Monthly Income Report - April 2014

For regular readers of this series, you will know that I’ve posted our Monthly Income Reports since I started earning income from this blog (a little over a year). While I still don’t make much, so posting these reports is somewhat embarrassing to me, what keeps me doing it is the motivation I receive while writing them.

Because, I’m constantly surprised. And amazed. And thankful.

So while I don’t make much, at this point in my blogging career, compiling these reports is worthwhile to me because they continue to motivate and inspire me to stay the course. Because, blogging is hard work! It takes time, commitment, focus and unwavering faith.

Faith that at some point in this journey, I’ll make at least enough to support this blog {grin}! Because while I report my monthly income, I’ve yet to share with you the monthly expense {grin}. Thus, you, the reader, are still getting a lopsided view of blogging income; at least blogging income from my blog!

What has motivated me while writing my Monthly Income Report – April 2014? This:

I had hoped to reach the 20,000 Pageview level this month. So, when I logged on to Google Analytics and saw that I missed that goal by 702 Pageviews, I was disappointed. But, rather than stew about it, I decided to dig a little deeper.

The photo above is a collage (created in PicMonkey) of two different screen views. The top part of the photo is for April 2014 and the bottom part of the photo is April 2013. Comparing the same month a year apart was eye-opening to me and I started doing a happy dance instead of moping around because I missed a self-imposed goal!

In a year’s time, Unique Visitors have increased from 798 to 13,059 and Pageviews have increased from 3,164 to 19,298. Wow! My brain can’t wrap itself around the math {grin}!

Where did they all come from? I’ll tell you {grin}:

Pinterest stills leads the way in driving traffic to my blog. Last year, it was readers linking in directly by typing in my URL. Who knew I had 652 friends! Thank you, my faithful friends, who have now grown to 1,858 visitors who consciously type in my URL!!!

Google organic searches are still number two; a quick “refresher” for those of you who don’t know what this means – it is visitors landing on our site while searching for something. For example, if you type in the words “peach pineapple dump cake” in your browser, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll land on our site. Because, this blog is NUMBER ONE in the search engine ranks with a 5-star rating for that long tail key word search! Woohoo!

Wait – there’s more! If you type in the words “coffee banana protein smoothie“, my recipe is NUMBER ONE, too!

And here’s the really staggering news about that – out of 2,230,000 results, my Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie appears at the top! OMG – am I dreaming?

There’s more:

If you search for “Mexican Caesar salad dressing“, Toot Sweet 4 Two is in the number two position out of 1,750,000 results! Note that “Caesar” is misspelled as “cesar” in the URL. I’ve gone into the post and corrected the URL. We’ll wait and see if that jumps this recipe up to the 1st position. But, if it doesn’t, if we lose our number two position, trust me, I’m changing it back to the misspelling {grin}!

And, one more:

If you search “lite layered Mexican casserole“, Charlie’s Lite Layered Mexican Casserole is number seven out of 1,610,000 results! We are still on the first page of the search engine results! Also, note that the photo is pretty good. Visitors are more likely to choose a link with a photo than one without. If you are a WordPress blogger, and your photos aren’t showing up on Google, check to see if you have set your “Featured Image” within your post. If you haven’t and you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I explain it in this post: How to Add a Featured Image Thumbnail to a WP Post.

Anyway, in my excitement to share all this good news with you sweet peeps, I’ve gotten a little bit off-track! Below is a snapshot of my April 2014 Behavior Report. The Behavior Report shows what visitors do when they land on your site, i.e., where they go…

In April, the misspelled Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing recipe drove the most traffic to this blog. Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie is still going strong at number 4. This is extraordinary to me because that post, launched in July 2013, is almost a year old! Number 2 for April is Denver Quiche. This is exciting to me because:

On our All Time Behavior Report, since installing Google Analytics on our blog in mid-October 2012, Denver Quiche is number 17! In one month’s time, Denver Quiche has made the Top 20 All Time! I’m looking forward to following this recipe and seeing where it goes from here!

I attempted to put the two above Behavior Reports into one side-by-side collage. But, when I did, you couldn’t read the names of the posts. So, you’ll have to scroll up-and-down to compare the two. But, to make it easier for readers, I’ve compared it for you:

April #1 – Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing is number 5 on the All Time Report
April #2 – Denver Quiche is number 17 on the All Time Report
April #3 – Gail’s Potato Chip Cookies is number 8 on the All Time Report
April #4 – Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie is number 2 on the All Time Report
April #5 – Charlie’s Mexican Casserole is number 7 on the All Time Report
April #6 – Peach Pineapple Dump Cake is number 3 on the All Time Report
April #7 – Fresh Strawberry Pie is number 9 on the All Time Report
April #9 – A Box of Yellow Cake Mix: 5 Cookie Bar Recipes You’ll Love – is number 4 on the All Time Report. But, on the All Time Report, this recipe is listed twice. It is also number 13 on the All Time Report. That’s because some people landed on the post and others landed on the photo (and, hopefully, then went to the post). If you add those two numbers together (7,796), it moves up the ladder to the number 3 position on the All Time Report. It’s not listed twice on the April report, so that doesn’t change.
April #12 – Cake Batter Cream Cheese Bars is number 10 on the All Time Report
April #13 – Ideas for Reusing Old Picture Frames is number 19 on the All Time Report
April #15 – 42 Must Have Kitchen Utensils – is number 16 on the All Time Report
April #20 – Grilled Balsamic Chicken Breast Tenders is also number 20 on the All Time Report

The rest of the posts on the April Behavior Report do not repeat on the All Time Report.

Let’s go back and look at this report again:

I’ve spent oodles of time on examining Google Organic Search Engine results and sharing it with you in all the hoopla above. But, I want to recognize and thank Recipe Lion, number 3 on the April Acquisition Report above. Recipe Lion is another recipe aggregation site owned by Prime Publishing. I am now one of their “Featured Foodies” and they drive traffic to my site. All Free Casserole Recipes and The Best Dessert Recipes are also part of the Prime Publishing family and I’m a “Featured Foodie” over at All Free Casserole Recipes and The Best Dessert Recipes (“Featured Foodie”). Hopefully, over time, you will see more and more of Toot Sweet 4 Two’s recipes on all three of these sites, plus some of their other “sister” sites.

Here’s what being a “Featured Foodie” on Prime Publishing’s sites has done for me:

See the spikes in visitors in the photo above? Every one of those spikes is a direct result of Prime Publishing. When those spikes occurred in the month of April, it was a direct result of Prime Publishing featuring one of my recipes (1) either on one of their sites OR (2) in one of their newsletters. Did I mention how grateful I am? Thank you, Prime Publishing and specifically to their editors Emily (Recipe Lion and Recipe Chatter), another Emily (All Free Casserole Recipes), Julia (Creative Income Blog) and Danielle (The Best Dessert Recipes).

As you can see from the cover photo at the top of this post, I’m happy to report that for the Monthly Income Report – April 2014, I made $108.00! While this is a decrease over last month, the good news is that I made money! All of this income was derived from guest posting (thank you Prime Publishing!). I am a guest poster for both Recipe Chatter and Creative Income Blog. A shout-out of thanks to both Emily and Julia, the respective editors of those blogs!

Want to read what I’ve written and created for them? Now’s your chance! Here are links (but, please come back to my blog, k?) to all the guest posts I have done for them since I starting working with them (in other words, not all done in this month {grin}:

For Recipe Chatter

For Creative Income Blog

You could say I’ve been busy! My brother says I’m now a “professional writer” because someone is actually paying me to write!

Here’s a couple of fun things I’ll share:

In Google Analytics, you can watch visitors to your site in “Real Time”. This active report shows you where they are coming from (acquisition) as well as their location. When I took this snapshot, most visitors were arriving from Recipe Lion and viewing the Crazy Chocolate Cake post. Way cool, huh?

And this one:

You can find out the number of times a “Pin” has been “pinned” on Pinterest, if you know the URL. Just paste the URL into the search bar, click on the red button and voila, there’s your Pin Count! You can see that Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing has been pinned 5,164 times!

I think I’ve shared enough happiness with readers today! Thanks for stopping by and reading this incredibly long post!

Tootles,

(other Monthly Income Reports)

For Recipe Chatter

For Creative Income Blog

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