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Okay – I complained in my last post (that was only ten days ago) so I won’t complain in this one. 

But, put real simply: I am getting back in the swing of things after a rough patch where the blog took a backseat. (Everything’s okay now, thank you!) 

So I only wrote three posts in April, but I did have pretty consistent posting on Pinterest because I set up with a Pinterest manager this month! 

Drafting and traffic

So: this blog is 16 months old. I’ve learned a lot of lessons from this experience. 

If I could go back and start over, the biggest mistake I probably made was focusing too much on writing posts, and not focusing enough on pinning consistently and well. 

There were many months where I was writing a blog post every single day, then getting tired and skipping the pins for my older posts.  

And for a really new blog, this is probably a good way to balance the work. If I was starting all over today, I’d sign up for RankIQ before I even got my hosting and have 30 posts ready to go before I launched. 

(I sort of knew this before I started but honestly got really overwhelmed at the idea of all the interlinking and prep I would have to do before posting. That doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me anymore.)

Realistically, I was five months in before I had enough posts to really be pinning any volume. So, if I ever start another blog, I’ll lock down 30 posts before I start paying those hosting bills. 

But … after those five months, I was still skipping pins. I should have switched my focus to pinning more and writing less! 

(If you are earlier on in your journey than I am, that is what I would recommend you do!)

But now – I’m in a hard work year and a transition at home. My in-laws need more care than they did when I started the blog, and my kids are in more activities. 

Working with a Pinterest manager

I have not been shy in my previous posts about sharing that I don’t really enjoy Pinterest. 

I also don’t really feel good at it. I don’t think I was great at designing pins or writing the SEO copy. I definitely developed a style while I was pinning, but I don’t know if the style was any good. And I never figured out how to tell. 

So, when the Pinterest manager I’m working with reached out to me late last year, I put her off and said I would reach out when I was ready. And last month, after weeks of not pinning at all, I decided it was time. 

The blog does make a little money. Not enough, right now, to cover the Pinterest manager costs. But – honestly, I barely worked on the blog in April, so it’s no great loss to not see any money from it.

And, I have faith that in working with someone who’s more effective than I am and more consistent than I am, the blog will make more money faster. 

The setup was pretty quick and included fixing up some of my boards. I have seen a modest but clear uptick in my numbers so far, and I expect them to continue to improve. 

I’ll discuss this further in the May report when I have more background! 

Real life

So, I have avoided discussing this so far because I don’t want to be identifiable, but a lot of my challenges this year with the blog have related to some health problems for my husband’s parents. 

His sisters are not local, and my schedule accommodates their doctor’s appointments better than his does. So I do a lot of the driving for their appointments, and I attend my mother-in-law’s appointments with her.

This is not a complaint, at all! They are my family, and I’m grateful for their role in my life. I just bring it up because it’s really why I’ve been so awful at blogging lately. (Some of it is also the extra worry.)

I still have goals and hopes for this blog, for sure. And when school gets out at the end of this month, I will have a lot more time to focus on what I want to do here. For now, I’m holding my head above water a little bit. 

Traffic in April 2025

I hit 10,000 sessions in March after a weird fluke with one of my posts (not a complaint!). For some reason, thousands of people googled the SOTO Method and hundreds clicked on my Soto Method Review in the space of a couple days. Which was pretty cool!

This month, that traffic dropped down as a pretty direct result of the lack of Pinterest traffic. 

You can see that I had 7,900 sessions this month, which is a pretty significant drop. 

Because I have already put a solution in place (Pinterest management), I am trying not to beat myself up about the drop. It just is what it is, and i have a plan for a way forward. 

Income for April 2025

From Journey, I earned $176.84 in April. From Amazon, I earned $30.23 in commissions.

I paid out $249 to begin using Pinterest management services. 

So the blog took a small loss in April 2025: $41.93.

And the year-to-date revenue for 2025 is gone down a little bit, to $592.93. That means I’m going to have to file taxes this year. (Yay?)

And the revenue for the life of the blog, since December 2023, is $516.74. 

I trust that this is going to track back upwards, so this small setback is no big deal. I’m going to give myself grace and get focused.