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First: this is my 150th blog post! I can’t believe that.
So: It was a short month, but I was pretty successful in staying on track and making progress towards my goals. Not perfect! But pretty good.
Let’s dig in.
What I Can Control
I am trying to change my mindset a little bit about blogging stuff. Some of the things that are out of my control stress me out.
I can’t control whether or not a pin catches on. And I can’t control my traffic.
But I can control whether or not I post five pins that day! And I can control whether or not a blog post that gets put out is my best work or not. And I can control whether or not I do a little work on the blog every single day.
So I’m trying to focus my mindset on doing the stuff that I can do rather than the stuff that is outside of my control. I think it’s a lot healthier than tying my mood to the traffic that takes months to build anyway!
(I have been doing this for many years in my classroom but have not really been consciously applying it to blogging. But this month, it’s been really helpful to take a beat then ask myself, “Can I control this right now? Is there something I can take action on that will improve this?”)
Last Month’s Goals
Let’s do this post a little out of order. Here are the goals I set last month:
- Post three times a week, for a total of 13 posts in this short month. (Nearly! I missed two Wednesdays this month. 11 posts in total)
- Pin five pins per day, no exceptions, no excuses. Re-pin older pins that have been neglected. (Also nearly! I had two days that were two or three pins, not five)
- Try to batch some of the post work – prep all the outlines at once, set up all the pins at once, set up all the posts at once. When I’m on top of this, it makes the whole process go more easily. (I did this and it was successful! All the outlines for the month at the same time, etc.)
- Go back through from post one and improve the interlinking of my posts. Because I schedule posts ahead of time, I never go back into old posts and link to the new one. I know that I should, and that it won’t actually take that long to do it. (I started this and got through the first five or so posts. The early posts are rough and needed a lot of improvements. It’ll get faster.)
- I’m going to wish upon a star here: hit 10,000 sessions. This number is no longer as important as it once was since Journey took me at 6,000 sessions. But it’s still a big deal to me to hit five figures!. I think it’s (Not quite! 9,100 sessions in the last 30 days, which is still +900 and still my new highest traffic month ever!)
Here’s the traffic report. I’m bending the rules a little since there aren’t 30 days in February, but comparing apples to apples is more accurate anyway. I am so close to 10K — another 30 hits per day would get me there.
My traffic composition has shifted a lot too — Now, nearly twice as much of my traffic comes from Google as from Pinterest.
I think the Google growth is partially from RankIQ and partially from hitting a year of existing. RankIQ gives you a ranking analysis where you can see how your rank for different search terms has changed month-over-month. When I first started using it, my blog was about 4 months old and my rankings were stagnant. They grew slowly for about six months. Since my blog hit the one-year mark in December, though, they have grown a lot.
This makes me want to work harder at Pinterest! Since so many others are having so much success with it, I know that I can grow there and have great traffic from both.
I keep telling myself — three months of solid focus! February was month 2 of being totally on the ball.
Blog Income Report – February 2025
From Journey, I earned $184.14 in February. From Amazon, I had my best month ever — $66.30 in commissions! I’m also reaching a cool place with my affiliate links where most of the things people have bought are actually things I recommend on the blog. When I first started, people would click my links then order their groceries from Whole Foods, which was a little discouraging at the time.
I paid out $29 for RankIQ. I’m behind on reports, so I’m going to freeze that for a bit. I really appreciate that they allow you to do that!
So the total blog revenue for January 2025 is $221.44.
And the year-to-date revenue for 2025 is now $381.23.
And the revenue for the life of the blog, since December 2023, is $305.04. The blog lost money consistently until I got into Journey, then the early profits were wiped out when I had to pay the annual blog hosting costs. But now we’re in the black!
I think my next mid-term economic goal is to get to a place where I can invest in a Pinterest manager. I’m not great at making pins, and I don’t really love doing it. I know I’d be doing better on Pinterest if the pins were prettier. Right now, the cost is more than the blog makes, but that won’t be the case forever. And getting a pro in there might help me get there faster in the long run. So I’m waffling about pursuing that in the next few months.
Goals for March 2025
- Eyes on the prize: 10,000 sessions. Let’s go.
- Moving up to 6 pins per day to get closer to posting every pin every month. Pinning 5-7 days at a time to make this a less overwhelming process.
- 3 posts per week, for a total of 14 posts in March. I did well getting ahead in February, but not staying ahead — I would get ahead, get out of the habit of working a little every day, and then fall behind. I can do better!
- Continue batch prepping posts weekly.
- Continuing to work on relinking early posts. I’m going to aim for another 10 posts for re-interlinking this month.
- Focus on what I can control, and keep the faith in what I can’t.
