Monthly Income Report – October 2013

 

As you can see by the photo above, we made $200 in October.  This money came from sponsored post activity and not through any other potential source of revenue, i.e., not from any of our affiliate advertising, not from Amazon as an affiliate vendor, and not from Google AdSense for their advertising.  If you haven’t a clue about what I’m talking about, I’ve discussed these things in earlier Monthly Income Report posts and, if you are interested in learning more, you can click on the links at the bottom of this post!

I’m excited that we are “in the money” again after a couple of dismal months in August and September.  But, as you can see from this little, itty, bitty amount of money, we still have a long way to go before deeming ourselves a financial success!

But, I love our blog.  I love the creative process that it takes to keep this blog going.  I love writing, I love photography, I even love editing!  So, if we never make another dime on this blog, I’m okay with that because I love what I do {hope I’m not jinxing us!}.  And, if you have a hobby or a vocation that brings you satisfaction and pleasure, isn’t that what it’s all about anyway?

Every month (except for August and September, when I combined them in one post), I write this report to share how blogs can make money and what drives traffic to blogs.  I do this because I’ve learned from two other very successful blogs:  Bjork’s monthly income reports at Pinch of Yum and Pat’s monthly income reports at Smart Passive Income.  Their willingness to be open and transparent in sharing their information is inspiring to me and, it keeps me moving forward and keeps me motivated to learn and improve our blog daily.  So, a “shout-out” to Bjork and Pat:  thanks, guys, for the continued motivation – you rock!

The links I provided above in their blog’s name will take you to their most recent monthly income report.  Check them out – you’ll be inspired, too!

I’m a slow learner.  In fact, reading instructions from a book and then interpreting them correctly is a constant struggle for me.  And, I lose patience and move on to something I want to do (writing).  I know, I know; I write these really long and pretty detailed posts about analytics, numbers, etc.  What do I mean that I’m not very technically proficient?

Well, it takes me a while to grasp how things work.  And, sometimes I miss the obvious when it’s right in front of my face!  As a creative type, as opposed to an analytical type, my mind is racing and thinking about all the things I want to do!  Life is short, people!  I’d rather create than analyze! {grin}

If my father had been born in the 1970’s or 1980’s, he’d be a rock star now!  A highly artistic and creative person, he was also an Air Force pilot.  Using both sides of his brain, he successfully integrated two distinct brain functions into his every day life.  Here’s a really great picture of him creating art work:

 

Here’s are picture collage of him during his Air Force career:

 

And, here’s a picture of him flying the airplane that he built, from scratch, after he retired from the Air Force (took him 7 years):

 

These two distinct abilities (creating art and flying airplanes) come from two different parts of your brain.  Don’t ask me for details about this because I’m not a rocket scientist, nor a doctor, nor Martha Stewart (she dissed bloggers recently calling us not “experts”) {grin}.  Being able to access both sides of your brain to create art or to fly a plane is a rarity.  You are either creative or analytical; most people aren’t both.

While I consider myself creative, I didn’t inherit ANY of his artistic ability nor his proficiency at math and critical thinking.  While I think I’m relatively smart, I am not a genius (he was) and it really shows when I’m working in unfamiliar, geek-type territory, such as anything and everything to do with technology {grin}.

Here’s an example:  Tiffany and I have a few videos on YouTube.  I’d give you a link to our YouTube site, but I don’t know how to do that without giving you our password {grin}.  If you are interested in watching our videos, I’ve included links to those posts at the end of this post {whew; the easy way ‘cuz I DO know how to link within our blog!}.

We’ve added a few videos over the past 15 months to this blog, so we have them stored in YouTube and then embedded into our posts.  But, we only have a few.  Consequently, I don’t go into YouTube very often.  But, I’ve been going back through our blog editing our pictures.

Why am I editing our pictures?  When we first started our blog, not knowing any better, we added the photos to our blog in their original format.  Some of these digital photos are large files.  When we hired a designer to “refresh” our blog this past February, the photos didn’t automatically resize themselves to fit our new design.  So, if you look back through our archives into some of our old posts, you will notice that the photos seem to run off the page…

So, over time, I’ve been going back to our old photos and editing and cropping them to fit our current design.  And, a time or two, I’ve had to go into YouTube to fix the borders of the embedded videos on our blog.  But, since I’m not a frequent user of YouTube, I can’t remember how to do it, so I always have to refer back to one of my favorite blogging gurus, Amy Lynn Andrews of Blogging with Amy.  She’s awesome and I’ve learned so much from her site PLUS she has the easiest video about embedding videos into your blog correctly.  Here’s a link if you want to watch her video:  How to Embed and Resize a YouTube Video in a Post.

But, because I’m an infrequent YouTuber, I have to refer to her video every.single.time.  See – I’m a slow learner!

So, I went into our YouTube account a month or so ago to fix one of the videos in our blog.  I couldn’t remember how to do it, so I visited Amy again and watched her video again.  Anyway, after watching Amy’s video, yet again, I felt confident that I could do this.  Yes.  I.could.do.this!  So, back to YouTube, and I easily corrected the post’s video.

Then, I needed to upload a video for a new post I was working on.  So, back to YouTube, I’m looking everywhere on the dashboard for the link to add/upload a video.

I can’t find it anywhere.

I look and look and look…

About 30 minutes later (slow learner), I call Tiffany in desperation and ask for her help!

Guess what?  In 20 seconds, she tells me what to do.  It was right at the top right side of the dashboard.  If it was a snake, it would have bit me.

I’m telling you, sweet peeps, if you are Baby Boomer age like me, it behooves you to have some Millennials in your back pocket {grin}.

So, this is a long story to give you a short disclaimer {grin}:  I am not an expert in Google Analytics.  In a few years, I’m hopeful that I’ll have more expertise in Google Analytics and will be using Google Analytics more productively to benefit our blog.  But, currently, I would not consider myself any kind of expert; but, I do try to apply the information that I glean from Google Analytics and analyze it in a practical way and apply those lessons to our blog.

So, here are “the numbers” per Google Analytics for our Monthly Income Report – October 2013:

 

Our “visit” numbers and “unique visitors” are down slightly compared to last month (7,638 and 6,820, respectively, last month), while our “pageviews” are up slightly (11,726 last month).  So, while we’ve had a few less visitors, they have viewed a few more pages!

 

 

Pinterest remains the largest driver of traffic to our blog, with “Google Organic” not far behind (I’ll discuss this further below).  In the #3 position is “direct”, which means that over one thousand people {OMG! I’m doing a happy dance!} came directly to our site by typing in our URL!  Thank you so much, 1,142 readers!  You are truly our “sweet peeps” and we appreciate you so much!

By the way, you can “subscribe” directly to our blog via email or through an RSS feed (like Feedburner).  Just put your email address in the “Subscribe Now” box and you’ll get an email in your inbox every day!  Here’s a picture (no, you can’t “subscribe” by clicking on this picture!  I don’t, yet, know how to make that happen!  So, be sure to do it from the box on the sidebar!).

 

Thanks, again, 1,142 direct visitors!  You rock!

 

 

Here’s another chart that rolls up all the “social” traffic and, you will note, that “Organic Search” is still not far behind.

 

 

Recipes continue to be the main driver of traffic to our blog.  The above photo shows the Top 10 for this month.  But, even in the Top 100, all but about 5 are recipes.  So, while I don’t consider us a “food blog” because we don’t focus on food and recipes, food does indeed drive our traffic!  My guess is that ALL of these search results came directly from Pinterest.  I don’t think that 100 people put “appetizer party for a crowd” in their search engine and landed on our site!

Here’s a picture and link to the #1 recipe this month:  Gail’s Potato Chip Cookies (Gail is my sister).  Doesn’t this picture make you just want to lick the sugar right off the cookie?  I’m so proud of this post that I’m bursting at the seams!

 

You can find the other nine by hovering over “Recipes” on our Menu Bar and click on the drop down that says “Recipe Index.”  Fair warning though:  many of these posts (Creamy Mashed Potatoes, A Box of Yellow Cake Mix, Easy Appetizer Party for a Crowd) have not been “fixed” and the photos run off the page!  But, they are still driving traffic to our blog!  Yea for mashed potatoes, cake mix and parties!

So, here’s the last picture for today:

 

2,646 people landed on our site through an organic search (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. all combined); almost 37% of our traffic this month.  Pinterest weighs in at 39%.

When you type a word into a search bar, it’s called a “key word”.  If it’s a series of words, it’s called a “long tail search”, for example, number 8 above “must have kitchen items”.  As you know, search engines direct your traffic to sites based on your search criteria.

You will note that item number 1 above says “not provided”.  How could Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. be directing 2,066 people to our site, if the key word or words are “not provided”?  Well, this is a little misleading.  People ARE searching specifically for certain things.  And, they are landing on our site because whatever they are searching for, those key words are found somewhere on our site.

Here’s what is happening:  Google is encrypting more and more searches.  This means more and more “not provided” or “unknown search terms” will appear on analytical reports, whether Google reports or other reports (WordPress reports, for example).  While Google is “mum” on their reasons for doing so, the theory in the blog world is that Google intends to encrypt all Google searches for privacy and spamming reasons.

While this may cramp your style when analyzing  your analytical data, overall this is probably a good thing.

And, the “good thing” for us is that our organic searches are neck-and-neck with our Pinterest visitors.  This means that we are utilizing SEO (search engine optimization) tactics correctly AND we are using key words correctly.  So while we may not be able to, at some point in the future, determine HOW traffic is landing organically on our site, we are doing a pretty good job of that right now and hopefully we will continue to do so as we grow!

So, thank you, dear readers, for continuing to visit our blog and many thanks to our Pinterest visitors for dropping by!

Tootles,

 

Related Posts:

(other Monthly Income Reports)

• Monthly Income Report – February 2013
• Monthly Income Report – March 2013
• Monthly Income Report – April 2013
• Monthly Income Report – May 2013
• Monthly Income Report – June 2013
• Monthly Income Report – July 2013
• Monthly Income Report – August and September 2013

(links to our posts that have videos)

• 5 Little Rules…
• 42 Shades of Red
• Emergency Planning Checklist
• Exaltation of Larks!
• Mommy Diary Monday:  They Missed Me!
• MommyJuice Wine {Sponsored Post}
• Operation Swallow Adios
• Top 10 Reasons I Love Bloggy Boot Camp