My Third Month of Blogging: Blog Stats and Income Report

This is my blog income report for June 2017, my third month of blogging. This report shows my blog stats, blog income, and expenses, how I made my income, what I learned, and my goals for July.

I went into blogging being acutely aware that it could take a very long time before I made a penny back for my time and expenses. I blog because I love to help people and I have a further reach by having a blog. Monetizing my blog is a goal of mine so I can keep doing what I love and have my blog expenses covered and eventually help out with my family’s expenses. I was a little worried my blog income reports would say $0 for a long time making my reports uneventful.

My Reasons for Writing My Blog Income Reports

My original reason for posting my blog income reports was because I was encouraged to start a blog by reading blog income reports. I made a decision to start my blog income reports from the very beginning. I wanted to pay it forward and help others who are thinking of starting a blog. Blog income reports provide me so much value and inspiration.

Now, I read a lot more blog income reports and they can be so helpful for bloggers to read. I find them so helpful that I have a Pinterest board called Blog Income Reports and find that others like to follow that board too! If you write your blog income reports, let me know, and I’ll add yours to the board! Blog income reports help bloggers to see other blogs income and expenses, strategies and goals that other bloggers have, and what tools bloggers like to use and find helpful.

My final reason to post my blog income report is to keep myself accountable. I was a nurse for a long time and still like to chart meticulously. I want my income reports to be an accurate picture of “health” for my blog, good or bad. This will allow me to see more clearly where my blog needs to improve.

My hope is that my blog income report is not a cause for comparison, but to be able to get at least one takeaway that can benefit every blogger reading this.

How I Got Started with Monetizing My Blog

I took a course for new bloggers called Building a Framework. During the course, I learned the basics of how to make income from blogging. I decided to start monetizing my blog through affiliate marketing. My first affiliate was Amazon because they are a good fit for any niche. Then, I began to search for affiliate programs for companies that I know and love.

Soon after launching my blog I took a popular course called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing because other bloggers so highly recommended it and I knew there was so much I needed to learn to be able to monetize my blog successfully. This course was a game changer for me! I applied the lessons as I went through the course and started to see my affiliate sales come in! I highly recommend this course to everyone that wants to monetize their blog.

My Blog Stats and Income Report for my Third Month of Blogging

Pageviews: 3,014

My pageviews have been growing around a thousand a month since I launched my blog. I heard blog traffic dips over the summer so I wasn’t expecting so many visitors.

Subscribers: 70 Confirmed with an additional 17 Unconfirmed Subscribers

My Resource Library was up for its first whole month and am happy that people are finding value in my library of free printables. I have unconfirmed subscribers because I choose to do a double opt-in for subscribers instead of a single opt-in. It appears that some people subscribe and forget to open the follow-up email to confirm subscription. I have shared many conversations with other bloggers that find it hard to see the unconfirmed subscribers because we can’t do anything about it. The staff from ConvertKit ensure that the double opt-in helps with a more engaged community and higher email open rate, and overall, is best practice for bloggers.

Social Media Stats: Pinterest– 273, Facebook– 123, Twitter– 123, Instagram– 337

My social media stats rose a little across the board, except my Pinterest more than doubled. I will share why in the what I learned section later on in this post.

Total Blog Income Earned for June 2017: $141.88

My income was diversified this month with affiliate sales, ads, and a sponsor. This was my first full month of using ads and I’m so used to them now that I hardly notice them compared to when I first added them to my blog.

Affiliate sales:

ConvertKit: $17.40

Blog Finance Spreadsheets: $9.60

OptinMonster: $62.64

Instamazing Growth: $20.00

Ads:

Google AdSense: $7.24

Sponsored post:

Grammarly: $25.00

My Expenses

ConvertKit: $29.00

Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: The Master Course: $99.00

Pinterest Unpuzzled: $25.00

Instamazing Growth: $77.60 (I plan to take this course in August. It’s a new course for Instagram and sounds amazing. Click the link to learn more.)

Pinning Perfect: $119.20

My total blog expenses in June were $349.80.

Blogging Goals

Review of June’s Goals and What I Learned

1. Finish Unit 2 and complete Unit 3 in Elite Blog Academy.
2. Go to the Craft + Commerce Conference and network with other bloggers at the event.
3. Start and complete Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: Master Course.

I completed all of my goals for June and more. I’m a firm believer that a successful blog involves getting educated on how to blog from bloggers that you admire and networking with other bloggers on a daily basis. In addition to my June goals, I did several things this month that helped my blog. I listed what I did below.

Canva

I branded my social media images and to do that I wanted to learn how to use Canva so I could use it to its full potential. Canva has a free course I took called Canva Design School.

Moz Academy

I found Moz Academy because Eden Fried told me about the MozBar, a free SEO toolbar. I wanted to learn more about SEO so I also took their free course, Moz Academy.

ConvertKit

I went to ConvertKit’s 1st Craft+Commerce Conference in Boise, Idaho. The speakers were fantastic and the ConvertKit team held an amazing event. I am so ecstatic that I was able to go and have gained so much appreciation for  ConvertKit’s staff and email marketing platform! Click here to hear the latest product announcements from the founder, Nathan Berry.

CoSchedule

As a subscriber and customer of CoSchedule, I get the scoop on CoSchedule’s products and free courses. I took a free course they were offering for a limited time called Social Media Strategy. It was such a great course and said to be valued at $5,000! To be notified of future free courses, I would recommend subscribing to CoSchedule.

Pinterest Unpuzzled

Since I have so much to learn about blogging, I have been investing in some courses, but I usually buy them when they are on sale. I bought this course in the beginning of June before a price increase and completed half of it so far as of the time of this writing. This course was a contributing factor to my Pinterest follower count more than doubling and my average monthly viewers going from 16,513 as of June 1st, 2017 and increasing to 58,970 as of June 30, 2017!

As a side note, the course creator’s Facebook group, Blogger Insights, has quickly reached over 10,000 members! This is one of my favorite Facebook groups for bloggers because it is an active community and so much support is given to bloggers. Eden Fried, the creator of Pinterest Unpuzzled, is quickly becoming a leader in the blogging industry and I consider her to be one of my blogging mentors!)

Elite Blog Academy

I didn’t plan on starting Unit 4 of EBA in June but started for practical reasons. There was a section on guest posting guidelines and I wanted to go over that since I was submitting my first guest post. There was also a section on networking and crafting an elevator pitch which I completed in preparation for the blog conference I went to and found it so helpful.

Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: Master Course

I took this course about affiliate marketing even though I am a raving fan of another affiliate marketing course because I heard so many positive reviews about this one as well. I think the two affiliate marketing courses are very different and both are worth taking if you want to know a lot about affiliate marketing to monetize your blog. I found this course helpful because I learned a lot about using Amazon links and an in-depth training on how to use disclosures for affiliate links. Tasha, the course creator, was a lawyer so she covered the legal aspect of affiliate marketing very well! Tasha is in the DIY and craft niche so anyone in that niche should definitely take this course since she provides so many examples from her blog.

The Master Course includes the eBook and online course which opens for enrollment a few times a year. The eBook has so much value for the price and is available for purchase year round.

My goals for July

1. Finish Unit 4 in Elite Blog Academy.
2. Focus on growing my Pinterest and have a firm understanding by taking two Pinterest courses; finish the last half of Pinterest Unpuzzled and complete Pinning Perfect.
3. Purchase a Tailwind subscription to schedule my pins on Pinterest. I have been manually pinning for most of June because my Tailwind free trial came to an end and I was waiting as long as possible to pay for a yearly subscription.

I hope you found inspiration or helpful tips from reading my third blog stats and income report. There are many resources in this post for bloggers. Feel free to Share or Pin this post to save as a resource and to help other bloggers that find it.

Related post: How I Successfully Launched My Blog in 30 Days

My First Blog Income Report: April 2017 (and How I Made an Affiliate Sale in My First Month of Blogging)
My Second Blog Stats and Income Report: May 2017 (and How My Income Grew More Than 1,000% in My Second Month of Blogging)