I almost stopped blogging this month. Read on to learn what happened and why I didn’t quit.
My April 2017 Blog & Social Media Stats
Quick Links to Information in this Post
- Pageviews: 35,117, up from 34,378
- Sessions: 17,759, down from 19,129
- Users: 13,797, down from 15,104
- Mailing List Subscribers: 6179, up from 4329
- Pinterest Followers: 12,787, up from 8239
- Posts Published: 6 (best post: Pop-Up Apple Tree Card)
My April 2017 Blog Income
- Advertising Revenue:$43.31, up from $37.84 (Google Adsense)
- Affiliate Revenue:$68.39, up from $33.93 (Amazon Associates)
- Product Revenue: $18.82, down from $28.23 (Etsy)
- Sponsored Content: $0
Total blog income: $130.52
Below is a breakdown of my monthly expenses:
- Tailwind monthly fee: $14.99
- BoardBooster monthly fee: $30
- ConvertKit: $79
Total blog expenses: $123.99
Net Blog Income for April 2017: $7.47
Hey, I came out a little ahead! That’s progress compared to my past two months. This is essentially just breaking even though, because I knew I bought a few craft supplies for blog posts. I wasn’t tracking those so it’s hard to say how much, but I know from looking through my posts that I bought some canvas for my patio chair cushion post and and I’m SURE that cost more than $7. So I was probably in the red all things considered.
My Blog Income’s Running Total: -$979.08
My running total since starting the blog is now -979.08 (still in a deficit). I am seven months into my blog at this point and have had four months where I made money and three months where I lost money. I have spent a total of $1640.32 on my blog now.
My Blog Goals
This month my blog goals were as follows:
- Continue posting twice a week (again, I didn’t quite make it at 6 posts instead of 8)
- Create more freebies for my posts and keep building that mailing list (5 more new freebies made and released!)
- Keep working on my blogging course (done!)
- Send out weekly newsletters (3 newsletters sent this month, so close but not quite!)
Blog Lessons Learned This Month
This was another meh month and I was feeling frustrated. I was now seven months in and had nothing more to show for it other than a blog with a bunch of posts.
I was $978.81 in the red on my blog at this point and wondering what the heck I was doing. I wasn’t even meeting my goals each month. I began to feel like I was fizzling out and maybe I should let that happen. Go get that job at some office and just suck it up.
I was feeling this way for several weeks in April. Then I remember a day this month when I was in the car talking to Greg about life and stuff. I said to him, “I have only made ONE blog post this month and we’re already more than halfway through the month. If I’m serious about this blog, I need to get on the ball and actually DO IT.”
For whatever reason, saying it out loud helped me. I thought about quitting. What that would mean. And the loss of this dream I had. And the job I’d have to go find.
And I decided I hadn’t been taking it seriously enough. One blog post in nearly 20 days was NOT GOING TO CUT IT. I had no excuses for this. If I was going to make this work, I had to put in the work.
What is it Thomas Edison said? “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
Like many bloggers, I was struggling to find the time to post. I still had a job, and while I did have the luxury of working at home, it was still a time-consuming job and didn’t leave a lot of time for other things. I knew I could spend my time more wisely, however. And many of the tips I wrote about this month in this post — How to Find More Time to Craft — were also the things I started personally doing to find more time to blog. The biggest thing to hit the time chopping block was my hobby — I decided the hobby was getting too much of my free time and while I enjoyed it, I needed to refocus on what was really important: providing for my family.
So I went home and did a blog post. And another, and another. I got five blog posts done in less than two weeks, a much better output rate than before.
In addition to getting out more posts, I got more serious about my blogging course. I had finished the section on email earlier and was feeling like I was doing well in it, so I’d been lax. Clearly, I was doing good at email, but I knew there was a lot more to it than that. All those subscribers weren’t doing me any good right now other than racking up a big fat bill. I need to keep learning and implementing.
My big lesson this month was to not give up, especially when I really hadn’t given something 100% yet. Yes, I’d been working hard and making great progress, but I wasn’t really giving it everything I could. I KNOW content is super important and I’d not put my all into it yet. How could I give up I hadn’t given this a fair shot yet? Seven months is barely any time. And I’d only been doing my blogging course for two months. It was a baby in the blogging world.
So I buckled down and dug in further.
And that’s it for this month! I hope this has inspired and educated you.
Read the NEXT month’s income report or view more of my income reports here!
Love,
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