Blog Income Report November 2018

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Blog Income Report November 2018 : Find out how I made $345.42 through my blog with various strategies.

Welcome to my 9th blog income report! November 2018 has been really challenging for me if I am being honest. I made some great strides but I also became super obsessive about numbers and comparison and really kind of hating on those that seemed like overnight successes. I know in my heart that THIS is where people really give up and even though I was about to, I can’t come this far to only come this far.

Past Blog Income Reports

Check out: Blog Income Report | February & March 2018 | $18.34
Check out: Blog Income Report | April 2018 | $203.17
Check out: Blog Income Report | May 2018 | $50.93
Check out: Blog Income Report | June 2018 | $213.50
Check out: Blog Income Report | July 2018 | $213.50
Check out: Blog Income Report | August 2018 | $174.52
Check out: Blog Income Report | September 2018 | $177.52
Check out: Blog Income Report | October 2018 | $563.78

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in November:

Everything dropped DRAMATICALLY: After the Whole30 takeover, my traffic and engagement dropped dramatically. This is to be expected after hosting accounts that totalled 1.5 million when you factor in FB and IG but man did it feel kind of bad! I was prepared for it but it was almost like a high that I had to come down from and watching all of my numbers go down was NOT EASY!
I joined Mediavine: In January of 2018 I wrote down my business goals, and getting accepted into Mediavine was one of them. Mediavine is an ad network that basically takes care of all ad placement and gives a much higher rate per 1000 impressions (RPM). To join you need to apply with proof of 25k sessions in 30 days and it takes about a month to get things sailing smoothly but I am so happy I did! They have been amazing to work with and I made more in 10 days than I would with Adsense or Gourmet ads. I cancelled those both and I feel like I will be sticking with Mediavine for the long haul. Side note: The takeover did help boost my traffic enough to get to 25k sessions (I ended up with 40k sessions that month) but I was teetering on the edge with 17k or 21k for SO LONG. It’s good to know I would have gotten there eventually and probably in January with the healthy living boost.
I continued to improve my photography: I’m still nowhere near manual mode, but I am really figuring out how to edit my photos so they make people hungry. It makes me want to go back and erase ALL my old blog posts and start over! As I continue to work on my skills I do see more engagement on pinterest from them and more accepted submissions into foodgawker which honestly doesn’t affect my traffic much but to me it’s a sign im getting better. I also have reached out for help about photography and will be getting some real lessons in the future because books don’t cut it for me!
I hired an assistant: One of my followers who lives in Charleston SC reached out to me about helping me with the blog. I thought about maybe having someone schedule and run my social media but I honestly don’t have enough content to cycle through yet because I don’t feel like my posts were actually worthy until about a month ago. I was also not regularly posting over the summer so I have inconsistencies in my content which will NOT HAPPEN IN 2019. Anyway, although I would love her or someone to take over social at some point I thought about the things that take me the most time and that is formatting and uploading blog posts. In a google doc I will write out my posts, tags, links I want and what photos should go where. She takes that document and creates a post and basically fills out everything for me with 2 posts a week. It has been AWESOME because my writing flow is so much better in a google doc where as the wordpress dashboard gets me all kinds of distracted. Keep in mind I technically don’t have a surplus of money to make this happen but I am investing in her help to save time and with the intention of needing help to grow! I will keep you posted!
I focused on writing for search engines instead of social media: Keyword research has still been going strong for me and I feel like it’s been paying off. Honestly, most of my traffic comes from Pinterest, Google then social media. Social media used to be in the #2 spot but since I really have been focusing on quality content and adding value it is helping things step up! I guess what I realized is that with algorithm changes, social media is a very unpredictable egg to put in your basket. Even if you have 100k followers a post may never see a fraction of that if the algorithm decides that’s what it wants. In a podcast about pinterest I heard someone say that they wish more people just focused on creating good content instead of trying to “cheat the system” because overall that will never work long term. Good content is long term and its best to focus on that always.
Started over: All in all I feel like this is the month that I “started over” I have a groove with content, an assistant to help me and really I just need to be PATIENT. Watching a blog grow is literally like watching water boil. It truly does take time for these things to happen and hopefully I will be on my way to having this blog pay my mortgage by the summer of next year!

A note on the metrics below: I switched ad networks 3/4 of the way through November so there is a lot of random amounts this month. Next month it will be coming from a lot less sources. It’s also important to know that my Gourmet Ads income for November will never actually see my account because I didn’t make the $100 threshold before I quit. Sucks but it happens!

When you factor in blog expenses and hours worked (40/wk on top of full time job and podcast) I am definitely in the red but that is what is SO important to see. I truly believe it will pay off!