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Welcome to my first EVER blog income and traffic report. This income report is for my blog Mom Wife and Everyday Life.
www.momwifeandeverydaylife.com
I plan to present income reports my entire first year of blogging. Beyond that, I can’t make any promises.
Overview
Blog Name: momwifeandeverydaylife
Period: January 2021
Month: Month 1
Experience: This is my first blog
A Quick Breakdown of My First Month
- January 5th Purchased Domain and Hosting
- January 10th Went live with 5 posts
- January 20th Started pinning my own content
- January 31st 15 total posts published for the month
I am counting the full month of January as my first month even though I wasn’t live until the 10th. I would like for the months going forward to start on the first and end on the last day of the month.
Here we go. This report is my first ever income report for my first ever blog.
The Numbers
| Published Posts | 15 |
| Users | 12 |
| Pageviews | 673 |
| Email Subscribers | 0 |
| Pinterest Followers | 5 |
| Pinterest Impressions | 7.4 K |
| Income | $0 |
| Expenses | $239.80 |
If you have a desire to track your own blogging numbers click the form to become a subscriber and you will get a free PDF with templates you can use yourself. I have provided a couple of options as well as an example filled out for you.
Pageviews
I would like to say my stats could be off. I tried to delete myself from the data on Google Analytics, but am not sure if I did so correctly. So it is quite possible that most of those pageviews are from me.
Expenses
Hosting: $190.80
Blog Theme: $49
I regret purchasing the blog theme. I use the free version of Astra Theme instead.
I have decided to hold off on purchasing Tailwind. I will likely do so soon but am curious to see what progress I can make without it. I also learned that you can schedule your pins to go out on a future date for free with Pinterest. Everyone talks up Tailwind so much I hardly realized this was a thing!
If and when I purchase Tailwind it will be for the ability to schedule pinning others’ content and for the benefits of Tailwind Tribes.
Update:
If you are interesting in Pinterest and Tailwind check out two articles I have written with my experiences.
Why Do I Have to Reload Every Time I Manually Publish Pins?
Would I Recommend Tailwind for New Bloggers?
Goals
I decided not to waste my time trying to figure out what reasonable goals I should set for my first month blogging. Honestly at this point why bother? Either I achieve them or I don’t. I did however focus on task-based goals. These were things I could control.
Month 1 Goals:
- January 5th Purchase Domain Success
- January 10th Launch with 5 posts Success
- January 20th Start using Tailwind I have decided to wait on this
- January 31st Convertkit Setup, but struggling with using it
My Strategy
This is my thought process for starting a blog:
-Set up
-Organize
-Publish content
-Build the content structure- link posts together
-Get content seen (build traffic) (Create pins for Pinterest)
-Get pageviews-you can’t make any financial progress without people seeing what you put out there
This was where I started. I want to build the framework and the setup. I have so many more tasks to complete, such as becoming an Amazon affiliate and setting up links. This will be my first attempt at monetizing. I didn’t spend time working on affiliates this first month because honestly, I wasn’t likely to make anything with basically no traffic. I only started pinning on January 20th.
Do I regret not monetizing my blog from day 1? As of right now no. I had a lot of other tasks to complete this first month. Could I possibly have made a few bucks…maybe, but I doubt it with my traffic?
One step at a time is ok. Just master a step and complete it as quickly as possible so you can move on to the next step.
I feel very good about what I accomplished this first month. I am ready to tackle more and take on month 2.
Resources
These are the resources I am using currently:
- BlueHost-Paid
- Convertkit-Free Version
- Canva-Free Version
- Grammarly-Free Version
Preparation for Launch
I want to be clear real quick here about how I was able to publish 15 posts in a month while setting up a brand new blog and all the while being a first-time blogger.
I prepared for my launch.
My interest in blogging started 3 to 4 months before my launch. I spent those months researching and creating a stockpile of blog posts and pins on Canva. You can read my full article on How I Prepped for Launching my Blog.
This was the best decision I made when starting my blog. My stockpile of content allowed me to take a break from writing and focus on learning how to build my blog. I did not write any posts during January. I simply edited them and formatted them in WordPress to get them published.
How I Feel about Income Reports
Income reports have inspired me, but I always wanted to see the real stuff. I don’t want to see “I made $8000 in one month” Well that was what month for you? Your 36th month? Oh, ok, cool. That doesn’t help me.
The first year or two is what matters.
I want this to be clear and easy to read. I’m not going to make it a long story of how I’m not bragging and how these income reports inspired me. But just to clarify I am never bragging about my income and yes I enjoyed looking at income reports. Also, I currently have no income to share so bragging is completely off the table.
I also despise income reports that ramble on and on. I don’t care if my income reports are 400 words or 1200 words. I do not want to waste your time with fluff. I also hate when these reports say the same thing throughout the entire post and all the writer does is change the numbers.
I was these reports to be a resource for guidance.
Screenshots
I am including some screenshots to show you some of my numbers from January.
This shot provides a quick look at my first month blogging. I had 12 users. This may seem terrible, but you have to start somewhere. The pageviews being 673 is completely ridiculous. During the month I removed myself from being tracked in my analytics. Not sure if it worked, but this is way too high of a number.
Here you can see my Pinterest Analytics.
My impressions dropped throughout the month.
I think this is because when I first started my account I was pinning strong content from other creators. On January 20th I started pinning my own content.
I tried to balance publishing posts, pinning others’ content, and pinning my own content. It was difficult and I was just figuring things out. I think the biggest reason for the decrease in impression was the lack of pinning strong content. This dip though is necessary because I want to promote my content.
Hopefully my numbers will build back up over time.
My Pinterest saves were 8 for the month.
Here is a quick snapshot of my Pinterest account. My impressions rounded out to 7K, here is says I had 6 saves, 70 outbound clicks, and I have 5 followers. I am not sure why there is a discrepancy in the number of saves I have for the month. I guess it was somewhere between 6 and 8 saves.
These are my top pins for the month. The first pin is actually a cover board. This cover is for my board about baby food. I am not sure if it was correct to make my board a pin. It is also pretty sad that my best performing pin does not lead to an article. My next three pins you can see and how they performed.
I was proud of the fact I was even able to figure out how to create, link, and publish pins.
Conclusion
I am happy with this first month. I didn’t really have expectations because I didn’t know what I should be aiming for. This first month was just about learning and implementing what I learned. I am going to constantly be working to make improvements along the way.
Check Out My Articles
February Income Report Mom Wife and Everyday Life