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Blog Traffic and Income Report : How I made $2,131.92 in June

I am so excited to be completing my 6th blog traffic and income report. If you haven’t seen my last month’s income, you can check it out Blog Traffic & Income Report: How I made $2,299.58 in May.

During this process of reporting my earnings in 2015, I have received so many lovely and supportive comments and emails supporting what I am putting out there. I think since my goals started small at $500 for January, it allows for people to help set realistic goals for themselves and see the snowball effect blogging can have!

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This post contains affiliate links*

Check out all my Blog Traffic and Income Reports on my new page!

In December of 2014, I took some advice from Bonnie at Hobbytohot.com who said to create your annual goal $$. She says to then work backward to help figure out your monthly goals to achieve your large goal for the year. Since my large goal is $15,000 for the year, I was able to work in the order she suggested to help create smaller manageable goals every month.

I am excited to say that the info I am presenting has been inspiring others to start a blog or take their blog to the next level which is the best feeling in the world for me.

My main goal when starting these income reports was to show others (in a very specific way) how they can make money online. Especially those that are just starting out and trying to figure the whole blogging thing out. I remember how intimidating and confusing it was when I first started.

The process of really tracking my earnings along with my blogging expenses has been so helpful. It is quite eye opening to the amount of change that can occur within a month!

To reach my $15,000 goal for the year, my income goal was to reach $2,500 income goal for the month of June.

The crazy thing is that I would have earned more this month, but I didn’t hustle as much as I had hoped because of my day job. If you don’t already know, I am an Art Department Coordinator/Set Decorator in the film and television industry by day and blogger by night and weekends. Right now I am currently working on Big Brother in its 17th season and I have been staying very busy with that. This show always drains me!

After switching to BlueHost as my web host at the end of April 2015, I am happy to say that my site has not crashed once! This was not the case when I was hosting with Go Daddy after I started getting more traffic. Also, did I mention that a lot of my photos from my transfer in hosting didn’t make it?? So now I am manually replacing photos on posts and galleries which is super tedious work.

If you want to learn more about the art of blogging (because it is an art form) you should check out my Essential Bloggers Resource Guide to get more details if you are thinking of starting a blog to even just improving the one you already have.

I am really trying to put myself out there to (hopefully) inspire newer bloggers with my current and future monthly blog income reports. I am also doing this to hold myself accountable to continue pushing forward with my income goals for the year. 

Moving on to the details from June…

This year I have really been trying to focus on creating beautiful images… specifically, pin-worthy images. I have also been working more and more with canva.com to do this. I had a couple posts go viral on Pinterest last month because of my images! Super happy about that one.

I began implementing a few new things this month in social media specifically.
I must preface, that I didn’t start really investing in my blog until April 2015 when I started making over $1000/month. Now that I am making a decent side income each month, I don’t see any harm in freeing up my time to finish my ebook and work on more DIY projects.

  • I have been using the social media automation tool Meet Edgar for a couple months now and I swear this was such a great move!  I am saving so much more time every day by not having to be on my phone scheduling posts on FB, Twitter, and Linked In. It is a little bit of a splurge costing me $49/month. But this is a solid investment because it frees up my time to other things.
  • Another tool I began using is Tailwind. I heard about it from the fabulous Blogger, Erika, over at Olyvia.co. She wrote the most amazing post about HOW TO GET PINTEREST FOLLOWERS + REPINS: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE.

I didn’t realize how much I could still learn from Pinterest when I feel like I had a really good handle on it when I had 5,600k followers and a lot of traffic coming to my site daily. But this article taught me so much and showed me Tailwind. This automation tool is geared specifically towards Pinterest and Instagram.  Now I have 7,146k followers and gaining hundreds daily. I also just reached a milestone of over 10,500k page views in a single day! That was pretty exciting. I attribute a lot of my success to Tailwind. 66% of my traffic comes from Pinterest, so it was worth the investment. I can schedule an unlimited amount of pins for weeks ahead of time with their easy interface. I love setting it and forgetting it!

Best. Thing. Ever.

** You can try Tailwind for free and schedule up to 100 pins before they ask you to pay $15/mth for 400 pins a month. Or you can pay $119 for the year for unlimited pins. Since this platform is my largest traffic referrer, it was worth the investment and I paid for the annual membership.

Another new concept I implemented last month was working with The Blogger Network. They are an ad management company that helps bloggers make more money with their own “holistic ad placement.” These ads were just implemented at the end of the month, but I am happy to say I have already made money with them. Yay! I am also happy to report that they admitted me into their “Flight” mobile ad network as well. This was just implemented at the beginning of June. So stay tuned for more info next month about this feature.

A couple months ago I wrote an article about how to make your space look more expensive on a dime that went absolutely completely viral on Pinterest bringing me an additional 49,000 page views in March for that post alone! I am happy to report that this post is still my #1 Popular Post on my site still earning me 57,480 views in May. Who knew this post would be such a hit?? I am proud to say that this post had 96,714 page views during the month of June! I didn’t think I would exceed any of my last page views after the post had been live for a few months. Still amazed.

Another thing I really worked on in June was building my following on my social media platforms a bit more and applying for more affiliates and media groups when I could. I worked with Linqia* this month on a fun campaign!  AND I will be working with them again during the month of July!

Here is my May Google Analytics traffic summary.

**Things are a little different this month because when I switched my web hosting my google analytics account went down while my site was down. After some edits, I was able to get my google analytics back up and running on May 9th.

I am pleased that even with my analytics being down for 9 days, I still pulled off 128,123. According to my WordPress jetpack dashboard, my total page views for the month of may was 157,717!

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Here is my June Google Analytics traffic summary. 

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I am pleased with the progress I made last month in June with 198,204 page views and there were 30 days in that month.

  • My Page Views increased by +40,487 
  • The Average Time on my site increased by +12secs
  • My Bounce Rate increased (which is not a good thing) by +1.95 secs.  As I try to approach my site as a reader, I have really been trying to tweak it to make navigation more seamless. I have also really been working on back linking in my posts to related articles to keep readers engaged & on my site longer. I hope to curtail this skill soon.

 

My top referrers for the month…

Pinterest is the best traffic driving tool ever and I really trying to create more compelling images that people will want click on and hopefully pin to their boards.

I have been working so hard on my SEO and my keyword research prior to writing my articles and I am elated that I am showing up in search engines in the #4 position.

Here are my traffic referral stats from June… 

blog-traffic-and-income-report-how-i-made-2131-92-in-June -google-analytics-source
The sources of my earnings…I set a goal for myself at the beginning of June to make at least $2,500 during the month. I am trying to set reasonable goals each month to reach my ultimate goal for 2015 of $15,000.
Here is the breakdown of how I did. 
  • Adsense ………… $112.25 decrease of -$48.25 from last month. I started working with the Blogger Network so Adsense had to go. 
  • The Blogger Network….$1,181.69 increase of +$437.03 from last month
  • Infolinks* …………..$10.66 decrease of -$29.05 from last month. To comply with the Blogger Networks requirements, my text links had to go in my posts. I now just have 3 small images at the bottom of the blog that is generating a small revenue now. 
  • Content.ad ………$168.84 decrease of -$4.61 from last month. 
  • Amazon …………..$178.61 increase of +$115.04 from last month.
  • Mom’s Affiliate*…..$2.00 decrease of -$4.00 from last month. 
  • Linqia* ……………………..$368.40 This was my second campaign with Linqia! I did my first ever full video tutorial project for my first Linqia campaign back in May on my new YouTube Channel! Check it out! They were really fun and easy to work with! I highly recommend them. 

          Total ………………$ 2,131.92

I didn’t quite meet my goal, and I didn’t get as vigorous about applying for sponsored posts because of my day job taking up too much of my time. I can’t wait to be a full-time blogger. Blogging has really opened so many opportunities for me and I am so grateful to be able to continue to do it! Making money doing what I love!

I attribute a lot of my success last month with my goal of getting organized. I purchased the EPIC BLOG One-Year Editorial Planner* and it has changed the way I do everything. I seriously love this thing! I bring it with me pretty much everywhere OR a notebook to write in if an idea strikes. I love how organized I am staying while planning my posts months in advance. What a relief it is to have things pre-planned!

I highly recommend this awesome planner if you are ready to get serious about blogging. The creator Regina is absolutely fantastic. I have learned so much about blogging and business from her! Check out my I also have some great blog post brainstorming tips. for more info on other helpful resources.

How I am making money with this awesome editorial planner

Some fun post brainstorming…scheduling my posts in my calendar.

How I am making money with this awesome editorial planner. Planning ahead is so essential

I hope some of you found this traffic and income report helpful! I do these monthly to help track my progress.

Feel free to share this blog traffic and income report if you think it will help others. 🙂 Thanks in advance.

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Let me know what you think! Is there anything you want to know more about? Did you like this article? Let me know in the comments below.

Your feedback really helps me to figure out how I can best help YOU! I want to share everything I wish I had learned when I first began blogging back in 2012.

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3 Comments

  1. Sir,

    I love reading your traffic and online income report. It has inspired me to work harder.

    I’m a blogger from Malaysia and currently generating online revenue about $200 per month through Google Adsense and only joined the affiliate marketing recently. I really admire to be as successful as you.

    Cheers,
    Skytech

    1. Thank you so much for your sweet comment! I think if you focus your attention and keep plugging along with some of the tips and suggestions I have made in my reports and other articles I write, you will get to your goal! I have been blogging for about 3 years and 4 months. I have only really been taking it seriously as a possible career since December! You can DO IT! 🙂 Keep in touch and if you ever have any questions please email me!

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