MY 4TH MONTH BLOG REPORT GIVES YOU AN INSIDE LOOK INTO BEHIND THE SCENES STATS AND GOALS.
Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season came to a beautiful close and you’re ready to start the new year with focus and dedication. January 1st doesn’t necessarily mark the start of new beginnings, but I find it’s the perfect time of year to get back on track—at least for me. After all of those delicious meals and sugary treats anyway!
The start of a new month means it’s time for another recap of my progress as a new blogger. In this 4th month blog report, I’ll be reviewing what I achieved in December as well as what I hope to accomplish in January. You’ll see real numbers and gain insight that (I hope) motivates you in your blogging journey.
On with the show!
December recap
Traffic
Most popular posts by page view:
- For Him: 10 Gifts He Secretly Wants (1,632)
- Nighttime Routine Habits For A Renewed You (917)
- 15 Practical Tips To Help Manage Everyday Life (207)
People I reach:
Activity from Sprinkle in Joy:
Most clicked pins:
- For Him: 10 Gifts He Secretly Wants
- Nighttime Routine Habits For A Renewed You
- Nighttime Routine Habits For A Renewed You
December highlights
- Sprinkle in Joy received ~8x more users in December from the previous month! A huge jump in traffic!
- I can officially report my first income from this blog—$1! Woot! I’m not quite sure when or if I’ll start talking about income and expenses in detail, but my first sale is just so exciting I couldn’t keep it a secret! I earned this dollar as an Amazon Associate with the purchase of two orders. If I’m not mistaken, I only have one more qualified sale to maintain my status as an associate (and two more months to do it in!). Eek!
December goals
Publish five articles » Miss. I published four. I was so close to publishing five, but I lost a little motivation towards the end of the month as I was writing a (currently in-progress) blog post.
Posts published in December:
- 3rd Month Blog Report: Traffic + Goals
- Beginner’s Countdown To Hosting A Holiday Meal
- For Him: 10 Gifts He Secretly Wants
- Blogmas Winter Tag: My Holiday Favorites
Average 20 users a day (600 users total) » Success! In fact, a major success! I averaged 99.32 users a day (3,079 total) who gave me 3,683 pageviews overall. I am completely blown away by these numbers. Under my traffic recap section above, you can see that my For Him: 10 Gifts He Secretly Wants totally took the cake on that one with most of the pageviews. Maybe I should have written a For Her guide as well! 😉 And I am positive I can also attribute my jump in traffic to automatically pinning with my new Tailwind membership.
Create one opt-in freebie and post to blog » Miss. Sadly, again. Even still, I’m much closer to tackling this goal!
Finalize system to track pinning » Miss. I want to call this a sort-of success, but in reality, it’s closer to a miss. However, I did update my Google Sheet to put me on the right path, but my system is still a little clunky and could use some refining.
Use Tailwind to pin my pins to group boards » Success! With my updated Google Sheet, I’m now using Tailwind to schedule and automatically pin to my personal boards and group boards. Can I just say how much of a lifesaver Tailwind is? I’ve read that Pinterest favors manual pinning, but if you’re not able to manual pin throughout the day, Tailwind is the way to go. I’m loving the fact that I don’t have to jump onto Pinterest every moment I get to pin. Now, I can use this time to focus on other aspects of blogging. If you’re interested in a free Tailwind trial, click here! With a free trial, you’ll be able to test the waters before deciding if it’s right for you.
Update affiliate links to nofollow links » Miss. But still a top priority on my to-do list.
450 Pinterest followers » Success! I ended December with 478 Pinterest followers (+187 from the previous month).
Reach 200K monthly Pinterest viewers » Success! By December 31, I reached 263,233 viewers (+181K from the previous month end date). I strongly believe pinning more consistently helped reach this number. During December I pinned 30 pins each day—6 of my pins to 24 of other blog pins. I’m not really a math person, but I believe that is 20% my pins to 80% other blog pins.
January goals
Publish five articles » At this point, I’m going to still make this a goal. Publishing five posts might prove a little more difficult this month as Mr. E and I are redoing the floors in our home! I’m so excited, but anticipating I’ll have less time to focus on writing since we’ll be living out of one of our guest bedrooms and parent’s RV as our house will be out of commision for up to one week. Not to mention the time we’ll be spending moving our belongings out of our main living spaces into our guest bedrooms and garage leading up to the project start date.
Average 100 users a day (3,100 users total) » I’m going to be honest, as I write this post, reaching this number doesn’t look promising. Shopping for Christmas gifts is over, which means the blog post that was driving the most traffic has died down—completely. I’ve also been sick the past couple of days and haven’t been scheduling pins on Tailwind. On the bright side, I’m going to kick it into high gear again, get that Tailwind queue filled, and increase the number of pins I schedule daily.
Create one opt-in freebie and post to blog » Going to give this goal another go… again! I have the content and just need to learn the technical side of delivering it to my audience. Researching how to do this definitely took me back to the days of spending hours upon hours learning how to navigate WordPress.
Create a new subscriber welcome email » When someone joins by email list, they don’t receive any special welcome, and they should! I would love to craft a thoughtful welcome message to go along with their new subscriber opt-in freebie.
Update affiliate links to nofollow links » Giving this another go.
Make at least one more qualified sale as an Amazon Associate » As I mentioned under the December highlights section, I (believe) I made two qualified sales as an Amazon Associate and will need one more sale to stay an associate. I say I believe I made two qualified sales because I’m a little fuzzy on their policies and what they consider to be a qualified sale. My two sales were from digital products. Amazon doesn’t consider digital products from certain sellers as qualified sales. However, the digital products purchased were from a seller with a name other than the sellers that would not qualify as a sale. Confused? Me too.
750 Pinterest followers » To reach this number, I’ll need to gain 272 followers in December. A more comfortable number would be 700, but what’s a goal if it doesn’t seem a little out of reach?
Reach 500K monthly Pinterest viewers » Not quite sure about this one, but time will tell!
Read next:
3rd Month Blog Report: Traffic + Goals
2nd Month Blog Report: Traffic + Goals
Did you reach your December goals? What are you blogging goals for January?
Great post! Keep up the good work! Also, don’t you love tailwind 😉 It’s one of my favorite blogging tools.
Many thanks! And yes, Tailwind is so amazing. I wanted to be stubborn at first and not purchase it, but it’s made my life so much easier when it comes to pinning!
Brilliant progress, looking FORwARD to the next instalments.
Thanks so much! I look forward to sharing!
Hi! Publishing 4 articles is still great! I think Tailwind is an amazing tool for pinterest… i have similar results thanks to tailwind.
Congratulations on your first affiliate sale!!!!! Amazon’s program is super confusing, I agree. I don’t understand their policies haha.
Good luck redoing your floors!
– Jackie
Hi Jackie! Thanks so much! Yes, I suppose as long as I’m being somewhat consistent with publishing, I should be happy with my posting schedule! Maybe one day I’ll have more time to post a little more often. 😉 We’re super excited about our floors! The only thing is, now I want to start remodeling everything else! Paint, furniture, fixtures. Eek! I can see the dollars flying away now.