March 2017 Income and Traffic Report – How I got 131K pageviews and made $862.93

(This post contains affiliate links. My full disclosure is very boring, but you can read it here.)

Hi, I am back with another traffic and income report. This is where I write about how many readers visited, enjoyed and found alluringsoul useful and also about how much I made from alluringsoul in a month.

This income report is very special. The reasons are I have crossed 131,000+ page views and also made $862+ dollars this month.

I published my 1st income report in January 2017  where I made $14.46 blogging on alluringsoul. Although it was a very small income, I learned a lot from it and have shared all my learnings in that post. You can find it here.

You can also find the list of all my past income reports here.

I have always loved reading income reports throughout my blogging journey. It gave me the confidence that I too can make a full-time from blogging like other bloggers. It’s the best source of knowledge about how to start and grow a blog.

[UPDATE] – If you want to start your blog today and make money from it, then this tutorial will help you get started. It includes a step by step way to start a blog with just $3.95 per month  (only when you register with my this special link) on Bluehost from scratch and assumes that you have no prior experience with blogging. Also, you get a FREE domain name!.

Blogging has changed my life for good. I enjoy the freedom and work on my own terms. Read the tutorial on how to start a blog and make money from it.

Why write an income report?

A lot of bloggers nowadays write income reports. I think blogging is the only industry where you can do that and I really enjoy it. I guess Pat Flynn was the first blogger who started doing this. While there are a lot of reasons bloggers can give you why they write income and traffic report, here are the reasons which I believe in.

Learning

When I started blogging I used to read a lot of income reports about how bloggers make thousands of dollars per month by sharing excellent content with their readers. I feel there is a tonne of information that a blogger can take up from an income report.

It has the much-needed information about how to grow traffic using various tools, how to engage users using emails and also how to make money from your blog.

Bloggers share their real-life experiences about blogging which have great value. Every blogger can relate them to it.

Income reports help other bloggers by giving the much-needed motivation to think about starting a blog and running it full time. It did that for me at least.

Also, I know I have made pennies this month, but I still believe this income report will help other bloggers in some way.

Transparency

It provides transparency and builds the necessary relationship between me and my readers which will go a long way. This income report is all about “you can do it too“.

This transparency is much needed if you are looking to have a healthy relationship with your readers.

Tracking and Analyzing

This is for me. Income reports help me to track my progress and goals. It helps me understand whats needed and what not.

It also helps in analyzing where are you spending money and where you should be. You always set goals for the upcoming month while publishing income report which means you know what you expect from yourself.

Blog Traffic

I received a total of 131,980 page views in the month of March. This is an increase of 200% if you compare with February. In February I got 61,715 page views.

Again, Pinterest has been the major source of traffic for me. I got 93,864 sessions from Pinterest.  As you can see thats the maximum share of traffic. This is mainly because I spent all my efforts in building my profile on Pinterest. Revamping Pinterest and building pinnable images was my topmost priority for the month of March.

Every blog will be on a stage at a point in time. It could be the growth stage where you are working towards building massive traffic to your blog or it could be monetizing where you are more inclined towards making finding ways to make money from your blog.

My blog is in growing state now which means I spend most of my time creating content my readers want and then making them viral using Pinterest.

I think Pinterest is a great place to be in when you are starting your blog. Its the highest return on your investment (time and money both) you can get.

I used boardbooster to run my Pinterest strategy on autopilot. Boardbooster is an awesome tool which makes sure you are always active on Pinterest by pinning on your behalf. I schedule pins for every day on boardbooster which have gained me followers and traffic both.

I use Tailwind for mainly analytics that it provides about Pinterest. It provides all the insights about how my pins are doing, their repin and clicks rates. It also helps me decide the best time of the day to pin. Its highly recommended if you are serious about Pinterest.

I did get a good amount of traffic from Google as well. You can see here, I got 1038 sessions from Organic search to my website.

Well, this is a significant growth as per the last month when I got 281 sessions from Google (Read my February income report to find out more such stats).

Also, I have not done anything to build or increase my traffic from Google as my topmost priority now has been to build my traffic from Pinterest.

Blog Income

I made a total of $862.93 in the month of March. This is a significant growth as compared to last month (February) when I made $292.04.

I am slowly moving towards the mark of $1000 per month! So excited about it!.

• Ad Income – $831.59
• Affiliate – $31.34

Total Income – $862.93

When I started blogging I had no idea if I could make money from blogging. Now making this much from alluringsoul seems like a dream come true.  I am so excited about this.

[UPDATE] – If you are thinking of starting a blog then I would like to remind you again that I have written a step by step post on how to start a blog and make money from it. This is the post I wished I had when I started blogging. Here is the tutorial.

Ad Income

I made a total of $831.59 from ads in the month of March. All of this income I made is from Ezoic.

Ezoic has been great so far. I have grown my ad income drastically, all thanks to Ezoic.

If you have read my February income report, you would find that I had used Media.net as well for my ad campaigns. Ezoic is clearly the winner here.

I had never heard about Ezoic, it was my boyfriend (now husband!) who told me about Ezoic. So we started using Ezoic and it has been the best decision for my blog to start using them.

Ezoic uses artificial intelligence to place ads on your website thus optimizing them for each and every reader. Also, it bids to multiple ad providers in real-time for your blog ad space thus giving you the maximum returns on your ad space. They provide you all the tools required to grow your ad revenue without you doing anything. Isn’t that great!

I would recommend applying for Ezoic when your blog traffic grows to 15000 visitors per month. (This was the requirements at the time of writing this post). You can apply using this link.

Affiliates – $31.34

Amazon Affiliates – $31.34

I made $31.34 from Amazon affiliates.  I know it’s a small amount, but I am glad I have started at least. I am working on improving my affiliate strategy.

Amazon is a great place to start your affiliate marketing journey. Although the commission is very small as compared to other affiliate providers, Amazon has the largest online store of products in the world which means you can find affiliates for almost any product. Also, Amazon is one of the most trusted e-commerce company in the world which means your readers will be comfortable buying from them.

Also when you are starting out with affiliate marketing, make sure that you only recommend those products which you have used yourself and have a positive feedback about. I always recommend those products which I have used myself and which I genuinely believe will solve my readers’ problems.

Blog Expenses

Total expenses – $19.99

Bluehost – $0

I use Bluehost for hosting my blog. I have taken the yearly plan of Bluehost so I have not paid anything in February.

They are great and very simple to use. Also, they have an excellent support if you need any help.

Tailwind – $9.99

I use tailwind for mostly analytics. I am on a free plan for now. I know the free plan gives you a very limited analytics, but that’s fine for now. For this month I was mostly concerned about finding new Pinterest strategies to grow my traffic, running ad campaigns and creating excellent content.

Boardbooster – $10

I use boardbooster for scheduling my Pinterest pins on auto pilot mode. If you don’t know about boardbooster, then here is what they do.

Boardbooster lets you pin your pins on group boards (which you are added to, obviously!) all by itself. Just give it a set of pins and time at which you need to pin, and boardbooster will repin then for you. Also, you can configure it to run this every day or any day of week or month. Its that simple with boardbooster.

Boardbooster is very powerful as it puts your pins in front of your readers which means more repins and you get massive traffic from Pinterest.

MailChimp – $0

I am using MailChimp for email marketing on alluringsoul. I am still using the free plan as I have less than 2000 subscribers. I started collecting emails in the mid of February for my newsletter.

You should start collecting emails early in your blogging career does not matter how much traffic you get.

I did the mistake of starting with email marketing very late in my blogging career. Make sure you don’t do the same as well.

Blog net income (income – expenses) : $862.93 – $19.99 = $842.94

Tools and Services

• Bluehost – This is where my blog is hosted.
• MailChimp – I use it for sending newsletters to my email list.
• Ezoic – Ads on my blog are run by Ezoic.
• Media.net – Half of the ads on my blog were run by Media.net as well.
• BoardBooster – Use this for Pinterest pins scheduling.
• Tailwind – Use it mainly for simple board and follower analytics on my Pinterest account.
• Amazon Affiliates – I recommend products which I use and believe in and my readers can buy them from Amazon. I make a small amount when they do buy from Amazon.

Goals

Let’s see how many goals from last month were achieved by me.

• 1200 Followers on Pinterest. – FAIL (Got 1100 followers)
• 90 Followers on Facebook. – PASS (Got 92 Followers)
• Increase my traffic to more than 100,000 pageviews. – PASS (XXXX Pageviews)
• Start writing emails to readers on my email list. – PASS (Wrote 2 emails to my readers)
• Get added to 3 Group Boards. – PASS (Added to 6 group boards)
• Be consistent with replying to comments on my posts. – PASS

Here are the goals for the next month

• 1400 Followers on Pinterest.
• 120 Followers on Facebook.
• Increase my traffic to more than 150,000 pageviews.
• More emails to readers on my email list (At least 4 emails).
• Get added to 5 Group Boards.
• Consistency with publishing new posts.

Takeaways from this income report

• Select one social media platform to master, like the way I selected Pinterest. Pinterest is the best return on investment you can get for your time and money. It has readers and great content for everyone does not matter whats your interest is. Learn, implement, fail fast and iterate. That’s the mantra on Pinterest.
• Be sure to pin on a consistent basis on Pinterest. You should be pinning yours as well as others pins. Use boardbooster to pin on autopilot. Boardbooster is an amazing, tool and makes sure to use it to grow your traffic from Pinterest.
• Use Ezoic for your ad campaigns. Ezoic is great and you just need 15000+ traffic to start with. Make sure to apply when you are at that level.

This is it, my friend. I hope this blogging income and traffic report will help you in some of the other ways. It gives you the motivation to start and grow your blog.

If you have any questions, just email me or comment in the post and I will surely reply to it.