Hello and thank you for checking out my blogging update and income report. At the time of writing I am 3years and 9 months into my blogging journey. I am counting this time from the date of my first post. There were of course months and years before that when I planned to start a blog. I don’t mean actual plans with work behind them either, they were more pipe dreams than plans 🙂
This blog post you are reading now is not my first or only blog so you won’t find that first blog post here. I started out over on my crochet and craft blog Stickytapeandstring. The name breaks all the rules of being catchy and short …… I know!! However, I started there and I am keeping it.
The other rule my crochet and craft blog breaks, or should I say one of the other rules it breaks, is that I cover too many topics there. Moving these blog updates to WearingRed is an attempt to improve my performance on that score. I will keep the business and blogging side of my journey over here going forward. I am also setting up a separate mailing list here so if the business and blogging side is more your thing or you want to follow some of the lifestyle and goldendoodle side of my ramblings – WearingRed is probably where you want to be.
So – How is it going?
I was quite shocked to see that my last blogging update and income report was almost a year and a half ago. A lot of blogs fail because bloggers are not consistent with their posts. There goes another fail! 🙂 To be fair I do have a full time job and family and I have been putting out content but regular and consistent …. er no!
On the plus side I have a few posts on Stickytapeandstring that drive traffic. These are all posts with free crochet patterns for heart shapes and projects using hearts. One really interesting and encouraging thing is that the longer these posts have been up the more the traffic builds. The majority of the traffic comes from Pinterest. One really exciting thing happened recently when another blogger picked up one of my patterns and included it in a round up with a lovely comment. I don’t know yet whether that is driving more traffic but it was such a lovely thing to see.
As my most popular content is based around hearts you can imagine that my peak months for traffic are January and early February. You will see this in my stats at the bottom of this post. I am working hard to put out content that is relevant to Easter now as these peaks are so exciting. I guess the real trick is to have timeless constantly popular content sitting along side the seasonal stuff. I don’t really have any of that yet, although the heart patterns do get year round interest.
The power of Pinterest
One thing I had let slide a bit over the third year of my blogging journey was my Pinterest account. I cannot begin to tell you how short sighted that was given that is where most of my traffic comes from. Pinterest for me is a source of ideas and inspiration. I don’t think of time spent on Pinterest as being work to build my blog. Time spent there is (or was) fun, looking for new ways to be creative. At some point around three years in I started to lose interest in the content. It felt like there was nothing new coming through so I simply stopped going on there. My neglected profile didn’t really lose followers but it stopped building new ones. I have undoubtedly lost ground and momentum building a following.
I am back on Pinterest again now and finding lots of new content. There is a year or so to catch up on! Pinterest themselves seem to be promoting new content which is great and makes for a better experience.
One tool I did not stop using during this time was Tailwind. I am an affiliate for Tailwind so if you click on links in my blog to explore Tailwind that could generate a small payment to me at no additional cost to you. I started using Tailwind quite early in my blogging journey and used to recommend it for scheduling pins. The tribes Tailwind offer are also fantastic for driving traffic. Join the right tribes and watch your content get posted to new boards and find new audiences – amazing.
Tailwind – just revolutionised my blogging life
As I write this update those things I said about Tailwind remain true but the GREATEST thing about them to me now is their new pin creation tools. I used to spend ages producing fiddly pictures on Canva. These would have frankly quite awful graphics because I am not very artistic. In short I invested hours to create something pretty shoddy. This is certainly not to say that there are any issues with Canva. Canva is a great tool but in the hands of someone like me the results leave a lot of room for improvement!
Tailwind pin creation is a whole new world. You link to your content, choose a set of colours, add some photos and the tool creates the most amazing pins for you to select from. You are given a lot of options, arguably too many but there are tools to help you pick a ‘house style’ and move towards having a ‘brand’. I absolutely LOVE it. It saves a lot of time and improves the appearance of your pins.
Cut to the chase! – blogging progress and income report
There is too much to share for this post. I haven’t even started on my Instagram or Facebook updates. Nor have I talked about my mailing list. I will come back to those subjects in the next update, which I promise will be monthly going forwards!
Here are the headlines for Jan 21 – the comparatives relate to this post in August 18
- Pinterest followers – 1233 (up 463)
- Instagram followers – 744 (up 431)
- Adsense clicks – 80 (up 69)
- Adsense income in Jan – £8.09
- Adsense income to date – £53.86 (so so close to the magic £60 and my first actual payment!!)
- Amazon affiliate income – 0 (this one has been a time consuming non starter for me so I am not currently signed up. I will post on this separately)
- Shareasale income – 0 (Tailwind affiliate links)
- Subscribers – 86 (an increase of 72)
- Etsy listings – 10 (no change – in 3 years!)
- Etsy sales – 0 (*sigh* needs work!)
- Page views – 4,287 (up 2109 but I strongly suspect this is seasonal)
There you have it. I suppose the final thing I should say is that I am really enjoying putting out content. I love designing and sharing crochet patterns and I really enjoy the positive interaction on my blog.
There are aspects I do not enjoy – huge volumes of spam comments trying to sell or plug unmentionable services/products would be top of my dislike list!
But the thrill from seeing people looking at my stuff, the excitement at a single click or 1p Adsense income earned makes it all worth it 🙂 I am here for the long term and will keep plugging away. Happy blogging!
Annie 🙂