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Blog Income Report February 2020

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Blog Income Report February 2020 : Find out how I made $1411.15 through my blog with various strategies. 

So obviously, we made a turn for the worse income wise. Honestly, I feel very frustrated and disappointed and even more worried about the future. I actually have been working VERY hard making content over this last month and have exceeded my goals, so it’s only natural to be feeling a bit tense about the downward trend. 

Past Blog Income Reports

Blog Income Report February 2020

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in February:

  • Goal Setting: For 2 months in a row, a good friend of mine and I have been meeting in person once per month to create business goals for ourselves. This month in particular, I exceeded my goals! This makes me happy because it means I now have a standard for what I can accomplish for the blog that can be compared to. This simple act will help me grow with the tides. 
  • Traffic down 34%: The official numbers are in, and my blog took a 34% hit in traffic this month. This stings REALLY bad. When you are busting your ass cranking out posts (with videos) and see that everything is going DOWN, it can get really frustrating. I suspect the reason for my traffic drop is for a few different reasons. One being seasonal, less people care about food in February because most have abandoned their healthy eating strategy. There also has been insane amounts of google algorithm updates. Because I have SEMrush, I am able to see what I lost rankings for and I lost a lot! This is something that is out of my control in a lot of ways. Another reason I could have lost traffic is because I have been a bit radio silent on Pinterest. They have made MAJOR updates over the last month and I am waiting on some personalized information on what to do so I can move forward. 
  • No Extra Work: For the month of February, I did not have any sponsored work or recipe development projects for any companies. I almost did, but the timeline on a few were too short for me to handle and be able to do my best so I had to turn them down. 
  • Ebook: One of my goals for the month was to start creating a better opt-in. Well, not only did I start it, I finished it! When you sign up for my email list, you will get an ebook that has 15 Meal Prep Hacks that I’ve learned through the years. It’s not as perfect and pretty as I would like it to be, but the information inside is very valuable. I was surprised to see so many already signing up for my list immediately after I put it out there. 
  • Newsletter: I’ve decided to change up things on the email list front a bit. Instead of sending a weekly email with my latest posts, I will be crafting a monthly newsletter to my subscribers that will be more personal. It will have a life update, seasonal recipes, product recommendations and more. If you want to sign up, CLICK HERE
  • Pinterest Audit: One investment I made in my business was to get a full blown Pinterest audit. Right now, I can’t afford someone to run my account for me so I figured this was the next best thing. I was very lucky to have it worked on while these changes were going on so that I wouldn’t be working off of old information. I actually should be receiving my audit today and am excited to work on it even though I know I have been doing so many things wrong!
  • I don’t Actually Work Full-Time: I caught myself in the comparison trap a lot recently. What I fail to realize sometimes is that this really is a part time gig right now. I only have 10-15 hours a week to work on this blog because I am blessed enough to be able to stay home with our son AND pay a babysitter to come over 2x a week so I can work. The amount I can do is not as much as others who get a full 40+ hours. 
  • Carnivore Diet Experiment: I came out of the diet closet this month and announced I was going on diet in order to heal after pregnancy and birth. If you want to know a full list of why I am doing it, you can read this post. I mention this here because it put a bit of a damper on recipe creation for the last half of the month. Since I am only eating from the animal kingdom, I really couldn’t experiment with much. I am over halfway through this experiment and I am excited to continue to create from a place where I have more variety in my eating. However, I will say that going forward most of my post will be keto and low carb based as I truly do believe that way of eating for the most part is best for me.
  • Blog Re-Design: One of the missing pieces of my whole blog as a business is the fluidity of my design. I bootstrapped my way into this as a personal chef and it took on it’s own world. Because of that, I have mismatched logos, color schemes and branding. One thing I hope to accomplish this year is to make enough money to hire a designer or branding expert so I can get everything looking clean, smooth and minimalistic.
  • Seasonal Recipes: A while back in Q2 and Q3, I remember how many people were basically dropping everything for Q4. Now I understand! That truly is when you make the bulk of your money that will carry you through the rough months. This year I am going to try and be smart and look ahead. Since we have a big family transition coming up with my husband getting out of the military, it seems like a good idea for me to start working on seasonal content now. This for me means researching recipes for the holidays and making and photographing them during spring and summer so I have a bank of content to work with for that time period. This actually excites me a bit because sometimes I have trouble making summer type recipes. 

As defeated as I feel right now, I also feel like deep down I am going to reach my goals by the end of this year. I know it takes about 6-8 months for posts to really start ranking and doing well and so I am hoping that all this work I am putting in now will eventually pay off soon. I just need to keep up the momentum even though I don’t see much growth!

Blog Income Report February 2020 | Metrics

Food/Recipe posts that were created in February: 12

Amazon Affiliate Income: $73.84

 Mediavine Income: $1337.31

Virtual Assistant Work: $0

Sponsored Work: $0

Hours spent working on the blog: 16-20

Blog Income Report February 2020 Total: $1411.15

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