Work From Home

1st year blog report

First Year Blog Performance – Income & Traffic Review

First Year Blog Report- Income & Traffic Review

Welcome to my first year blog report. I can’t believe Curly Bun Mom is one year old already.

Writing the content for this blog has improved my life so much and touched the lives of so many others. It has truly been an honor and pleasure creating content to help others.

Before continuing, catch up with my first month, second month, third month, fourth month, fifth month and sixth month of blogging 🙂

Looking for more ways to make money as a stay at home mom? Check out the best jobs for stay at home moms.

Affiliate Disclosure: “This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.”

How Much Did I Make In My First Year Of Blogging

Let’s kick things off with the burning question of income. While I didn’t make a profit in my first year of blogging, my income totaled $75 USD from affiliate sales and I’m really pleasantly surprised and happy.

While it’s true that I could have made more if I pushed harder, it was more important for me to listen to my body and of course, prioritize my kids’ and family’s needs.

2020 wasn’t a walk in the park for most of us and I’m really proud that I stuck it out and didn’t go down the easier road of giving up.

As I write this review, I don’t have an income goal for Curly Bun Mom. My main focus will continue to be on family as our kids are still going to be homeschooled and we’re hopefully going to be settling in into our new home.

First Year Blog Performance Review

I’ve learned so much since my last blog report. I slowed down since my blog’s sixth-month mark and honestly, it did wonders for my traffic and for my Pinterest account. I work less and my traffic is hovering around 8k monthly views with no facebook traffic threads! This is honestly a dream for me because I really didn’t have the time to continue with the threads.

Pageviews

  • Pageviews : 8,847
  • Sessions : 7,588

Below is a screenshot of my Google Analytics for the last 30 days. Of the total pageviews, 90% is from Pinterest, 3% from other social media and 7% from organic google traffic.

first year mom blog traffic report

Pinterest seems to be a long term strategy for my account. Over the past few months, my older pins began ranking and now I have a few pins that bring in a consistent flow of traffic every month.

If my current traffic trend continues, I should be able to hit the 10K pageviews mark once again. The main difference this time would be that the traffic is not dependent on Facebook share threads.

Google Ranking

In the past 6 months, I’ve learned so much more about organic traffic and ranking on Google. The main thing I’ve learned is that I have a lot to learn!

So, this year my focus is on learning all that I can on how to rank on Google and hopefully rank on the first page for a higher traffic keyword. That’s my main goal this year.

I have a handful of posts that are responsible for bringing in organic Google traffic:

First Year Pinterest Performance Review

Pinterest was a rollercoaster in 2020 and I was honestly giving up on it and that’s how my account grew. I was spending so much of my time trying to churn out 8-10 pins a day that I wasn’t getting much time to do anything else with my blog, especially as I’m homeschooling.

At the sixth month mark, I decided to limit my posting to 1-2 pins per day and whatever happens, happens. One day I put up a video pin, just to see what it was all about, and the results were AMAZING! Video pins became key in my Pinterest growth. In 6 months, I went from 281K monthly viewers to now, 3.1M. Below you can see my stats from the 6 month blog review.

As a reminder, this is a quick look at overall stats as at June 2020

  • Followers: 418 – 520
  • Unique monthly viewers: 116K – 281K (139% INCREASE)
  • Impressions: 147k – 343k
  • Engaged Audience: 2.89 – 5.91k (104% INCREASE)

These are my monthly stats after 6 months, as at 17 January 2021

  • Followers: 520 – 2600
  • Unique monthly viewers: 281K – 3.1M
  • Impressions: 343k – 4.95M
  • Engaged Audience: 5.91k – 232.5K

This screenshot from my Pinterest analytics shows the growth in the last 90 days from my pins only (no third party pins)

first year mom blog pinterest report

It’s true that the click through rate on the video pins isn’t always fantastic, but it really doesn’t bother me because I still get more traffic than I used to and I don’t spend as much time as I once did to create pins.

This year, I don’t really intend to change too much with my Pinterest strategy this year as I would really love to focus on SEO and getting at least one article with a good keyword to rank.

Overall Goals for 2021

Overall, I’m really happy and proud of my blog’s first-year performance. When I started Curly Bun Mom, my intention was to grow at a slow pace and eventually earn a steady monthly income over time and I think I accomplished all that I set out to do in my first year of blogging.

I hope this first year blog report has helped to get a good idea of what a year of blogging can look like. Lots of bloggers devote more time and effort to their blogs than I did and get stellar results. Consistency is definitely key. If you’re now starting out, I think learning SEO may be the best place to start.

Happy blogging 🙂

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stay at home mom jobs - easy ways to make money from home

24 Legit Stay At Home Jobs For moms – Make A Lot Of Money

Best SAHM Jobs In 2021

Make A Lot Of Money From Home

jobs for sahm, stay at home mom jobs - make money from home - jobs for stay at home moms

Are there legit jobs for sahm that pay well? Can I make money from home as a stay at home mom? These are two of the first and most popular questions that aspiring or current stay at home moms or aspiring stay at home moms ask.

In one word, the answer is ABSOLUTELY! It’s definitely possible to make good money from stay at home mom jobs.

The key is finding the best one that suits your skillset and lifestyle. Moms can find the best legit at home jobs, side jobs for sahm, online or remote jobs, jobs for moms with no degree and even jobs for the stay at home mom with no experience.

Some other questions that stay at home moms ask before deciding on a work from home job and business :

  • What are the best stay at home mom jobs that pay well
  • What are the best online jobs for stay at home moms?
  • How can I make money from home as a stay at home mom?
  • What job can I do from home as a SAHM?
  • What jobs are flexible for stay at home moms that make good money?

The amount of money that you can make with a work from home or a stay at home mom job largely depends on:

  • The type of job
  • The industry or niche
  • The amount of time you are able and willing to put into your business
  • The amount of money you can invest into your business

In this post we are going to take a closer look at some awesome ways to make money from home, which are perfect options for stay at home moms. For ease, I’ve included a table of contents here for easier navigation.

Affiliate Disclosure: “This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.”

How To Make Money From Home With A Stay At Home Mom Job

After I resigned from my dead-end and extremely unfulfilling job while pregnant with my third baby, I eventually knew I wanted a flexible stay at home mom job that made enough money for our family to be comfortable.

When our kids are young, day care is incredibly expensive. I realized that most of my salary would go into paying for childcare and I would be missing out on so much with my kids during the day. It felt like a lose – lose situation. I would not be able to give the kids and my husband the attention that I’m able to now.

So, for my stay at home mom job, I set a really conservative monthly income goal. I also knew that I wanted flexible, easy ways to make money from home. This was critical as my main focus would be to be the primary care giver for my kids and family.

So, the question remained, how to make money from home as a stay at home mom?

Trying to find my ideal stay at home mom job that made good money proved to be a truly enlightening journey. I have found lots of easy ways to make money from home.

I ultimately chose blogging as my first business venture to make money from home, but because I learned so much while researching for a stay at home mom job, I compiled a list to share with you.

These are the best options for flexible stay at home mom jobs that can make you good money from home.

What Do You Need To Make Money As A Stay At Home Mom ?

To be quite simple, all you need is a good idea, confidence, and determination. Essentially, the best way to make money from home is to become an entrepreneur or the phrase that I love the most, a mompreneur.

So perhaps, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at the qualities of an entrepreneur.

  1. Dedicated
  2. Motivated
  3. Determined
  4. Self-Disciplined
  5. Focused
  6. Organized
  7. Strong
  8. Goal-oriented
  9. Consistent
  10. Creative
  11. Confident
  12. Forward-thinking
  13. Always willing to learn more
  14. They know that failure is part of success
Stay at home mom jobs - work from home jobs - how to make money from home

The Best Ways To Make Money From Home

The opportunities to make money online seem endless. Almost anything that can be done in an office can be tweaked to be side businesses for a stay at home moms!

I’ve also included the list of jobs here to help while you navigate through these easy ways to make money from home.

Blogger – start a blog business

The best jobs for sahm, in my opinion is blogging. It’s at the top of my list because it’s the one that I chose. The main reason I started my mom blog is because I felt that I had so much to share with others. I also saw the potential to make really good money doing it.

When I started my mom blog, I had no clue that I would end up home schooling two kids in addition to being the primary caregiver to my youngest. Because of this, I’ve been taking a more gradual approach to growing my blog but I’m very proud of my successes so far. Earlier this week, I was included in Feedspot’s Top 200 Mom Blogs on the web!

While blogging is a lot of hard work (don’t let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise), the flexibility it brings to be your own boss and set your own schedules is invaluable. This makes it the best way to make money from home for me.

Even if I didn’t make much money from blogging, being able to share and help others really means so much to me that it is a win-win stay at home mom job. It’s truly my ultimate motivation.

It’s important to note that even under normal world circumstances, making money from blogging can take time and it definitely takes ALOT of work in the beginning.

I recommend getting started with Suzi Whitford. She’s an awesome teacher. Not only is she super genuine and sweet but she has a wealth of knowledge and her free stuff has brought me more value than some paid products.

Her paid products are also insanely valuable. Especially because she updates them often and once you purchase, you get all future updates for FREE! She explains things so well and she’s extremely encouraging, which is essential when you’re getting started and may feel overwhelmed.

She’s a mom so she knows from experience! Check out her YouTube channel and her freebies and then decide for yourself. Once you’re convinced, purchase her blog by number course – you will NOT regret it! If you use my affiliate link to purchase, I will receive a small commission which would mean so much to me ?

  • Earning potential per month:  from $1 – 100K+ per month
  • Experience needed: none
  • Ease of start up: moderate
  • Cost to start up: Cost of laptop, domain, hosting, desired courses

That said, there are other jobs for sahm that are flexible and great options to make money from home, so let’s move on.

E Book Author

Do you love writing and storytelling? You can start your own ebook business as a sahm. You can write your preferred content, create ebooks and sell on your own website or on Amazon. Your success will depend on your niche and your ability to engage others with your writing to help and entertain them.

  • Earning potential per month:  from $1 – 10K+ per month
  • Experience needed: good writing skills
  • Ease of start up: moderate
  • Cost to start up: Cost of a good laptop, website, overhead costs

Make Good Money As A YouTube Influencer

This is such a good business idea and model! If I wasn’t camera shy, I think I may have tried this in addition to blogging.

People love to see videos and they love tutorials. I personally use YouTube just as I would use Google. I’ve found so many awesome tutorials on so many topics – from Excel training to blogging journeys and tips and tricks, to pregnancy vlogs, cooking, baking and my favourite (because I struggle SO much) exercise videos and motivation.

If you would like to know more about becoming an influencer on YouTube, I highly recommend Cathryn Manning. I’m not even interested in becoming a YouTube content creator and still, I LOVE her videos.

It seems that it may be easier to earn from ad revenue as YouTube creator than from blogging. It’s still a long and difficult journey to grow on YouTube but Cathryn Manning has a lot of experience and she really breaks things down very simply for you.

  • Earning potential per month:  from $1 – 100K+ per month
  • Experience needed: none
  • Ease of start up: moderate
  • Cost to start up: cost of a laptop and internet access of your choice. Eventually you will need to purchase a good quality camera and lighting equipment

Instagram Influencer

If you have or can build a large and strong following on Instagram, you can earn good money from brands.

You have to be brave enough to put yourself out there and be creative enough to create content to grow your following and have a highly engaged audience.

Your pictures, captions and responding to comments are ultimately what will drive your success.

  • Earning potential per month: from $1 – 100K+ per month
  • Experience needed: none
  • Ease of start up: easy
  • Cost to start up: $600 and up. Cost of a laptop, smart phone, camera and internet access of your choice

Freelance Writer – Get Paid Well To Do What You Love

Love writing and need to earn money fast as a stay at home mom? Then look no further! This is the job for you.

While researching, one thing that really stood out to me was that you have to go into this expecting quite a bit of rejection. But as with most things, once you’re more established, getting jobs is easier.

You can become a freelance writer and slowly grow your blog at the same time too.

I love Elaina Cain’s resources on this career path. This is a great guide on how to start Freelance writing.

  • Earning potential per month: from $1 – $100k+
  • Experience needed: none to little
  • Ease of start up: easy
  • Cost to start up: cost of a laptop and internet access of your choice

Virtual Assistant (VA)

The beauty of being a virtual assistant is that you have the ability and control to work with who you want and the tasks that you take on. You can work for a blogger, other entrepreneurs, and small businesses. Of course, the flexibility is also a huge plus.

Your job as a VA is to help with daily tasks, remotely. It can include any of these: social media management (Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter), email management, marketing, graphic design content creation, customer service management, general administrative duties (data entry, managing calendars and schedules) and Finance & Accounting.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 – $10k+
  • Experience needed: proficiency in the services you’re offering
  • Ease of start up: easy
  • Cost to start up: cost of a laptop and internet access of your choice

Photographer

This has always been one of my dream jobs. I seriously considered taking some classes and making this my stay at home mom job. The only deterrent was that it still entails being out of the home a lot for occasions and shoots.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, start by taking a couple of photography courses and practice. Graphic editing also pairs with this nicely, so be sure to check out a course on that too.

To be successful, you must be available for shoots, have a great eye and personality to capture great shots. You can even try selling your photos as stock photos. To market and promote, you can set up Facebook and Instagram pages to share your best work.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 – $10k+
  • Experience needed: creativity and basic editing knowledge
  • Ease of start up: easy
  • Cost to start up: moderate to high. Cost of a high quality camera, lighting equipment, laptop, internet access and photo editing suite of your choice

Earn Money As A Graphic Designer

Many bloggers, entrepreneurs and small businesses will hire a good graphic designer. For many, a professional will be better equipped to take care of the things that they just aren’t good at or that isn’t in their scope of business. e.g. for advertising and marketing purposes. This makes this stay at home job a great option to make money from home.

Ideally, you would need some formal training. You should also be creative and good at designing.

Start with a good course and start building your clientele.

  • Earning potential per month: $100-$10K+
  • Experience needed: Good established portfolio
  • Ease of start up: Relatively easy once you have the qualifications and creativity
  • Cost to start up: Cost of a good laptop, internet access and photo editing suite of your choice

Work As A Social Media Manager

Are you naturally a social butterfly? Love connecting with others through social media channels? Then, social media management is an easy way to make money from home.

In many niches, success is highly dependent on positive social media presence. Entrepreneurs and businesses will therefore, hire good social media managers to ensure that their business is positioned well in the market.

  • Earning potential per month:  $10-$10K+
  • Experience needed: Good established portfolio
  • Ease of start up: Relatively easy once you have the relevant passion and skill set
  • Cost to start: Cost of a good laptop and internet access

Sell On Etsy

Etsy is a fabulous place for stay at home moms to find opportunities to make money online.

Sahm can start a side business or full time business make really good money from home

Use your skills to make or create something to sell online. Great ideas include, but are not limited to: Crafts, jewellery, clothes, beauty supplies and printables.

This is a really great post detailing how to get started and tips and tricks to be successful.

  • Earning potential per month: $1 – $10K+
  • Experience needed: as little or as much as you’re comfortable with
  • Ease of start up: easy
  • Cost to start up: Cost of a good laptop, internet access, cost to set up Etsy store and any other software or supplies needed

Flea Market Flipper

Flea market flipping is a great stay at home mom job if you love to get second hand or used items, turn them into gems and resell them for a profit. I’d say this takes some talent and an eye for design. So, if you’re super creative, I think this is a fabulous SAHM job. Get started here, for all the information you need.

  • Earning potential per month: $0 – $10k+
  • Experience needed: none to little
  • Ease of start up: easy
  • Cost to start up: Capital to purchase items to flip and supplies to repair and flip
Stay at home mom jobs - work from home jobs - how to make money from home

Work As A Proofreader

Love reading and you’re really good with English Language? Become a proofreader to earn money from home as a stay-at-home mom.

Proofreaders are usually the last pair of eyes in the editorial process. Their primary role is to spot any mistakes (like typos, punctuation errors, spelling mistakes) missed by others in the process.

You can set your own rates and your own hours, making it a great job for stay at home moms.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 – $10K+
  • Experience needed: proficiency needed in a few key skills
  • Ease of start up: easy once you have experience
  • Cost to start up: Cost of a good laptop, courses, internet access, and any other software or supplies needed

Transcriber

Becoming a transcriber can be a dream stay at home job if you’re detail oriented, have great listening skills and accurate typing skills. Your main job would be to turn an audio file into readable text.

You can become a transcriber in the business, legal or medical field.

Check out Transcribe Anywhere to get started. They offer lots of resources and courses to help you build and grow your business. Also, check in your home town or state to see if you need a license before you start.

This is flexible because you set your own hours and rates.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 – $10K+
  • Experience needed: proficiency needed in a few key skills
  • Ease of start up: easy once you have experience
  • Cost to start up: Cost of a good laptop, courses, internet access, and any other software or supplies needed

Baker

Turn your love of baking for your kids and family into a money making stay at home mom job. You can easily turn this skill and passion into a lucrative job that you can do from home.

This can be done on order in your home town or you can just start with family and friends. There will always be demand for tasty, high quality cakes, cupcakes, cookies and other treats.

The amount you can earn from this stay at home mom job would largely depend on your time and skill level.

  • Earning potential per month: $10 – $5k+
  • Experience needed: Sufficient experience with baking tasty foods and deserts
  • Ease of start up: Chances are that you may have lots of equipment already in your kitchen and a potential market to start with (family and friends)
  • Cost to start up: Cost of baking equipment and ingredients. If required, also the cost of a baking class

Catering

I would hire someone to do this for me. While I love to bake, something about cooking just never clicked with me.

The worst part of cooking for me is prep work. I hate cutting up! If I could get everything prepped and ready to throw on the stove or oven at a great price, I would jump at this service.

Nutrition is also becoming more important for families with the most popular deterrent being time to prepare healthy meals. If you have family and friends who would be interested in this service, start off catering to them and grow your business from there. High quality and tasty food will always get good reviews and recommendations!

Be sure to apply for any necessary food licenses.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 – $5k+
  • Experience needed: Catering & Cuisine
  • Ease of start up: moderate
  • Cost to start up: cost of catering essentials

Daycare or After School Care

While caring for your own child, you can offer child care services for other families on a daily basis or as needed basis.

You can charge per hour or offer packages depending on the needs of the family.  

To get started, be sure your home is safe and that you are licensed.

  • Earning potential per month: $10 – $5k+
  • Experience needed: Childcare
  • Ease of start up: easy to moderate
  • Cost to start up: cost of licenses and child care essentials

Online Tutor

This is perhaps one of the most sought after resources right now. If you are skilled and qualified in your field, this an easy way to earn money from home. There are many online resources to guide you and many with job offerings.  

  • Earning potential per month: $10 – $5k+
  • Experience needed: Efficiency & qualification in your field
  • Ease of start up: easy to moderate
  • Cost to start up: cost of a laptop and internet access

Air BnB

If you have a finished basement or another property available, you can make a decent income as a stay at home mom by being an Air BNB hostess.

The amount you make with this stay at home mom job will depend on the area your Air Bnb is located and the amenities that you provide.

You can get started here.

  • Earning potential per month: $500+
  • Experience needed: None, though your customer service should be fantastic
  • Ease of start up: Moderate to Difficult
  • Cost to start up: Cost of renovations and furniture

Bookkeeper

Love working with numbers and have experience with book keeping? Preparation of accounts and financial records for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 +
  • Experience needed: Relevant experience and competency is required
  • Ease of start up: relatively easy once you’re qualified
  • Cost to start up: Cost of a good laptop, internet access, Accounting or Financial software or supplies

Stock Trader

Trading allows you to make money online, but you must have a good understanding of the market and how stocks work. This is imperative with this stay at home mom job.

If you’ve never done this before, there are many resources available to help you learn about the trading world and set up your business.

Due to the nature of the stock market, it can be risky but with great risk there is potential for great rewards.

The flexibility and earning potential of your business is up to you! You decide how many hours you have to focus on it and you set your revenue target.

  • Earning potential per month: $0 – $10k+
  • Experience needed: Formal training is strongly advised
  • Ease of start up: Moderate
  • Cost to start up: Cost of Trading course(s) and funds to invest

Realtor

Owning your own real estate business can be the perfect career and job for many stay at home moms.

It isn’t as flexible as some of the other options in this post but it’s certainly more flexible than an 8 hour office job. You would need to be out of the house for listing visits and showings but other than that, everything else can be done from your home.

I know many successful stay at home moms who earn well above their previous full time income jobs.

As with most other stay at home careers on this list, your earning potential is up to you.

  • Earning potential per month: $0 – $5k+
  • Experience needed: Knowledge of Real Estate Market, Customer Service Oriented, Sales & Marketing Skills
  • Ease of start up: Moderate
  • Cost to start up: Cost of relevant Realtor Licenses, listing & advertising needs

Real Estate Flipper

Love watching renovation shows? Me too! Unfortunately, that’s not enough to start this career and make a good living from property flipping.

However, if you have experience in real estate, construction, and design, then this could be a good work from home job for you.

The start up costs for house flipping is the largest of all other business ventures on this list. The profits to be derived could also be the largest.

Basically, you will purchase a house, renovate then sell it for a profit.

There are alot of resources to guide you and you can (and should) reach out to others in the business for some tips and tricks for your area.

  • Earning potential per month: $0-$100k+
  • Experience needed: Substantial real estate and/or construction experience
  • Ease of start up: moderate to difficult
  • Cost to start up: high – cost of property investment and renovation costs

Aesthetician

If you love beauty and you are good at it, then you can start a business right from your home. You can also make house calls when it’s possible, perhaps for older clients.

I first got this idea from my aunt. She’s an awesome hairdresser and was paying a lot of money to rent a spot. A few of her clients started asking if she would be open to doing their hair at home and she jumped at the opportunity. Not only does she not have the overhead of rent, but it’s easier for her to set her own times.

This flexibility and earning potential makes this a desirable stay at home mom job.

  • Earning potential per month: $100 – $5K+
  • Experience needed: some experience is needed in the field you choose
  • Ease of start up: Easy once you’re trained and have the necessary experience
  • Cost to start up: cost of equipment and supplies

Virtual Fitness Expert & Coach

Turn your health & fitness passion into your dream stay at home mom career. Sometimes, after becoming a mom is when you find your passion. I know lots of stay at home moms who made good money by being a Fitness Coach. Through their fitness and health journey postpartum, they found their passion and were able to share their experiences and expertise to help others.

  • Earning potential per month: $5 – $10k+
  • Experience needed: Formal training
  • Ease of start up: easy to moderate
  • Cost to start up: Cost of training, required license and advertising

So, What Is The Best Stay At Home Mom Job?

To find the best jobs for sahm that pay well and the best way to earn money from home or online, the first thing you need to do is to assess your skills and your situation and come up with a good business idea and plan.

Then, all you really need is to believe in yourself and put your plans into action. Once you have a dream, passion, and dedication, you can set goals and make anything happen.

To be successful, you must have a great plan, the right mindset and lots and lots of hard work. The best part about having a stay at home mom job in most, if not all cases, is the flexibility. The biggest disadvantage is that there are no additional benefits of paid sick leave and vacation. You really have full control of what your success will look like.

This is in no way a comprehensive list of jobs for sahm. However, I really hope that this list of work from home jobs was helpful and that you’ve gotten some inspiration with choosing the best stay at home mom job to make money from home.

What did I miss? What business would you love to start as a stay at home mom job?

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Sixth Month Blog Report

Sixth Month Blog Report

Curly Bun Mom is six months old and I made my first $4.06. Yayyyy! In this sixth month blog report, I’m going to be sharing how I made my first bit of money blogging and the change in my growth strategy and the results.

Before continuing, catch up with my first month, second month, third month, fourth month and fifth month of blogging 🙂

Looking for more ways to make money as a stay at home mom? Check out the best jobs for stay at home moms.

Affiliate Disclosure: “This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.”

how i made my first dollar - $4.06 blogging with my mom blog

So, How Did i make my First $4.06?

This is pretty funny – after I first wrote this post, I actually went to my Amazon Affiliate account to see how much longer I had before they kick me out (if you don’t make a sale within a certain amount of time, they let you go).

To my surprise, I had made a few sales from these posts: Curly Hair Basics For Busy Moms, 10 Newborn Must Haves To Make The Newborn Stage Easier, 9 Breastfeeding And Pumping Essentials.

I didn’t even know that I made money from my mom blog!

I made my first $4.06 from Amazon Affiliate Sales.

When I found out, of course, I had to come back and add in this awesomeness 🙂 My promotion strategy for these posts (and all my posts) has been solely through my Pinterest account (more in the Pinterest section below).

What is my current growth strategy?

In June, I didn’t participate in any facebook traffic share threads and so, as expected I saw a steep decline in pageviews. However, I’m so excited that my hard work with Pinterest paid off and my Pinterest account soared! For the first time, traffic was coming in consistently WITHOUT Facebook traffic share threads. These were real people from all over the world who visited my blog because they were interested in what I had to say! I know it’s a little corny but, this is, hands down the MOST exciting and rewarding aspect of blogging.

It’s so amazing to see what content is truly resonating with my readers. I have to admit here that I have been taken aback and even a little stumped with the content that’s doing really well – I definitely didn’t think the topic would have been a hit, as I thought it was super saturated. The insight I’ve gained from tracking my popular posts are truly invaluable.

Sixth Month Performance Review

As you would remember from last month, I’ve stopped setting numerical goals for my blog. Instead, I’ll be focusing on return on investment (my time) and growth.

6 month mom blog traffic report. Newbie blog report review

Pageviews

  • Pageviews : 4652
  • Sessions : 1530

Even though my pageviews have declined, I’m actually super excited about what that number means! It means that Curly Bun Mom was authentically viewed 4,652 times! How could I possibly be sad about that?

This month, I started tracking real-time views in Google Analytics, when I published a pin on Pinterest. It was pretty awesome. Especially for the kids. They get so excited when they see the number currently on my blog and the LOVE to check out the locations of the views. It has certainly turned into cute little family moments.

I’m hoping as I grow on Pinterest and hopefully start ranking more on Google, my traffic will increase bit by bit.

In July, I’m going to focus even less on the number of pageviews and use the insights from Google Analytics to write more content for my audience.

Google Ranking

I’m currently still ranking at #1 for eight of my posts and a few others are on the first page of Google.

When I started my blog, I dreamed of the day I would have just one post ranking at #1! By my fifth month, I have had eight!

I’m currently ranking first on Google for these posts:

#1 google search result for never too late to learn to love yourself - curly bun mom
Curly Bun Mom – #1 result for “Never Too Late to Learn to Love Yourself
Curly Bun Mom #1 result for “Becoming a SAHM MBA wasted?”
Curly Bun Mom Google Snippet for Curly Hair Basics for Moms

Pinterest Performance review

Quick look at overall stats:

  • Followers: 418 – 520
  • Unique monthly viewers: 116K – 281K (139% INCREASE)
  • Impressions: 147k – 343k
  • Engaged Audience: 2.89 – 5.91k (104% INCREASE)

My goals for June was to upload five new pins every day. This totally paid off!

I haven’t purchased many courses because I’m not making any money as yet. But, I definitely lucked out by getting Ell’s Pinterest course and Carly’s Pinteresting Strategies.

Ell’s Pinterest course, Pinterest With Ell is SUPER affordable and she also has a Facebook group where you can ask her anything and get a timely response. It’s amazing!

Ell’s course is easy to understand and she has a private Facebook group for anybody who has taken her course. This is so helpful as I was able to not only clarify my Pinterest strategy, but I also gain a lot of insights from her and other members in the group.

Next up is Carly’s Pinterest course – Pinteresting Strategies. Carly has been an inspiration of mine before I even started blogging. When I was searching for a blog name, funny enough, one of the names I checked for was “mommy on purpose”, LOL. That’s how I found Carly.

Then when I was getting into blogging and more specifically, Pinterest. I really didn’t want to put out the money for Tailwind and so, I came across Pinteresting Strategies and Carly once again.

Her Pinterest strategy is basically manual – right up my alley!

Even though at the time her course was aimed at bloggers who were a bit more established, I still bought her course with plans to implement her strategy once I had more posts to share.

This was probably THE BEST investment. Her course was updated recently with all the Pinterest changes and she breaks. it. down!

In her course and online videos, she eliminates all the confusion and is very clear with everything Pinterest related. She has a Facebook group that is extremely helpful AND from time to time she does live to explain and quell Pinterest confusion.

She even showed how her traffic tanked and how she able to get it back on track. This was really useful to me and her course helped me clean up my Pinterest account since I stopped with the Facebook threads.

So now, with the knowledge I’ve gained from those two courses, Pinterest With Ell and Pinteresting Strategies coupled with trial and error, I have a decent Pinterest Strategy. It has worked really well for me in June and will hopefully continue to work well in July.

Overall Goals for July 2020

For July, I’m going to continue with my Pinterest Strategy and start back writing blog content. I also hope to offer a couple of freebies, so sign up and stay tuned 🙂

Unrelated to blogging, this summer, I’m going to be baking and spending lots more time playing with the kiddos!

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a fifth month blog traffic report can look like.. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your fifth month?

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Fifth Month Blog Report

Fifth Month Blog Report

I have so much to share in this fifth-month blog report. I’ve changed my growth strategy a bit and I’m excited to share my results and thoughts so far.

From this report onwards, my blog reports are going to look very different. My reports will now reflect growth or declines rather than specific numerical goals for Pageviews and Pinterest stats.

Since the end of my first month, I focused on traffic gains and measuring my blog’s success on that.

Looking for more ways to make money as a stay at home mom? Check out the best jobs for stay at home moms.

What Did I Change To FINALLY see Steady Growth?

I had already decided that in May I was going to relax a bit on the traffic front and focus less on Facebook threads. I knew that most of my traffic was coming from the threads and so I expected a decline (more on this in the traffic section). This decision was made mainly due to constraints on my time.

However, by mid-May, I became incredibly frustrated with the decline of my Pinterest account. I was even more frustrated with my dependency on the Facebook share threads for page views and growing my Pinterest account.

The reality is that I can’t keep up with the threads, continue to write and create pins. The route I was taking to gain traffic and grow Pinterest wasn’t sustainable for my current life situation.

To maintain my page views, I feared that I would need to continue doing Facebook threads long term. So, I needed to figure out a better way to get traffic outside of it. Another issue with doing some Facebook share threads is that they’re very time consuming and may have been worth more if people were participating fairly. Given my stats, I am certain that I was giving more than I was receiving, and that alone suggests that participating in them was a poor use of time.

There are a couple of threads that I will rejoin once things settle with my family because the participants are fair and the groups are very well managed by the owner.

In the meantime though, I made the tough decision of stopping the traffic threads and Pinterest save threads. Instead, my focus shifted to pin creation and I got back into writing new content.

Before continuing, catch up with my first month, second month, third month and fourth month of blogging 🙂

Fifth Month Blog Goals

As you would remember from last month,

May 2020 goals: 

  • Blog page views: 9000
  • Blog sessions: 3000
  • Pinterest followers: 300
  • Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 95k

Pageviews

  • Pageviews goal of 9000 missed: dropped from 14,578 to 6859
Curly Bun Mom 5th Month Blog Traffic

By mid-May, I knew I was going to miss my blog traffic goal. I’m not sad about it at all. In fact, I feel happier with the lower pageviews because it reflects a more authentic picture of my audience.

Based on the bounce rate and duration times from visitors on Google Analytics, I realized that by participating in those Facebook traffic threads, I was not hitting my MAIN GOAL for my blog – to help people through my experience.

I’m fairly certain that most of those views were obligatory vs people who actually read my content.

I also realized that my approach was extremely counter productive. I was getting awesome pageviews for a newbie but I wasn’t getting any time to write anymore. Nor did I have time to create and publish one new pin daily.

Another realization and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, fear that I had was that my pageviews had become highly dependent on participating in the Facebook threads.

Right now, I have a surplus of blog posts ready to be published weekly. But when that runs out? How was I going to have time to write, create pins, grow Pinterest, participate in Facebook groups, AND of course see about myself and family?

Promotion is of course, integral to a blog’s success but I don’t think my approach was a smart long term plan.

I had reached a point where something definitely had to give. And instead of taking a set back from the blog, I decided to try to grow it mainly through Pinterest and without Facebook share threads. So far I’m extremely happy about the results, just two weeks in. Even though my traffic is down, my Pinterest presence has grown.

Google Ranking

When I was trying to decide on how to shift focus with my blog growth, my husband pointed out the one fact that basically made the decision for me.

I haven’t been allowing myself to recognize the quality of my blog so far.

I’m currently ranking at #1 for eight of my posts and a few others are on the first page of Google.

When I started my blog, I dreamed of the day I would have just one post ranking at #1! By my fifth month, I have had eight!

I’m currently ranking first on Google for these posts:

#1 google search result for never too late to learn to love yourself - curly bun mom
Curly Bun Mom – #1 result for “Never Too Late to Learn to Love Yourself
Curly Bun Mom #1 result for “Becoming a SAHM MBA wasted?”
Curly Bun Mom Google Snippet for Curly Hair Basics for Moms

Pinterest Performance

Quick look at overall stats:

  • Followers: 360 surpassed – 418 followers
  • Unique monthly viewers: 100K surpassed – 116K
  • Impressions: 150K missed – 147k
  • Create new pins regularly – uploaded at least one new pin every day!
Curly Bun Mom Pinterest Growth 5th Month

For the first 2 weeks of May, I was sure that I wasn’t going to hit my Pinterest goals. I was again frustrated as I kept seeing my stats fall. I didn’t obsess over the stats as I previously did but when I checked, it was a downer for sure!

I did over Ell’s Pinterest course and felt inspired by her progress and success. I felt inspired and justified in my new way of thinking that she attained her success without using Facebook share threads.

From May 18, I stopped most of the Facebook share threads and focused on pin creations.

I started stressing less about my pin designs and started whipping up FIVE new pins daily and have been trying out various posting times and strategies.

Throughout May, I was hovering around 89K unique monthly viewers and as you can see from Pinterest Analytics, from May 18, 2020 there has been a steady increase.

On the first day of publishing a new pin (without participating in Facebook share threads), I’ve gone from getting a couple of impressions. clicks and saves to getting up to 1.5K impressions, 20 link clicks and 5 saves.

In June, I’m hoping that by being consistent with my new strategy, I see some great results.

Overall Goals for June 2020

For June, I’m going to continue trying to pin 5 new pins daily and pin to my top boards consistently directly from Pinterest. I’m going to continue pinning 20% of my own and 80% of others until I have enough posts to do more.

Similar to pageviews, I’m not going to have set goals for the stats. Instead, I’ll be tracking and sharing any growth or decline.

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a fifth month blog traffic report can look like.. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your fifth month?

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4th month blog traffic report

Fourth Month Blog Report

Fourth Month Blog Report

Welcome to my fourth-month blog report. April went by so quickly. I feel like it was just last week that I was writing about my first-quarter performance.

Before continuing, catch up with my first month, second month and third month of blogging 🙂

Looking for more ways to make money as a stay at home mom? Check out the best jobs for stay at home moms.

how to increase blog pageviews

Fourth Month Blog Goals

This month my plan was to continue focusing on increasing blog and Pinterest traffic.

As you would remember from last month,

April 2020 goals: 

  • Blog page views: 13500
  • Blog sessions: 2500
  • Pinterest followers: 300
  • Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 95k

Fourth Month Blog Performance

Spoiler: I’m happy to report that I’ve been able to reach all the goals that I’ve set for myself. I’m super happy about my blog growth so far (especially given the current time constraints with the kids being at home).

I put in more work this month and both pageviews and sessions went up in April. It was much harder than I anticipated though as the kids are at home. I honestly feel a little burned out and so, I know that I have to dial it back a bit and set some new priorities (more on this later).

The kids being at home is so awesome but I feel like I’m not getting to fully enjoy the experience with them. Towards the end of April, I started being a little more cranky and wasn’t looking forward to blog-related tasks anymore. I really don’t want to get to the point of not enjoying growing my blog so a little reprioritization is definitely in order.

But the best thing is that now I feel more confident that I know exactly what needs to be done to grow my little corner of the internet.

Ok, now that my feelings are out of the way, on to the numbers!

Pageviews & Sessions

Curly Bun Mom Blog Traffic Report - 4th Month
Curly Bun Mom’s Blog Traffic Performance – April 2020

Traffic – Pageviews

  • Pageviews goal of 13500 surpassed: from 10,434 to 14,578

I planned to monetize with ads at the end of my first year of blogging. Before I launched my blog, I didn’t expect this level of traffic. The Facebook communities have been ah-mazing!!!

Therefore, at the end of March, my blog traffic was enough for me to apply to Monumetric or Ezoic (or so I thought!).

Unfortunately, I could not sign up for Monumetric because my country was not listed.

I switched gears and tried Ezoic. Seems like I misunderstood something during the application. In their FAQs, the requirement is 10,000 pageviews. However, the representative told me it was actually 10,000 sessions. UGH!

I’m pretty far from 10,000 sessions at this point and so I was a little disappointed. I’m still determined to meet my goal of ads monetization by the end of my first year.

Sessions

I finally saw some good movement in the number of my sessions, going from 2050 to 4167. This represents an amazing increase of 108%!

Google Ranking

I’m still ranking first on Google for these posts:

first google snippet - how to prioritize when everything is important mom - curly bun mom
Curly Bun Mom’s first Google snippet
#1 google search result for never too late to learn to love yourself - curly bun mom
Curly Bun Mom – #1 result for “Never Too Late to Learn to Love Yourself
Curly Bun Mom #1 result for “Becoming a SAHM MBA wasted?”

I ended April by ranking with my second Google snippet for “Curly Hair Basics for Busy Moms

Curly Bun Mom Google Snippet for Curly Hair Basics for Moms
Curly Bun Mom Google snippet for “Curly Hair Basics for Moms”

4th Month Blog Traffic Report

May 2020 Blog Traffic Goals

For the next three months, I’m going to be more conservative with my pageview goals. As I mentioned earlier, I need to set some new priorities and goals. Our family may be migrating (once flights resume) and I won’t have the time to promote as much.

  • Pageviews: 9000
  • Sessions: 3000

Pinterest Performance

Quick look at overall stats:

  • Followers: 300 surpassed – 342 followers
  • Unique monthly viewers: 95K surpassed – 119K
  • Impressions: 100K surpassed – 135k
  • Create new pins regularly – uploaded a new pin every day!
  • Improve number of link clicks on pins – 1362 to 1841
Curly Bun Mom Pinterest 4th Month Growth

Everything was up from month three and I surpassed all of my goals which is great!

In April, I put in a lot of work and uploaded a new pin every day. It was the first month I’ve done this to see the return on my investment (time) and I have noted that my Pinterest account had a bigger percentage increase in all categories from month 2 to month 3.

At the beginning of month 4, I had a couple of pins that did REALLY well with both impressions and link clicks. That was super motivating. However, in true Pinterest form (at least in my experience) things went a bit wonky.

I used to get around 1K impressions and 20 link clicks on the first day of uploading a new pin, but I suddenly dropped to getting 0-200 impressions and 0-5 link clicks.

So far, the pins slowly gain traction over time which I think is a great end result. Even though it’s a bit frustrating and can be demotivating to see this change but once the pageviews are coming in, then that’s all that really matters.

Another goal for me for May, therefore, is to stop obsessing over Pinterest numbers! Because Pinterest clearly plays with my emotions.

My link clicks saw a 35% increase from 1362 to 1841 and the link click rate also slightly increased from 1.19% to 1.37%.

Overall Goals for May 2020

For May, I’m going to actually dial it back a bit and put out at least 5 pins each week. While I’m happy with my increases for April, I don’t think the return on my time is worth it right now as we’re migrating and I’m homeschooling the kids.

As soon as we’re settled I’ll jump back in with new daily pins.

Because of this decision, I do expect to see a fall in the following months but I’m hoping to stay steady at 100K monthly views and 1.4% link click rate. That should keep my blog traffic steady until I’m able to focus more efforts on my blog.

  • Followers: 360
  • Unique monthly viewers: 100K
  • Impressions: 150K

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a fourth month blog traffic report can look like.. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your fourth month?

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Third Month Blog Report

Third Month Blog Report

3rd month | 1st quarter blog report curly bun mom

Curly Bun Mom is three months old! I can’t believe I’ve just completed my first quarter!

“This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.”

This month knocked my socks right off. I’m still in disbelief and feel like I’m gonna wake up from a dream – a really, really great dream.

Before I get to my performance review and analytics, I need to make a super special mention of Suzi, from Start a Mom Blog. Her incredible free resources are what got me excited at the possibilities of becoming a mom blogger. When I decided to give it a go, I invested in her Blog by Number Ebook and in her signature, AH-MAZING Blog by Number course. Guys, there’s so much value in her courses that I recommend her resources and courses even if you’ve already started blogging.

What’s insane is that I was so close to stepping away from my blog while the kids were home as I know that I’d have to be prime on homeschooling my 6 and 4 year old, plus continue with my stay at home mom duties with my 1 year old. I’m absolutely thrilled that my husband convinced me against stepping back and instead, we’ve worked out a schedule where I’d be able to continue with all that I had planned for April It’s a bumpy road, to say the least, but we’re working and tweaking things as we go.

Before continuing, why not read about my first month and second month of blogging 🙂

Looking for more ways to make money as a stay at home mom? Check out the best jobs for stay at home moms.

Third Month Blog Goals

This month was dedicated to increasing blog traffic and increasing Pinterest traffic. This report will look at March’s performance as well as touch on the first quarter.

As you would remember from last month, I continued to set my goals conservatively. To recap,

March 2020 goals: 

  • Blog page views: 3500
  • Blog sessions: 1500
  • Pinterest followers: 225
  • Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 45k
how i increased mom blog traffic by 211 % in one month

Third Month & First Quarter Blog Performance

Pageviews & Sessions

Let’s start things off with the quarterly performance report. It’s so rewarding and exciting to see how much I’ve been able to accomplish within three months:

  • 14.8 K Pageviews
  • 3.8 K Sessions
  • 1.7 K Users
Curly Bun Mom's 1st quarter Blog Traffic Performance - March 2020
Curly Bun Mom’s 1st Quarter Blog Traffic Performance – March 2020

3rd Month Pageviews

  • Pageviews of 3500 surpassed: from 3282 – 10,434

10,434 pageviews! WHATTT!!! I’m still so shocked, excited, elated….I could go on but let me not get too sidetracked.

I remember researching “how to gain traffic” in February and feeling a bit deflated when I compared my results to others that I was seeing. Of course, that was for what seemed like a split second, then I was back to keeping my eye on MY prize and not anyone else’s. This strategy obviously worked very well for me.

I toyed with the idea of jumping on the wagon of blogging about current events but decided against it for two main reasons – I felt that it would have been so saturated and also I just didn’t take the time to write anything new. I poured a lot of my energy into ensuring my family were all adjusting well to the social distancing situation and of course, answering the millions of questions that my 6 year old had.

Let’s take a look at the Pageviews screenshot first. I’d say that I’m pretty steady now at about 420 daily views. In March, there were a couple of days where I crossed 500 and I’ll continue to monitor to see if it’s on the same day of the week. A pattern will definitely help me to plan for higher traffic days.

Curly Bun Mom's Blog Traffic Performance - March 2020
Curly Bun Mom’s Blog Traffic Performance – March 2020

Most of my traffic comes from Pinterest and awesome Facebook Communities. I actually have a couple of posts that are ranking at #1 on Google for my topic – whether people are searching for it I guess is another story. But to see my posts at number 1 with millions of Google results is an indescribable feeling, for sure!

first google snippet - how to prioritize when everything is important mom - curly bun mom
Curly Bun Mom’s first Google snippet
#1 google search result for never too late to learn to love yourself - curly bun mom
Curly Bun Mom – #1 result for “Never Too Late to Learn to Love Yourself
Curly Bun Mom #1 result for “Becoming a SAHM MBA wasted?”

The following screenshot gives a good comparison of Feb & March 2020. As you can see everything increased but notably my pageviews increased by an astounding 211%.

Curly Bun Mom’s Google Analytics Second & Third Month Comparison – March 2020

April 2020 goals

For April, I’m going to set my pageview goals a little higher than I usually do because I’m going to continue to be consistent with my strategy and hope it continues to pay off in April.

  • Pageviews: 13,500
  • Sessions: 2,500

Pinterest Performance

As with pageviews, let’s start things off with the quarterly performance report.

  • 222 K Pageviews
  • 166 K Total Audience
  • 10 K Engagements
Curly Bun Mom's 1st Quarter Overall Pinterest Performance - March 2020
Curly Bun Mom’s 1st Quarter Overall Pinterest Performance – March 2020
how to increase pinterest link clicks by 335% in one month mom blog
  • Followers goal of 225 surpassed : 203 – 260 followers
  • Unique monthly viewers goal of 45k surpassed: 45K – 91K

As always, Pinterest’s “vanity” numbers make me feel like a rockstar! There’s lots of talk that impressions don’t mean much but hey! It makes me feel motivated and boosts me to reach higher – that alone makes it mean a lot to me. I also still believe that it’s important in terms of your pin being visible to more people and so it increases the chances of it being clicked.

My strategy was pretty simple for me – I really put in a good effort to pin at least one new pin every day. I missed a couple of days but all in all, I’d say that, judging from my Pinterest analytics, I was successful.

Overall

This first screenshot shows my overall performance for March 2020. On March 31st, I pinned a pin as an experiment and while it didn’t go viral, I received a lot of impressions and engagements relatively quickly.

3rd month pinterest analytics report - curly bun mom blog
Curly Bun Mom’s Overall Pinterest Performance – March 2020

Engagements

This second screenshot shows that engagements followed a similar trend as my overall performance. Both engagements and engaged audience was up from last month at 56 % and 63% respectively.

3rd month pinterest analytics - curly bun mom blog
Curly Bun Mom’s Pinterest Engagement Performance – March 2020

Link Clicks

As I know all too well, my problem lies with link clicks. As you can very clearly see, the pin on March 31, 2020 that got the highest impressions and engagements for the month, got one of the lowest number of link clicks for the month.

However, I’m not too bummed because overall my link clicks increased from 321 in February to 1397 in March which is a 335% increase! Can’t be mad at that at all 🙂

Curly Bun Mom's Pinterest Link Click Performance Analytics report
Curly Bun Mom’s Pinterest Link Click Performance – March 2020

Goals for April 2020

  • Followers: 300
  • Unique monthly viewers: 95K
  • Impressions: 100K
  • Create new pins regularly
  • Improve number of link clicks on pins

I’m proud of my performance so far and I’m totally excited about the next month and next quarter.

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a third month blog traffic report can look like with a lot of hard work and determination. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your third month?

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Second Month Mom Blog Report

Second Month Blog Report

Curly Bun Mom 2nd Month Blog Report

Curly Bun Mom is two months old! Woohoo!

“This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.”

This month didn’t feel as smooth as my first month but I’m really happy with my results overall. Did I hit all my goals? Read on to find out.

I set out to learn Pinterest and Tailwind in February and of course, Pinterest decided to make a big announcement about their best practices that seemed to turn the Pinterest world. This made my confusion over Pinterest and Pinterest strategies worse!

As I mentioned in my post two weeks ago, my family and I are migrating to Canada. Needless to say, we’ve got LOTS to do. I, therefore, planned my editorial calendar in such a way that in February, I could take it easier with writing and really concentrate my efforts into learning Pinterest. The frenzy the announcement seemingly caused didn’t help my already frazzled migrating brain lol. (more on that later).

Ok, enough rambling – on to month two results!

Second Month Blog Goals

As you would remember from last month, I set my February goals pretty conservatively. As a reminder,

February 2020 goals: 

  • Blog page views: 2000
  • Pinterest followers: 250
  • Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 40k
  • Email subscribers: 8
  • Invest in a Pinterest course
  • Learn more about traffic growth for Mediavine

Curly Bun Mom 2nd month blog traffic report

Second Month Blog Performance

Pageviews & Sessions

  • Pageviews of 2000 surpassed:1175 – 3282

Unbelievably, I surpassed my pageview goal for February. I set out to get 2000 pageviews and ended up at just over 3000!

I’m super proud of myself but I have to admit that while researching “how to gain traffic”, I came across quite a few blog reports of bloggers who made well over 10,000 pageviews in their first or second month. It’s difficult not to get sucked into all the marketing and promises of getting you there faster. In the end, though, I stopped comparing because I gave myself a year to ease into blogging for a reason. I had to keep my eye on MY prize and not anyone else’s.

The jump in my pageviews is largely due to my joining one of THE BEST Facebook groups. I found myself participating mainly in two groups this month which freed up some much needed time to learn more about Pinterest.

I’m not yet seeing much traffic outside of the Facebook groups but it’s still only my second month and I only have ten posts so I’m continuing to work on SEO and Pinterest while I build up my content.

Curly Bun Mom 2nd month blog traffic pageviews and sessions report

March 2020 goals

For March, I’m going to keep my pageview goals modest because even though the Facebook groups are excellent for bringing in traffic, they’re also very time consuming. I’m therefore going to continue with the easier threads and concentrate on Pinterest for traffic.

Through researching traffic growth for Mediavine, I learned that the number of sessions is what’s important to be able to apply. So from March 2020 I’m going to include a session goal for my blog.

  • Pageviews: 3500
  • Sessions: 1500

Pinterest 

  • Followers goal of 250 missed:137 – 203 followers
  • Unique monthly viewers goal of 40k surpassed: 37K – 41.5K

As I said earlier, I was already very confused by Pinterest with the various strategies out there that when there was the big announcement, I kinda froze.

The good thing though is that I was about to purchase a course that was predominantly about using Tailwind. After the announcement, I opted to buy Pinteresting Strategies from Carly Campbell. I knew that one day I was going to invest in her course as she provides the best insight and advice but I knew her strategy was for when my blog grew a bit more. Additionally, she immediately jumped on Facebook to quell everyone’s fears and packs and updated her course.

Curly Bun Mom 2nd month blog report pinterest growth

Followers

I did nothing much to gain followers this month but there was a trickle and I gained 66. I didn’t hit my goal of 250 but I’m not beating up myself over it, because again, I’ve read that followers don’t matter as much as I once thought.

Impressions

Right after valentine’s day, I noticed that my impressions and audience declined. My strategy of pinning and repinning content from January didn’t change but there were a few days where life just happened.

Many Pinterest strategists seem to agree that impressions and unique monthly viewers are vanity numbers and I guess I probably shouldn’t take too much stock in. However, I still think that they’re important in some way – perhaps it refers to your reach on Pinterest and therefore the likelihood of your pins being clicked (once they’re click worthy). I’m therefore not yet ready to ignore it.

Link Click Rate

Curly Bun Mom 2nd month blog report Pinterest link click (click through) rate

That brings me to my link click or click through rate. In the last week of February, I started concentrating more on Pinterest and started pinning at least one new pin everyday. I also repinned my top performing pins to relevant boards. The increase in my click through rate from 0.71% at the start of my second month to 1.32% motivates me to continue with my current strategy in March 2020.

Curly Bun Mom first analytics

Goals for March 2020

  • Followers: 225
  • Unique monthly viewers: 45K
  • Impressions: 60K
  • Create new pins regularly
  • Improve click-through rate on pins

Email Subscribers

I feel sorry for this aspect of my blog lol. I’ve neglected it big time. I didn’t create a freebie nor did I promote my existing one.

It’s something I need to work on but, for now, I’m going to take this off my plate. It may be a mistake to do so, but there’s really just so much to do and so little time.

2nd month blog traffic and pinterest report

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a second-month blog traffic report can look like. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your second month?

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First Month Blog Report: How I Crushed My Goals in My First Month of Blogging!

First Month Blog Report

How I Crushed My Goals in My First Month of Blogging! 

Curly Bun Mom is one month old! YAYYYY I didn’t think I would be this proud of myself.

Reading other blog reports was incredibly motivating and inspiring and I hope to do the same for others with my first blog report. Before I launched my blog, I spent SO much time reading Blog reports to get an idea of what to expect and growth rate possibilities.

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The thought of blogging had never occurred to me as I don’t consider myself a good writer. However, I came across Suzi Whitford from Start a Mom Blog and she truly inspired me to go for it. I didn’t have to be the best, I could pace myself and most of all my perspective could help someone.  

Shortly after I started seriously looking into starting my blog, I realized there was way too much information out there for me to sift through with two young boys and a new baby. I invested in Suzi’s Blog by Number Ebook. It was so easy to understand and informative that I also purchased her signature Blog by Number course. It was my number one resource to get this blog up and running. In fact, it’s still my number one resource as I frequently refer to it. The best part of her course is that you have access to every future update.

I used her step by step, super simple guides to set up my:

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First Month Blog Goals

My goals for January 2020 were conservative. I had no idea what to expect and I planned to launch with two posts and post every Monday thereafter. I wanted to dip my toes in the water before I started monetizing (as I’m extremely confused where that’s concerned).

January 2020 goals: 

  • Blog page views: 300
  • Pinterest followers: 25
  • Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 2K
  • Email subscribers: 5

 

first month blog traffic report pageviews

First Month Blog Performance

Blog Launch

Launching my blog was exciting, to say the least. While my main goal was and remains to help others by sharing my experiences, I want to ultimately be able to contribute financially to our family.

Pageviews

First month google analytics

I surpassed my page view goal of 300 in my second week, with three blog posts and I was blown away. Maybe it’s because I set a low goal for myself but I feel pretty great sitting at 1175 page views in my first month of blogging. I didn’t even dream of making it to 1000 in my first month so I’m definitely sticking to what I’ve been doing and I will invest in a course to try to increase my views.

My family and closest friends are my biggest supporters which means more to me than I could probably ever express to them. They read my posts religiously and really help with motivation. My husband believes in me when I doubt myself and pushes me to go beyond the limits I sometimes set for myself. My sister has probably always been my biggest cheerleader with everything in my life and this was no different.

Joining Facebook groups and Pinterest have proven to be the most helpful for my pageviews. I will admit that in the beginning, I didn’t love the promotional aspect of blogging and I wanted to just continue writing and forget about monetizing. But because my main blogging goal is to help others, I had to be able to reach them and so I continued with promotions. It’s still not my favorite part but I love the community and I love helping others by reading their posts and promoting them. My issue was purely a time management one and so I’m working on creating a better schedule for myself.

first month pinterest report

Pinterest 

Oh, boy, did I feel awesome on Pinterest. I followed Start a Mom Blog’s guide to set up my Pinterest account. In terms of a posting strategy though, I was clueless and confused. I read lots of blogs and looked at many YouTube videos and I felt like I just wasn’t understanding.

The great thing, though is that I like to pin and so I just pinned things from Pinterest that interested me before I joined Facebook groups. At that point, I also pinned fellow bloggers’ pins from groups.

Using only this strategy, I crushed my Pinterest goals of 25 followers and 2K monthly viewers.

  • Followers: 0 to 137 followers
  • Unique monthly viewers: 0 to 37K
Curly Bun Mom first analytics

Honestly, seeing my Pinterest analytics (even though I don’t totally understand it yet) kept motivating me to continue. I understand that these numbers don’t mean much since my click-through rate isn’t great. It definitely needs some improvement and so, my goal in February is to find a good Pinterest course, that includes a simple guide to Tailwind – please let me know in the comments below if you have any good recommendations!

GOALS for Feb 2020

  • Followers: 250
  • Unique monthly viewers: 40K
  • Impressions: 50K
  • Improve click-through rate on pins

 

Email Subscribers

I didn’t hit this goal of having 5 email subscribers and to be honest, I didn’t try at all. I launched my blog with a freebie that I promoted in the first couple of weeks. When I passed my page view and Pinterest goal, I didn’t promote the freebie anymore. I focused more on blog promotion.

In the third week of January, I noticed that there was a broken link on my blog and visitors were able to download my freebie without entering their email address * facepalm *. I had a total of 93 visitors and 2 subscribers (one being my sister – thanks sis!)

My February goals will still be pretty modest, though. I intend to focus on learning how to grow traffic in February.

Goals for Feb 2020

  • Create a new freebie
  • 8 new email subscribers

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a first month blog traffic report can look like. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your first month?

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