August 2016 Income & Growth Report

OK so this income report is super late to be posted because I took September off due to our recent move and being very ill from morning sickness (the sleep deprivation didn’t help either- thanks, little man)

Anyway, I’ll jump right in because this income report (while awesome because my income more than tripled!) is going to be pretty quick and right to the point! Last month stats:

UVs: 4,567
Monthly Page views: 12,3666
Email subscribers: 469
Pinterest: 388
Facebook: 95
Twitter: 1,346
Instagram: 1,459
Income:Â $68.48

Augst goals:

UVs: 6,000
Monthly Page views: 20,000
Email subscribers: 600
Pinterest: 1,000
Facebook: 150
Twitter: 1,500
Instagram: 1,600
Income: $300

I’m being a little aspirational for my social media growth, seeing as I actually did not focus at all on social media andÂ focused mostly on income growth. After all, it does cost money to run a website! I really wanted to focus on some more sponsored posts for August. I prepared a sponsorship package and sent it out to 5 companies. All five replied for more info and one company purchased my biggest package (which accounted for the majority of my income for August). Other news for August, I found out we have a little bun in the oven and was VERY tired! I also got my first sponsored post with IZEA. I took a step back from social media, I did not expect to see much growth at all. Actual August 2016 Stats:

UVs: 6,057 (goal met)
Monthly Page views: 26,273 (goal met and more than doubled!)
Email subscribers: 1,041 (goal met)
Pinterest: 507 (goal not met)
Facebook: 113 (goal not met)
Twitter: 1 ,354 (goal not met)
Instagram: 1,489 (goal not met)

I want to be honest, while my social media goals ALL fell short, I did see an AMAZING increase in traffic due to Pinterest (even with less than 1k followers!). I was gifted the awesome Pinterest Strategy by the author of the guide (I actually purchased it at first and then won a consult with her and she refunded it at that time as a gift). This entire strategy is broken down into only 5 pages, but man it is full of everything you need to know (and none of what you don’t need to know) I highly suggest it. Check it out here.

Things that worked this month:

Sponsored posts: Let’s be honest, to really monetize your site long term you need a high amount of traffic and a pretty hefty email list. Most of the good ad networks don’t even accept you until your page views are around 80k and the email list is helpful for sales funnels and affiliate income. I’m not naive, I know that it takes I’m not naive, I know that it takes time to build up traffic so I decided to focus on sponsored posts for my monetization method in August.

I created a sponsorship package with each individual service (sponsored post, newsletter campaign, and social media campaign) and then created packages with bundled services at a lower cost than purchasing separate. I sent my media kit along with a brief (like seriously, just a few sentences) quickly describing my niche and my idea for a sponsored post to 5 companies and asked if they wanted more info. All of them responded. I then sent my sponsorship package to all of them and 1 accepted. I also obtained a sponsored post opportunity from IZEA. The company contacted me directly.

Pinterest: Like I said, I implemented The Pinterest Strategy Guide and quickly saw a jump in traffic. The best part? The traffic converted amazingly to email subscribers (I went from 469 to 1,041 in one month!). I love the traffic I get from Pinterest because unlike linky parties or Facebook groups, the people actually wanted to click to my article. They didn’t come to my site so that I would go to theirs, they aren’t commenting so that I leave them a comment, and etc.

What didn’t work this month:

Social media: But to be fair, I didn’t put much effort into it. It’s not really a “run on autopilot thing” OH how I wish I could hire a VA to help with this!!

OK time for the income breakdown!

Income for August 2016: