This month’s income was down a bit.

But, still over 4.5 times what I earned last year at this time.  Woot-woot for that.

As always, my income reports are brought to you by my blogging income spreadsheet.  It tracks all of this.  I just pop the numbers in, it tells me how much rpm I’m making per network (a lot of ad company’s are wrong, especially if you have separate mobile vs desktop companies).  Seriously, it’s the bomb.  check out the video on the product page. 🙂

Ok, on to the numbers!

Sessions: 193k      Hits: 239k

Both of these are down about 20%.  Go ahead and put your sad face on with mine.  BUT I do chock this up to a couple of things.  1)  I had a GREAT January.  People are looking to organize their lives, and I help them do that!  2)  Pinterest had some wonki-ness this month – -see below what I’m doing to combat that!

Ad income:  $1512

This is up 37%.  Mainly because I switched ad networks and it takes a while for the new network to figure out what works with you.  I have some days that my new ad network — MediaVine is approaching a 12 dollar rpm (when added to my photo ads).  That’s good news, I was hopeful to get around 10.  I’m glad.  I am still really happy that I switched.  I might make a bit less with MediaVine but my site runs SO much more smoothly.  It’s not an ad everywhere you look.

Affiliate Income:  $1500

This is down 35% – -I had done my makeover with Dressing Your Truth last month and had a good month with them.  Also, a couple of my companies changed how they are paying affiliates.  It’s made me realize that I don’t love being at the mercy of companies.  In fact, one I had a contract with that stated what I got paid, but did say it was according to the terms in the affiliate contract.  That pretty much means they can pay me whatever they want, regardless of what I’ve invested.  Less good feelings about affiliate income, but I am still looking for companies that are a good fit for me and my readers.  🙂

Last month I figured out a way to kick Amazon up and boy oh boy did I!  I made 208% more than last month.  I hope to increase it.

Sponsored Posts $450

This is way down.  Not many available this month.  I have one in the works for next month.

Own Content $1100

At the end of January I launched my prenatal class.  I did launch it at an introductory one month price and I think I have milked my email list for all the purchases it generates for a bit.  I did sell over 30 in the month of February and I am thrilled by that, I was hopeful for 20, so I surpassed my goal.  However, I have now raised the price and now it’s just a grand experiment to see how that works.

I also still sell my spreadsheet, and my book.

I am accepting affiliates for both my spreadsheet and my prenatal class.  I am giving an adjustable 40% affiliate for my programs (it’s adjustable as you can ask for a coupon for a smaller % back).

Grand total: $4581

This is actually only down 10%.  I’m really excited about my own products and growing partnerships for those!

Full blog CPM is $23.64 — that means for every 1k hits I’m making that amount.  It’s pretty good.

My time investment has certainly been higher lately launching the prenatal class.

My goal is 1 hour of writing (creating actual blog posts), 1 hour of secretary stuff (answering emails, working with affiliates, etc) and 1 hour of assigned tasks (I have a rotating schedule of social media and newsletter tasks I do each day).  I often have my laptop around as I help kids with things or watch TV that I’m checking on a few other things.  I REALLY work to try to minimize it, but it’s always something I fight.  It’s always here.  Always something to work on. 🙂

A few things helping me:

1.  My friend Rosemarie Groner from Busy Budgeter has a great YouTube series on setting up Board Booster.  Check it out, I certainly came up with with a few things I changed (and it helped!)
2. Affiliate sales have continued to be awesome with the changes I made last month.  Be sure to check that post out for great ideas.
3. I have decided to up my publishing schedule to every 3 days starting this month (March).  I had seen new pins were tanking on Pinterest, but I am hopeful that more posts means more Newsletter traffic, and I am all about THAT.  Plus, good pins still tend to pick up on Pinterest — they just take a while.  My December 7th post took JUST about 2 months to come out of the woodwork.  It’s sailing now.  So weird.
4. I am doing a lot more looping of eight boards that represent the majority of the posts I create.  You can see them at the top of my Pinterest profile.  I was up to 10/day on boards that I felt could handle it, and that seemed too much.  I have cut back a bit.  In fact, I halved pinning to almost ALL of my boards on Pinterest.  I mean that I halved how many pins were going to them.  I am also hand pinning the BEST pins to my most popular niche boards every few nights too.  The best pins on the best boards (still trialing some less-good pins too) is still my strategy.

In increasing my looping I wanted more pins on those boards.  Boy, oh BOY!  There is a lot of crap out there on Pinterest.  A few thoughts on things NOT to do….

Things to NOT do as a blogger:

• Do NOT look for things that are popular on Pinterest and just write about those.  Be creative, be insightful and be YOU.  Don’t copy others.  SO many are doing that.  It drives me insane.  You can tell this person is just copying (or doing a round-up).  That’s not blogging.  That’s copying.  If you want to copy — go work for Xerox. 🙂
• STOP PAGINATION.  That means that I have to click the next button to continue on through your 500 word blog post which is now split into 5 pages so you can increase your ad revenue and pretend that you have more pageviews. I click away and I vow to never come back.  I know you say your readers don’t care.  That’s because they’re just leaving.  Be thoughtful, you want to give them as much info as you can. Less work for them.  I also think companies are starting to realize how dishonest this type of reporting is to get more sponsored posts.  It makes us all look bad.
• Disclose.  If you have a sponsored post, it is just the trustworthy thing to mention you were paid by the company to write about it.  Apparently, that’s not required in Canada, but it breeds trust.  If you loved the company before they paid you, tell your readers that, but be thoughtful.
• Make your pins consistent but not all the same.  Sometimes I see some pinner’s stuff and each pin looks exactly the same, with small differences (which looks like spam) or they all look SO different you couldn’t tell it was them.  I would say that I have a pretty serious “look” to my pins.  Find a few favorite fonts that go well together and are very readable.  Use them the majority of the time.
• I am all for capturing information.  I’ll talk to anyone about their pinning strategy, but then see what their results are.  If they have income reports – are they making good money?  Check out their pinning profile and see if they are getting more re-pins than you.  SO many people are acting like experts right now, it’s hard to know who to listen to.  AND they are charging rates that seem completely outrageous.  Be careful.  And get some good blogging friends that you can bounce ideas off of.

Be you, be honest, be kind.  Just like in real life, that will breed an audience that trusts you and comes back for more.  If you look at these “do not’s,” almost all involve readers who trust you.  AND if you make cohesive pins, those trusting readers will click through. 🙂

Interested in starting a new blog?  Check out my post about hosting:

Interested in a way to get more clicks from your newsletter (and more engaged readers)?

And don’t miss my blogging income spreadsheet:

Check out all my blogging for income posts:

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