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Blog: www.momwifeandeverydaylife.com
Period: 1 full year
Experience: This is my first blog
Launched: January 10, 2021
Stats for Full Year of 2021
| Published Posts | 78 |
| Users | 4150 |
| Pageviews | 7647 |
| Pinterest Impression | 421.38 K |
| Income | $19.26 |
| Expenses |
Published Posts
| January | 15 |
| February | 8 |
| March | 7 |
| April | 6 |
| May | 6 |
| June | 6 |
| July | 6 |
| August | 6 |
| September | 6 |
| October | 6 |
| November | 3 |
| December | 3 |
| Total | 78 |
Before launching my blog I worked on creating a stockpile of content that I was able to publish in the early months while setting up my website. Those first few months the goals was to get content out there!
After that I had a fairly steady publishing schedule. I published 6 posts every month very consistently.
November and December I fell off the wagon due to family circumstances. If you want to hear more about that you can read my post The Significant Reason I Took a Short Break from Blogging.
Other than November and December I stayed consistent in following my publishing schedule. This is an example of how disciplined I was during this first year of blogging.
Users/New Users
| Users | New Users | |
| January | 12 | 12 |
| February | 30 | 26 |
| March | 268 | 265 |
| April | 203 | 198 |
| May | 287 | 283 |
| June | 319 | 312 |
| July | 350 | 345 |
| August | 413 | 408 |
| September | 442 | 437 |
| October | 535 | 532 |
| November | 629 | 621 |
| December | 662 | 656 |
| Total | 4150 | 4095 |
I love looking at this chart and seeing my blog’s growth this first year. If you removed April from the chart you would see growth every single month!
I don’t think April was a bad month, I just think March was so string it made April look bad.
My user growth after the first two months was crazy. This just shows you that while you are struggling through you never know what is right around the corner.
If you compare my number of users to my number of new users you will only see a difference of 55. This means during the entire first year only 55 users returned to my blog.
I need to retain more readers. My actionable step to achieve this is to spend time creating free email opt-ins to get reader’s emails so I can stay connected to them.
I am excited to look at this number after another year and see if my audience retention has inproved.
Pageviews
| January | 673* |
| February | 359 |
| March | 502 |
| April | 368 |
| May | 468 |
| June | 581 |
| July | 628 |
| August | 644 |
| September | 697 |
| October | 950 |
| November | 857 |
| December | 920 |
| Total | 7647 |
January * I did not have this many pageviews! If you look back up at my users you can see I only had 12 users in January. There is no way 12 users view 673 pages.
What happened here was I didn’t know how to remove myself from Google Analytics. While setting up my site and publishing the first few posts I was constantly getting on my website to view them and tweak the layouts. This was part of my learning process.
March and October were standout months as far as pageviews. Throughout the year I saw growth and continued to get excited with my progress.
My goal for next year is 30,000 pageviews total.
Pinterest Impressions
| January | 7.4 K |
| February | 4.2 K |
| March | 28.3 K |
| April | 38.4 K |
| May | 33.1 K |
| June | 38.6 K |
| July | 48.96 K |
| August | 45.79 K |
| September | 47.59 K |
| October | 42.34 K |
| November | 47.45 K |
| December | 39.28 K |
| Total | 421.41 K |
I started the year out excited about Pinterest and how many users it would drive to my website. Seeing the initial growth was motivating. However, if you know anything about Pinterest you know 2021 they kept changing things up.
Because of these constant changes I was hesitant to invest in a course. I have yet to do so in any area of the business.
Pinterest just seemed like a mess. I did my best to follow the standards of what people were saying was working.
My numbers are all over the place though. I felt very out of control regarding Pinterest. This is why I need to spend more time learning and focusing on organic traffic with SEO and would recommend this to new bloggers.
I am going to continue doing my best on Pinterest. It is responsible for most of my traffic at this point.
Another thing I would like to reflect on after a full year of blogging is how time consuming Pinterest is. I spend time getting images, creating pins, the publishing the pins with unique descriptions each time.
Pinterest is a time suck!
I plan to document the hours I spend blogging in January. I am specifically interested in the hours I spend on Pinterest related tasks versus others tasks in my blogging business.
I feel like if I were ever in a position to hire out a task it would be handling Pinterest or at least pin creation.
I feel that I have done my best over the year to speed up my Pinterest processes the best I can.
Income
| Affiliate | Ads | |
| January | ||
| February | $0.64 | |
| March | $0.07 | |
| April | $4.82 | |
| May | ||
| June | ||
| July | ||
| August | ||
| September | ||
| October | $1.25 | |
| November | $3.75 | |
| December | $4.41 | $4.32 |
| Total | $9.94 | $9.32 |
| Total Income $19.26 |
Instead of filling in every row that I didn’t earn money $0 I left the spaces blank. This way it is easier to see when I did make money.
I would like to note I have not see a penny of this money yet. I have not hit minimum thresholds to get paid out. I like to note when I earn money, rather than receive it.
My first form of monetization was affiliate links. I basically started with Amazon Affiliates as soon as possible. I was so excited with what I earned in April. I really thought this was the beginning and each month after the money would roll in and continue to grow.
That was not the case. After April I had 7 straight months of no affiliate income. This was quite a bummer. I was thankful to see affiliate income again in December. I hope as my pageviews grow my affiliate clicks will grow and turn into commissions.
My ads income was unexpected. When I first placed ads on my site I got overwhelmed. During set up I crashed my site for an entire weekend. Then once it was up and running there were too many ads. I thought I shut ads down!
Apparently I did not because after months of ignoring it I finally logged into my Ezoic account and found i was earning revenue from ads. Crazy.
I didn’t want ads on my site too early, but have come to the conclusion that seeing income every month, even if it is small, will be motivating.
Expenses
| Bluehost | Theme | |
| January | $190.80 | $49 |
| February | ||
| March | ||
| April | ||
| May | ||
| June | ||
| July | ||
| August | ||
| September | ||
| October | ||
| November | ||
| December | $67.99 | |
| Total | $258.79 | $49 |
| Total Expenses $307.79 |
I did my absolute best to keep my expenses down this first year of blogging. Hosting was necessary and may be higher than you expect because i did pay for two years initially. In December I paid to renew something with my domain. I think it was the privacy or security because I only had that for the first year.
I regret purchasing a theme. I initially bought it because I thought I needed to and wanted to do it from the beginning rather than wait and figure it out later.
I could not figure out anything with this theme. I ended up removing it and going with the free version of Astra.
I know it can be tempting to find a unique theme, but if you go with a popular one you can easily find tutorials on YouTube to help if needed.
I did not spend any money on plugins, software, schedulers, or courses.
I honestly think a course could have been a worthwhile investment. If you plan to do it I would when you are in your set up phase. Ideally a course to help you with the tech side of setup as well as the proper way to publish your first blog posts.
Quick Time Line
Started Pinterest 12/10/2020
Published First Post 1/5/2021
Launched Website 1/10/2021
Publishing First Pin 1/20/2021
Signed up for Amazon Affiliate Program 2/1/2021
Signed up for Ads 9/20/2021
Goals
I have an entire post dedicated to my goals for next year you can click to view that article.
Comprehensive Business Plan and Strategy to Grow My Blog During Year 2
I have goals related to income and traffic, but I also have goals to hopefully move my business forward. A huge push I plan to make is to create PDF freebies to gain subscribers.
This was the year of learning and content production. Next year I hope to see more progress as a money-making business. I want to launch products. I want to gain email subscribers. I want to retain readers and start developing an audience.
Strategy/Changes
A major change for next year is to slightly slow down on content production and focus on others aspects of the business.
I want to more closely motitor where I am spending my time. it is important that next year I do not get stuck in the same routine of write content, publish content, publish pins related to content and that’s it. I need to go beyond these routine steps to move my business forward.
I need to build my email list by offering freebies to gain subscribers. I need to talk to my email list and find out what they need from me. I need to push myself to launch products or services.
Unless your blog has crazy traffic, which mine does not, you cannot make it on affiliate income and ads alone. You need to provide your readers with a produce or service.
I need to push myself out of my comfort zone in order to get where I need to be.
Feelings
I am so proud of myself for making it through this first year of blogging!
It was an amazing year full of so much growth and learning. Are there things and areas I wish I could have done better, yes of course! Overall though I am happy. I saw progress this year in so many ways.
The number of skills I have acquired is crazy! I own multiple websites! I have content I produced on the internet. I learned how to publish pins on Pinterest. These are all things I didn’t know how to do a year ago!
Conclusion
Overall I am satisfied with my first year blogging. I do not think this is the route to take unless you are committed and have extreme patience. Instant results are not going to happen.
I am looking forward to my income and traffic reports for next year to see the progress I make.
Comment below if you found this year long income report to be helpful in any way!
Check Out My Articles
Steps to Take to Have a Successful First Month Blogging
January Income and Traffic Report 2021
My First 6 Months Blogging Income and Traffic Report