Hello again! Happy Saturday and more importantly I hope you guys had a wonderful & safe Independence Day! Winnie was so incredibly sweet with her first experience of fireworks. She hooted and kicked her feet, what a sweet baby. Since the holiday landed on a Friday, Michael gets a three-day weekend… YAY! Here is my favorite photo of last night, I snagged it while the older kids were off playing and daddy was having some sweet cuddle time with baby… how sweet are they?
June Traffic
Total Page views
Monthly page views increased slightly. Last month Bread & With It had a little over 7,200 page views and this month we are a little over 7,900. This is a good start but I’m hoping to increase these numbers a little more substantially in the months to come.
Organic Search
What I am very pleased to see is the increase in organic search engine traffic, which I talk about in more detail in the Monetize Bread & With It Newsletter. You can sign up by going to the bottom of this article and filling out the form.
Google Analytics shows 172.92% increase in sessions deriving from organic searches in June from the previous month. That’s great! The bounce rate has also gone down which is another bonus!
Traffic Sources
Foodgawker is really coming through for me. Last month TasteSpotting was my leading recipe traffic source but I’ve had some issues with getting a few recipes submitted. Their main reason for denying me again and again is ‘composition’. I’ve grown to hate that word. BUT… just like all of my college professors have told me, the trick to submitting art to galleries is learning what they like. I need to spend more time studying the images TasteSpotting approves & compare them to my own and see where I am going wrong. I will discuss this topic in more detail this month in the Monetize Bread & With It Newsletter.
The second leading traffic source came from All Free Crochet and I have to let you know that those stats came over the course of 3 days! Wow. If you have any crochet projects I would recommend submitting them asap. It takes awhile for them to actually approve your piece… but if they do, the traffic is nice. I have received more from them over the course of 3 days than most of my traffic sources produce in a month… This traffic resulted in a spike of Google Adsense income, Facebook followers and email subscribers. All good things!
June Income
I am very optimistic about the June income report! The increase is shocking considering the amount of traffic didn’t increase substantially and I am still only using Google Adsense as the only income source. I am looking forward to signing up for BlogHer but I have to wait until Bread & With It is at least 3 months old (July 23).
Google Adsense
This spike in income from last month is really exciting for me. There has been an increase in the amount of bids put on my ads most likely due to the fact that there has been an increase in the amount of clicks on my ad spaces. I have two 250px square ads on the right hand side corner that are both “Google recommended ad sizes”, they flow along with the design and layout of regular Bread & With It ad spaces. I have changed these ads to both banner and text-based ads which Google recommends if you want to get more competition and higher bids over the ad space.
I have also been slowing changing all the ads in older posts to the recommended sizes as well. The difference in price per click is pretty noticeable and it is defiantly worth it to use the recommended ad size.
There you have it guys! I’m crossing my fingers for an equally great month this month for Bread & With It! That’s all for now… it’s gorgeous outside and it’s time I get off the computer and go play 😉 Until next month!
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Nice report Laurel! It’s been interesting to me how in the last few years blogging has become so visual (probably because of Pinterest) and now the photography is almost just as important as the writing for growing your blog. I got into blogging for the writing so the photography has been an area where I’ve had to try to grow and learn a little more. I’ve only tried submitting one of my photos to Craftgawker and got the “awkward angle” reply. *sigh* But like you said, it’s an opportunity to learn and try again.
The vague responses like “awkward angle” and “composition” are so frustrating, but at least they are giving us some indication of how we can improve for next time. In the world outside of blogging we may not be so lucky… we may not even receive a call or letter letting us know we were denied. So I say we at least have something to help us move forward… right?
The Make Your Own Zone has been around for awhile and has good steady following, how did you start getting your blog out there in the early months? How long did it take before you started to see more serious Pageviews?