January 2017 First Income and Traffic Report – How I got 15K pageviews and made $14.46

(This post contains affiliate links. My full disclosure is very boring, but you can read it here.)

I am so happy, excited and nervous to hit the publish button on this post. This is my first income report.

Ok, so I didn’t make much but I am happy that at least I started out. This is just the start of many more income reports (hopefully). I hope to see this increase in subsequent months.

[UPDATE] You can also find the list of all my past income reports here.

[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  (only when you register 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.

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.

How all of this started?

Alluringsoul was born in September 2016. But I was not too serious about blogging at that time. It started because a couple of my friends wanted to seek advice from me about the DIY beauty and healthy living.

So I thought I would just put those in a blog, which will help a lot of people who were looking for solutions.

I used to write around 5 posts per month.

It was in December 2016 when I got serious about my blog. I started writing 3 times a week, consistently. That time I used to get most of my traffic from Google search and few from Pinterest.

I started monetizing from alluringsoul in last week of January 2017. I put a few ads from media.net and started making a few bucks from it.

Traffic

Page views – 15,026

Most of this traffic that I got was because of Pinterest. I did a lot of changes to my Pinterest profile and also to my pins and boards. Also, I started pinning consistently almost every single day. I made sure that my pins were a mix of my own and others.You can clearly see, that have paid a lot for itself.

You can clearly see, that have paid a lot for itself.

Just to show you the difference in traffic I got because of the changes I did on Pinterest, here is the screenshot of my previous months’ traffic.

You can clearly see the graph going up after December when I got serious about Pinterest.

Pinterest is great to start with. It proved that it gives instant results if you make sure that you are consistent with your pinning activity.

Here is another screenshot which shows 10,096 sessions on my blog coming from Pinterest this month.

 

Also, I don’t need to have a lot of followers on Pinterest either. I just have 500 followers on Pinterest and I still get around 10k traffic from it.

Blog income

Media.net – $14.46

I made $14.46 purely from ads. These ads were provided by Media.net.

I made this in the last week of January when I started with advertising for the first time on my blog.

Media.net is great if you are just starting out with your blog. They pay through PayPal which means you can accept payment from anywhere in the world. They are trusted and safe to work with. The ads they put on your website are great and nothing to worry about. Highly recommended if you are starting out.

A lot of bloggers suggest Google Adsense as well, but I think it’s a little tough to get accepted in it when you are just starting out.

Blog Expenses

Expenses – $0

The only expense I have made right now is on hosting for which I have paid for a year. I use Bluehost for hosting my blog. They are great and very simple to use. Also, they have an excellent support if you need any help.

Starting a blog on Bluehost will cost you just $3.95 per month (only when you register with my this special link) . Plus you get a free domain as well.

[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.

Net Income (Income – Expenses): $14.46 – $0 = $14.46

Tools and Services

Here are the tools and services I use in my blog

1. Bluehost – This is where my blog is hosted.


2. Media.net – Ads on alluringsoul.com comes from media.net.

Goals for next month

1. Double down on Pinterest. I will have to find different pinning strategies to get more traffic.


2. Creating great pins. I am following a lot of fellow bloggers on Pinterest and learning from them especially how they create pins. What works for them and what not. It’s going to be a learning and then implementing month for me.


3. Get added to Pinterest group boards.


4. More helpful posts.


5. 1000 followers on Pinterest.


6. 50 followers on Facebook.


7. Increase my traffic to around 25,000 pageviews.

Takeaways from this income report

1. Select one social media platform to master, like the way I selected Pinterest. Before that, I have been trying my best on Facebook and Pinterest together with no success to either of them.


2. I highly recommend you to invest your time on Pinterest. It’s highly rewarding for the time you put in it.


3. Revamp your Pinterest profile. Add relevant boards and pins.


4. Be sure to pin on a consistent basis on Pinterest. You should be pinning yours as well as others pins.


5. Don’t get overwhelmed by other bloggers having thousands of followers. You don’t need that many followers to get a good about of traffic from Pinterest.

This is it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed reading my first ever income report. I hope it will help you in some of the other ways. Hope it gives you the required motivation to start a blog, create awesome content and make money from it.

If you have any questions, just email me or comment in the post and I will surely reply to it.

February 2017 Income and Traffic Report – How I got 61K pageviews and made $292.04

(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 where I share information about how much traffic Allurinsoul get and how much money it makes.

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 find all my income reports here.

I have always loved reading income reports as they have a lot of information which a blogger like you and I can take away in a small time.

[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  (only when you register 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

For the month of February, I got a total of 61,715 page views. This is around 300% more from last month when I got 15,026 page views.

 

Around 43,497 sessions on my blog come from Pinterest as you can see in the graph below. This makes Pinterest as the major traffic contributor for alluringsoul.

This traffic from Pinterest is mainly because of consistent pinning and great pins. As per last income report, I decided to find what other successful bloggers were doing with their Pinterest accounts and try to replicate it for myself. It seems to be working for me.

I think Pinterest is a great place to be in when you are starting your blog. Its the highest return on your investment (time and money both) you can get.

All social media platforms are different and the way you approach each of them is also going to be different. On Pinterest, the strategy is to create great informative pins. This strategy sure does not work on Facebook or Twitter. I have tried it and have failed.

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.

I also got some traffic from Google (Organic Search) as well. I guess Google have started loving my posts now :). Organic search does take time to build up. Also, I have not been actively working on optimizing for Google anyway.

Organic search does take time to build up. Also, I have not been actively working on optimizing for Google anyway.

Blog Income

I have made a total of $292.04 in the month of February. In the month of January 2017, I made a total of $14.46. In February I have made way more than January. I know it’s a small income but I am still proud of it.

• Ad Income – $282.93


• Affiliate – $9.11

Total Income – $292.04

When I started blogging I had no idea if I could make money from blogging. This is a lot for me.

[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 – $282.93

I made a total of $282.93 from ads on my website. I used Media.net for the 1st half of February then I split the traffic between Media.net and  Ezoic for the rest of February.

Media.net – $93.18

I made $93.18 from media.net. This is when I was running media.net on alluringsoul completely for the 1st half of February then ads on 50% of traffic was served by media.net for the 2nd half of February.

Media.net is great to start with. If you are just starting your blog and don’t have a lot of monthly traffic, then you should start with media.net to make some ad income. They are great to work with, easy to use and pay on time through PayPal.(Means you get paid does not matter which part of world you are in).

Ezoic – $189.75

I made $189.75 from Ezoic. This money came when I was serving Ezoic ads on 50% of my traffic for 15 days only. This is great.

I had never heard of Ezoic, but my husband told me about it. So I thought let’s try it. It turns out to be great as you can see.

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 – $9.11

Amazon Affiliates – $9.11

I made $9.11 from Amazon affiliates. I know this is a very small but I am so happy that I at least started out with this.

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 – $5

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 can signup using this link.

Tailwind – $0

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 – $5

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.

MailChimp – $0

I am using MailChimp for email marketing on alluringsoul. I am still using the free plan as I have less than 2000 subscribers. I started collecting emails in the mid of February for my newsletter.

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) : $292.04 – $5 = $287.04

Tools and Services

• Bluehost – This is where my blog is hosted.


• MailChimp – 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

Let’s see how many goals from last month were achieved by me.

• Double down on Pinterest. I will have to find different pinning strategies to get more traffic. – PASS


• Creating great pins. I am following a lot of fellow bloggers on Pinterest and learning from them especially how they create pins. What works for them and what not. It’s going to be a learning and then implementing month for me. – PASS (There is still a lot to learn here)


• Get added to Pinterest group boards. – PASS (Got added to 4 Group Boards)


• More helpful posts. – PASS


• 1000 followers on Pinterest. – FAIL (Got 800 followers on Pinterest)


• 50 followers on Facebook. – PASS (Got 60 followers on Facebook)


• Increase my traffic to around 25,000 pageviews. – PASS (Got 61,715 page views)

Here are the goals for the next month

• 1200 Followers on Pinterest.


• 90 Followers on Facebook.


• Increase my traffic to more than 100,000 pageviews.


• Start writing emails to readers on my email list.


• Get added to 3 Group Boards.


• Be consistent with replying to comments on my posts.

Takeaways from this income report

• Select one social media platform to master, like the way I selected Pinterest. Before that, I have been trying my best on Facebook and Pinterest together with no success to either of them.


• Be sure to pin on a consistent basis on Pinterest. You should be pinning yours as well as others pins. Use boardbooster to pin on autopilot.


• Start collecting emails on your blog very early in your blogging career.


• Use multiple Ad providers to find which one gives the maximum income to you. I used Ezoic which completely beats Media.net.

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.

March 2017 Income and Traffic Report – How I got 131K pageviews and made $862.93

(This post contains affiliate links. My full disclosure is very boring, but you can read it here.)

Hi, I am back with another traffic and income 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.

This income report is very special. The reasons are I have crossed 131,000+ page views and also made $862+ dollars this month.

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.

I have always loved reading income reports throughout my blogging journey. It gave me the confidence that I too can make a full-time from blogging like other bloggers. It’s the best source of knowledge about 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  (only when you register 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 131,980 page views in the month of March. This is an increase of 200% if you compare with February. In February I got 61,715 page views.

Again, Pinterest has been the major source of traffic for me. I got 93,864 sessions from Pinterest.  As you can see thats the maximum share of traffic. This is mainly because I spent all my efforts in building my profile on Pinterest. Revamping Pinterest and building pinnable images was my topmost priority for the month of March.

Every blog will be on a stage at a point in time. It could be the growth stage where you are working towards building massive traffic to your blog or it could be monetizing where you are more inclined towards making finding ways to make money from your blog.

My blog is in growing state now which means I spend most of my time creating content my readers want and then making them viral using Pinterest.

I think Pinterest is a great place to be in when you are starting your blog. Its the highest return on your investment (time and money both) you can get.

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.

I use Tailwind for mainly analytics that it provides about Pinterest. It provides all the insights about how my pins are doing, their repin and clicks rates. It also helps me decide the best time of the day to pin. Its highly recommended if you are serious about Pinterest.

I did get a good amount of traffic from Google as well. You can see here, I got 1038 sessions from Organic search to my website.

Well, this is a significant growth as per the last month when I got 281 sessions from Google (Read my February income report to find out more such stats).

Also, I have not done anything to build or increase my traffic from Google as my topmost priority now has been to build my traffic from Pinterest.

Blog Income

I made a total of $862.93 in the month of March. This is a significant growth as compared to last month (February) when I made $292.04.

I am slowly moving towards the mark of $1000 per month! So excited about it!.

• Ad Income – $831.59


• Affiliate – $31.34

Total Income – $862.93

When I started blogging I had no idea if I could make money from blogging. Now making this much from alluringsoul seems like a dream come true.  I am so excited about this.

[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 $831.59 from ads in the month of March. All of this income I made is from Ezoic.

Ezoic has been great so far. I have grown my ad income drastically, all thanks to Ezoic.

If you have read my February income report, you would find that I had used Media.net as well for my ad campaigns. Ezoic is clearly the winner here.

I had never heard about Ezoic, it was my boyfriend (now 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 – $31.34

Amazon Affiliates – $31.34

I made $31.34 from Amazon affiliates.  I know it’s a small amount, but I am glad I have started at least. I am working on improving my affiliate strategy.

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 – $19.99

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.

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.

MailChimp – $0

I am using MailChimp for email marketing on alluringsoul. I am still using the free plan as I have less than 2000 subscribers. I started collecting emails in the mid of February for my newsletter.

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) : $862.93 – $19.99 = $842.94

 

Tools and Services

• Bluehost – This is where my blog is hosted.


• MailChimp – 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

Let’s see how many goals from last month were achieved by me.

• 1200 Followers on Pinterest. – FAIL (Got 1100 followers)


• 90 Followers on Facebook. – PASS (Got 92 Followers)


• Increase my traffic to more than 100,000 pageviews. – PASS (XXXX Pageviews)


• Start writing emails to readers on my email list. – PASS (Wrote 2 emails to my readers)


• Get added to 3 Group Boards. – PASS (Added to 6 group boards)


• Be consistent with replying to comments on my posts. – PASS

Here are the goals for the next month

• 1400 Followers on Pinterest.


• 120 Followers on Facebook.


• Increase my traffic to more than 150,000 pageviews.


• More emails to readers on my email list (At least 4 emails).


• Get added to 5 Group Boards.


• Consistency with publishing new posts.

Takeaways from this income report

• Select one social media platform to master, like the way I selected Pinterest. Pinterest is the best return on investment you can get for your time and money. It has readers and great content for everyone does not matter whats your interest is. Learn, implement, fail fast and iterate. That’s the mantra on Pinterest.


• Be sure to pin on a consistent basis on Pinterest. You should be pinning yours as well as others pins. Use boardbooster to pin on autopilot. Boardbooster is an amazing, tool and makes sure to use it to grow your traffic from Pinterest.


• Use Ezoic for your ad campaigns. Ezoic is great and you just need 15000+ traffic to start with. Make sure to apply when you are at that level.

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.

August 2017 Income and Traffic Report – How I got 223K pageviews and made $1320.35

(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.