first viral pin in March! This was a HUGE win for me and I was on cloud 9 for dayss after this!

So in summary, my pinning strategy is to manually upload 3-5 fresh pins daily while using Tailwind to pin 20 times per day. These extra pins consist of roughly 80% my pins and 20% others. I also made sure to share my best pins to Tailwind Tribes to maximize my potential views.

And if you use my link here, you can test out Tailwind for free for 30-days!

Adapting to the current worldwide situation.

In the blogging world, you HAVE to cater to what people’s needs are at THAT time. It might mean you have to adjust your current content to match what people are currently looking for. Well, this is exactly what I did in March.

And as you see, my top 3 blog posts were exactly the ones that I quickly published once COVID-19 hit because this was the new increasing trend.

Two posts, “Working From Home Pros, Cons & Tips” and” How To Work From Home With Kids” were catered to the working individual who was recently sent to work away from the office. These two posts did amazinggg and were my focus posts for the majority of the month. That means I created multiple fresh pins for each post per day.

In addition, I was also unfortunate to have been a bride impacted by Coronavirus. My wedding was supposed to take place on March 28, but instead was pushed back to November. 😢 “Bride-Not-To-Be Thanks to the Coronavirus” was more of a journal entry for me but decided to add it to a few bride groups I was a part of to hopefully help the many other brides experiencing the same thing. However, I honestly did not expect it to do as well as it did but am so glad that the brides found it comforting.

Participating in bloggers sharing threads.

I participate in these every single day, but mostly on weekdays. It really helps me connect with other bloggers, and provides additional visibility as other blogger’s are sharing my content with their followers.

I have listed all the tips I use when participating in bloggers sharing threads here. In addition, because I love the blog community and have found these Facebook Groups for Bloggers extremely beneficial, I have decided to start my own group.

My group is a self-promo blog community focused on helping each other grow to monetize your blogs! I also have daily sharing threads with extremely engaging members so request to join below to boost your blog growth as well!

Related Post: Learn How To Boost Your Engagement with Sharing Threads for Bloggers

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Enrolling into blog courses.

I’ve gotta say… all the investments into blog courses has really paid off! I have learned so much in a short period of time. Had I not enrolled into blog courses, it would have taken me years to learn and master.

I’ve taken quite a few variety of courses, and don’t think I am done yet! If you’ve been blogging for a while, you know that there is always something you can learn to become a better blogger. However, I will be slowing down on the amount of courses I enroll into so I can track the improvement each is providing.

The blog courses I’ve taken vary from crash courses to starting my blog, detailed blog courses on growing and monetizing my blog, Pinterest specific courses and travel courses. I am currently working my way through some SEO courses as well, but have not completed these yet.

I hands down give props to all the courses I have taken as I can clearly see the benefit they have provided for me in such a short amount of time. You can take a look at the blog courses I have taken here.

Related Post: The Only Free Blogging Courses You’ll Need

Stayed consistent with sending email pitches for sponsorship.

With the exception of March, I remained consistent on sending multiple sponsored email pitches to various companies. Of course not all responded and some kindly declined.

How did I even find their contact information in the first place? Well, at first, it took me a while to figure it out. I would go through several follow-up emails and get pushed around to several people before finding the correct person. However, I later learned the two best ways to get in contact with the correct person.

1. Follow and send the company a message via Facebook requesting the proper contact
2. If you are a part of the company’s affiliate program, reach out to the contact person listed

But surprisingly, there were a few that FOUND ME and EMAILED ME to see if I was interested in partnering with THEM. 🎉

These were the coolest ones because when they approached me, my following base was much lower than it is now. However, they visited my site and loved my layout and content – hence, the quality! Exactly my reason for saying not to let low followers prevent you from chasing the money.

If you haven’t visited my blog income report yet, click here to see the full report breakdown.

Related Post: 7 Ways to Make Money Blogging in 2020

Reconsider investing in Pinterest ads.

One of my early mistakes was to think that ads would help me reach a ton of link clicks. BIG MISTAKE! But the mistake wasn’t the fact that I used Pinterest ads, it was the fact that I tried using Pinterest ads before learning about Pinterest SEO.

Yeah, the ads weren’t completely worthless but I could have spent this money more wisely (or not at all). Ever since I implemented these Pinterest courses, my impressions and link clicks have performed way better than all my Pinterest ads combined.

So my biggest takeaway here is that I will continue focusing on improving my Pinterest SEO and keeping up with their algorithm.

Define a plan to post on Facebook more consistently.

Since I’ve been focused on Instagram, I randomly post on Facebook and have absolutely no strategy defined just yet. Some weeks I post more than others and the content I post varies from the multiple niches.

Although I was able to increase my Facebook followers, I believe the majority of my followers are other bloggers with similar niches. In a way, this is a good things as they understand my randomness. 😅 However, I don’t want to confuse my non-blog followers and later have them unfollow.

For this reason, I will need to define an actual posting strategy, even if it’s a super simple and basic one.

Alter my affiliate marketing strategy to gain additional sales.

While I did gain some affiliate marketing sales, I wish I could have done wayy better. I mean, I have affiliate links all throughout my blog, and that may very well be the issue. Maybe I need to condense and focus on a handful of affiliates.

In addition, we also have the current market situation that occurred due to COVID-19 which may be preventing people from spending money right now. However, I thought online sales would actually increase due to being stuck indoors. This may or may not be the case but is something I need to look into.

Additionally, I should probably go back and update some of my blog posts that provide affiliate reviews. I’m sure I have become a better write since then. 🤣 Once I update and revamp the post, I should probably begin re-promoting these as if they were brand new content.

Regardless, I need to redefine and alter my affiliate marketing approach if I want to gain additional sales. And that’s why, I have enrolled into this amazing course to learn everything I need to help me have a successful quarter!

Related Post: EBMS Bundle: Create a Unique Blogging Schedule to Blog Smarter

Re-evaluate if ads are worth keeping.

To be honest, I already know my answer to this – No. At least not Google Ads. This was one of the first monetizing components I added to my blog and has earned me less than $5.

I know part of the reason is that I don’t place ads on every single one of my blog posts. Can you blame me? It just doesn’t fit into them all and don’t like to takeaway from the reader experience, especially if my earnings is extremely tiny. Plus the payout minimum is $100. At this rate, it would take me 17 years to get my first $100. 😂

So for now, I will be removing all the Google Ads I have in all my posts. I have also heard about Mediavine, which is another ad company except they provide a much higher commission. The downside is that they do not accept blogs with less than 10K monthly views.

I’ll be reviewing to see if there are others out there that are worth it with lower blog views. But until then, I will focus on monetizing in other ways and on increasing my blog traffic so that better ad opportunities can present themselves.

Update my email marketing strategy to gain increase email link clicks.

Over the last few months, I have grown my email subscribers from 4 to 74, yay! Well, semi-yay. Most of them don’t even open my emails!

Only recently, I figured out a potential reason why this is. For starters, my email goes into the “promotion” inbox and not the “primary” inbox. When I realized this, I was so sad because there is literally nothing I can do to change this. If you know of a way, please share it with me!

However, I figured out a possible way to mitigate this as much as possible. When going through my email marketing, I noticed that I had missed to create an automation for my pop-up box, which is also where I gain the most subscribers. So when users were subscribing through this method, they were not getting any sort of welcome email – BUMMER!

Additionally, on my “success” page after one subscribes, I do not mention anything about checking for my emails in their promotion or spam inbox. What a shame on me!

I only found all this out about a week ago so will be working on making these adjustments for future subscribers. However, I still have to try to find a way to get my current subscribers to open my emails! Wish me luck haha!

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Q2 2020 Goals

Whoa, that’s a lot of work! I’m exhausted just thinking about everything I have planned out for myself this quarter. However, I am just one person so I will need to prioritize and instead jot down my next quarter goals. And don’t worry, I’ll share my next quarter blog income report as well!

So what are my primary goals for this quarter?

– Launch my Facebook Group for Bloggers. I have been working on putting this group together for some time now. I am almost done and hope to have it launched before the end of the month. Sign up below to be notified when this group goes live!

– Finalize my free E-Book. This goes hand in hand with my Facebook Group and is one of the things that has been holding me back from launching. I know it doesn’t have to but I really want this to be available to my group members when they join. It’ll also be available to my email subscribers.

– Create a Resource Library for email subscribers. Yes, I am focusing a lot of my email marketing strategies this upcoming quarter as I want to make my readers truly feel like I am a valuable resource to them. So for this reason, I want to create more free lead magnets and add them to a Resource Library that they can access with a password.

– My blog traffic goal is to increase by 1,500 views per month. This means, that I should have had 8,500 blog views in the month of June, or a total of 18,000 blog views for the quarter!

– Post at least 2 quality blog posts per week. This means that by the end of the quarter, I should have at minimum, 26 additional blog posts. Of course, quality of quantity as I do not post fluff posts, just to make it seem like I have more content.

Related Post: Writing an eBook Simplified With This Bootcamp

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And remember, there is always something to be happy for… Cheers to blogging! What are you cheering to today?

Lucy