This has been Bread & With It’s first full month on the world wide web and it actually did way better than I thought it would do!
I have read the income reports for other blogs and they always start reporting income after the blog is fully established with followers. I’ve wondered how long it takes from the point of starting their blog to when they are making an income. That’s why I’m reporting my income reports at such an early on point. It may take months or years, who knows… but at least I’ll be documented so that you guys will have an idea of a realistic time frame.
I’m excited to see how long it takes to make something substantial that pays for the amount of time that goes into it!
May Traffic
In these early stages of my blog, the focus is on growing traffic. I have been tracking my traffic with Google Analytics. The Jetpack plugin for WordPress will give you a basic version of this, but Google Analytics gives you such detailed information and you can sync it with your Adsense account for even more detailed reporting… I prefer it over the Jetpack plugin.
For the month of May Bread & With It brought in a whopping 7,223 pageviews! Wow! There are lots of blogs out there that don’t even get 1,200 pageviews after a year of blogging.
So how did I manage it?
I got my stuff out there by submitting my posts. Since Bread & With It is primarily focused on recipes and crafts what I’ve found the best sites to submit my posts to are Craftgawker, TasteSpotting, Foodgawker. With these three sites individuals can search for recipes and essentially it will bring in a constant flow of traffic the more recipes you have in their database. The hard part is that they are very picky about their photography so make sure you have excellent images. If you get denied, take new photos and submit again. You will get it eventually.
I signed up for StumbleUpon only about a week before the end of May and I received quite a bit of traffic from them. They only let you submit a certain amount of articles from one website before they realize you are promoting yourself. As a solution many Facebook groups that have been popping up where bloggers can post up the articles they want to be added to StumbleUpon and the other members “stumble” the article for you. Genius teamwork if you ask me 😀
Another way to bring in traffic is to submit articles to fellow bloggers who accept submissions. Sara over at Tangled Happy loved my crochet headband tutorial and posted it up on May 2nd which really kicked off the month with traffic that ended up in 4th place for the overall month. I just about jumped out of my seat with excitement when I saw it 😀
A few other blogers saw my article on Tangled Happy and shared it on their site, which brought in even more traffic and lovely Pinterest pinners!
Pinterest has surprisingly brought in quite a bit of traffic without me having to do anything. These aren’t shares of my pins, they come from individuals coming across my article, liking it, and pinning it on Pinterest. My guess is Pinterest is loved my MANY if not ALL bloggers!
Another exciting thing that has happened this month is the beginning of Google Organic Traffic. A few people have searched on Google and Bread & With It came up on the first page! The truly organic keywords are: apple cider vinegar cocktail, better homes and garden recipe for old fashioned strawberry short cake, crochet flowers, crochet headband that ties at the back, and making apple cider vinegar taste better.
I have been working hard to better my SEO (search engine optimization) so that I can show up on search results and it looks like it’s starting to work. Hopefully I will see more of this in future months.
May Income
For now the only revenue is sourcing from Google Adsense. There are a couple more avenues I will be pursuing in the next few months that require your blog to be 3 or more months old before applying, but more on that later.
The big number for this month is:
I can buy myself a cup of coffee! Ok, I know it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it but I know that all things come in due time. Most blogs take up to 6 months before they see any sort of income and here I am with my $2.86. I’m not complaining. All this hard work is going to lead toward a successful money making website.
Over the next few months I’m excited to start signing up for other income drivers and I am currently in the planning stage of a Bread & With It ebook! Yes… and eBook! I’d love to talk about it more but I want to keep in on the DL until it starts coming together more. *shhhh*
There you have it folks! Until next month!
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