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October has been a month to remember. I now have a beautiful baby girl as well as a cheeky little boy to keep happy and the blog to keep up to date. This income report will fill you in on everything.
I probably decided at the wrong time to start my 30 day Christmas countdown. The 30 day Christmas countdown is a series where I release new Christmas themed content every day for 30 days.
Having a newborn, toddler and recovering from a c-section while creating this much content was (and still is) really difficult. Content took priority over social media and pinning in October, so my traffic suffered slightly as you will see.
What is an income report?
An Income report for bloggers are posts about the previous month on our blogs. We generally talk about any income we may have generated through product sales, affiliate sales or online courses we provide. We may talk about how we did this and what was successful and what wasn’t.
We also talk about our traffic for the past month. This can provide insight into the strategies that a blog uses to gain traffic. Again, we will talk about what worked and didn’t work for us that particular month.
An income report is there to offer some behind the scenes insight into the blogging world. Many people think it is a get rich quick or easy route out. Blogging requires a lot of dedication, motivation and perseverance. The income report holds bloggers accountable for what they have or have not done, it provides motivation for the following month, even if the previous one has been dreadful or out of this world. It also means that the income report can show the rest of the world that you can be a blogger and you can be successful, for actually very little start-up cost.
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Goals from October
To lower my bounce rate to at least 70%-I think that’s attainable now I’ve sorted out the URL thing.
I didn’t manage to do this. When I set myself this goal, I didn’t realise how hard this would be. It is also very subjective to who visits your blog that month. I think that this will come in time, once I have managed to iron out any teething issues and developed a good pinning strategy.
To gain 5 more email subscribers- Again completely attainable with proper pinning now that my opt-ins are set up.
I was so close to hitting this goal! I gained 4 email subscribers in October. I am still super pleased with this as my email list is slowly growing as I learn about opt-ins.
To have all of my Christmas posts written
This was a massive dream!! It would have meant I would have needed to write 33 posts before the 11th October (when my baby was due). I had good intentions and had done a lot of prior planning for these, but I had only written 5 in full.
What worked/didn’t work for me this month
Writing
Even though I have a newborn and a toddler, I was able to draft a lot of my Christmas countdown posts on my phone while I nursing. This meant that when I was able to open up my laptop, it was only formatting and pinning that I needed to do with my posts.
Social media
Instagram has been very hit and miss. I have had the best intentions and have posted a couple of times, but I never seem to have the time on top of writing at the moment.
Email list
I m=am currently trialling several op-tinson my blog. This is so I can see what ones appeal to my target audience. I have decided that I will keep these ones until the new year and then re-evaluate what I offer. I may add in new ones but this is dependant on time. My pregnancy opt-ins are currently the most popular.
October Posts
20+ Essential Plugins you NEED for your New Blog.
Eco, How to Go More | October Goals
Income and Traffic Report | September 2018
Halloween Food Idea | Easy To Make Monsters
The Ultimate List | What to Pack in Baby’s Hospital bag.
The Ultimate Christmas Planner for a Stress-Free Holiday.
Christmas lists you NEED to make first.
Handmade Christmas cards | Essential Items to Make Them and Places to Buy Them.
27 Best Elf on the Shelf Ideas for mums short on time.
15 Best Christmas Messages to write for cards at Christmas.
21 Gifts for Pregnant Women.
10 Easy Homemade Christmas Decoration Ideas your kids can Help with.
How to Organise your Preparation for Christmas.
Most popular posts in October
First Trimester in Pregnancy | How you can survive using my Top 9 Tips.-306 Pageviews
Third Trimester | 23 Things you should do.-303 Pageviews
Hospital Bag Essentials | All you really need.-229 Pageviews
The Ultimate List | What to Pack in Baby’s Hospital bag.– 80 Pageviews
Second Trimester Joy and 10 Things you should do.-45 Pageviews
My top 5 posts, as you can see are still baby/pregnancy related. This gives me great insight into my target audience. It also tells me which posts I need to make new pins so that I can carry on promoting them with fresh images.
Traffic Report
Google Analytics
As my analytics show, my traffic was at its peak at the start of October. Since then I had a few peaks, but ultimately it stayed at a pretty constant level throughout the month. My bounce rate increased to 90.19% from last month, this could be to do with having a lot more posts. It could mean that I’m not attracting the right audience to my blog if they are not gaining enough value to stick around. The average time spent on a page increased by 107.39%, so the people that were reading my content, read more before they left. Which is a good thing?
My impressions on my Pinterest profile was a bit all over the place. I decided this month that I was going to change the design of my pins. I originally had quite a boxy design, with a faded out image which I overlayed with my text. I’ve now opted for images with much more white space or my text in coloured blocks. I am still unsure if I’m happy with these though or if my traffic will increase.
For the first time since I started blogging, I had dips in my reach. This is probably due to my change of pin design and that I wasn’t pinning as often as I’d like.
Income Report
No income again this month, but the clicks on my affiliate links increased a considerable amount. I believe this is still an improvement because it shows that people are reading my content.
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I do earn a small commission for any services bought or signed up for with most of my links, but this does enable me to keep the blog running for you lovely lot!
I have decided notto include google ads on my blog as many others do. This is because I don’t get the choice of what is advertised, and I want to make sure that I am only promoting brands that I love and trust. Once my blog has grown to the requirements of mediavine, then I will apply to use this adservice. I know I still have a long way to go before I can do that though.
Growing a blog is hardwork! Read the highs, lows and lessons learnt here! #blogging Click To Tweet
Outgoings
As my hosting is paid for upfront and Tailwind was a gift and paid for in full for a year. I had no outgoings this month.
Scheduling made easy
Tailwind is an amazing scheduling tool. I know that I certainly couldn’t pin as much if I were to do it manually. I also wouldn’t know what the best times to pin for my individual audience was. Tailwind does all this for you!
Use my link below to sign up to Tailwind, you’ll get 100 free pins, plus a $15 credit when you upgrade to the plus plan.
That’s the equivalent of a free month on the plus plan! That’s what I am currently on!
Another bonus is that when you sign up for the plus plan, you can use Smart Loop. This loops your pins you select. Awesome for that evergreen content.
Summary
October, overall was a good month for productivity. I started my 30 day Christmas countdown, managed to draft a lot of my posts for this Christmas themed series and changed up my pin design. My traffic could be improved, but it always could be couldn’t it? I still need to finish working through ‘Ready set Blog for Traffic’ and implement some of the lessons from it. This should help traffic as the next part is about pinning strategy, which at the moment I don’t really have.
Goals for November
- Finish ‘Ready Set Blog for Traffic’
- Create 1 new pin for my all time top 5 posts.
- Gain 5 new emails subscribers
- Create 10 backup Instagram posts
I’m looking forward to keeping an eye on my stats for this month and hopefully see some improvements.
Share my blogging journey with one of the images below.
