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It’s the first of May and I can’t even believe it. This is year is going by so fast, but also slow at the same time. It’s pretty weird. As you guys know, with everything going on my income took a hit in March… but in April things are slowly shifting back to normal which I am happy about. Last month was pretty great and I’m going to share with you guys what I learned, the income I made in April, and my goals moving forward for the month of May.
DISCLAIMER
I choose to write these income reports to keep tabs on my growth as well as struggles that I’ve encountered. This will help me see what works, what doesn’t, and what I need to work on to reach my goal of becoming a full time blogger.
Things learned
So many more blog comments during this Quarantine.
You guys I am getting so many spam comments. It’s absolutely ridiculous. In April, I probably had 300 spam comments and only 3 real comments from people who left a thoughtful response to a blog post I wrote.
When I post on Pinterest after 6 pm, I see way more impressions, repins, and click throughs to my website.
I will say it’s weird because I have 2 Pinterest accounts. My personal account and then one I use specifically for my blog. I tried posting some new pins around the same times and realized that my blog related Pinterest has a better response than my personal account. I feel like it might be because I have so many different pins on different topics versus my blog’s Pinterest account which has only 1K pins on specific topics.
I think I’m going to try to market my blog everyday on Pinterest using Tailwind again. I stopped using Tailwind about a year ago so I’m going to try to update more regularly to hopefully grow my website reach.
It’s also interesting to see how much I make from Amazon Affiliates.
So I had about 20 items sold on Amazon in April. When I think about how people make a living with Amazon Affiliates, it is truly bewildering to me. However, it does make me want to put in the effort to make a whole bunch of posts linked to a variety of affiliates so that I can make more money. I know for sure that I definitely don’t only want to focus on Amazon though.
Things I’m testing
Sharing my blog posts to LinkedIn.
So twice in the past I’ve had a brand’s PR find me on LinkedIn and they’d end up collabing with me. So I am going to try to keep posting on LinkedIn to see if I can get more collabs. I’m also going to attempt to reach out to people in specific PR companies on there as well.
Investing in stock photos.
I am going to pay for some stock photos that I can use on my website and social media for specific posts. I am hoping that my click through rate may increase with the use of these photos. I also just feel like it’ll make everything look more relatable and aesthetically pleasing.
Create outfit posts for IG.
I keep saying I am going to get into fashion blogging. This time I am going to go ahead and do it since I have a lot of outfit ideas. I want to see what the reach is and honestly it would just be nice to get some free clothes while also making affiliate sales off of the items.
Wins
I pitched myself much more.
I’ve been trying to get into the habit of pitching more to PR emails for not only free items, but also just to build a relationship. I pitched a few PR emails sent to me and received a few responses back.
I applied to be an affiliate at a few companies on shareasale.
Sign up with Shareasale today to start finding affiliates you can link in your blog posts to start making money blogging. I did get accepted to most of the companies I applied to which I am pretty happy about.
Sign up for Share-A-Sale and start making money with affiliates today!
I had one of my photos featured on a brand’s page!!
I was really excited when I checked my Instagram and saw that one of my photos had been featured on Creme of Nature’s page. It was surprising considering that Instagram photo I had posted and tagged them in was from May 1, 2019. The photo was almost 1 year old so that’s pretty cool. The post received 1000+ likes. I didn’t get any follows from it unfortunately, but it was nice to be featured anyway.
Fails
Pitched 2 campaigns on Social Fabric and was declined.
I feel like I’m going to need to edit my blog and Instagram in order to get sponsored posts from this website. I also feel like I should make more Evergreen personal content to get more sponsorships.
My Current Social Media stats
Pinterest – 11.2K followers (Pinterest won’t show my actual amount of followers, just a round up total [increased by 200])
Twitter – 1174 followers (+16 new followers)
Instagram – 1064 followers (+29 new followers)
Facebook – 393 likes (+11 new likes)
Mix – not sure since Mix went down as being private the last 2 weeks of the month (last month 275)
Quora – 73 followers (no change)
Flipboard – 42 followers (+2)
Youtube – 31 subscribers (no change)
Total following = 14,252 following (+158 new followers)
January (collective) blog views: 2,845 views (+596 views in comparison to last month)
Unique views: 2,547 views (+467 views in comparison to last month)
My Youtube watch time – 6 hours collective
Domain Authority – 15
Amount of blog posts I Wrote in April: 41
Blog post goal for May: 30
Videos I posted on Youtube: 0
My Income Report
Sponsorships
Fiverr – $153.60
Blogging Platform – $25
Affiliate sales
How much I sold vs How much I made
I sold a collective of $400+ in items from affiliate sales and I made around $22 from it.
Amazon Affiliate – $21.36
Viglinks – $0.67
Other ways I made money
Ebates / Rakuten (cashback) – $2.21
I made a purchase from Hot Topic, Walmart, and Macy’s which is where the cashback comes from when I click through the Ebates / Rakuten website so that was pretty cool.
Income Total = $202.84 (+161.44 in comparison to last month)
Things to Do / April Goals
I plan on revamping my Instagram.
I want to work on making more personal connections with my audience instead of just posting products.
Change most of my links to No Follow.
So I haven’t been making my links No Follow unfortunately. I am going to go through all of my published posts and change most of the links to no follow instead of do follow which is going to be a hassle. However in one of the blogger groups I am in.. I saw that when someone changed their links from dofollow to nofollow that they saw an increase in traffic over the course of a couple of months so I am hoping that it helps my traffic too. I also just want to be compliant with Google too.
Apply to more affiliates.
I’m trying to add more affiliate marketing to my income so I am hoping that I can grow my income substantially with blogging.
Create 10 heavily affiliate linked posts.
Last month I made at least 15 heavily affiliate linked posts so hopefully they bring me some sales.
Actually start marketing my links more on Quora.
I keep setting goals to promote my links on Quora, but I kind of don’t push forward to do it. So I’m thinking if I aim for at least 15 promotional links on Quora that it would be ideal.
Also going to try blog commenting again on at least 30 more blogs that have a higher domain authority that mine.
I am hoping that overtime it will increase my reach and assist with my DA.
Check out my other Income Reports from this year!
January Income Report 2020 + February Goals – $307.56
My February Income Report + March Goals – $107.78
March Blog Income Report + April Goals – $41.40
So I hope you guys found this Income Report helpful.
Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment down below.
