Blog Income, Stats, & Goals - Month 6

Last month I started a new monthly feature where I write about my stats for the month, the income (or loss) for the month, and my goals for the upcoming month.  I was pleasantly surprised by how many people visited, commented, and shared my post.  So here I am back again this month to update how month 6 went.  See my month 5 post here.

I can't believe that I have actively been blogging for 6 months.  I look at my posts from January and see how much I have learned already.  The thing about this blogging process is that as soon as you think that you have one topic pretty much covered and you know what you are doing, you realize that there are 100+ more things to learn about.  It's fun though and I love using my mind and learning new skills.

                                                    Month 5 Stats                                          Month 6 Stats
Monthly Pageviews                     2018                                                       5815
Facebook Followers                    322                                                           575
Twitter Followers                         119                                                          139
Pinterest Followers                       271                                                          338
Instagram Followers                     118                                                          140

Okay, pageviews were amazing (for me).  My social following all grew nicely.  I'll take a minute to talk about how all of those increased.

Pageviews - This increased almost 200% in one month.  Most of my increase in pageviews was because of my Patriotic Wreath.  Normally I only get a few visits from Pinterest during the month, but this past month I had over 500 visits from Pinterest.  My wreath was pinned over 1,000 times!  I did share the wreath on a few different link parties, but the main amount of pageviews came from my submitting the wreath to the Craftgawker website.  Since my wreath was holiday related, I can't depend on that much traffic coming in again this month.  I will have to figure out another project that would be good to submit to that website.

For my social media following increase:
Facebook - a few followed me after finding me through a giveaway, but most of the followers were from 2 bloggers that shared my page with the people that follow them.  Thank you Tastefully Frugal and Crafty Wife!
Twitter - Most of the increase was from people following me after I follow them.  I haven't figured out the trick to Twitter.  Any tips you have would be appreciated.
Pinterest - Quite a few people started following my Blogging board.  I think most of the new people have found me through group boards that I have joined, from my increase in pinning, and from the link-up party I am doing this summer.
Instagram - For Instagram, I don't actually promote my blog much.  Most of my pictures have to do with behind the scenes of some projects, but mostly my nature photography, local events we go to, and food.  Quite a few of my new followers this month have been local eateries, local cities, and local brands.  I found it very strange when one day the official IG account for Provo followed me, then the next day Salt Lake City followed me.

Income Report for June
Expenses
Passionfruit Ads - $7.00 for 1 medium ad and one social media shout out
Giveaway - $10.00 for 3 social media links
Crafting supplies - $4.25 for future projects

Income
IZEA - $0.00 - did not get accepted for any ads this month.
Google Ads - $1.16 (increase from last month)
Sales - $12 wreath
Products - $65  2 free classes from Craftsy

Expenses -    - $ 21.25
Income -      +  $ 78.16
Overall -      +  $56.91

My plan is to increase listing my products on local Facebook sites to see if they sell. I haven't really had any luck with Etsy.  I have quite a few views of my listings, but no sales.  The one sale I had this month was from a friend buying a wreath.

So my goals for June went pretty well.  The only things I didn't succeed with were: getting more opportunities with IZEA, finding opportunities to review products, setting up a Passionfruit account to sell ads on my page, and my pictures are a constant work in progress.  I have started using Canva for setting up some of my main images and have liked them quite a bit.

Goals for July

• Find a program to schedule pins
• Set up a Passionfruit account and offer ads
• Find additional places to guest post
• Write blog post 3 times per week
• Make some sales
• teach my girls to sew
• write About Me page
• increase ads for Cricut and Craftsy on Twitter
• focus on selling my crafts
• increase traffic from Pinterest

What are goals that you are working on for growing your business or blog?  What program do you use that works best for scheduling pins?  I'd love to hear your thoughts or questions in the comments.