(This post contains affiliate links. My full disclosure is very boring, but you can read it here.)
Hi, I am back with another income and traffic report. This is where I write about how many readers visited, enjoyed and found alluringsoul useful and also about how much I made from alluringsoul in a month. I also write about what tools and services I used this month to grow my blog and what strategies worked and what didn’t. So lets quickly dive into it.
This is a very special income report for me. The reason being I got 223,000+ traffic for the 1st time on alluringsoul. I am so excited about this.!
I published my 1st income report in January 2017 where I made $14.46 blogging on alluringsoul. Although it was a very small income, I learned a lot from it and have shared all my learnings in that post. You can find it here.
You can also find the list of all my past income reports here.
Income reports are great. I have always loved reading them, and here I am writing one for my blog. Income reports are the best source of knowledge for a blogger on how to start and grow a blog.
[UPDATE] – If you want to start your blog today and make money from it, then this tutorial will help you get started. It includes a step by step way to start a blog with just $3.95 per month (you get this price only with my this special link) on Bluehost from scratch and assumes that you have no prior experience with blogging. Also, you get a FREE domain name!.
Blogging has changed my life for good. I enjoy the freedom and work on my own terms. Read the tutorial on how to start a blog and make money from it.
Why write an income report?
A lot of bloggers nowadays write income reports. I think blogging is the only industry where you can do that and I really enjoy it. I guess Pat Flynn was the first blogger who started doing this. While there are a lot of reasons bloggers can give you why they write income and traffic report, here are the reasons which I believe in.
Learning
When I started blogging I used to read a lot of income reports about how bloggers make thousands of dollars per month by sharing excellent content with their readers. I feel there is a tonne of information that a blogger can take up from an income report.
It has the much-needed information about how to grow traffic using various tools, how to engage users using emails and also how to make money from your blog.
Bloggers share their real-life experiences about blogging which have great value. Every blogger can relate them to it.
Income reports help other bloggers by giving the much-needed motivation to think about starting a blog and running it full time. It did that for me at least.
Also, I know I have made pennies this month, but I still believe this income report will help other bloggers in some way.
Transparency
It provides transparency and builds the necessary relationship between me and my readers which will go a long way. This income report is all about “you can do it too“.
This transparency is much needed if you are looking to have a healthy relationship with your readers.
Tracking and Analyzing
This is for me. Income reports help me to track my progress and goals. It helps me understand whats needed and what not.
It also helps in analyzing where are you spending money and where you should be. You always set goals for the upcoming month while publishing income report which means you know what you expect from yourself.
Blog Traffic
I received a total of 2,23,322 page views in the month of August 2017. This is a milestone for me. I have never got 200,000+ page views in a month on alluringsoul. I feel so great, excited and proud!
Pinterest has been the major source of traffic for me. I got 154,148 sessions from Pinterest which is mind-blowing. As you can see the major source of traffic for me is from Pinterest.
If you have read my older income reports, you would know that Pinterest is the best traffic source I have for my blog.
Pinterest without any doubt has been the best investment I have made in terms of time and money for my blog.
I have been working on my Pinterest strategies for a while and I think it has been paying off. I have been consistent with my pinning activity on Pinterest.
I used boardbooster to run my Pinterest strategy on autopilot. Boardbooster is an awesome tool which makes sure you are always active on Pinterest by pinning on your behalf. I schedule pins for every day on boardbooster which have gained me followers and traffic both.
Apart from using boardbooster, I have also been doing manual pinning. Automated pinning is great, but I feel I manual pinning on Pinterest can also produce great results. In fact, manual pinning is what I used to do before I started using boardbooster. I don’t have much time for manual pinning so I use boardbooster for most of my Pinterest campaign, but whenever I get time I try manual pinning.
I also use Tailwind to visualize mostly for my Pinterest account analytics. It gives me all the stats on when I should be pinning and at what time of the day to get maximum clicks and repins. It’s a great tool and highly recommended if you are serious about Pinterest.
I got a good traffic from Google as well. You can see I got 12,468 sessions from Organic Search which mainly includes Google.
I think Google has taken my blog seriously now. I can see a lot of traffic this month from Google. This traffic has been consistently growing month on month. Most of the traffic I am getting from Google is in my older posts. I think it does take time for Google to start showing your great content on the 1st page, you just have to wait and keep patience.
I am thinking about editing my older posts which get a lot of Google traffic and make them more SEO friendly. I have not set a plan for that but I will do it soon.
Blog Income
I made a total of $1,320.35 for the month of August.
- Ad Income – $1,304.37
- Affiliate – $15.98
Total Income – $1,320.35
[UPDATE] – If you are thinking of starting a blog then I would like to remind you again that I have written a step by step post on how to start a blog and make money from it. This is the post I wished I had when I started blogging. Here is the tutorial.
Ad Income
I made a total of $1,304.37 from ads in the month of March. All of this income I made is from Ezoic.
Ad income is down during the month of August. I expect to increase this in coming months.
Ezoic has been great so far. I have grown my ad income drastically, all thanks to Ezoic.
I had never heard about Ezoic, it was my husband who told me about Ezoic. So we started using Ezoic and it has been the best decision for my blog to start using them.
Ezoic uses artificial intelligence to place ads on your website thus optimizing them for each and every reader. Also, it bids to multiple ad providers in real-time for your blog ad space thus giving you the maximum returns on your ad space. They provide you all the tools required to grow your ad revenue without you doing anything. Isn’t that great!
I would recommend applying for Ezoic when your blog traffic grows to 15000 visitors per month. (This was the requirements at the time of writing this post). You can apply using this link.
Affiliates – $15.98
Amazon Affiliates – $15.98
I made $15.98 from Amazon affiliates. I am working on building my affiliate strategy especially Amazon Affiliates.
Amazon is a great place to start your affiliate marketing journey. Although the commission is very small as compared to other affiliate providers, Amazon has the largest online store of products in the world which means you can find affiliates for almost any product. Also, Amazon is one of the most trusted e-commerce company in the world which means your readers will be comfortable buying from them.
Also when you are starting out with affiliate marketing, make sure that you only recommend those products which you have used yourself and have a positive feedback about. I always recommend those products which I have used myself and which I genuinely believe will solve my readers’ problems.
Blog Expenses
Total expenses – $68.99
Bluehost – $0
I use Bluehost for hosting my blog. I have taken the yearly plan of Bluehost so I have not paid anything in February.
They are great and very simple to use. Also, they have an excellent support if you need any help.
You might be thinking although I am getting so much of traffic and I am still able to run my blog on Bluehost basic plan. Well, it’s because of my husband. He is a software programmer and knows ins and outs of how these servers work. He has done some tweaks to make sure website still works perfectly even when the traffic is high enough. But I think from next month onwards we will be moving to a bigger hosting provider. For now, this saves me some cash at least 🙂
Tailwind – $9.99
I use tailwind for mostly analytics. I am on a free plan for now. I know the free plan gives you a very limited analytics, but that’s fine for now. For this month I was mostly concerned about finding new Pinterest strategies to grow my traffic, running ad campaigns and creating excellent content.
Boardbooster – $10
I use boardbooster for scheduling my Pinterest pins on auto pilot mode. If you don’t know about boardbooster, then here is what they do.
Boardbooster lets you pin your pins on group boards (which you are added to, obviously!) all by itself. Just give it a set of pins and time at which you need to pin, and boardbooster will repin then for you. Also, you can configure it to run this every day or any day of week or month. Its that simple with boardbooster.
Boardbooster is very powerful as it puts your pins in front of your readers which means more repins and you get massive traffic from Pinterest.
Convertkit – $49
I am using Convertkit for email marketing on alluringsoul. I started collecting emails in the mid of February for my newsletter. I am using their 3000 subscriber plan as of now.
You should start collecting emails early in your blogging career does not matter how much traffic you get.
I did the mistake of starting with email marketing very late in my blogging career. Make sure you don’t do the same as well.
Blog net income (income-expenses) : $1,320.35 – $68.99 = $1,251.36
Tools and Services
- Bluehost – This is where my blog is hosted.
- Convertkit – I use it for sending newsletters to my email list.
- Ezoic – Ads on my blog are run by Ezoic.
- Media.net – Half of the ads on my blog were run by Media.net as well.
- BoardBooster – Use this for Pinterest pins scheduling.
- Tailwind – Use it mainly for simple board and follower analytics on my Pinterest account.
- Amazon Affiliates – I recommend products which I use and believe in and my readers can buy them from Amazon. I make a small amount when they do buy from Amazon.
Goals For Next Month
- Cross 4500 Followers on Pinterest.
- 200 Followers on Facebook.
- Create content upgrades to get more email signups
- Send consistent emails to my readers.
- Level up my affiliate strategy.
Takeaways from this income report
- Again Pinterest has beaten all other sources of traffic for Alluringoul. I can’t emphasize more that Pinterest is the best return on investment you can get for your blog in terms of time and money. Make sure to take it seriously.
- Traffic from Google can take some time. Don’t get panic and start to use blackhat SEO techniques to boost your search ranking. It will never work and you might get penalized by Google.
- Use tools to grow your blog. I have used boardbooster and Tailwind to grow my blog. There are numerous other tools I will be using to take my blog to next level.
- Manual pinning is great to attract a lot of traffic on your blog. I have seen the growth myself which I mentioned here in this income report.
- Start your blog right away if you haven’t. Its the best time to start your blogging journey. Trust me on that.
This is it, my friend. I hope this blogging income and traffic report will help you in some of the other ways. It gives you the motivation to start and grow your blog.
If you have any questions, just email me or comment in the post and I will surely reply to it.
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