Alas, my first month of blogging has come to an end…
Sorry to break it to you guys, but I wasn’t able to meet my $10k per month goal, or at least not just yet.
Okay, I’m kidding. Making $10k a month in blogging income was never my original goal. Honestly, it’s pretty unrealistic for new bloggers to reach that figure within 30 days of blogging.
But who knows? It could definitely happen, I’m just not an exception to that rule. Listen, I have a handful of email subscribers, a handful of products to sale and just as many viewers.
There’s no way I could possibly make anything close to that in blogging income for month one.
In July, my goal was to focus primarily on creating content with a little bit of promotion on Pinterest here and there.
I managed to grow my Pinterest profile to roughly 130k views per month and 1.5k followers. Not too shabby after hopping back into the game.
The bulk of my viewers, however, came from participating in Facebook groups and I’d like to change that.
I recently scaled back on participating in Facebook groups, because they aren’t necessarily the target audience I’m looking for and I’d prefer to grow my blog organically.
Moving forward, it’ll just be little ole me, Pinterest, and Google SEO.
With that said, I was able to write 10 blog posts, 500 – 2k words each, each of them were in my three main categories. That’s one of the goals I did meet.
During my first month of blogging, I spent the majority of my time learning about the basics of blogging as a student in Suzi Whitford’s Blog By Number course.
It’s the perfect course for beginners like me who didn’t have a clue where to start. I’ve detailed my first blogging nightmare and best blogging tips for beginners here!
Suzi takes you by the hand to set your blog up for success. All the basics you need from WordPress plug-ins, how to properly install Google Analytics to creating a beautiful website theme your audience will love.
The Blog by Number course content is easy to digest and not overwhelming. I also appreciate the small steps she takes to teach simple SEO, how to create clickable pins for Pinterest, and different ways to promote blog content.
My blogging budget is fairly small right now and Suzi Whitford’s info packed course was well worth the affordable price. If you’re thinking about starting a blog, I will never steer you in the wrong direction.
Blog Monetization
As promised, this is a blog income report, so let’s talk money goals!
I plan to monetize this blog primarily by way of digital products and ads once my blog viewership significantly increases. I’ll be working on this consistently for the rest of 2020.
While I’m not the biggest fan of affiliate marketing, I’ve joined quite a few programs since starting this blog from scratch.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve earned exactly zero dollars and no change (cha-ching!) from the affiliate programs so far. But I’m still optimistic, all I need is traffic, traffic, and more traffic.
Okay, now that I’ve touched on that update let’s take a step back.
My previous website only received $20.00 in affiliate income and I struggled with keeping track of programs as the payouts changed or they became inactive.
Because of this, I quickly dismissed affiliate marketing as not being worth the headache or time, not taking into consideration that I was blogging wrong and marketing my affiliate links ineffectively.
I blogged for three months then jumped ship. If only you could see me shaking my head right now, don’t let this be you. I’m serious about making my blog business work and am full prepared for the long journey.
Hopefully, this time my affiliate marketing strategy will work. My blog income report may look a little different next month, we shall see.
Email Marketing
Over the next few months, I’d like to grow my email list substantially by offering various opt-in freebies to visitors and will begin sending out weekly newsletters.
I’ll also be adding opt-in freebies to older content.
A larger email list equals a larger audience, more affiliate income and product sales, so fingers crossed. Check back in at the end of August with the blog income report number two.
Thanks for following my blog business journey with me!
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