While I decided to stop doing my income reports, I have decided to do a “state of the blog” post that will have a very edited income post, but also 5 things that are really helping my blog.  I think there are plenty of pageviews for all of us.  I figure helping others can only help myself.  But first, I can’t help but share a few numbers (don’t miss my blogging income spreadsheet that will help you get your # as well!).

Pageviews: 280,000 (up 26%)

Income: $4,500 (up 26%)

• 45% ads
• 35% affiliate
• 25% sponsored posts
• 2% “owned” work (so far my book and my spreadsheet)

Now, for the tips!

1.  I am slowly finding affiliate income that I can stand behind!  I added a post to Owlet Baby Care which is a smart product.  I’m excited to share it.  I’ve also earned good money with kiwi crate (I paid for 2 kids to get those Kiwi Crate and Tinker Crate for Christmas).  I’ve also continued to have a great time with Dressing Your Truth, and continue to enjoy sharing them (and have a makeover coming this month).
2. Starting on January 7th I have changed my desktop ads to MediaVine.  You might notice less ads and a faster load time, which is really exciting!  It is likely that ad income will initially go down (January means a pretty hefty decrease for all bloggers in ads) but with faster load times and less obtrusive ads I think it’s worth it.  I had a great run with Blogher and Blogger network, but I’m pretty sure that the days of more is more advertising is coming to a close.  At least for me.  I am still using PadSquad for my mobile site.  I heard they’re working on caching, which could be really exciting!
3. I love my host.  I use InMotion hosting.  They’ve been so great with a bunch of technical questions I’ve had.
4. I switched to ConvertKit in mid November.  Since then I’ve had about 2400 sign-ups on my newsletter list.  I’ve been using some printables that I already offered to get people on my list.  Some unsubscribe, but many become avid clickers.  I add a tag to my links when using ConvertKit which allows me to see exactly who is clicking over.  It looks to be about 1500/month right now.  I hope to have more!
5. Favorite Plugin of the Month:  Content Views — It allows me to show a customized views of what posts I want to include.  I can sort by category, tags, date posted, and many more.  You can see it at the bottom of almost all of my recent posts and also on my category pages — like Finances.

2016 Goals

A few of my Facebook groups encouraged us to write blogging goals.  Frankly, I had never done that before but I wanted to try it this year!

• Income:  4k/month of “passive” income each month (that means ads and placed affiliate content by 2017.  $48,000 for the year in passive income.  I’d like to be at 6k/month of total income by December.
• Pageviews:  500,000 pageviews/month by December 2016 (consistantly)
• Teach a class at a blogging conference (that they pay me to teach and put me up for the conference) – I think I’d be great at finding your niche (how I settled into a writing style that combined my educated job and my writing) or tracking your stats.
• Create, produce, promote and sell my prenatal class (coming soon!)
• 100k pageviews/month coming from my newsletter
• 500/month from Amazon by 2017
• 1k/month total from affiliate sales
• Hire my teenage son part time by the end of the year
• 1k/month from my own personal sales by 2017

Social media by 2017

• Facebook 5k likes
• Twitter: 6k followers
• Pinterest: 30k followers
• Instagram: 1k followers

I have a little table that splits it all up by quarters, so we’ll see how I’m doing and also how often I want to do state of the blog posts.  Either way I’d love to know what’s working for you!  Give me the skinny!

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