My 1st Year In Blogging & My Blogger Report

Wow!, That year went quick. So as many of you who have been following my blogger reports and blog growth you may have seen I have missed the last 3. This is because where I was working full time I just didn’t put as much effort into my blog as I perhaps should have.

It seemed a bit pointless giving you updates where not a lot had happened. I have decided it is best if I do Quarterly updates for the time being. It means when there is an update at least it will show decent progress due to the time and effort that has taken place over the 3 months.

Also if your new to this blog and would like to read any of my other blogger Income reports then you can find all those reports here.

 I have made these blogger income reports from day one, not only to keep myself headed towards my financial goals but also for you guys to read and hopefully gain something from, but also for myself so I can look back and see the areas I need to concentrate on.

When I started out with this blog I was looking at other blog income reports and came across Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. She runs a great Personal Finance blog called Making sense of Cents. You can find her blogger Income report here

However as amazing as Michelle has done with her blog and as much as it gives me motivation, I was looking for blogger income reports from beginners to see how it was going to be at the beginning of my blogging journey. It turned out there wasn’t that many. The ones I did find were a good mix of honesty, hard work, mistakes, and learning.

So to that end, I’m am going to try and be as transparent as possible so as you readers out there see not only my successes but also my failures.

So as of the beginning of March, my lowly little blog is 1 year old. A lot has happened. There has been some growth, A small number of earnings and a huge amount of self-belief and fresh motivation has come my way.

I am going to give you all the low down of where I am at with this blog. Also where it is heading and I hope this inspires a few of you who may be in a rut to give your head a wobble and get stuck into getting your blogs back on track.

Some of my posts may contain affiliate links. This simply means if you purchase something after clicking one of the links I may receive a commission at no extra cost to yourself. Many thanks for the continued support.

2020:

So 2020 has been a rough year so far and January and the beginning of February especially were tough. There were lots of hospital visits and then careers etc. None of this was for me but someone in my family. It took its toll on my blog because some things are more important.

At the end of February once things had begun to get back to normal I decided to take a look at the state of play of my blog on Ubersuggest.

I was starting to rank for several keywords, I think about 150 at the time then one stood out. I was ranking on the first page of google for a keyword!! YAY!!. This gave me added impetus to put more effort into writing longer more keyword focused articles.

I have started to publish one article every 5 days or so and also one of my pins on Pinterest went semi-viral. I was for a period of over a week getting nearly 200 views to my blog a day which is a good increase. This has now changed my Pinterest strategy as well.

All in all, with the added focus this year is hopefully going to get better and better from here on in.

Articles:

So where are we at article wise. Well as of the time of writing I have 60 articles published. Of those 60 I would say 3 or 4 need completely rewriting and another 15 need improving with added keywords, pictures, and more information. Optimizing these posts is something I am working on though.

Traffic:

No use of writing blogger reports without talking traffic. As I rank for more keywords so my traffic rises slightly. I am still working on organic traffic. This does seem to be rising slightly but most of my traffic is social at this point. Ie, from Pinterest and Facebook, etc.

As you can see from above this is a screenshot of my traffic from the last 90 days. You can see where it was really poor at the end of last year and beginning of this year due to my not being on social media or writing many posts etc. It spiked due to my Pin going viral and is now going back to a normal level.

I am working on ranking for lower searched keywords. Ranking for a few of these is very easy and gives you a good boost to searches on google etc.

Social Media:

Facebook:

I had so much time away from Facebook so I wasn’t promoting my group or sharing posts etc. At the time of writing, I have 99 members in my group and am looking to double this in the first half of this year.

Feel free to join up to my money group here. I would love to have some more followers on board.

Twitter:

I have never focused on twitter but did have a couple of days where I tweeted a few things and managed to get my twitter followers up to 33.

Pinterest:

Since purchasing my first course from Ana at Thesheapproach.com my Pinterest skills have improved. I’m learning new skills such as creating images and how to layout my profile etc. If you are stuck with Pinterest then I would certainly suggest checking out her course Especially with the new Pinterest changes.

As you can see from the above image I have 78k monthly unique views. This is up from about 28k only 6 weeks ago. I believe a lot of this is due to the changes I made when Pinterest let everyone know their algorithm had changed.

At time of writing, I have 1110 followers although this doesn’t generally lead to more views on Pinterest and is way less important a metric then it is on other social media sites.

More recently purchased a boost to tribes on tailwind. This now allows me to join 10 tribes and submit around 80 pins per month to the tribes and this has also helped with boosting my profile.

The resulting changes I have made have all contributed to much higher figures across the board as I look to make my Pinterest profile as strong as possible and to get my pins in front of as many sets of eyes as possible. The eagle-eyed amongst you may also see that my total audience is 88K, Which means my main page needs to update.

Changes Made:

So the changes I have made in the last couple of months are to up the number of posts published and to spend more time beforehand researching keywords etc. I have made changes to my Pinterest work as mentioned above and have also been going through a lot more of the courses I got with the Genius Bloggers Toolkit.

If you haven’t heard of the GBTK then trust me it is worth the money. It comes out once or twice a year and is a collaboration of courses from various successful bloggers. Save the link below and be ready for this year’s one.

Anyway, I don’t want to go on too much about it. If you are interested in looking at this amazing deal then check out the Genius Bloggers Toolkit here.

Pin This For Future Reference:

Income/Financial Goals:

This hasn’t changed much. I have made a few dollars from my ads but my main goal is to increase traffic and improve SEO. Once this is done then the money comes after.

My blogger reports at the moment tend to be the things I am doing to grow my blog as opposed to monetize it.

I still need to organize all of my affiliates into one place. This can prove a long process to check to see if I have been paid from any of them.

Affiliates:

Below is a quick look at some of my affiliates which I use myself and can wholeheartedly recommend. These all contribute to my blogger income report but it is difficult to keep track of.

So my list of affiliates is growing and I can’t wait to add more and start to implement them more. I will list some of them below.

HOSTING:

If you are looking to start a blog and are unsure whether to self-host or use a third party site then I can assure you, self-hosted is the only way to really be able to monetize your site in the future. A well-monetized site can help you hit all the financial goals you may have.

Siteground is who I use and they have helped me loads with any issues that have cropped up. Click below to look at their self-hosting plans that start at really reasonable prices.

Studiopress offers some great paid themes to make your new blog really stand out from the crowd. I personally use one of their themes and find them very easy to work with. If you are wondering mine is a theme called Foodie Pro.

StudioPress – Themes

MATCHED BETTING:

If you have been reading my blog for a while you will have realized that matched betting is my specialty. I would not be writing blogger reports without it. It is one of the best side-hustles out there to make you potentially hundreds of pounds per month. Profit accumulator can help you achieve that and guide you through the first few profitable bets. Sign up for free below.

EBOOKS & COURSES:

As I said at the start of this article I mentioned that I had just made my first purchase in regards to a blog course. (Keep reading to the end to hear about my latest purchase) This was the great E-Book by Ana over at ThesheApproach.com. It is a book on learning how to use Pinterest and how to grow your blog using this popular medium.

I have completed her course and I am already making some great changes. If you are looking to boost your Pinterest Profile then check out Ana’s E-book here. Below is the code to get a massive discount off of all Ana’s great books. If I’m getting results from just the Pinterest one, Imagine what you could do with the others.

If you want to achieve any kind of growth or want to hit certain financial goals and create your own blogger income report with your blog then you are going to need to invest a little cash into it in order for your blog to grow. Dont be scared just try and commit to your blog as I have done with mine. Ana’s course above didn’t cost a great deal. It was however still a financial decision I took that is already benefiting me and my blog.

Summary:

I have had a slow start to the year because of lots of things going on in my private life but the last 3 or 4 weeks have been productive and I am more focused on the tasks ahead and looking forward to making more progress this year.

I hope these blogger reports give new bloggers an insight into how hard this is. However, I also hope it isn’t enough to put you off. If there are any things you would like to know about or you are having trouble with yourself then please let me know in the comments section below.