My October 2018 blog income report DOES NOT contain ANY AFFILIATE LINKS
Why Share My Blog Income Report
For holding myself accountable!
I’ve been wanting to start these for a long time. Mainly, because I want to track my progress as I proceed with my blog, and in order to track it, I will have to do the work.
I think these progress reports will make me continue to work, even when no one is there to force me to work if I don’t feel like. Even when I feel alone and demotivated, and even if I don’t make any quick money from it right now.
Even if no one reads them, I would like to continue to document it because time and time again I see how bloggers say it has helped them grow.
For traffic?
I don’t know if blog income reports still drive traffic or not. But I sure hope people are interested in reading my progress on the blog. This will keep me accountable and I’m sure sharing my struggles and the not-so-pretty side of blogging too (so nobody falls into this pit thinking blogging is easy) will help others too.
Blog income reports were a raging trend but I see this dying, as more and more people are skeptical of the numbers others share, and that might have reduced the readership over time as others say.
But I have yet to experience how it goes on my blog. Let’s see if these kinds of posts still drive traffic or not and I’ll be sure to let you know here.
For making money?
Some A lot of people criticize income reports for being a marketing tactic that sells dreams. This thought alone has been very scary to me and the reason why I stopped writing bloggy posts.
I can’t make money off of an already exhausted mom by making her believe that if she stays home and starts a blog, her life will definitively and easily become easy.
Now that I know how easily I can get someone into a big mess by merely promoting blogging dreams, I can’t and don’t ever want to drag someone into blogging unless they are willing to pay a metaphorical arm and leg – because it is that nerve testing!
It’s like having a baby, fulfilling but tough nonetheless.
Don’t get me wrong here though, I love my blog and wouldn’t give it up for any other job but I’ve come to understand that you can’t make it work unless you have the passion/will to carry you when motivation gets low, frustration over techy issues, glitches, algorithm changes, hurting fingers and back etc take over and you feel like the needle just isn’t moving. <— All these things are a compulsory part of the blogging deal, especially for a first time blogger.
That is why I have decided to use no affiliate links in my income reports.
Now, what about the people (who have extra arms and legs and are) willing to pay the price to learn how to blog. They sure could use my honest recommendations. Rather, it would be unfair not to guide them after trying the gazillion blogging products I have. Maybe they can save money and time this way?
For this, I have set up a separate blogging recommendations page and each of the tool/product I recommend is only the one I use for myself (after testing many many others, old habits eg shiny object syndrome die hard!)
If you visit the page, please know that I don’t usually pick on people’s products if I don’t like anything. (Good and bad can be subjective. And those people/their feelings are real.) I just like suggesting the products I do find useful, why and what I like about them.
If you really want my detailed personal opinion before putting in the money into anything I already have and you’re thinking of getting it too, you can email me at henabilal1@gmail.com to ask. You don’t have to buy it through my affiliate link for that!
One more important thing!
Just because I’m keeping my income reports non-salesy, (so they retain their primary purpose of accountability for me plus providing help/guidance to others) doesn’t mean I’m not into blogging for income. I need this blog to make money in order to fulfill my dreams for my family. And that’s why there are affiliate links in other posts that I write.
October 2018 Blog Income Report – The Stats
I’m starting reporting from an embarrassingly slow month. A month when I absolutely did not do anything. Where can you go except upward from here? *knocks on wood*
Here are my numbers:
- Sessions: 1249 (1130 in Sept.)
- Page Views: 1385 (1231 in Sept.)
- Bounce Rate: 86.91% (88.27 in Sept.)
- Organic search: 295 (234 in Sept.)
- Pinterest
- followers: 2197
- monthly viewers: 55.5k (up from 46k)
- monthly engaged: 2k (up from 1.4k)
Follow me on Pinterest and see what I share.
- Newsletter subscribers: –
- Other Social media: –
- New Posts published: 2 (no posts published in Sept.)
- Sales: 4 affiliate sales (no affiliate sales made in Sept. which means I won’t receive any money in December)
- Actual Income Received in October for August affiliate sales in PayPal: $267
My Blog Expenses
There weren’t any fixed expenses except my monthly blog hosting fee.
But I purchased a content creation course to improve my writing. I’m happy with this investment.
Payment:
- $11 for my monthly hosting payment (a compulsory payment)
- $114 for Sticky Blogging (a discretionary payment I made by using the money I had earned the previous month from my blog)
- $97 (a discretionary payment made by using the pocket money my husband gives me for anything I want to buy each month. I haven’t purchased a shoe or dress or anything non-blogging since forever. Not complaining, just sharing my choices with you.)
What worked
I didn’t do much. But I do want to mention how this (having nothing mentionable) has forced me to actually sit down and do something so I have stuff to write about in the next month’s income report at least.
- Accountability: I had a group of blogger friends who I eventually stopped talking to when I stopped working on the blog in October (out of embarrassment) but by the end of the month, I got brave and went back to them, they welcomed me.
They had gotten way ahead of me and it felt small being with them when we had all started at the same point a couple months back.
But I forced myself to stay connected. I had earned this self-professed shame and now I needed to earn feelings of accomplishment by making progress on the blog.
- A Doze Of Motivation: The difference between listening to motivational podcasts or not has been the difference between day and night.
Here are my favorites:
What didn’t work
In order to fill this section, I need to actually do work before I can determine if it worked or didn’t.
Goals for Nov.
Primary goals
- Publish 8 posts in November
- Finish implementing unit 5 of Elite Blog Academy
- At least double my traffic
Stretch goals
- Because November is the NaNoWriMo month, I will work to write 50k words. I’m going to use this goal to get my other three goals accomplished and I won’t mind skipping it if my first three goals are met.
- 10k page views
Key Takeaways
- If you stopped midway, get back up now, take the first step no matter how far behind you are.
- Establish accountability that happens in real time, outside your brain. Like connecting with people, using physical habit trackers etc.
- Keep fueling your motivation by consuming good literature (books, podcasts etc)