Blog Traffic and Income Report : How I made $2,856.70 in May

I am so excited to be completing my FIFTH income report of 2016 & 17th blog traffic and income report of all time!

I am still in disbelief that I am now in my 2nd year of treating my blog like a biz. I started my blog in April of 2012 but just messed around with it for the first 2 years while I was soaking up as much info as I could about the art of blogging, marketing, & other biz strategies.

If you haven’t seen my last monthly income of 2015, you can check it out Blog Traffic and Income Report : How I made $2,645.54 in April. 

I am so happy with how this accountability study and goal mastery went this year. I have decided to keep it going for the year 2016. I really admire those that are making an income online and disclosing how they are doing it.

When I am writing my blogging articles, I am constantly saying to myself… what would I have wished I had found when I was learning who to blog? This is the basis and mindset of ever blogging or business post I write. I want this to help you succeed!

I invested in Ruth Soukup’s Elite Blogging Academy 2.0 with my friend Flavia from Neat House Sweet Home.

I believe there is always room for improvement and since I started my blog as more of a hobby…I wanted to relay a more solid foundation and clean up my site a bit more. My goal is to make a really exciting experience on my site. It is constantly a work in progress.

Accountability is key with this.

It isn’t hard, but it is about focusing your attention. It is also about creating new daily habits to make sure you are using your time wisely to take care of your tasks while soaking up blogging 101.

This post contains affiliate links  at no additional cost to you. It helps to keep this blog up and running. I appreciate your support.

Check out all my Blog Traffic and Income Reports page!

Way back in December of 2014, I took some advice from Bonnie at Hobbytohot.com who said to create your annual goal $$. She says to then work backward to help figure out your monthly goals to achieve your large goal for the year.

Since my large goal was $15,000 for the year, I was able to work in the order she suggested to help create smaller manageable goals every month.

I began to hear this reverse engineer method over and over in podcasts that I enjoy listening to. So I began to pay attention.

A couple of the podcasts that I love and subscribe to are:

1. Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield
2. Build Your Tribe with Chalene Johnson
3. Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn
4. The Gary Vee Show

By reverse engineering your goals you make them more plausible. In fact, when you write your goals down on paper you are 42% more likely to accomplish them.  I heard that statistic on The School Of Self Mastery Podcast with Adrienne Dorison. 

I began by breaking my income goals into months, but you can take it a step further and break it down to weeks or even by day. That is if you want to get really specific.

Months works best for me with what I am doing.  

I am excited to say that the info I have been presenting this year has been inspiring others to start a blog or take their blog to the next level which is the best feeling in the world for me!!!!!

My main goal when starting these income reports was to show others (in a very specific way) how they can make money online. Especially those that are just starting out and trying to figure the whole blogging thing out. I remember how intimidating and confusing it was when I first started.

The process of really tracking my earnings along with my blogging expenses has been so helpful. It is quite eye opening to the amount of change that can occur within a month!

After switching to Blue Host as my web host at the end of April 2015, I am happy to report that my site has not crashed once!

I signed up for a 3-year deal where I pay $5.95 a month. Awesome hosting without killing my blog expense budget. This was not the case when I was hosting with Go Daddy after I started getting more traffic. Also, did I mention that a lot of my photos from my transfer in hosting didn’t make it?? So now I am manually replacing photos on posts and galleries which can be super tedious work. This is still something I am working on. No fun!

If you want to learn more about the art of blogging (because it is an art form) you should check out my Essential Bloggers Resource Guide to get more details if you are thinking of starting a blog to even just improving the one you already have.

I am really trying to put myself out there to (hopefully) inspire newer bloggers with my current and future monthly blog income reports. I am also doing this to hold myself accountable to continue pushing forward with my income goals for the year. 

I have also launched my blog & social media consulting services!!

This  Google Hangout session will include a timed session + a pdf print out documenting what was discussed during the session. Stay tuned for an entire page dedicated to this service with testimonials, and check out directly from the site.

WORK WITH ME

I have some projects in the works including an ebook about blogging this year!! This is my first time ever writing a larger ebook and I am really enjoying but getting a little delayed by other priorities! I can not wait to launch it. It really will be an exciting launch!  If you are one of my subscribers you will get an opportunity to get the book for free. Make sure to sign up for that at the end of this post!

Moving on to the details from May…

This year I am really  trying to focus on creating more beautiful brand cohesive images… specifically pin-worthy images.

I pretty much only work with Canva.com  and Photoshop to do this. I have had a couple posts go viral on Pinterest in the past because of my images I have created on Canva.

I now pay $9.95 a month for Canva For Work which is a new service they provide. This works great within a team.

I began implementing a few new things this month in social media specifically.

I must preface, that I didn’t start really investing in my blog until April 2015 when I started making over $1000/month. Now that I am making a decent side income each month, I don’t see any harm in freeing up my time to finish my ebook and work on more DIY projects.

• I’ve been using the social media automation tool Meet Edgar for over a year now and I swear this was such a great move!  I am saving so much more time every day by not having to be on my phone scheduling posts on FB, Twitter, and Linkedin. It is a little bit of a splurge costing me $49/month. But this is a solid investment because it frees up my time to other things.
• Another tool I began using is Tailwind. I heard about it from the fabulous Blogger, Erika, over at Olyvia.co. Since working with Tailwind and joining more group boards within my niche, I have increased my traffic substantially. 

I didn’t realize how much I could still learn from Pinterest when I felt like I had a really good handle on it with my following when it was at 5,600k. I thought I had a lot of traffic coming to my site daily. But this article taught me so much and showed me Tailwind.

This automation tool is geared specifically towards Pinterest and Instagram.  Now I have over 18k followers and I am gaining hundreds daily.

That was pretty exciting. I attribute a lot of my success to Tailwind. Since 45% of my traffic comes from Pinterest, it was so it was worth the investment. I can schedule an unlimited amount of pins for weeks ahead of time with their easy interface. I love setting it and forgetting it! Getting back to life to be present in the moment.

Best. Thing. Ever.

** You can try Tailwind for free and schedule up to 100 pins before they ask you to pay $15/mth for 400 pins a month. Or you can pay $119 for the year for unlimited pins.

Since this platform is my largest traffic referrer, it was worth the investment and I paid for the annual membership.

Another update!

Big news… I have officially changed Ad network providers.

I am happy to announce that AdThrive has been my ad network now more over a month. I am very happy with them and the income I am now making! I am happy to report that not only has my daily increased by over 7% of what it was on The Blogger Network. I did enjoy my time with TBN however, some of their ads were slow to load and also distracting. I am happy that my site looks less cluttered and my income is growing + the techs with AdThrive are super helpful and they respond very quickly to any issues I may be having.

I will say it was hard to leave The Blogger Network because I was doing well with them too. However, the ads they placed on my site that converted really well were the most annoying to deal with on my site. 

Both TBN and AdThrive are ad management companies built by bloggers. They help bloggers make more money with their own ad placement techniques. These ads will be implemented for you!!! Say wha? Yep. I don’t ever have to worry about placing or managing ads on my site again! IT’S AMAZING!!!

Here are the traffic analytics stats from April…

Here are the traffic analytics stats from May…

Here is the breakdown of how I did…

I hope some of you found this traffic and income report helpful! I do these monthly to help track my progress.