Page views: 2.9 million.
My page views this month were at 2.9 million (I owe a lot of it to my “Mommy, will you lay with me” post that went viral.) It went up just a touch from last month.
Facebook: 25,215 (I have never kept track of FB or Pinterest, so I can’t really compare it to anything for you… this is my way of keeping track)
Pinterest: 15,770
Background:
I was an elementary school teacher, before I became a stay-at-home-mom and one-day-a-week play therapist. My yearly income was $27,000 (we live in one of the lowest-paying states for teachers). I worked from 7:30-4:00 every day. I quit nine years ago to have children. This month, with my blog, Yourmodernfamily.com, I reached that amount, in one month. I was thrilled and shocked (as I am every month!) I started this blog in January 2013. (Really Dec 2012, but I moved it to WordPress & started “over” in Jan. 2013)
If you are trying to make money on your blog, I hope that you will learn a lot from reading this post and walk about with inspiration and tips to put into practice on your blog. I owe my success to a lot of effort right from the very beginning. I hit the ground RUNNING (and stay up late, watching hours of youtube.com videos on how to set up a blog… while our kids were snug in their beds!)
Here is where my income comes from:
Tap Influence
Izea-
Others (personal email offers, etc…)
Share a Sale-
CJ.com
Affiliates
Amazon
Linqia
Moms affiliates
Other (contributor posts, etc…)
My e-books: (I ALSO SELL MANY PAPERBACK BOOKS, BUT I DON’T HAVE THOSE NUMBERS IN YET FOR JAN.)
POTTY TRAIN IN A WEEKEND and You can be a Stay at Home Mom on One Income.
I had a lot of outgoing expenses, too: hosting ($150), editing ($200), tech support ($99), having someone help me with technical issues ($90), dollar photo club – $20, pic-monkey royal, e-junkie, paying contributors for writing roundups, buying supplies for posts, etc… Totaling a few thousand.
TRAFFIC TALK:
~Here are my top viewed posts (that bring in the most traffic): http://www.yourmodernfamily.com/top-viewed-posts-2014/
~Here is my highest viewed post for January:
“Mommy will you lay with me?” – when your children want you to lie down with them at night
~This one does well, too, and has really picked up momentum, resulting in higher affiliate sales: http://www.yourmodernfamily.com/freebie-websites/
FOUR THINGS THAT HAVE WORKED WELL IN JANUARY:
1- Working on my overall Images. I have been using dollar photo club for a lot of pictures. ($1 per photo) and it has been such a huge booster for my blog. I have taken old posts (like my Mommy, will you lay with me and my How to make a child feel important) and I gave them new life by updating the images. Both have done extremely well since their “makeovers”)
2. I added a pop-up newsletter box.
3. I am sending out my weekly Newsletter! I am really excited about this! It was such a hurdle to do, because I was nervous, but now I’m just excited. 🙂 People even respond to them telling me that they liked them, etc… It just makes my day!
4. Pinterest- I have gone back to the “good ol’ days”
I felt so overwhelmed by my pinning, fb sharing, tweeting, using G+, etc… so I decided to just go back to pinning like the good ol’ days. I pin for fun. If I see something pinned that I like, I re-pin it. Easy enough! I do share my post of the day and maybe a few others, but I don’t overly-pin my own posts. I pin what I think looks good. I have seen that my followers are really liking that! They are pinning more & I’m getting more followers.
FOUR THINGS THAT I WANT TO DO BETTER NEXT MONTH:
1. Put all of my ebooks on Createspace so readers can buy them as paper-backs. It doubled my income on Potty Train in a Weekend, so I want to do this again.
2. Still working on bettering my brand new newsletter.
3. Trying to keep up the traffic from January. (I worry about this EVERY month)
4. YOUTUBE! I am going on a tour of the You Tube Lab this week and I can’t wait to put into action everything that I learn! Paula and I are thinking of doing a weekly g+ hangout with each other or a ‘expert’ in an area and we want to put it on our blog for our readers.
TWO PLUGINS I WOULD BE LOST WITHOUT…
1. My WordPress Editorial Calendar. I love seeing my posts on a calendar!
2. SumoMe. This is the one that I mentioned earlier- I really love it. I only wish that I would have done this a year ago or when my Husband vs Wife going to bed post went viral.
I hope that you found that to be helpful! Happy Blogging!