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We are continuing to see growth on the site in Week 9! Our Pinterest following and reach is improving every day and we are now at 5.7M monthly Pinterest viewers! This is great, as it translates into traffic to the site. The graphic below shows an increase in our growth across the board on Pinterest.
We are up to 808 followers on Pinterest! I’m wondering if anyone does Pinterest giveaways? I’d like to do something when we hit 1000. Maybe a gift card? Or a Looks Like Happy gift basket of sunshine? That would be super fun! I will have to look into that. Maybe start with a gift card and save the basket for 10,000 followers?
I ended up upgrading our Tailwind account to the middle level, which is unlimited Tribes and 400 monthly Tribe submissions. On Monday of this week I did my bi-monthly Tailwind scheduling and Tribe submissions. I like to schedule enough Pins to get me through 2 weeks of submissions to various group boards and re-pins to my own boards, and also add my Pins to new Tribes I’ve joined. If I notice any Pins are suddenly doing well, I will add them to the Tribes again if it has been a month or more since I first added them. Some Tribes have rules about re-pinning your own items, so I am trying to be very conscious of each Tribe’s rule. On Tuesday I was thrilled to see that my Farmhouse Decor post was scheduled so many times! That was kind of a sleeper that I posted on the blog over a month ago, so to see it gain traction now was awesome! That is also a 100% affiliate post so I am reallllyyy hopeful that I will earn some affiliate money. <fingers crossed> The graphic below shows my top performing Pins. The circled number shows how many times the pin has been scheduled by another Tribe member. I have submitted these particular pins to several Tribes, so it is not just one Tribe increasing the numbers.
The “Meal Prep Like a Pro” post is really surprising! It was one of my very first posts that I did before launching the site. I think the bright colors in the pictures I am using are what draws people to it.
The “8 Exceptional Guest Rooms” post did really well about 2 weeks before Memorial Day. I will re-pin it a couple weeks before the 4th of July and Labor Day, since holidays usually mean people will have house guests.
The “12 Farmhouse Kitchens you can Actually Afford” post has received quite a few comments from people who like seeing kitchens they can actually afford! We did a kitchen reno last year and were on a very tight budget, so we are pretty good judges of what items cost and how to stay on budget.
So, nothing has gone viral yet, but I think these posts are my best chances. I did run a Facebook ad for the Kitchen post, and it did generate some traffic, but not enough to justify the expense of the ad. (I spent $20 on on ad that ran for 5 days and targeted women in the US from ages 25+.) I would try an ad again if I was launching a product, but I would increase my demographic and budget substantially for better results.
In the affiliate marketing realm, I am slowly going back through all of our posts to add in affiliate links, in addition to the ads that are running through AdSense. I am trying to update 8-10 posts a day and should be caught up in another week or so. Flex Offers seems to have the best payouts we’ve seen so far, but I’d love to hear what others are finding to be the most profitable! I like Flex Offers because once you are approved by brands, such as Pier One or Target, you can either place affiliate links to specific items, like Target’s summer sandal sale, or longer running promos, like 20% off your first Pier One order, which doesn’t expire until 2023. They provide banner ads, too, which is really helpful and they don’t take up a lot of space in your post. I haven’t done any short term affiliate links, like the sandals one, because I don’t want to have to remember to go back and change it when it expires, but I could see using those promos in specific, targeted posts, like a Father’s Day gift guide and having an add for 20% off for Father’s Day at Best Buy or wherever.
In other advertising news, we’ve been approved with Media Vine! I am super excited about this because it seems like the Big Bloggers use Media Vine over AdSense. For Media Vine you need to show 25,000+ page views (or sessions, I cannot remember) in a month’s time. My husband is in charge of ads, so this is his department. He will work on switching over from AdSense to Media Vine this week. Hopefully we will start making a little more money.
I still have not signed up for the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course yet, but fully intend to this month. We’ve had some household expenses so I feel bad spending more money on my not-very-profitable blog. That thought is counterproductive, since I’d be spending money to make money….
I also need to find time to focus on Facebook because my following is not even to 25 people yet! There must be a way to gain Facebook followers, but I have not had a chance to look into it. Same with Instagram. Pretty much I have Pinterest down, but nothing else, lol! That’s ok though because I am looking forward to learning the ins and outs of both FB and Instagram so I know exactly what I am doing.
Overall, I feel like we are doing well, but not great. I really need to focus on increasing our page views and affiliate sales, as the two go hand in hand with making this a profitable blog. I feel like the 5 million+ Pinterest viewers is an impressive number for a blog that is 9 weeks old and that I should be monetizing that traffic better, but I need to figure out how. I think the affiliate marketing course will help a lot, so I really need to make that a priority!
How about you, fellow new bloggers? What have you found that is giving you good results? I’d love to hear your ideas and successes!
If you’d like to see more about our new blog, you can read about our first 8 weeks, including our 2 month update, here.
Happy blogging!
Allison
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