It is officially May – what the hell?! How did that even happen? I turn 30 this month!!! Next month I will most likely give birth to my second baby……..
Ok I had to pause there for a second because I really scared myself! That sounds incredibly scary when said out loud, so let’s just forget that and move straight on!
WHY POST PROGRESS REPORTS?
Honestly, I went backwards and forwards on wether to do these reports at all. Then I went backwards and forwards on wether to call them “income reports” or “progress reports” or something else entirely.
I mean can it even be an income report when there is no income?!?
The reasons I decided to go ahead are below. I noticed a lot of bloggers say that they write income reports because they “really want to help others” etc and I’m sure some of them genuinely do! I won’t lie though, my reasons were mostly for my own gains but I’m sure some people may find them useful to read at some point.
To keep myself on track! I am a personality type that really needs some external motivation and consequences, if I don’t produce. Even if people don’t really read these posts, I will still feel like I’m being held accountable to someone else. That means I can be sure, each month, I will seriously try hard to hit my goals and won’t be too tempted to slack off!
Traffic. Apparently, income reports are very popular and great for getting traffic. I know that I enjoy reading them to try and find things that work and things that don’t, so I guess it makes sense. I’m not totally convinced but it’s certainly played a factor in my decision to make a start.
To help my online profile. This was important for me, I wanted to find a way to show people my honesty and authenticity. I’m hoping that by writing these reports, from the start, and being open about not earning any money, or what I’m doing wrong, will help my audience see me as relatable. I want to seem like a real, honest person who makes mistakes and not just a face behind a computer screen.
Maybe I do want to help others too though. I know I mocked other bloggers before on this BUT I really did struggle to find blogs with income reports from day one. However, the ones I did find were incredibly helpful. I don’t care how you made $40,000 in a month if I can’t see the 4 year plus journey you took to get to that point.
GENERAL BLOG INFO
This is the first report, so I thought I best just lay out a few quick facts before I get into any goals or figures…..
- The site went live 18th March but I really didn’t do anything or have any serious content for a while. I just hit publish to start the ageing process with Google.
- I’m just going to report from 1st April onwards as that’s when I would consider myself as “launched” (although very much s soft launch)
- I think once April hit I had 4 posts written although none of these were written to keywords and they were basically just filler content. I wrote these, quick, articles so every category had a post and the site looked “finished” in order to start link building.
- My aim is to primarily target an Australian audience.
- My main monetisation strategies will be affiliate marketing and ad revenue, which are both mid to long term strategies. I’m trying to be realistic about the fact that it will, therefore, probably be a while before I see any income at all.
PRIOR EXPERIENCE
In order to be totally transparent I will admit I had another blog before this one but only for about 2 months. After just that short time I realised that it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in and I started Lifestyle Queensland as my main focus. Before that time I had zero experience in blogging or anything related.
I did pay for a blogging course called Build Blog Freedom Fast Track (by Sharon Gourlay) which I would highly recommend! I haven’t included that cost in these reports though as I’m using the lessons I learnt over multiple sites and it would have been too hard to split the cost.
APRIL GOALS
- Publish three affiliate focused articles – I managed two (although they both need work)
- Set up social media accounts – Done although branding not fully added and no actual promotion done.
- Join 4 Facebook blogging groups – Done (think I joined 7 all with various different benefits)
- Write 3 guest posts for high authority sites – Done although none are published yet.
My goals for May will be a lot more numbers focused around traffic and income but these were just a few things I jotted down when I first started.
TRAFFIC
Page Views: 292 Users: 151
As I mentioned before, I haven’t done any real promotion as of yet so as a brand new site I’ve had next to no traffic. I did find that the once or twice I posted my blog link in a facebook group or randomly pinned I would see a small spike in page views. This at least gives me confidence that starting on social media this month should see a good increase.
During May I will be making much more of an effort to push traffic to the site through social media. I’m hoping this will mean I see a huge jump in page views and users. I don’t, realistically, see traffic increasing due to organic search for quite some months yet.
LINK BUILDING
Building relative links to my site is something that I want to work on continuously. I’m going to be focusing on affiliate marketing as a main income source so I need google to see me as an authority and relevant in my niche. The best way to show this (on top of writing excellent and relevant content) is to get other high authority sites to link to me.
Do follow links published during April – 12
Other links submitted during April (not yet published) – 7
I don’t intend on tracking these numbers forever but at the beginning it will be a big thing I concentrate on so want to do it for now.
INCOME
Affiliate Marketing
$0
So far I only have two articles which are very affiliate link focused. One of these is already ranking around the 50 mark in Google for main keywords which I’m very happy with. The other is not ranking yet but I know SEO is a long game so I’m not too worried. (All figures are in AUD)
Advertising
$0
I still haven’t even applied to Google Adsense yet but I’m hoping by the end of May I will have it up and running. (All figures are in AUD)
EXPENDITURE
I will make a quick list each month of money I have physically seen leave my bank account. I paid for 2 years domain and hosting up front but to be transparent I’ve split that into monthly payments. There are also a few photo editing and keyword research tools I’ve fallen in love with so decided to sign up to those. (All figures are in AUD)
Domain – $3.95
Hosting – $6.55
Online Tools – $23.90
SUMMARY
Income – $0
Expenditure – $34.40
APRIL PROFIT = – $34.40
FINAL THOUGHT
So, there you go! In my first month of blogging I officially lost $34.40 and I fully expect to have quite a few more months of losing money ahead of me.
I don’t have a lot of spare money to spend on blogging HOWEVER I do fully intend to treat this as a legitimate business. Therefore, I have to be in the mindset that, if there are things I really need which cost, well, I just have to fork it over.
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