Monthly Income Report - September 2014

Goods news for my Monthly Income Report – September 2014: I made $151.71! That’s a significant jump over last month, which was only $2.15, so I’m pretty stoked about that!

I’m really happy because I didn’t do anything special this month and the $151.71 is truly “passive income.” I’ll explain both of these, “I didn’t do anything special” and “passive income”, further below. But before I delve into those nitty-gritty details, let’s explore the numbers.

The above photo is Google Analytics’ Audience Overview. The key numbers in this report are:

8,189 Sessions
7,345 Users
11,487 Pageviews

Briefly, this means that 7,345 different visitors came to Toot Sweet 4 Two in the month of September. Those visitors viewed 11,487 pages (posts) and several of them came back for another visit (8,189 sessions). The spike in this report is on September 10th, when a total of 793 users came to my site and viewed 1,060 posts. Of those 793 users, 560 were referred by Prime Publishing sites, who have featured some of my recipes.

Do you want to peek at those recipes on their sites? Here are links:

As always, I credit Prime Publishing’s sister sites in helping to continually drive traffic to my site. They actually “found” me and contacted me via email. Ever since, I’ve been working with the various editors at their sites and because of them, my traffic has grown steadily.

So, a big “shout out” to the two Emily’s and Danielle (the editors of those sites) – thanks, ladies, for your continued support!

I’ve talked about Prime Publishing numerous times and if you want to learn more about them, or if you are a new food blogger and want to see how they can help drive traffic to your site, check out my earlier monthly income reports. Links are provided at the end of this post.

This is Google’s Acquisition Report. This report tells you where traffic is coming from. As you can see by the above report, the majority of my traffic has come from visitors searching for something and landing on my site based on their search parameters. Google no longer supplies “key word” information on your blog’s analytics (privacy issues), so it’s hard to know what people are looking for in their searches. But, with a little detective work, you can get a pretty good idea (I’ll explain more about that later, too).

Pinterest is the 2nd driver (referrer) of traffic to my blog and this surprises me because I have been almost inactive on Pinterest as of late. It’s not that I don’t love Pinterest (I do), but I’ve had so little time these past few months that I’ve had to choose:

do I want to spend my time on Pinterest and other social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, StumbleUpon, etc.? or
do I want to create a steady flow of content?

I’ve chosen the latter. Creating content feeds my sole and feeds my blog; there will be time to engage in social networking when life slows down a bit.

In the meantime, sweet peeps, keep pinning my stuff to your Pinterest boards! I’ll be back to pinning on Pinterest soon and appreciate my readers who pin my recipes and other posts to their Pinterest boards, so thank you very, very much!

If you add up the visits from referrals from Prime Publishing sites (#4, #5, #6, and #9), they have driven 1,877 visitors – several hundred more than Pinterest! And, I didn’t do anything special with/for them this month – they just keep adding some of my recipes (not all – they have a plan!) that fit their target demographic.

Speaking of recipes, this is Google’s Behavior Report. This tells you what people look at that arrive on your site. As you can see, all but two are recipes. One is “blank” and to this day, I don’t know why. Maybe that’s the “home” page? The other one, 42 Must Have Kitchen Utensils, is one of an ongoing series of lists for my household inventory project, part of a larger emergency planning project. If you are interested in learning more about either, check them out!

Anyway, remember above I said you could sorta figure out “key words” even though Google doesn’t supply that information anymore? This is the report that will help you analyze what your visitors want to see.

This is September’s report, but if I change the date parameters to inception of when I signed up with Google Analytics (October 2012), it will give me a list of my top traffic posts! The photo collage at the top of this post reflects the top 9 all-time drivers of traffic to my blog since inception. Note they are all food (recipe) posts!

So, while I like to think of myself as a “lifestyles blogger”, in reality I’m a “food blogger”. My “compromise” is that I’m a “lifestyles blogger with a heavy emphasis on food” {grin}!

Okay, now for the explanation on “I didn’t do anything special” and “passive income”:

This is Google’s AdSense Report showing which of my posts have generated income from inception (March of 2013) of placing Google Ads on my site through the end of September 2014. While it has been more than a year (so slow growing) since signing up with them, it is “passive income” in that “I didn’t do anything” directly.

The ads run on my site and I’m paid for having those ads based on traffic volume and click thru’s (visitors clicking on the ads to learn more). I made more than $100.00 this month because Google doesn’t pay out until your account reaches $100.00, so I don’t (yet) get a monthly payment from them, but rather a quarterly payment.

So, while it’s been 3 months since my last payout from Google, it’s always a thrill to see that money land in my bank account! Thanks, Google!

While my Monthly Income Report – September 2014 is still a small, paltry sum, I’m in this for the long haul and know that over time, my revenue will continue to grow! So, thanks to my regular and faithful readers and to the visitors who drop by occasionally – you inspire me!

Tootles,

(recipes mentioned in the above reports)

(other monthly income reports)

Comments

Sharla says

November 15, 2014 at 1:23 pm

(yes, the blank one is your home page and is a good thing because it usually means that people are coming to read your new content)

I really enjoy reading income reports and seeing what’s working for people. It sounds like you’ve seen some growth and are using Pinterest to its fullest.

- Carole says
  
  November 16, 2014 at 1:18 pm
  
  Thanks, Sharla, for the confirmation of the “blank” in the Google Analytics list of stats. I appreciate it when fellow bloggers drop by AND particularly when they help me learn new things!
  
Yoly says

November 6, 2014 at 3:24 pm

Thank you for such a detailed report. I must say that you really peaked my curiosity about Prime Publishing. Here’s to a fantastic Holiday $ea$on. 😉

- Carole says
  
  November 10, 2014 at 1:09 pm
  
  Check them out; they’ve been awesome to work with. Thanks for stopping by!

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