October 2018 Blog Income Report – $908.85 In one Month From My Blog

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Why Share My Blog Income?

Reading other blogger’s income reports is what started the blogging dream for me.

I was a 20-year-old stay at home mom with a new baby. Scrolling through Pinterest when I saw a post titled How I made $12k+ in one month as a stay at home mom.

It led me to a blogging income report and the rest is history! I started my blog and am now making money online while at home with my now toddler all because of that blogger’s income report.

So, I post my blog income in hopes to pay it forward and show others that it is possible!

How it all started:

At 20 I was a new mom who was so grateful to be able to stay home and raise my baby! But after my husband started his journey towards his dream career, I remember feeling so jealous of what he had.

I didn’t want to sacrifice being a stay at home mom but I also wanted more! I wanted something to fill that void in me that wanted to be successful in something other than “just” motherhood.

Then in the fall of 2016 I found THAT thing! I remember stumbling upon a blog post from a mom who shared how she made a full-time income while at home with her kids by blogging and the rest is history.

I started my blog within a week, and that space in me that so wanted something of my own was full! Suddenly I went from “just” a mom to a momtrepreneur who was raising babies and making money during nap time.

That was back in 2016, now I am focused on helping other moms do the same by starting their own profitable blogs, transforming them from a mom to a momtrepreneur in the time they have during nap time!

If you’re ready to turn your passions into profits, you can get my free start a blog guide and checklist sent right to your inbox by signing up below!

On to the report!

Blog Income From October:

*Note I only count income I actually received, not revenue I earned but hasn’t been paid out yet.

Affiliates: $147.27

Amazon Associates: $147.27

Affiliates Total: $147.27

Ads: $552.80

Mediavine: $552.80 (Ads on the blog)

Ad Total: $552.80

My Own Products: $208.78

Conquer Your First 30 Days Blogging – Ebook/Workbook: $132.52
38-Page Blog Planner: $40.95
Etsy: $35.31 (Blogging Tees & Digital Prints) Check it out here!

Product Total: $208.78

October Blog Income Total: $908.85

October Traffic and Stats:

Pageviews: 79,052 (up from 71,905 in September)

Pinterest Followers: 1,968 (+78)

Pinterest Reach: 904k (+215k)

Instagram Followers: 1,608 (+16)

Facebook Likes: 5,461 (+468)

Facebook Group Members: 230 ( +25 – You can join the blog for profit group here!)

My Most Popular Posts From October:

My most popular posts were mostly the same per usual. However, my How to Easily Take Photos Of Yourself For Instagram for Your Blog post made a comeback and jumped from the number 8 spot to number 3!

What Worked This Month:

Tailwind:

Just a few months ago Pinterest released a statement about what Pinterest pin schedulers it would allow to be used on their platform. In doing so, they put other pin scheduling companies out of business namely BoardBooster.

BoardBooster was the platform I was using to schedule my pins and I loved them! They were only $5 a month and their method of pinning to secret boards, and their looping abilities was awesome! So when they shut down, it’s safe to say I was pretty upset.

So after a while of pouting I finally purchased my Tailwind membership and boy it’s nice to have a pin scheduler again! I still don’t like it as much BoardBooster but it works for what I need and is much better than nothing that’s for sure!

I highly recommend having a pin scheduler, and now that BoardBooster is gone, I’d say the best thing out there is Tailwind. Their plans start at $15 a month or you can get an entire year for only $120 which is the equivalent of $10 plus with the annual plan you get unlimited pins.

On the monthly plan, you only get 400 pins a month which means the max you can pin a day is 13 pins. And really to boost your Pinterest traffic you should be pinning at least 20x a day. So really, in my opinion, the only plan worth doing is their annual plan, or you might as well just pin manually.

Anyway, after starting my membership I went full force and filled up my pin scheduler to 25 pins a day. I had a goal to post three blog posts a week in October so I had lots of pins coming through and even upped my pin scheduler to 30x a day at one point.

Since having everything scheduled out my following grew much faster (78 new followers this month as compared to 3 last month) and my reach exploded again!

Back in May, I had a reach of 3 million, but after taking a hiatus during the summer, it dropped all the way down to 689k. Yikes right?

But after scheduling my pins again and posting regularly I’m almost to 1 million so we’re getting up there! It just shows that pinning regularly to Pinterest can really boost the number of people that see your pins.

So Tailwind was a win for October and a big contributor to boosting my blog traffic by 10% this month!

My New Products:

In October I soft-launched my very first products on the blog! Yes, I had an Etsy shop before but I don’t think those really count?. I launched my very first Ebook/Workbook Mom to Momtrepreneur – Guide to Conquering Your First 30-Days Blogging During Nap Time and my brand new complete 38-Page Printable Monthly Blog Planner!

Mom to Momtrepreneur – Guide to Conquering Your First 30-Days Blogging Durning Nap Time Ebook

My new ebook takes you through all the essential tasks you should do your first 30-days after you launch your blog to set yourself of the fast track to success with only 2 hours of work a day (your average nap time!).

With this guide, at the end of day 30 you’ll have:

clear and established branding
know how to effectively brainstorm and create a good blog post
have a posting schedule and calendar with posts scheduled out and ready to go
optimized social media accounts along with a Pinterest strategy to drive traffic to your blog.
started an email list and a method to grow it quickly
started the monetization process and added income streams that allow your blog to start making money
developed a strategy to drive traffic to your brand new blog
and have created an action plan for the future to continue growing!

With this guide what would normally take you months of scrolling through Pinterest and Google will only take you 30-days and will allow your blog to start making money asap! Get your copy here!

I launched my ebook on October 6th and sold 10 copies in its first 3 days without marketing it at all! I have a plan to do an official launch to my email list in November with an upgraded sales page so wish me luck! But I am still overjoyed by the $132 it brought be in October!

38-Page Ultimate Blog Planner

On October 20th I accidentally created my second product I wasn’t planning on creating at all! I had decided I wanted to revamp my old lead magnets my start a blog checklist and my monthly blog planner and when I went to revamp the planner I just couldn’t stop!

After adding in newly revamped page after page to the planner I ended up with 38 pages of gold! But I knew that It may overwhelm a newbie blogger or would be too much for someone just blogging as a hobby so I decided to take out the most basic pages and give those away for free to my email subscribers and allow the ones who are serious about blogging for profit to purchase the full 38 page planner.

I printed off the pages for myself as I did with my old planner and I am so happy I decided to revamp it!

The layout is much better and it has everything I need to keep my blog growing and running smoothly! If you don’t use a planner for your blog yet you need one! Even if you just go purchase a planner at Tjmaxx or use an online planner! But if you’re looking of a killer planner you can get your hands on mine here!

It’s only been about two weeks so far that the planner has been on sale but the response has been great so far and I’m so glad to have another product available for my readers!

Updating my Lead Magnets:

Like I said, this month I decided it was time to revamp my lead magnets (opt-in freebies) and I am so glad I did! It allowed me to create 2 tripwire products (listed above) and add two more income streams to the blog.

The nice thing too, is that I added in A LOT of value to the old lead magnets. In fact, I added in a complete guide to my Start a blog checklist and a much easier and prettier layout to my blog planner!

After launching the newly updated freebies, I’ve also been able to attract more of my target audience (Stay at home moms) too so as my list is growing, I’m getting less and less unsubscribes and more thank you letters! Yay for knowing my audience!

What Didn’t Work:

SEO… kind of…:

In last month’s income report I talked about how I was going to be focusing on SEO to increase my traffic by 25% in October. Well, I did focus on SEO, but I only increased traffic by 10%.

That is because the more and more research I did into SEO the more I learned that it is the slow race. All my SEO efforts will pay off but not in just a month. In fact, I learned from Neil Patel, SEO guru, that it’s gonna take at least 6 months to really see a major increase in search engine traffic??‍♀️.

It’s okay Y’all I’m still learning too! So SEO “didn’t work” this month the way I was thinking but it will pay off soon! So I’m continuing to focus on SEO and optimized each of my blog posts every week with the long game in mind.

Under Valuing my Products:

Like I said in the wins from this month, I launched two new products and they are selling great! But one mistake I made was initially pricing my blog planner too low.

I priced the blog planner as a $5 tripwire. (which means they can get the planner for only $5 when they subscribe to my email list but only have 20 minutes before the offer expires) and $10 full price.

It sounds like a good deal but when I first asked my blogger friends what I should price it at, they all said upwards of $20. The mistake I made was pricing something that really is SO GOOD for so low.

I thought to offer it for only $5 and $10 would make me more sales but it didn’t! It’s like when a product is priced so low that people think it must not be very good right? Like if I offered you a brand new Mercedes for $5,000 you’d probably assume there’s something wrong with it right?

My planner was the same!

So a few days ago after researching the market and learning that my blogging peers were right. That other blog planners were selling at a MINIMUM of $20 I increased my price. I made the planner $20 and the tripwire $9 (normally a tripwire is around 50% off-ish).

And guess what? I’m actually selling more now! Isn’t it crazy? I’m still researching to make sure I’m still not undervaluing my product and will probably increase it in the future but for now, I feel good about the price.

It just goes to show that you should always ask people to pay for the value they are getting! And guess what? They are happy to pay for it!

Rebrand = Drop in Ad Revenue:

So the last miss from this month was my obvious major drop in ad revenue.

So back in May when I rebranded Life on Waller to CassieScroggins.com my ad earnings were cut in half! I knew it would happen because some ad buyers don’t bid on “new” websites (sites under a year old) but I felt like the rebrand was needed so I went for it anyway.

The thing with my ad revenue is that I get paid out 90 days after I earn it. That’s just how Mediavine (my ad network) works. So the ad revenue I received this month was actually earned in July.

So after my rebrand, my earnings immediately dropped. And they continued to decrease hitting an all-time low in July. Combined with the low blog traffic season being the summertime meant I made significantly less in July than any other month.

Luckily as August came around and traffic went up so did my earnings and my RPMs started to climb back up too! So My ad earnings right now are just now returning to what they were pre-rebrand (around $850+ a month) but again I don’t get paid out til 90 days later so my first month back to $850+ ad income months won’t be till January.

That’s okay though, you just gotta roll with it and keep working on my traffic. I’m still about 10,000 pageviews less than I was pre-summer. But I’m hoping that I’ll hit that by the end of the year which means more ad $$.

How I did – Goals From October:

Increase my blog traffic by 25% – Half fail? I didn’t increase my traffic by 25% in October but I did increase it by 10%! I’d say that’s still pretty darn good!
Post 3x a week in October. – Check! I posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in October to help boost traffic and build up content!
Finish my new ebook and tripwire! – Check! Yes! I finished my ebook Mom to Momtrepreneur – How to Conquer Your First 30-Days Blogging During Nap Time Ebook and I sold 10 copies it’s first 3 days without promoting it!

Goals For November:

Finish EBA (Elite Blog Academy) Unit 9!
Sell $300 of my new products (MTM Ebook & Blog Planner)
Finish All Blog Posts for 2018.
Increase my traffic by another 10%!

I don’t know about you but I am so stoked for the holidays! And what these last two months has in store for me and my blog! Ad RPMs are at their highest of the year so I’m hoping to take advantage by increasing my traffic and in turn growing my email list too!

I’ve been making my way slowly through EBA. But I would really love to finish it in the next few months.

I told myself I would finish by the end of 2018. However, I’ll be out of town with family from December 7th to January 8th so that just won’t happen.

Since I decided to stop where I was and start the course all over again at the beginning of this year I really have been making sure to complete each assignment thoughtfully and do it right. So I don’t want to crank out the last quarter of the course in one month and not do it right.

I’ve got big goals for 2019 so I’ve got to make sure I finish EBA the right way and set me off for success!

What are your goals for November? Are you as stoked for the holidays as I am? Leave me a comment below!

October 2018 Blog Income Report – $908.85 In one Month From My Blog

Why Share My Blog Income?