Hey all, and welcome to my April 2020 income and traffic report! I started my blog in November 2018 (it sounds so long ago now) and have been keeping track of everything since the beginning.
You can check out the other income and traffic reports in my reports section.
This month kinda sucked, what with everything going on in the world, my motivation was at an all-time low (I mean, I didn’t get around to writing this report until the end of JUNE for goodness sake).
I didn’t get a huge amount of work done and was not consistent at all. So I’ll keep this report short and sweet and mainly focus on the numbers.
Scroll on down or click here to jump to the section that interests you.
Posts
Posts this month: 4
Sigh. Not good. But it is what it is, at least I got about one out a week minimum (which is my absolute minimum so that’s not saying much).
Traffic considered to soar this month while RPMs kept plummeting, both to be expected given the global state of things.
I definitely took it easier this month with the blog, after skating so close to total burnout last month, in order to have more mental energy available for the day job and my kids who were still at home with us instead of at school.
Traffic
April 2020 Page Views 85,461 (compared to 67,063 last month and 3,742 in April 2019)
Another massive (temporary) boost in traffic.
Google and Pinterest traffic took the biggest leaps this month, along with some Yummly love (which I normally NEVER get).
Email Subscribers
217 (versus 200 in March)
I should just rename this section “Sigh…” As some of you will know from previous reports I’ve seen a big slowdown in subscribers ever since I had to get rid of my MailChimp subscriber popup (due to a clash with Mediavine Ads) and am planning to look into ConvertKit (when I can afford another outgoing) to fix this issue.
Push Notifications
592 (versus 281 in March)
OneSignal has been a lifesaver for me, with my email sign up fiasco, getting eyes on posts as soon as they are updated. Highly recommend!
This month I barely touched Facebook so follower increase was negligible, just 3,402 when compared to 3,314 in March. I posted on Facebook every day, mixed up my post types, and shared to at least five groups a day (well, most days).
Facebook is still a bit of a mystery to me and I haven’t found any course yet where I was satisfied with the ROI.
I have a blogger friend who has done the Moolah Marketing course, but ouch so expensive – she seems to have great results on Facebook but I’m not convinced it’s worth it unless you have a product to market.
In April I finished up with 1,500 followers, compared to 1,300 in March. I focused big time on Pinterest this month and on getting out fresh pins (exhausting),.
I also had my VA dabble in manual pinning, but didn’t see any amazing results from it, so I’m happier to stick with my Pinning Perfect strategies and Tailwind.
Pinterest strategies can take a few months to pay off but by the end of the month, my monthly Pinterest page views had increased from around 19,589 in March to 26,945 this month
370 followers (up from 327 in March)
Zero care given about Instagram…I had my VA post on it regularly this month, as an experiment, and got very little return in terms of followers or pageviews.
So that pretty much confirms for me that it should be just an afterthought – the only thing I enjoy about Instagram is the chance to interact with people who have tried my recipes and posted photos there.
Income
April Income : $743.42 (compared to $888.08 in March)
As you can see, despite a huge increase in traffic, lower RPMs meant that I earned less than in March.
Which was okay with me – while the whole awful pandemic situation was going on I was happy to get any income, and reinvested it back into things I needed for the blog, and my VA.
My average RPM fell to $8.70 dollars (per 1000 pageviews), compared to $13.26 in March, lower even than the lowest in January!
Honestly, given the difficulties that travel bloggers have been experiencing, I have just been grateful to see increased traffic and not so focused on the income side.
All income mentioned is the gross amount, not my net income, and doesn’t take into account deductions for tax, social security, accountant, expenses, etc.
Review and Goals
I had set several goals for April but did I meet any of them? Let’s take a look:
- Hire a VA (Virtual Assistant ).
- Examine, update and edit my Pinterest Boards.
- Research Facebook Strategy
I did hire a VA, who does not have experience in the blogging sphere but I knew to be a good worker and already be versed in the ways of SEO. This month was mainly training and she was working on Instagram and manual pinning, as well as adding alt text to photos.
Umm, I kinda examined and updated my Pinterest Boards – I really have enough now and need to work on filling them. What would really be more beneficial to me soon would be to deep dive into Tailwind statistics and analyse how well my individual boards are doing and tweak or archive poor performers.
Research Facebook strategy – not so much. I did look into courses for Facebook but was unable to find one more suitable for bloggers, they all seem to be about marketing products and ads, so the search continues.
For next month I’m aiming at a VERY short list of goals, due to the current world situation and working from home with the kids, etc. I’d like to:
- Train up my VA a bit more to take over things like videos, which I really hate doing.
- Basically abandon Instagram and post no more than once or twice a week (Bye! It’s been fun! Not!)
- Focus on increasing my RPMs.
- Get some (any) content out.
- Research changing hosts as my Siteground package is only for 100k visits a month.
I hope you found this report useful, if you have any questions or would like to see other items included in the next report, holler at me down below!
Stay safe and keep blogging!