My First Income and Traffic Report: September 2016
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclaimer for more information
Hey Peeps! As promised, this is my income and traffic report for the month of September!
I’m so excited to finally be doing my own after reading so many income and traffic reports from other bloggers!
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclaimer for more information.
Why I’m Blogging My Income & Traffic Reports
When I created this blog, it was to show people how to make money online through online jobs, online businesses, blogs, websites and so on. What better way to do that than to allow them to see me doing it right along with them, right?
1. I want to be able to document the growth of my blog.
2. I want people to see that it is possible to make money from their blogs and ultimately create a better life with more choices for themselves and their loved ones.
3. I love to write, so I will take the opportunity to write anything!
Plus it’s all the rave these days and everyone’s doing it! Just kidding! I’m not one to follow the crowd, but I am particularly interested in making money and sharing my experiences trying to do so online.
4. The main aim of my income and traffic reports is so that someone somewhere can learn something from this and create a better life for themselves by starting a blog too if that’s what interests them, but they’ve been afraid to take the leap!
So, if you’re that someone who would like to create your own blog, I created a detailed step by step guide on how to setup a blog in 30 minutes or less with SiteGround. If you use my link, you can receive a 60% discount and start blogging for just $3.95 per month (unbeatable value!!!). I recently learned that it is really possible to make money from a blog and I am determined to do this right and have a super successful blog. I would love for you to join me along the way!
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I am super excited to share my income and traffic report for my first month of blogging (September 2016). I had quite a bit of fun this month getting to know and interact with new people, learning new things and getting a chance to be creative and do something I enjoy!
I notice that many bloggers start income and traffic reports when their blog actually starts to make money, rather than when they first start their blog. I get this since
1. Many bloggers start their blogs with no idea that they can even generate an income from it, ‘ .or with no desire to even do so.
2. Some do not even know the concept of a blog income and traffic report when they first start out blogging.
But, I do, and I want to be different and share the progress of my blog from the very beginning rather than from when it starts to actually make progress.
I’m Sharing My Income And Traffic Reports To Keep You And Me Motivated!
Here’s what I think
I suspect that many people who start blogging quit before really giving it a chance because they don’t seem to see much progress in terms of traffic and income in the first few months of blogging (month 1-3) and so blogging seems useless to them.
Moreover, many people don’t see bloggers ‘like them’ who aren’t making much money and getting much traffic as yet. After all, the blogosphere is filled with income and traffic reports from bloggers who choose to share their income and traffic reports when they ‘look better’.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. But this blog is about helping the newbies, like me see full, unedited progress and pitfalls from day one.
I share this in the hope that it will keep newbies motivated and let them see that they aren’t doing anything wrong, they are merely learning and progressing at a typical pace.
Also, if you’re not yet a blogger, I hope my income and traffic reports, as well as all my other juicy articles for newbie bloggers, will help you build up the courage to start your own profitable blog as you see that anything is possible with it no matter what your stats are in the beginning. It will get better, way better, if you do the right things consistently.
A Few Highlights
I had some terribly stressful days this month such as when I broke my little old blog in mid-September trying to be a techie (which I’m not). Also. I was stressed out and very disappointed when my traffic sucked on some days and I was literally depressed about it! But, I keep reminding myself that this is a part of the process.
Overall, it was a great experience for me and I plan to keep it going to help people make money online and make an income for myself from this blog as well.
This is it!
As you may know, this blog was launched on September 1st, 2016 and this is my 1st income and traffic report.
As you can imagine, I am still figuring things out and getting a feel for what’s to come in terms of work, ideas and so on.
My Goals For September 2016: Was I successful Or Not?
Social Media Follows Stats
The goal for September was 150 Pinterest followers, 50 Facebook fans, and 50 twitter followers
What Actually Happened:
Pinterest: 211 followers – Successful!
Facebook: 27 fans- Failed
Twitter: 24 followers- Failed
Blog Posts Published In September 2016
The goal for this month was to have 30 posts published. I launched the blog with 13, so I only had to publish 17 more by the end of this month:
Unsuccessful (only published 12 posts)
Blog Related Posts I Published In September 2016
Great Sites To Promote Your Blog: New Blogger Chronicles
How to make money online: 12 Bloggers Income And Traffic Reports
Pinterest Group Boards And Why New Bloggers Need Them
4 Affiliate Marketing Networks That Also Pay You For Referring Publishers
Why My First Income Blog Failed And Yours Will To If You Do Not Prepare
How To Get Out Of Debt By Starting A Money Making Blog
Online Jobs Related Posts I Published In September 2016
List Of Virtual Assistant Jobs From Home That Pay Well
Great Online Jobs For Military Spouses
Best Ways To Make Money Online If You’re Unemployed
Get Paid To Test Websites And Apps: You Can Get Paid As Much As $10 Per Test
Mystery Shopping Companies Hiring Now!
Income
My income goal was to make $25 with Ad Networks and $75 for guest posting: Unsuccessful
Google Adsense: $51.29 (Success X 2!!)
Guest Posting: $0.00 (Did not meet this goal. I literally could not find the time to create awesome posts that were worthy of being published on someone else’s blog!)
Site Groud web hosting: $0.00
Surveys: $0.00
Total Income: $ 51.29
Expenses
Web Hosting: $3.95
Tailwind: $15.00
Facebook ads: $2.00
Total Expenses: $20.95
Net Income: $30.34
Traffic
My goal was to get 6000 page views in September: Majorly unsuccessful 🙁
I received 3528 page views for my first month of blogging.
You might like this bonus I’ve made just for you. If you’re new to blogging or looking to increase traffic you really need to check it out.
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What do you think of my accomplishments this month?
Takeaways From September 2016
I’m the sort of girl who sets goals (for accountability and focus) and then goes out and tries my best to nail them!
At the beginning of every month, I will set some and we will see if I accomplish them! I will outline my goals for October soon.
But First, For The Takeaways from September
I like to evaluate things to see what’s working, what’s not working and to ultimately decide what I need to adjust to get better results based on my goals.
What I Plan To Adjust
Stumbleupon
I will be parting ways with Stumbleupon
If you do not know what StumbleUpon is, it is a discovery engine that helps you ‘discover’ web pages, videos, and images from all over the internet.
Keep in mind, that as of the third week in September, Stumbleupon became my first source of traffic, followed by Facebook and Pinterest.
But I feel like I have to discontinue using Stumbleupon and here is why.
Like is said, StumbleUpon is my highest source of traffic but, I realize that this traffic from StubleUpon does not create value for my blog.
Let me explain
Like me, many of the users on StumbleUpon are only stumbling my web page to get views for themselves.
I have tested StumbleUpon out by stumbling web pages on my computer, while at the same time looking at my Google Analytics stats on my phone. The more I stumble other people’s web pages, the more visitors I get to my blog and when I stop stumbling, I stop getting visitors to my website.
Trust me, it was awesome to see 19 people on my website all at once (on a brand new blog!), but this traffic is not really helpful to my blog, because, like me, they were only trying to get more traffic to their blog and they were not reading any of my content. It is easy to get caught up, but I have come to realize that this is not the type of traffic that I want or NEED to grow my blog.
I spend hours researching and creating my blog posts and I want people to actually read them!!
So, here are all the reasons why I will not be using StumbleUpon anymore
1. Most of the people who are viewing my blog posts from StumbleUpon do not care about my content.
2. StumbleUpon caused my bounce rate to increase dramatically.
3. Stumble Upon caused my average session duration (in Google Analytics) to decrease. If I want to rank in Google quickly (which I do), I think I should be vigilant with this because Google likes it when your visitors spend lots of time on your blog. It tells Google that your content is good and valuable to readers and so they will send more organic visitors to this valuable content (your blog).
What I did in September.
Spent 35-45 minutes stumbling daily.
What I will do in October
Use those 35-45 minutes to learn and implement new strategies to increase my Pinterest traffic.
Why Pinterest?
Because although I want page views, I want them to be valuable.
The users of Pinterest, unlike the users of SU, are wanting and looking for my content. When someone on Pinterest saves or repins my information, they did it because they found some value in it.
I think this is real value and this is what I want to build this blog based on.
Therefore, I will:
1. Work to improve my Pinterest profile and tie up all those loose ends.
2. Upgrade all the keywords in my pins and put more thought into what I write for my pin descriptions.
3. Finally, create a uniform template for all my pins.
4. Get accepted into 30 more group boards.
5. Learn how to use Board Booster effectively, especially the looping function.
Now to be quite frank, Pinterest may flop and be a huge disappointment to me, but this is where I want my traffic to come from for now and so I will give it my best in October.
Facebook groups
What is a facebook group you ask?
It’s a group on facebook with bloggers (many of them new) who network and help each other out by commenting on blog posts, sharing blog posts via social media etc. The concept is mainly, you scratch my back, I scratch yours kinda deal.
In the second week of September, I got introduced to Facebook Groups and boy, did I love this concept.
However, I realize now that I spend way too much time in Facebook Groups. I think I actually spent 3 1/2 hours daily trying to complete threads and read as much as I can. This played a huge part in increasing my page views but, it took away time from writing my content.
If you have read this post, you know that I plan to use social media including Pinterest (and now facebook groups) to help me rank quicker in Google search.
Let me explain
Before Google starts to rank your blog or content, you need to prove that your content will be worthwhile to Google users. Google will look at factors such as your page views, the amount of time a user spends on your blog, your content engagement, (such as shares, comments, likes etc)
Because this is a totally brand new blog, I don’t expect to be getting comments, shares, and likes organically just yet. The only other way I know how to get those are through Facebook Groups. Therefore, I will keep using them.
My plan, though, is to cut down on the time I spend on them. For October, I will only spend 1 1/2 to 2 hours daily participating in Facebook Groups and I will only participate in three threads daily.
What were your takeaways for this month?
Blog goals for October 2016!
1. Get 6000 page views by the last day of October 2016
2. Make Pinterest my biggest traffic source
3. Participate in Facebook Groups for a maximum of 2 hours daily
4. Make $275 on my blog
- $60 from Ad Networks
- $150 from SiteGround web hosting
- $75 from Guest Posting
5. Publish 16 blog posts (each 1500 + words)
6. Purchase and install a new theme.
7. Guest Post two (2) times
8. Get 50 email subscribers
9. Get 400 Pinterest followers
10. Spend 24 hours in this month (1 hour a day) working on my first e-book.
11. Comment on 30 niche related bloggers blogs
12. Get 150 facebook likes
Will I achieve these goals at the end of October? Stick around to find out how I’m doing!!
I’d love to know what your blog goals are for October. Share with me in the comments below!
Good luck with your goals! I need to start making some.
Hi Amber! Thanks so much. You should definitely set some goals. They might give you a sense of focus throughout the month. Plus, there is nothing better than having accomplished a goal or goals that you set for yourself, whether big or small!
As a blogger I love the way you broke this down! I am a newbie also!
Hi Teresa. Thank you so much. Good luck with your blog!
Thanks Teressa! Good luck with your new blog.
Keep working at it. Focus on the success you are having. I know Facebook is slow for me to grow. Thanks for sharing
Thanks so much! I will definitely be focusing on facebook this month to help increase traffic. Thanks for the suggestion and for stopping by.
I love the fact you are showing people how you are making money and from the get go! Thank you so much for sharing, can’t wait to see what October brings.
Hi Sarah! Thanks. I’m super thrilled to be sharing as well. I can’t wait for October too!
Looks like you’re on the right track! I hope you reach your goals for next month. The hard work and effort are worth it, I promise you!
What a great post for me, I have a new blogger friend. I will share this to her, Glad you share this info
Thanks Elizabeth1 I will do my best to achieve those goals that I set!
I’ve been blogging for around 5years now, and to be honest, I never had goals. Never. I created my blog just to share my adventures and make it as a diary and to be informative for other people who reads it. I never check my visits or likes or how much I earned. But its not bad haha. I get paid for textlink ads, banner ads, adsense, paid post and some others which I am not expecting to come every month. But I am so thankful. I’m sure you can do it! You sound so positive! ❤️
Your blog set up sounds very interesting. I would love to have a look at it. Thanks so much, I love setting goals because then i feel more in control of my time and I work harder. Lol
I really enjoyed reading this! I published my blog and am new to all this so I’m still in research mode on how to make money and things and benefit from what I do write as a mom blogger! Thank you so much for posting this! It was worth the read for sure!
Thanks Krista. I too am in research mode! There is so much to learn! But, I’m sure we will both do well. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate it!
This seems so manageable! Thank you for the amazing example and showing me what’s possible. I didn’t even know what goals to set for myself. I really need to set up my FB game, and my instagram is doing well enough, though! Still, over 3000 views in your first month is amazing! How did you get so much traffic?
You’re welcome! I am so glad this helped you. In order to set your goals, think about what you want from your blog for the next 30 days. For instance, do you want to increase your page views, get more followers on instagram etc. Then you work towards those goals! My traffic came from Stumble Upon, Facebook Groups and Pinterest. I am preparing an article right now called ‘Everything I Did To Get Traffic In My First Month Blogging’. I will be sure to let you know about it when it is done!
Thank you for the great content. Very informative and useful. im a new with blogging and after reading you post, i am thinking that i have to work harder!!!
Hi! Good luck with your blog and It’s always a good thing to put in as much work as possible to advance your blog. Thanks for taking time to read my post! I really appreciate it.
It is a big job. Keep at it.
Thanks so much Laura. I most definitely will!
You should really be proud of yourself! Having a profit in your very first month is NOT very common at all. I have YET to make a profit on my blog, and I’ve been doing this for two years. Everyone’s case is different, but you are making it!
Hi Sarah and thanks so much! I really wish you luck with making a profit on your blog! If I may ask, are you blogging solely as a hobby?
Great post. It’s impressive that you made over $50 on Ad NetWorks. Our site had over 4000 views last month but barely made 2 dollars.
Could you share some insights?
Hi Chen, I am experimenting with a different strategy with ad networks at the moment. I will be sharing more about it as soon as possible. I will be sure to let you know about it!
I love this. I am 9 months into my site and it’s nice to see what the beginning looks like because I need the help haha. Your goals are super big – don’t think I can keep up but I love it! Super admirable. Question: I am making pretty much nothing from adsense, is there a trick to it?
Thanks! I hope I can keep up with my goals too. Haha! I am currently writing up what I hope to turn into an e-book about how I’m making money from ad networks. I will be sure to let you know of it as soon as its done!
Great job!!! Pinning and saving this for future use. I see you used Adnet instead of Adsense. Is there a reason?
Thank you so much Clearisa! I used only adsense ads on my blog this month, but I want to use ads from other ad networks in the near future and so I thought ‘ad networks’ would be a good idea since it would keep things more consistent.
This is so helpful! As a new blogger myself it reaffirms that I am in the right track! I have a question though.. how are you getting paid to do guest posts? How/where are you finding people who want you to do guest posts for them?
Hi Veena! Thanks for stopping by. I am planning to write a paid guest post to ‘The Penny Hoarder’. Check them out and if your blog is in this niche then you can also try it out! Here is the link : http://www.thepennyhoarder.com/contributor-guidelines/
Thank you so much for the link!!
You’re most welcome Veena!
I really enjoyed reading your first income and traffic report! You’re right when you say bloggers don’t usually start posting these until they’re making a certain amount of money. I like the way you’re doing it because I think this is the best way to see how to grow a blog from the ground up. Also, I think you’ll do great on Pinterest!
Thank you so much Tiffany, I’m glad you enjoyed it and I’m especially happy that you found my strategy worthwhile. I will be working super hard to get Pinterest traffic up. Thanks for believing in me1
Congratulations!! I’m jealous because I’m still waiting for that first penny. But thank you for sharing! If I had some advice of my own I’d share it here, but until then, best of luck!
Hi Matt. No need to be jealous, You will surely earn money from your blog in time! Thanks for stopping by and feel free to come again.
Congrats on all of your achievements! I just published my first blog income report too. I made money my first month too! Hopefully, we can continue this trend. You’ve got some great goals for October. I’ll help you out by following you on Pinterest and Twitter. Best of luck!
Thanks so much Nikk! I’m heading over to see your income report since I absolutely love reading these and it’s pretty cool that you made money in your first month! They keep me focused, you know? Thanks so much for following, I will surely recip!
I love that you shared your blog accomplishments in details. I haven’t tried using Stumbleupon but I heard that it’s a good way to get an organic traffic. Will check this out soon. Thanks for sharing!
Mhaan | http://www.mommyrockininstyle.com
Hi Mhaan. Thanks for stopping by and best of luck with Stumbleupon, some bloggers swear by it, so you should definitely try it out to see how it works for you.
Looks like you’re off to a good start. Keep up the great work here, and live unstoppable!
Thanks so much Rhonda! By the way, I love this little phrase in the end. ‘Live Unstoppable’
Sounds like you are off to a good start. Just have to keep it up. It was interesting to me to see your comment about Stumbleupon. I have just started to use it. I may have to rethink it?
Hi Roy! Thanks for stopping by! Stumbleupon is great for increasing traffic, but it does not necessarily provide valuable traffic, in my opinion. Although I’m sure there are a few unique cases. I wish you luck in making your decision.
You’re off to a great start! I also love how you broke down everything in this post. I’m wondering if you did anything special to reach out to ad networks. I have been denied for all of the ones that I have applied for.
Hi Kay and thanks. Before applying, I read a few places that in order to get approval you need to have a contact page, a privacy policy and a well-designed website and a few pieces of content (I applied to google adsense when I had 11 posts published). If you do not have some of these, you should look into adding them.
p.s If you so not have a privacy policy you can use this template: https://www.bbb.org/dallas/for-businesses/bbb-sample-privacy-policy1/
Hope this helps!
This helps! I have almost 30 posts and disclosure page, and a contact page but I do not have a private policy. I will work on this. Thank you so much.
Great! Good luck Kay!
This is great! Love how you broke it down. September is also my first month of blogging on ontreprenr, and will should write a traffic and income report too.
Will let you know how that goes 🙂
You also did really good with adsense despite the fact that this is your first month! Surprisingly, this is the first blog that I am seeing with 3000+ page views and $50 in ad earnings from adsense. How did you do it?
Thanks for sharing this lovely post.
Hi Hannah! You definitely should and I will be glad to check it out!
Right now I am experimenting with a strategy with ad networks, Google Adsense in particular. I had planned to write up a post about it, but I have changed my mind and decided to create an e-book instead. I am working on it now and I will let you know when it’s done!
Hey! I started my blog on October 2016 and am finally getting some good pageviews YAY! I was wondering the same thing about your ads because I’m literally making like $3 per mont with Adsense. Let me know when your eBook is done! I would love to see your secrets!
(p.s. just joined your facebook group)
Hi Lexi! Congrats on starting your blog. I have since put the idea of this ebook on hold for the time being. I do have some tips that I will share about google ads.
1. I activated page level ads from Google Adsense. You should go into your google Adsense dashboard and activate this feature.
2. I make sure to target keywords with high ‘suggested bids’ in some of my posts. That way, some of my ads CPC are high. I use google keywords planner to find this information. Thanks for joining the group! Please feel free to reach out if you have any more questions or need more help.
For someone who started blogging in September, I’d say you did great with those numbers even though you didn’t reach some of your goals. I’ve also had the same experience you had with StumbleUpon. Its great when you have time to waste on the site. What I really learnt here today is setting goals for the month. I’ve never done that and reading this has made me realize how much traffic and potential income I’ve lost. Thanks Sheblogs.
Hi Davin! Thank you and good luck with setting goals for your blog and working towards them. If found goal setting to be a really great strategy for keeping accountable.
so agree with you on stumbleupon and facebook groups. that’s what im doing now! I found I spent way too much time on linkies and twitter chats too :/
Hi Emma. I did not use links or twitter chats, but boy did stumble upon and facebook groups suck up my time. Good luck and I hope youre able to manage your time well this month!
i love how you break down and set goals! as a lazy blogger, it’s very helpful for me!!!
Thanks April. I’m glad you found it helpful. I encourage you to start setting some goals, even if it’s one for the month. Let me know if you did and how it worked out for you 😀
Thanks for sharing your income and traffic report. September is your first month of blogging and it looks you did a great job in keep up your progress!
I have been blogging since July and I can totally related on how much time we have been spent on facebook engagements (Julie from Blog Engagement and Prom Mastermind Group). I have considered set up stumble upon but I have second thoughts after reading the parts of the traffic generate from Stumble Upon is not that genuine.
Have you tried Google+? It links to Google so it will potentially boost your SEO but it takes very long to get even +20 followers. And if you have time, this post provide perfect resources on how to increase the bounce rate and your social media reach: http://mytanfeet.com/blogging/improve-bounce-rate-page-views-travel-blog/. Good luck and I believe you will do well!
Hi Julie! Thanks for stopping by. I actually haven’t tried Google+. I have been very reluctant to add another site to ‘manage’ for traffic. I don’t have any more time to spare! LOL. I will look into it,though, but only when things get a little bit more settled over here. Thanks for the suggestion and for your vote of confidence in me!
Is AdSense your only Ad Network? I am looking for one that is worthwhile, but have not found another.. ugh.
http://www.myitzy.com
Hi! For right now I’m only using Adsense. Good luck with finding one you like!
Loved reading this – it’s nice to see where other bloggers are succeeding (and you ARE succeeding). I’ll be watching in October to see how things go for you. Good luck!
Thank you so much Brandy! I loved reading your comment 😀
Thank you for this honest and informative post. I think you’ll like what Pinterest does for you.
Thanks Jaye. Pinterest is interesting. I see the potential of it, but there seems to be something that I haven’t quite put my finger on!
I love how real you are being with your traffic. Setting goals and working towards them is always the best way to go on things like this.
Thanks so much Leigh! I will continue to share my experiences with getting traffic.
I think, its now time to be serious in blogging. I never had goals my entire blogging years, oh please, dont kill me for that 🙁 and, i still have lots of salt to talk to have lots of traffics like your blog. i stop using facebook and after 2 years, im back on track, but true, ive been consuming much time on facebook but that doesnt help either because im doing it wrong 🙁 huhu
thanks for the blog post, it did helped me keep motivated.
I’m so glad you were able to get some motivation from this blog post. Facebook is really great, we just need to try hard to find a balance with the time we spend there. I have been trying this so far this month and I will report any improvements in October. Let me know how it’s going for you too!
what ad network do you use? Congrats on a solid first month! and thanks for the info on stumble upon. looking into it is actually on my to-do list, but maybe Ill push pause on that.
Hi Harmony, You’re welcome. I use Google Adsense at the moment.
Thank you so much for this article. I’m a new blogger but I also work full time and have a busy family so I physically cannot spend as much time as I’d like on my blog. That said though, I really loved how you broke down your goals and results as well as tips on what worked and did not work for you. Following your example, I just wrote down some goals for November 🙂 Looking forward to more information!
Thank you Leva! Writing goals is a great start. I find that I can’t function well without some goals or a to-do list. Keep at it. If you do. you will be able to blog full-time and have more time with your family!
Hi very helpful article. Newbie blogger here. What ad networks do you currently use? For the moment all I use is adsense. But I barely get $5 even when I get 5,000 views. Lol.
Hi JM Castro. I use Google Adsense and I activated anchor ads or what many called page level ads. You should do a bit of research on this in the Google Adsense dashboard. 🙂
Wow, I didn’t know that ad type paid alot. Thanks! I’m gonna go activate that. Haha.
Great JM! Let me know how it works out for you!