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A real mixed bag of a month — but another profitable one!

Before I get started, here’s the September blog income report if you’re curious.

An improvement in routine

I did better than last month in posting: I blogged nine times in October. So, an improvement over where I was in September where I only managed to blog twice, but still not at my goal.

I pulled back to the cheaper RankIQ plan because I’ve been having so much trouble making time to blog, and if I’m being honest the nine posts in October pretty much all came from the first two weeks of the month. It’s been tough to be consistent.

Because I’m a teacher with a full-time job, my schedule at school has a big influence on how much blogging actually gets done. Last year’s schedule was very helpful in getting a lot of blogging done. This year is not.

In November, I’m going to try to get a lot done on the weekends. Is this ideal with three kids at home? No way. Is it doable if I manage my time well? Definitely.

More money, fewer views

I made money on the blog this month!

Through Journey, the blog made money. Even when things slipped and didn’t feel great — and you’re going to see that I actually backslid in the blog this month!–it made money. And that’s important!

But I slipped big time in Pinterest at the end of September, and I’m seeing the results of that now. My Pinterest stats and Google stats are both down, and that means I’m below 200 daily visits.

(I think that 200 was the magic number for Journey — as soon as I had two days of 200 views consecutively, I got the acceptance email.)

So now I’ve slipped below that.

Getting my Google site speed info fixed wasn’t the magic cure I had hoped for either…my Google performance has also been kind of crappy. And the site speed hasn’t stayed fixed.

Mindset stuff anyway

So my sessions numbers dropped from 7.3 sessions to 6.5k sessions total. And that’s….discouraging. But I really can’t complain too much when I haven’t been consistent.

I had great results with Pinteresting Strategies so I need to stick to that. I’m going to make more of an effort with Pinterest and try harder to be consistent and schedule ahead. I’m shooting for five pins per day, so with the native Pinterest scheduler it means I can do ten days’ worth of pins at a time.

I’m also going to try for a big push to write more and focus on getting through my backlog of RankIQ reports. I have….a lot…backed up.

The hardest part of the school year is over, so I can turn more of my attention back to this without work suffering.

Hosting change

I have a significant blogging expense coming up this month — I’m going to upgrade my hosting!

I used Bluehost this year, and it was good to me to get me started! Their startup plan is cheap and accessible. It is the most affordable option out there, and that’s really what you need in those first months where I was getting very few sessions. (In January 2024 I had 48 sessions total, many of which were probably from me!) Through my link, you can get your hosting for $1.99 a month, which was ideal for most of this year.

But since the site speed thing has been such an issue (and some of that is my own mistakes!), it makes a lot of sense for me to upgrade now. I’m planning on Kinsta.

I’m going to wait as long as I can to do this and try to get the November earnings up there first! But ultimately — I’m lucky to have a money-making blog and this is the cost of doing business.

Blog traffic 2024

Let’s start with Google Analytics:

So, like I said: a setback in sessions. You can see the decline over the month, and thatI’m lower than the preceding month. I’m going to try to dial in on pinning to remedy this.

And here’s the Google outcomes.

This is also a pretty significant drop compared to last month. I honestly don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on here anymore.

I’m planning to go back and edit my top-performing Google posts this month and see if those updates help.

Journey by Mediavine blog income report

Even though there were some setbacks, my RPMs went up in Journey, so I made more money than last month. It’s fun to put that in a blog income report!

In October, I made $168.99 with Journey. Their software says I got 6,110 sessions for some reason.

Earnestly — this is really exciting. Is it a ton of money? No. But it’s real money. Not $20 from Amazon Associates (or the old blog I had years ago that took me four years to pay out $100 through AdWords!).

I have proof of concept now. I know I can keep pushing and grinding and get to a place where this blog is a third income in my household. I just need to stay super focused on my goals and on staying consistent.

Goals for October -review

• Write a total of 18 posts on Really Well, Thanks!, posting Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Let’s try this again. (did not achieve – got to 9)
• Use RankIQ reports to improve the earliest posts on the blog, and two posts on the other blog. (did not do this)
• Increase my monthly traffic to 10,000 sessions. (did not achieve)
• Reach 100 Pinterest followers. (so close! got to 99)
• Reach $250 from Journey. (nope)
• Schedule a month’s worth of old pins at once to ensure at least one pin per day. — aiming to do this on Thursday for the whole month. (I tried to do this and it didn’t work with the Pinterest native scheduler because then my other pins don’t fit!)

So…better than September but still not a great month.

Goals for November

I don’t want to write bullet point goals this month since I didn’t achieve any of the October goals.

In the interest of consistency I think I need to start looking at monthly, not weekly. Posting 4x/week for two weeks and then not at all for two weeks is not helping me.

So I’m going to put in a lot of work this weekend and try to schedule Monday and Tuesday for next week, then every Monday in November. Then every Tuesday in November, then every Thursday in November, and so on.

Ideally, I’d like to be writing the December posts during November and so on. It’s hard to have that kind of discipline though! In the spring when I was truly posting every day, I needed the stress of the deadline..bBut I need to try something else. Right now, this is not working.

I also need a Pinterest plan — I am growing to kind of hate making pins and to dread it, which is not great. So I’ve been putting that off in a way that is hurting my reach! Only being able to schedule 50 pins at a time means I can’t rip the band-aid off once a month.

I hate to end a post complaining or being negative! This blog is making money despite me falling off last month! When I make a zillion dollars from this blog I can pay someone else to do my pinning! But for now, I have to do it and complaining doesn’t help. When it’s hard, I can always plan my future blog income report.

Blog income report for October 2024

Let’s GOOOOOOO

• I earned $214.68 for Really Well, Thanks!. $45.69 was from Amazon Affiliates, and $168.99 was from Journey by Mediavine.
• I spent $29 on RankIQ on the Lite plan.
• So the total blog revenue for October 2024 is a PROFIT of $185.68.
• The year to date revenue for 2024 is $2.07. For the year, the blog has crossed into profitability!!
• And the revenue for the life of the blog, since December 2023, is -$261.23. This is an improvement over last month, when it was -$446.91.

It is so exciting to see that, for the moment, it is a profitable year! (Really, paying for hosting at the end of this month is going to wipe that profit out. But still!!!!)