Blogging Update: 4 Month + Income Report

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Well hello! It’s been awhile since I did a blogging update. Summer has been busy, busy, busy! I feel like I cannot get organized and figure out a schedule that allows me to accomplish everything that is swirling around in my brain!

Blogging Update 

So, blogging is going REALLY WELL! We are thrilled with our progress and while we are going to be learning the ropes for many months to come, we are happy to report that blogging is going better than we thought it would. For anyone who is new, we launched our blog on April 1st, 2018.

Ad Provider.

I think the most exciting update is that we have qualified for Mediavine. I was indifferent to our ad provider because I assumed they were all one in the same. I was more looking at qualifying for Mediavine as a benchmark, rather than a source of better income. WOW. Was I wrong! To qualify for Mediavine you have to have 25,000 unique sessions (not page views) to your site in a 30 day period. We qualified in June and started running Mediavine ads on June 27th. 

Let me back up a minute to our original ad provider, Google. We used Google Ad Sense for about 6 weeks and made $89.19. Not bad at all for a blog that was, at the time, about a month old.

Back to Mediavine. We have been with Mediavine for a complete month now and made $443.79 in July! That’s like 100% higher than Ad Sense. (Actually, I think it is more, but math….) I am super excited by this and cannot wait to see what August brings! 

Page Views.

Our page views are doing great- we are at about 53,000 for the month of July! I am delighted with this because I was expecting it to take months for us to get to this point. We have pretty much doubled our page views each month, which cannot last forever, but if it continues for the next couple months that would be fantastic! Fingers crossed, it seems like an impossibility.

Pinterest.

Pinterest is a fickle friend. In June, our monthly reach was 5.6million. In July, it dropped to 4.1million. Big difference! Everyone in blogland says summer is slowwwww and to expect a drop in everything, including monthly viewers. It makes sense – I know I haven’t been on Pinterest nearly as much as usual this summer – but it is still hard to see your numbers drop! We seem to have leveled off at 4.1M. Hopefully this will pick up with Back To School pinning. Our followers are up to 2,455+ (<– click to follow us!) and growing steadily by the day. (Which is good, because the monthly viewer number is dropping by the day. Oh well- not much we can do until the slump is over and holiday pinning begins!)

Last week I woke up one morning to being on Pinterest’s spam list and nearly had a panic attack. I managed to get myself together and convince myself that there was NO WAY I was spamming anything, maybe someone accidentally reported a pin as spam, whatever. After several hours I started looking in the Facebook groups I’ve joined and it turns out TONS of bloggers woke up to a mess, so it wasn’t just me, and it was a glitch. Nevertheless, I contacted Pinterest and Tailwind early in the day, and Mediavine in the late afternoon. Mediavine was ON IT- excellent customer service- and sent me a form to complete and return to them. I completed the form, sent it back and was back in business within 2 hours. Coincidence? Maybe. But I’m crediting Mediavine with the spam lift because others were unblocked much earlier than I was!

While this issue was resolved in about 18 hours, it really drove home the fact that Pinterest can be gone in a flash, overnight, with no warning. The only solution is to build up your social media followers on all platforms and to build your email list. This is something I definitely need to work on because I am about 90% focused on Pinterest. 

Viral Pins.

We have a pin that continues to generate a lot of traffic! Meal Prep Like a Pro with These 10 Yummy Recipes has been shared over 50,000 times on social media! I learned two important lessons from this:

1. When you have a viral post, be sure it is loaded up with affiliate links. 
2. When you have a viral post, be sure you have an email opt-in that relates to the post and shows up inside the post.

Unfortunately, this was just pointed out to me about 2 weeks ago, so those 50,000+ shares were not put to good use at all. Lesson learned! I have since loaded it up with affiliates and we’ve made about $35, and we put a meal plan opt-in and have gotten about 20 sign-ups. I just wish I’d thought to do this weeks ago! 

Facebook.

Click the logo above to join us on Facebook!
I am still surprised by how important Facebook is to blogging. I was not anticipating that at all! It’s not so much the Facebook page for Looks Like Happy that is important, as it is all of the Facebook groups I’ve joined to become a better blogger. (Here is our post on 35 Facebook Groups to Join to Skyrocket Your Reach.) I have joined several Facebook groups- some are for questions/answers, some are strictly to increase our presence in blogland, and some are a combination of the two. The hidden benefit of Facebook groups is that you’re introduced to people who have the same goals as you, and you’re able to form relationships with other bloggers. 

The other great thing about Facebook is that if something happens to Pinterest, our Facebook fans are still accessible. This works both ways, and for all social media accounts. If one is not working (or disappears entirely!) you still have the others to work with. 

Tailwind.

I still cannot believe how FANTASTIC Tailwind is! If you are a blogger and you use Pinterest, and you are not using Tailwind yet, you absolutely MUST check it out! Tailwind is approved by Pinterest as a partner, which is really important- especially given what happened with Board Booster and its clients.

I used to spend hours each day manually pinning other peoples’ content to my Pinterest boards, and then my own content to group boards and my relevant Pinterest boards. Hours. I pinned constantly- while my coffee dripped out of the Keurig, while letting my dogs out, while on the phone…constantly, in every spare minute.

By joining Tailwind I am able to spend about 5-6 hours in one day pinning other peoples’ content to my boards and then scheduling my own pins to go out over the course of a month. Yes, I do a month at a time, which is why it takes 5-6 hours. I schedule 100 Pins per day or other peoples’ content and then anywhere from 1-10 of my own pins to Tribes, group boards and my own relevant boards. Anytime I post a new post from the blog, I go to Tailwind and share it to Tribes, group boards and my own relevant boards.

I still pin manually several times a week, but now it is because I WANT to, not because I NEED to- I like to see all of Pinterest’s fresh content that its users share! Tailwind is the #1 reason I was able to grow our reach to 4m+ viewers each month. 

Income Report.

Ok, time for the good stuff, now that you’ve read this far. Considering our blog launched on April 1 of this year, we are THRILLED that it is making money. 

Mediavine: $443.79
ShareASale: $12.02
Amazon: $43.53

Total: $499.34 – SO CLOSE to my $500 goal!  for Month 4! I think I will round up for the sake of easiness. 😉

Final Notes on Month 4:

We honestly could not be happier with the progress of the blog. It is a lot of fun and I love learning new things. I feel like I am doing a lot more “studying” than usual, but it’s not tedious and instead, it is enjoyable- especially when you implement something and it actually works! I can’t wait to see what August brings and I am looking forward to all of the activity Fall will bring to Pinterest! 

You can read more blogging updates here to see what we’ve been doing to get to where we are today!

Check out a few of our top performing posts!
Meal Prep Like a Pro With These 10 Yummy Recipes!
20 Incredible Farmhouse Decor Ideas For Your Home
12 Farmhouse Kitchens You Can Actually Afford

Also, visit our Better Blogging board on Pinterest where we pin tons of content from other great bloggers!

Happy blogging!
Allison

 

 

 

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