Hey There, April (Goals, Traffic & Income Report)
Hey There,
I’m doing something a little bit different today. As I sat down to review my March goals and set some new ones for April, I decided that I wanted to add more about my traffic and even share a little bit about my income this month. I really want to help others love their blogs and if that means growing their audience and making some side money off their site, then I want to share how I’m doing that! So, today, I’m rolling out the new and improved goal post to share a traffic and income report as well!
March Goals Recap:
Start Harry Potter #3 Not only did we start HP #3, we were able to finish it completely on Thursday while driving across the great state of Texas! We’re on to number four!
Use my new planner I love love love my Happy Planner and am so glad that I’ve finally found a planner that meets ALL my needs. It’s customizable with stickers, so I can adjust each day to fit what I’ve got planned and it’s been great to keep me organized with my mentorees, sponsored blog posts, and meetings!
Continue to rebrand and update blog posts – Ugh, this was a bit of a fail. I think I updated two. This is definitely something I’m going to work on this month!
Get Serious about my email lists- This was a half success, half fail. I did REALLY good sending out bonus posts the first half of the month, but the move put me in a funk and I didn’t stay on top of it. That’s going to change this month, so make sure you’re signed up for my HTC Sunday Bonus posts! And Blog Bosses, I’ve got some great freebies coming your way soon!
Posting Schedule- I made it a goal to post 4 times a week and while I did great the first half of the month, I failed in the last two weeks (again, the move killed me.) But, I did realize that trying to post 4 times a week was absolutely exhausting and it was hard for me to stay passionate when I was pushing so much. I hold my blog posts to a really high standard these days and aim for them to be really in depth and informative, so I’m going to cut back to 3 blog posts a week. I know that having two days off from not posting will help me produce better content in the long run!
Launch the Mentorship Program– WHICH I DID! I was pretty nervous to launch this program because of the whole imposter syndrome, but I really wanted to give it a go. I have been SO excited about how well it’s been going. Not only have I been able to actually talk face-to-face (facetime/phone calls) with three amazing bloggers, but I’ve really felt like I’ve been able to help them so far. Getting back to my teaching roots has been so enjoyable and has really challenged me in nothing but great ways! I’m actually extending their program through the end of April because we’re having a great time and I want to finish up our projects and I’ll be offering another 6-week mentor program at the beginning of May!
April Goals:
Work while Dustin is working and try to have it all done by the time he gets home (he now works until 8:30 PM.) I want to be more intentional about sticking to office hours so I can enjoy my time with my husband when he comes home!
Continue to revamp old blog posts and recirculate them out in Pinterest!
Get 5,000 followers on Instagram! It’s a big goal (I’ll need about 800 followers) but I’m going to work for it!
Share my very exciting project that I’ve been working on for the past couple weeks! Look for more details on FRIDAY!
Stay dedicated to posting & email schedule! I mentioned above that I’m going to cut back to 3 blog posts a week (but might have a 4th one slip in there every once in a while) so that I can focus on producing more quality content instead of trying to churn out shorter posts. I also want to get back into some of my beauty posts! I feel like it’s time to bring back the Favs and Fails posts, no?
April Site Stats:
Pageviews: 15,000 (down by 7,000 from February)
Facebook Followers: 1100 (up from 1,008 in February)
Instagram: 4184 (up from 3800 in February)
Pinterest: 1.9K (up from 1.2 K in February)
Twitter: 1600 even (up 50 followers)
Takeaways:
-I knew that my page views were going to tank a bit from February, as I basically stopped blogging the last two weeks of March while we moved. But, I have seen an increase in google traffic and I think that’s because I’ve taken SEO more seriously, so hooray!
-I’m really excited to see that since implementing a very consistent Pinterest strategy (AKA, TAILWIND!) that my followers have been steadily growing. Unfortunately, that’s not converting into page views as well as I thought it would, so I still need to work on finding the key to getting the right people clicking on my pins and repinning them. I think part of the problem was that my branding colors were a little too muted for Pinterest. In case you haven’t noticed, I did a bit of tweaking this week and added in a pop of color and bolded up the purples to hopefully make my graphics stronger. I really love the change and hope that I don’t have to do any more site design changes for a long while!
-Instagram is steadily growing! I’ve been intentionally working on leaving real thoughtful comments on the photos of my followers and engaging with them, along with being as honest and transparent as I can in my captions. In fact, one of my most honest photos posted to date has gotten a whopping 800 likes within the span of a week and has over 70 comments. The new Instagram algorithm is scary, but I truly feel like being as honest as I can and just trying to be friendly with my followers is what’s helping me consistently grow the account (along with posting pretty content)
April Income Report:
I never thought I would share this kind of information on my blog, but March was an awesome month for me and it was great to have a bunch of awesome opportunities become available. In an effort to be transparent, I decided I would share what networks I worked with this last month and how much I made from them. I don’t think I’ll share this information every month, but I want other bloggers to know what networks are out there and what the pay can be like! (Bare in mind, this is just the money I made off of sponsored posts, this doesn’t include affiliate ads or sponsored social media syndication.)
Social Fabric: $320
PRIMP Network: $125
One2One Network: $125
Influence Central: $200
Acorns: $250
Total from Networks: $1,020
Holy cow! Even though March was a hard month, it was so awesome to be able to make enough money to not only fund my blog, but also, I was finally able to buy the components to upgrade my computer’s RAM, memory, and hard drive. Thank you, THANK YOU, for supporting me here at HTC and for supporting the brands that keep it up and running.
If you are a blogger looking to make a little extra income off some sponsored posts, make sure you check out my super thorough post on how to get sponsored posts with Social Fabric and download my free eBook that shows my step-by-step formula for pitching post ideas!
Okay, that wraps up this very extensive March blog report! I’d love to know what questions you might have or what your goals are for this month!
