Getting into Mediavine (Minimalism Blog Income Report) — Minimize My Mess (2024)

When I started blogging in February 2021, I didn’t know much, but I did know this: my goal was to get into Mediavine.

Mediavine is a premium ad network that has always appealed to me - based on the higher earning potential and how much people rave about how genuinely lovely they are.

I was inundated with super salesy “help” when I started out blogging - everyone seemed to have an ulterior motive, and genuine tips were few and far between.

This post is me doing my part to fix that.

I’m never going to regularly blog about blogging or create a blogging or Pinterest course, and I’m all about abundance and community over competition - so this is my no-holds-barred-tell-ALL to help newer bloggers become successful.

Spoiler alert - I did get into Mediavine, and it’s completely surpassed my expectations! More on that later…

Grab a cuppa because today I’m sharing all of my secrets about how I got here…

• About my minimalism blog

• My blogging timeline

• Blogging stats

• Is Pinterest dead for bloggers?

  • Pinterest stats

  • Pinterest tips

• How much money do I make blogging?

• Mediavine application process

• What I’m working on next

A quick intro for you to set the scene…

Minimize My Mess (MMM) started off as a minimalism blog aimed at messy people, but has evolved over the years:

1. My ADHD diagnosis really helped me understand the root of my struggles with mess and overwhelm

2. People responded really positively to my capsule wardrobe content so I have added lots of content about how to create an intentional wardrobe

So nowadays, my tagline for the blog is:

Simplicity for Chaotic Closets, Messy People & ADHD Homes

MMM Quick facts & snapshot (as of September 2023):

• I am the only person that works on MMM

• MMM is built and maintained on Squarespace

• I’m based in BC, Canada, but my audience is mostly from the US (~60%)

• 83 blog posts

• 2 free quizzes

• 7 free interactive tools

• 17 opt-in freebies

• The average length of post: 3442 words

• Bounce rate: ~55%

• Pageviews per session: ~1.9

• Repeat visitors: ~15%

• AI

  • I often use AI for Pin titles, Pin descriptions, blog intros, and blog conclusions, but haven’t had much luck using it for the body of my posts.

  • I specialize in unique approaches and thinking outside of the box, so my suggestions are often contrary to traditional tips and are therefore not suitable for AI-generated content.

• Making money on the blog

  • My goal is to mostly focus on “passive” income, so it’s been a slower process …this is definitely not the right guide for showy, inflated numbers or ‘how to get rich quick from blogging’ tips!

  • I’m not a huge fan of gatekeeping or false urgency, so my philosophy is to provide high-quality information for free, using display ads as my base income, and to offer paid tools for people who want extra support to make the process quicker and easier.

My MMM blogging highlights & milestones:

2019

• May 2019 - started MMM Instagram just before starting 18 month parental leave

2021

• Jan 2021 - went back to work after parental leave

• Feb 2021 | Month 1 - started MMM blog. I was shocked at how much easier working full time was for me, compared to being a full time parent. I suddenly had enough energy and creativity to start a blog.

• March 2021 | Month 2 - the lovely Courtney Carver of Be More With Less gave my home organization quotes post a shout out in her weekend favourites, resulting in a couple of thousand visits, wowza!

• April 2021 | Month 3

  • Got the lifetime deal for UberSuggest (for SEO research)

  • 100 people on email list

• May 2021 | Month 4

  • My first HARO feature in Realtor.com

  • Bought the Stupid Simple SEO course

  • Started MMM Tiktok

  • Published 10th post

• July 2021 | Month 6

  • Published 20th post

• Aug 2021 | Month 7

  • Published 30th post

  • 50k words published

• Oct 2021 | Month 9

  • Published 40th post

  • Joined She Media ad network

• Nov 2021 | Month 10

  • 500 people on my email list

• Dec 2021 | Month 11

  • 100k words published

2022

• Jan 2022 | Month 12

  • Created my first product (capsule wardrobe list template)

  • 5k site visits for the first time

  • 500 followers on Tiktok

  • 1k people on my email list

• Feb 2022 | Month 13

  • Published 50th post

  • 5k visits from Google Discovery

  • First $250 (CAD) month

• Mar 2022 | Month 14

  • 10k site visits for the first time

  • 2k visits from Google Discovery

• April 2022 | Month 15 - Put blog on hold and moved back to England

• Sept 2022 | Month 20

  • Came back to Canada & started working on the blog again

  • Accepted in to Amazon affiliate program (had not met requirement 2 previous times)

• Dec 2022 | Month 23

  • Went full time on the blog

  • 15k site visits for the first time

  • 500 site visits from Pinterest for the first time

  • Published 60th post

  • 150k words published

2023

• Jan 2023 | Month 24

  • 1k followers on Tiktok

  • 5k people on my email list

• Feb 2023 | Month 25

  • Published 70th post

  • 200k words published

  • 2k visits from Google Discovery

• March 2023 | Month 26

  • Started an email welcome sequence

  • 20k site visits for the first time

  • 13k visits from Google Discovery

  • First $500 (CAD) month

• April 2023 | Month 27

  • 30k site visits for the first time

  • 1k site visits from Pinterest for the first time

• May 2023 | Month 28

  • Created Fashion style quiz

  • Did my first product launch for the Happy Wardrobe Workbook

• June 2023 | Month 29

  • 50k site visits for the first time

  • 10k site visits from Pinterest for the first time

  • Published 80th post

  • 250k words published

• July 2023 | Month 30

  • Applied for Mediavine

  • 70k site visits for the first time

  • 15k site visits from Pinterest for the first time

  • 10k people on my email list

  • First $1k (CAD) month

• Aug 2023 | Month 31

  • Set up Thrive cart checkout for products

  • Created first Tripwire

  • 80k site visits for the first time

  • First $1.5k (CAD) month

• Sept 2023 | Month 32

  • Official Mediavine approval email received & ads went live!

Going Full Time

Our world fell out from under us when my Mum fell sick during a visit to us here in Vancouver, BC.

My daughter and I returned to England with her for her final months, then returned to Canada in fall 2022 - so the blog was on pause for around five months in total.

We had a magical few months together, and Mum was so at peace with dying, so it was a surprisingly beautiful experience.

But it felt so strange to go back to “normal” afterward.

This old quote - from Ally McBeal of all places - really sums up those first few months for me:

I found working on the blog again to be a huge comfort - it felt so theraputic to lose myself in my writing for an hour or two.

In stark contrast, I was struggling to complete even basic tasks in my day job, and eventually I decided to hand in my notice.

That wasn’t the plan - I had originally wanted to build blog earnings up to $2000 a month so I could go full-time when my daughter started school in September 2024.

If you read my two previous minimalism blogger income reports (months 1-6 & months 7-12), you’ll know that going full-time was a terrible financial decision - I think I was only earning around $300 a month at the time.

But I needed to prioritize my mental and emotional health if I wanted to have enough left in my cup to be the type of Mum I wanted to be.

I was incredibly privileged - my husband was supportive, and we had savings to lean on - but it was still scary to gamble on myself.

I’m very grateful to be on course to hit my goal of earning $2k+ a month by the end of 2023.

• Initially I found that the best thing to build domain authority was to regularly respond to HARO enquiries. You can see when I was less consistent as my DA flatlines.

• I saw an even bigger boost in my DA from responding to media requests on Qwoted. I also prefer their hashtag system, which helps you see requests that are more relevant to you and your niche.

• I can’t be sure that the traffic increase was solely related to my DA, but all of my posts seemed to start performing better once my DA hit 35.

• Data pulled from UberSuggest

• Other than responding to HARO & Qwoted media requests, link building hasn’t been a big part of my strategy.

• I keep a manual list of what I call “real life” links - aka links that seem to have been created by a real person.

  • Of the 1900ish links to my blog, only 67 of them made it into my “real life” link list. About 15% of these are from Qwoted & HARO, and around 85% appear to be organic.

• Data pulled from UberSuggest

• To qualify to apply for Mediavine, your monthly visits need to be 50k+

• I reached that point in my 29th month of blogging

• I used to hear about “hockey stick” stats in blogging, where after months/years of slow growth, there’s a sudden uptick in numbers.

  • As with everything in the blogging industry - where everyone seems to be trying to sell you something - I took it with a grain of salt …but here it is, my hockey stick! :) I sportsted!! I’m a sporter! I did the sport thing!

• I believe that my page views are higher than average - which I contribute in part to being very intentional about internal linking (more on that later)

• Search engines currently bring me the majority of my traffic, with direct and Pinterest traffic almost neck and neck for second place.

• I always assumed that direct traffic was mostly bots, but I get a fair amount of sales from direct visitors so there must be some real people in there too.

• Referrals (mostly google AMP / mobile traffic, or the odd Google Discovery feature) and my email list share third place with a couple of visits each per month.

• This chart also really shows that for me, social media (excluding Pinterest) is just for being social, and is rarely a major traffic driver.

  • I’ve given myself permission to ghost out of my social media accounts, and only post nowadays if I genuinely want to.

• I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Pinterest, but lets - excuse the pun - put a pin in it for now as I’ll do a Pinterest deep dive further down.

• I’m so happy to see the search (green) traffic grow, as it’s the most passive, and has the most growth potential

• From year 2 I started to focus on more competitive keywords with higher search volume.

• Prior to that, I was targeting long-tail low-competition keywords, but I noticed that I was ranking for the more competitive keywords anyway, so I went back to update some titles and prioritise high search volume moving forward.

• The number of blog posts is one of the biggest levers for how much organic search traffic you receive on your site.

• Despite my best efforts and promises to myself, I’ve never been able to produce as many new blog posts as I wanted.

• The amount of blog / online business maintenance really surprised me - I can work my tushy off all month but still not get any writing done.

• Regular posting is an ongoing goal for me.

• About a year into blogging, I learned how important internal linking is.

• I created a spreadsheet with every post listed down the side and along the top to record what posts link to where.

• It’s color-coded based on the category of the post to help me see what posts make sense to link to each other.

• It tallies up how many incoming and outgoing internal links each post has so I can see at a glance if I need to go through a post and add links.

• I usually review it as part of my post update process.

• There’s so much conflicting information about word counts for blogs.

• I don’t think it makes sense to write extra words just for the sake of it, but I’m naturally pretty wordy so my posts tend to take longer to write.

• Recording word count helps me feel accomplished even if my number of posts is going up really slowly.

• It’s great to see the email list opt-ins grow with the increased traffic

• I also made these opt-in improvements:

  • Added more post specific opt-in freebies

  • Where possible, added a photo mock-up of the opt in so people can see exactly what they’ll be getting

  • Added “freebies” to navigation bar to increase visibility

  • Added “click to download your cheat sheet” buttons to posts with opt ins (see example here)

• I try to keep my email newsletters fun and informative, and usually include the a combination of the following:

  • Latest blog post

  • Encouragement & Tips

  • Links to daily tools

    • Quote of the day

    • Journal prompt of the day

    • Daily declutter micro-project

  • Free tool of the week

  • Freebie of the week

  • Throwback post of the week

  • Product of the week

  • News features

  • Quickie personal update

• My open rate hovers around 40%

• My click rate hovers around 2%

• My unsubscribe rate hovers around 0.8%

Is Pinterest dead for bloggers?

Au contraire!

I’m going to indulge myself with a bit of a jackanory-story time because I’m a total Pinterest dork and it blows my mind that it brings in ~20k visits a month at the moment -

2021: The Emperor’s New Clothes

When I started blogging in 2021, everyone was raving about how amazing Pinterest was for bringing traffic to your site.

I read all the articles, did a couple of courses, joined a membership, and put hours and hours into creating pins …but only ever saw a trickle of traffic from Pinterest.

I always hovered around 10k impressions no matter what I did (I’m around 1.3m impressions at the mo …eeeek!)

I felt like the nakey emperor, wondering if everyone was just making Pinterest traffic up.

2022: On Again, Off Again

As a stats geek, I could see that Twitter and Pinterest were both barely bringing me any traffic, so I decided to quit them both.

Quitting Twitter was easy - I’m way to wordsey and convoluted to be penned in to snappy soundbites - but I actually missed the process of creating pins.

That thrill of finding the perfect stock photo …is that a thing or is it just me?

So I dabbled recreationally, but to a much lesser extent than before.

2023: The new rule

When I went full-time as a blogger about a year later, I really wanted to focus on “needle-moving” tasks, so I made a rule:

NO pinning during work hours

If I wanted to make pretty pictures that barely anyone looked at (let alone clicked on), it was officially a hobby and not a business task - so would be treated as such.

It was quite nice, actually - guilt-free graphic design over my morning coffee and lowkey pinning whilst winding down with a show after our daughter’s bedtime.

A Seed

Sometime around then, a little seed of an idea formed in my brain.

I realized that I’d developed a belief that my niche wasn’t popular on Pinterest, but I suddenly realized that plenty of other minimalism and simple living creators were absolutely rocking it on Pinterest.

So what was different about my account?

…Were my pins too loud? (yeah - a touch, but so am I so 🤷🏻‍♀️)

…Were my pin titles to samey-samey? (actually yeah, very much so! I have a great tip for that further down…)

But there was one thing that every successful account had in common that I didn’t have.

Volume.

They all seemed to have a minimum of 15k pins in their All Pins board.

I think at the time, I had just under 2k..?

Logically, I knew the following:

• A high impressions/followers number doesn’t necessarily mean these accounts were getting traffic

• They likely had more pins because it used to be best practice to repin your pins, as well as other people’s (I believe this practice is no longer rewarded by Pinterest, and may even get your account suspended nowadays)

• Their accounts could just be older and more established than mine, hence the more volume and being able to weather the “weird Pinterest storm” better.

But I decided to water the seed anyway and get even more serious about my pinning hobby.

The “Weird Pinterest Storm”

I’m no expert, but this is my very basic understanding of what Pinterest could have been up to these last couple of years.

What Pinterest used to be like:

• People used to use Pinterest similarly to Google - looking for visual ideas and inspiration.

• Users would regularly click on pins and go off of the app to read recipes, blog posts, etc.

• Users used to see a lot of pins from creators that they were following

• This version of Pinterest was a great tool for bloggers trying to drive traffic to their site.

What happened to Pinterest:

• When the company went public in 2019, it seems like they tried to shift to more of a shopping focus and encourage users to stay on the Pinterest app.

• We saw this with the introduction of idea pins, which were shown more than static pins and did not have links out to external pages.

• As a Pinterest user myself, I really disliked this. Instead of being able to click off to follow a recipe for dinner, I had to watch a silly little video over and over until it got back to the relevant step.

• Pinterest was more in line with other social media apps - Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, etc. - that try to keep users in their app for as long as possible.

• Users seemed to see a lot less pins from creators that they were following

• This version of Pinterest was NOT a great tool for bloggers trying to drive traffic to their sites.

What Pinterest is like now:

• In 2023 there seems to have been a shift to a more hybrid version of Pinterest

• There’s still a big emphasis on shopping (I dare you to look at a pin of a dress without being offered the chance to buy a similar one), but they seem more open to letting users leave the app to read recipes, posts, etc.

• Idea pins are now just video pins, and creators are able to add their link again

• Pins seem to be seen by users quite soon after they’re added, and I am seeing more pins from creators I follow in my feed.

Pinterest Results

My Pinterest traffic started building steadily in 2023, and then exploded in the summer …so much so that I ditched my ‘no pinning in work hours’ rule and spent most of August creating a pin strategy, doing pin KW research, making pins & pinning (which as you now know, is pure heaven for a dork like me 🏝️)

I do have a secret weapon when it comes to Pinterest (which I’ll tell you all about in the tips below), but the truth is I’ll never really know exactly what contributed to the big boost in traffic …how much was the secret weapon, the new/old and improved Pinterest, or my try-hard graphic design & copy skills.

Either way, here are my Pinterest stats for the blog:

• Pin impressions is a vanity statistic, but if you’re doing everything right with your pins, higher impressions should translate to higher outbound clicks too.

• The bump in months 21, 22 & 23 are related to the holiday season, as my minimalist gift guide pins do well.

• Saves are important as it gets your pins in front of more people, and indicates quality to Pinterest, but outbound clicks are my priority.

• People tend to save my informational pins (infographics, quotes, etc.), and outbound click on my “how to” pins.

• Your pin engagement rate shows you what percentage of your pins are interacted with by users.

• The truth is that the majority of pins are not given anything more than a second glance (approximately 93% of my pins at this time)

• As you can see, I’ve recently started splitting my stats between my pins, and pins pinned by others - I’ll go into more detail about that below

10 Pinterest tips that are working for my blog

Pinterest is not my job - so don’t follow what I say blindly - but it is part of my job, and this is what’s working for me at the moment:

1) Sign up for this free thing

Before you read any other tip, you have to promise me you’ll do this one thing!

If you are even remotely interested in increasing traffic to your site from Pinterest - RUN, do not walk - to sign up for Jennifer Ledbetter’s (aka “PotPieGirl”) Pinterest email list.

It’s completely freesies, but to be honest, I’d happily pay for it (she’s on hiatus at the moment, but hopefully, you get to start from the beginning of the sequence if you sign up🤞🏼)

She is my secret Pinterest weapon, and if I ever say anything remotely smart about Pinterest, it’s probably because I’ve learned it from her.

She’s got a completely unique way of looking at Pinterest and is so genuinely excited to talk about it.

2) Add more pin images to blog posts

This tip is straight from the PotPieGirl email newsletter.

There are two types of pin sources in the Pinterest analytics (as long as you have your site claimed/verified in Pinterest):

• Your pins - pins created or saved by you

• Other pins - pins created or saved by others, that link back to your site

I used to add a couple of pin images to the bottom of my blog posts but had gotten out of the habit of doing it.

Personally, I never pin images from posts that I read, so I ASS-umed that other people don’t either - wrong! 🤦🏻‍♀️

Jennifer’s theory is that Pinterest users who click on your pin and read your post LOVE pinning images from that page - even the image that brought them there (these would count as “other pins” in Pinterest analytics)

I had NO clue about this at all because my ADHD brain much prefers to just keep interesting tabs open until the end of time.

Jennifer also suspects that Pinterest may give extra weight to pins created or saved by others - which kinda makes sense - kinda like how us saying how great our post is is probably less convincing than an independent third party saying, “hey, I read this and it’s really good.”

I’ve been following her advice and adding pin images for each subheading, list item, tip, etc. in my blog posts (starting with the most popular posts on Pinterest), and my Pinterest traffic has been growing steadily ever since.

On average, approximately 48% of my Pinterest traffic comes from pins that other people have pinned 🤯

Remember - I’m barely scratching the surface here, be sure to go get on Jennifer’s Pinterest email list to hear about this in more detail directly from her.

3) Create a library board

I came up with this tip myself, and it goes against most popular Pinterest advice out there to not repin too much content from others - so YMMV - but this has been very successful for me.

How I created a Pinterest library-style board

I am very passionate about helping people create intentional and authentic wardrobes, and the first step in that process is to find your unique blend of styles.

I have a popular fashion quiz and style post that both narrow down the same 57 different fashion aesthetics.

It can be quite hard to find shareable stock photos for each style, so I’ve always wanted to build a Pinterest board with a section for each of the 57 styles.

I wanted to do a deep dive into each aesthetic to show the flexibility and range, and to help people make a well-informed choice about their true, authentic style.

Here’s the library-style Pinterest board that’s working well for me to give you a better idea of what I mean.

How a library-style Pinterest Board could help your blog

A library-style Pinterest board is a collection of pins (yours and other people’s) that your blog readers will find really helpful:

• It promotes community over competition

• It’s a central resource for your blog readers & Pinterest followers to come back to time and time again

• It’s a Pinterest board with a section for each sub-category

• It works great to do a deep dive on quiz results, blog list items, etc.

• Some examples from different blog niches could be:

  • Quick dinners, healthy dinners, make-ahead dinners

  • Quiz result a, quiz result b, quiz result c

  • Different decorating styles

  • Cleaning tips per room, etc.

• Increases Pinterest traffic

  • I didn’t expect it to be a big traffic driver, but my theory is that this board is the main thing that’s growing my Pinterest followers …which gets my pins in front of more eyeballs …which indirectly increases Pinterest visits to my blog

  • The difference between this and a normal Pinterest board is thinking up a subject that you can regularly link out to from your blog posts

• Increases Pinterest followers

  • A Library style Pinterest board is a great way to encourage traffic between your blog and Pinterest account …it turns my blog readers into Pinterest followers and vice versa

  • My Pinterest follower growth was nonexistent before creating this board, but now I usually welcome around 100 new followers a week.

  • I let people know it’s updated regularly to encourage them to follow along

4) Be intentional about keyword research

There are a few different keyword research methods I’ve tried for Pinterest:

• Search on Pinterest for your topics and take note of other search terms that are suggested to you:

  • Start typing your common keywords and see what keywords Pinterest suggests in the search bar

  • Start typing your common keywords and add letters afterwards (A, B, C, etc.) and see what sub-topics Pinterest suggests in the search bar

  • Sometimes Pinterest will show similar keywords in colourful bubbles at the top of midway through search results

• Start creating an ad to see approximate keyword search volumes - here are instructions

• Check Pinterest Trends to see if there’s an angle that you can use for any of your posts

• Advanced methods - see tip no.6

5) Audit your keywords

Pinterest is so time-consuming, so you want to make sure that what you’re doing is actually working.

Make a list of what keywords you’re targeting, and then check regularly to see if you’re seeing results.

I use two methods to audit keywords (neither of which is perfect):

• Check manually

  1. In an incognito window, I type the keyword into Pinterest and page down “x” amount of times (I do 10, but that’s probably excessive), then make a note of how many of my pins are showing in the search results

     1. If it’s zero for a few times in a row, I look for smaller keywords to target next

     2. If there are a few of my pins in the search results, I look for larger keywords to target next

  2. Pros are that I get a good idea of what sort of pin images are performing well for that keyword

  3. Cons are that it takes ages and is really fiddly

• Pin Inspector

  • This is a paid software that I’m fairly new to, so I’m not ready to recommend it just yet.

  • I search for keywords in the ‘Pin’ tab and then sort by ‘creator link’ to see how many times my pins are featured in the top 50 results

  • Pros are that it’s less fiddly, and you can see what sort of titles and descriptions are performing well for that keyword.

  • Cons are that it pulls SO much data that it takes about 15 seconds for the results to come through on our faster-than-average broadband …a 15-second delay is hellish for my ADHD brain

  • I’ve reached out to the app developer to see if I can limit the columns of data pulled to save time, and will update this if I get a response

6) Advanced keyword method

Once you’ve gotten the hang of Pinterest, I highly recommend this method - also by PotPieGirl.

It’s so logical and obvious now, but I never thought to find and review keywords this way 🤯

The most exciting thing for me is that it’s helping me get traction on blog posts that I’ve been pinning on for months with no joy.

7) Use AI

Pinterest seems to LOVE fresh content, so for years I would go through and change a few words of my pin title and description every time I posted a pin.

It really slowed down my process, and more often than not, I just avoided pinning.

Now I use AI to help me come up with titles and descriptions, which saves so much time.

Here’s an example prompt that I use - replace text in [brackets] to personalize it to you and your blog:

Act as a Pinterest Marketing Specialist & expert level copywriter. Please use an [e.g., encouraging, motivational, empathetic] tone. Please use a [e.g., friendly, casual, informative] style. Please write [number] SEO-friendly Pinterest Pin titles and descriptions for my article about [blog title]. The article includes [blog sub-themes/sub-headings/freebies/background info, etc.]. I am trying to rank for the following popular Pinterest keyword term: ‘[Pinterest keyword]’. Please use the exact keyword term in each of the titles and descriptions. Please keep the titles under 100 words. Please keep the descriptions under 450 words. Please give deep thought on how to stand out from the crowd, and encourage people to click on to the content, without being too salesy or pushy. Please provide the titles and descriptions in a plain format. Please do not use quotation marks. Please do not use bullet points. Please do not use numbers. Please start the description on a new line immediately under the title.

8) Keep images fresh by experimenting with different styles of pins

I spent a couple of months in early 2023 monitoring my most popular Pinterest pins, but it wasn’t very enlightening, and I haven’t changed how I create pin images as a result.

The results were not significant enough to continue, so the sample size was not large enough to be statistically significant.

For those that are curious, my pins with the most out clicks during that time period had the following traits (some categories were multi-select):

• Age:

  • 29% - less than 30 days old

  • 71% - older than 30 days

• Colour scheme

  • 18% - bright

  • 27% - dark

  • 39% - muted / white

  • 16% - pastels

• Calls to action:

  • 2% - “click for…”

  • 68% - none (I think this speaks more to me often forgetting to add CTAs to my pins rather than any statistical significance)

  • 2% - “you won’t believe…”

  • 19% - tagline / extra info

  • 2% - “great for this sort of person”

  • 1% - “Here’s how”

  • 4% - Arrow

  • 3% - “free”

  • 1% - “PDF”

  • 1% - “Read blog”

• Image

  • 10% - End result/aspirational/positive

  • 3% - Before & After

  • 9% - Background image

  • 4% - Before/image of problem/negative

  • 10% - cartoon/graphic

  • 8% - flat lay

  • 3% - digital product mockup

  • 8% - multiple pics

  • 21% - person

• Ratio

  • 34% - 50/50

  • 1% - just text

  • 52% - image took up more space

  • 13% - text took up more space

• Text size

  • 15% - large

  • 46% - medium

  • 24% - mixed

  • 16% - small

• Text style

  • 58% - Fancy

  • 42% - Simple

• Tone

  • 3% - Funny

  • 58% - Positive spin (e.g., simple solutions to make life easier)

  • 39% - Negative spin (e.g., avoid these 10 mistakes)

So, the main thing I learned is to try anything and everything when it comes to pin design (and that Pinterest does NOT think I’m funny). 😂

(hopefully, this list has given you some ideas on different ways to mix up your Pin image designs)

I used to get really carried away with making pins when I created a template I liked, but Pinterest & I both get bored easily, so I only create 5 of each style nowadays.

I can always go back and create more if it does well.

9) Only optimize a few blog posts at a time

Pinterest will take up all of your time if you let it, so I recommend only optimizing a few posts at a time.

I pin most of my blog posts in rotation, so they’re usually pinned about once a week - other than:

• Posts that have never gained any traction at all on Pinterest - I save time and skip these

• The top posts that I want to focus on - I usually pin these posts every 1-3 days

I choose 10 blog posts to focus on each month based on some of the following (but you could start off with just one or two if that sounds too overwhelming):

• Newer posts

• Well performing posts

• Posts that I want to boost

• Posts with high ad RPM

• Posts that I haven’t focused on for a while

I’ll take extra time each month to complete some of the following steps for my top posts:

• Pinterest keyword research

• Pinterest keyword audits

• Pin image creation (new styles that I haven’t tried before for this post)

• Bulk create keyword rich titles & descriptions

• Add fresh pins to my post if not already done so (one for each sub-heading or list item)

• Update blog post content to fill Pinterest keyword gaps

• Pull relevant copy from blog to be used on pin images, pin titles & pin descriptions

10) My Pinterest strategy

Here is a summary of my Pinterest strategy:

• Pin frequency:

  • I pin around 10-15 new pins a day

    • These are a mixture of my top 10 & regular posts

• Repins:

  • I repin repins when I have time - e.g If someone repins my pin to a relevant board, I will repin their repin from that board

• Logistics

  • I keep two notes on my phone to help with pinning:

    • Pin Share order

      • Lists of boards (mine and group boards) for me to share pins to - split into my general pin categories (e.g., minimalism, ADHD, style, etc.)

      • I can see where a pin was last shared, and then share it to the next board on the list

      • I move to the next on the list if a board has already been shared to enough that day

    • Pinterest Copy

      • For each post, I have grouped together lists of the following:

        • Checkbox - to show if used yet or not

        • Pin title

        • Pin description

        • URL

      • This makes it quick and easy to copy and paste the relevant info into Pinterest

      • I spread them out over a few notes so it’s not too much scrolling

• Group boards:

  • I do use group boards, but review them regularly and archive them if they’re not a good fit for my content

  • I archive group boards that have spammy content or too many users

  • I share other group members’ pins

• Pinning methods:

  • I pin manually and use the internal scheduling tool within Pinterest

  • I’ve tried Tailwind a few times, but I feel like I’m missing something because it doesn’t save any time for me?

Total blog expenses

First, let’s take a look at how much I spend…

• Blogging is an expensive business!

• The spikes in months 22 & 25 were due to annual renewals for a few different services

• In month 34, I upgraded my email service provider

• Here are some of my main expenses over the last three years (I’ve put stars next to my favourites):

  • The basics

    • The annual fee for Squarespace website ⭐️

    • Squarespace sidebar plugin ⭐️

    • New laptop ⭐️ - I went with a Macbook Air, and I’m so pleased I did. I love the super long battery life.

    • Legal Pages for blog - these last three are not very exciting, but have got to be done.

    • Business License

    • Domain & email

  • Education

    • Stupid Simple SEO ⭐️ - I wish I’d just taken this course right at the start of my blogging journey, I definitely would not be at this point without it

    • Next Level SEO membership ⭐️ - an affordable alternative to Stupid Simple SEO if you’re not ready to commit yet

    • Jarvis AI & course - this was an expensive (and unsuccessful) experiment back in the day before AI was freely available

    • Genius blogger toolkit

    • Faith Mariah Mastermind ⭐️ - The push I needed to create a business and not an expensive hobby. She does free events all the time and has a great podcast, too!

    • Love Your List by Kate Doster (now retired but she sometimes releases the self paced version) ⭐️

  • Tools

    • Canva pro ⭐️ - I scraped by with the free account for ages, but it’s so handy having access to all of the pro images and elements now.

    • Ubersuggest ⭐️ - for SEO research (lifetime deal)

    • Pin Inspector - Pinterest deep dive software that I’m still figuring out

    • Rank IQ ⭐️ - a robust tool to help you write SEO & user friendly articles

    • Email marketing systems

      • Squarespace - didn’t have enough advanced features

      • Convertkit ⭐️ - all the bells and whistles I needed and integrates great with Thrivecart

  • Commerce

    • Squarespace - limited features & doesn’t integrate with Convertkit unless you upgrade to the very top tier

    • Thrivecart checkout ⭐️ - amazing for tripwires and funnels, but there’s no way to set up a shop and add as many products as you want. I think I will need to use Shopify for that.

Profit First

• I learned about the ‘profit first’ money management style inside Faith Mariah’s mastermind (such a gorgeous & genuine community), and it really helped me manage my expenses.

• The general idea is that you decide on percentages to split your business earnings into, create separate accounts, and then transfer the relevant amounts each month.

• There’s much more to it, so be sure to do your own deep dive if you’re interested.

• Here’s how I choose to allocate my blog earnings:

  • Profit - I changed this category to ‘donate’ and allocated 10%

  • Salary - 50%

  • Taxes - 20%

  • Expenses - 20%

• Now, my expenses are limited to how much I have in my expense account, so it’s a lot easier to decide what to spend on.

• I like that it’s flexible and that as my income increases, I can invest more in the blog.

• My goal was to earn $2k a month by month 35, so I’m absolutely over the moon.

• You can clearly see what a huge impact Mediavine had on my earnings here. It will probably drop in month 36 due to seasonality, but still. Just wow - I’m pinching myself.

• Blogging experts usually recommend that you try to build up several different income streams, including:

  • Display ads

    • As the most passive option, display ads have been my main income focus.

    • I love how I can make a living but still provide lots of value free of charge to my readers.

    • The downside with ads is that until you build up substantial traffic to your site, you don’t make much money from them.

    • Your RPM is also very seasonal, so you usually earn a lot less at the start of the year compared to the end.

  • Affiliate sales

    • This is not currently a big focus for me

    • I do use affiliate links in my blog posts where relevant, but I’m not very strategic or aggressive about it.

    • I’ve only really had success with Amazon; I’ve tried Sovrn and ShareASale but never really got any traction.

    • I would do an affiliate launch for the right product, but it’s not something I’m interested in doing just for the sake of it.

  • Sponsored posts

    • Sponsored posts completely fell off of my radar, but it’s probably something I should explore now that I’ve built up more traffic.

  • Your own products

    • After being burned by so many mediocre digital products, I’m really fussy when it comes to putting a new product out there. Too fussy, probably.

    • Nurturing my audience with helpful emails and blog posts feels instinctive, fun, and rewarding to me, whereas selling to them can really feel like a struggle.

    • I’m trying to get out of my own way, though, and once my site traffic started trending upward earlier this year, I took time off from writing to focus on product creation and learning more able marketing and selling.

    • The results are clear, and I’ve already made more in product sales in the last month than the whole year prior to that.

    • Thing that worked for me - #1: Joining Faith Mariah’s mastermind really opened my eyes to what steps I should be taking and helped me work on my mindset: Selling is helping. I get that now. I love how Faith simplifies online businesses into three categories (all of which need to be working if you want a successful business):

      • Growth - a way to attract new people (for me, that’s SEO & Pinterest, but it could also be bundles, summits, speaking engagements, social media, etc.)

      • Nuture - look after your existing audience (I use blog posts and emails, other examples include podcasts, Facebook groups, etc.)

      • Earn - have something to sell to them (for me, it’s digital products & display ads; for others, it could be one-to-one services, group coaching, courses, etc.)

    • Thing that worked for me - #2:

      • I’ve been so frustrated that the commerce option within Squarespace did not include the function to add a tripwire (horrible, horrible term, I know - I much prefer Kate Doster’s version, “easy yes offer” …a fab deal that’s automatically offered to people when they sign up for your email list).

      • I was also dragging my feet because I’m not a huge fan of the false urgency created by a traditional easy yes offer, but I heard a tip from Tash Corbin that was so amazing that I set everything up the very next day.

      • Tash focuses on consent-driven marketing - which I find so refreshing in the sea of marketing funnel bros out there. Bleugh. …Anyway, the tip!

      • Tash suggested offering your easy yes offer twice - once when someone initially signs up to your email list and then once again a week or so later once they’ve gotten to know you a little better through your welcome email sequence.

      • She recommends being really transparent and upfront about it so people don’t feel pressured into making a decision before they’re ready to. She did it as a trial, and if I recall correctly, she saw a big drop in sales initially, but overall sales increased because people were even more likely to buy the second time they saw the offer.

      • More respect for your readers and more pennies in your pocket - it’s a win-win.

      • I finally created an easy yes offer through Thrivecart, and I am astounded by the response. Flabbergasted. Dumbfounded.

      • It is a great deal - 50% off of my two most popular products. I asked my husband how much he thought it had made in the first three weeks, and he guessed $30 …but nearly spat out his coffee when I said $694. I’ll say it again - Flabbergasted. Shook. Giddy!

  • Gifts/donations

    • I have a “Buy me a coffee” feature set up on my website, but this could include gifts on social media, Patreon, etc.

• When you combine earnings and expenses, things look a lot less impressive - but at least it’s all heading in the right direction, and a big spend month like month 34 didn’t push me into the red.

• The huge jump in ad revenue is from when I joined Mediavine - it’s quite emotional for me to see all of my hard work over the last three years paying off 🥲

• As mentioned, the jump in digital product sales is due to adding an automatic ‘easy yes’ offer when people sign up for my email list.

• The steady increase in affiliate earnings is directly related to increased traffic.

• Digital product income increased from 4.7% in year 1 to 36.5% in year 2

• I find daily blog earnings to be a really fun stat to track - it’s fab to have a guestimate of how much you can earn even if you’re having a movie day in your pjs 🤗

• I was pretty impressed with She Media when I joined them - they were a massive improvement compared to my experience with Ezoic, that’s for sure!

  • They weren’t the most responsive, but I figured they were a small team, and I didn’t have any major issues, so it wasn’t a huge deal.

  • But I was disappointed with their attitude towards me giving my notice, though - they missed my notice email and made me send them proof. Even when I did send them proof, they didn’t want to honour it, didn’t respond to any of my questions, and my RPM tanked to ~$6 as soon as they heard I was leaving. That’s not classy.

• On the other side of the coin - the Mediavine team has been ridiculously friendly, supportive, and helpful since I joined.

  • They have so many resources to help you optimize your site and increase your RPMs

  • I always receive an enthusiastic reply a few business hours after emailing them.

  • One of my favourite changes the team helped with is adding a sidebar to my site (I used this Squarespace plugin and it was so quick and easy)

Most of the accounts that I read online about the Mediavine application process said that it never takes as long as they say, so I was half expecting to have my ads set up within the week 🤣

As this wasn’t the case for me, I wanted to share my experience (…with a friendly reminder that I’m sure every application process is different, and they probably regularly tweak their process):

• 2-Jul-2023 - I submitted my application (I had reached 50k visitors a few days beforehand according to Squarespace analytics, but I had to - impatiently -wait for Google Analytics to catch up)

• 5-Jul-2023

  • Received an email from Mediavine titled “IMPORTANT: Additional information required for your Mediavine application.”

  • I granted Mediavine access to my Google Analytics account

• 10-Aug-2023

  • I knew the application process was thorough, so I tried to be patient (I think I’d read somewhere that it could take up to 25 business days), but I finally caved and followed up with them.

  • They responded really quickly and advised that the Google Analytics data hadn’t come through on their end, so they asked me to try connecting it again - doh!

  • I granted Mediavine access to my Google Analytics account again

  • I received an email from Mediavine three hours later titled “Thanks for connecting your analytics!”

• 18-Aug-2023 - I received an email from Mediavine letting me know that they’d completed the first phase of the internal review

• 25-Aug-2023

  • I received an email from Mediavine letting me know that they’d completed preliminary approvals and that the next step submit a request for approval with Google Ad Manager as well as their other partners

  • I received a login to my Mediavine Dashboard

  • I granted Mediavine access to my Google Ad Manager account

  • Over the next few days, I worked with the Mediavine Support Specialists to work on the backend of my site

• 30-Aug-2023 - I approved a request from Google Ad Manager to allow Mediavine to manage my inventory

• 1-Sep-2023 - I received an email from Mediavine letting me know that my application had been fully approved 🥳

• 8-Sep-2023 - Mediavine Support Engineers began my site inspection

• 14-Sept-2023

  • I got the all-clear to pull old ads (I got no help from She Media, so the Mediavine team ended up helping me do this. The code that I had to remove ended up being in the blog header code injection rather than the main site header code injection)

  • Ads went live!

• 15-Sep-2023

  • I received an email from Mediavine titled “Welcome to Mediavine!”

• 5-Dec-2023

  • I got my first payment for the last half of September :)

So, even though it wasn’t a one-week process …it was well worth the wait!

Unexpected Mediavine Bonus

One unexpected bonus of being with Mediavine is their Facebook group for their publishers.

I think I’ve learned more about blogging from reading posts there than I have in most paid courses - it’s fab!

• After months of working on the backend of my business, I’m excited to get back to basics and focus on writing again for the next little while!

  • I have many more topics that I want to write about, and I want to continue reviewing and updating posts regularly, too.

  • Being a little fish in the big Mediavine Facebook group pond has really opened my eyes to the earning potential of helping people online.

• I want to make sure that I diversify both my traffic sources and income streams.

  • The Google Helpful Content Update rocked the blogging community in the fall of 2023 - with some sites losing as much as 90% of their traffic.

  • I was extremely lucky and only dipped about 20%. And I think a lot of that is mostly due to the Google results page being rearranged so that “People Also Ask” and AI-generated answers are often shown before search results.

  • I’m going to continue my social media hiatus, other than Pinterest - which I’m excited to double down on again 🤓

• I want to create more digital products to sell & possibly offer limited one-to-one services

  • I am going to let it happen organically, though - I don’t want to create something just for the sake of it.

  • I’m still recovering from a nasty bout of covid pneumonia in September 2023, so I want to be very mindful of my energy levels before committing to any 1:1 services.

• Start another blog! …watch this space

Conclusion

There you go, my lovely - everything I could think of to share about getting into Mediavine!

I hope you’re feeling as motivated as I am to go and write :)

Don’t miss my other minimalism blog income reports:

• My first six months of blogging

• My first year of blogging

They are really detailed, and I share the step-by-step process I used to start building up my blog.

Merry blogging, folks!