Its that time of the month again. I hope that the first 3 months of the New Year have treated you and your blogs well. Fitness Fashionista is doing well and I am ready to break it down for you all what I did for the month of February.
First I just wanted to let you all know that I started a mailing list where I send out tips once a week that you can implement right away on your blogs. Its called Blog Smarter. Blog Better. and you can sign up for the list a the bottom of this post. I try to breakdown what you can do and give you other helpful resources to help you meet your blogging goals. Be sure to check that out.
February was a bit of an up and down for me because I was working on creating a new product for the site which I finally launched but I will talk about that on next months income report. The product is my It’s A Lifestyle Planner. While doing that I was also designing printables like crazy for others and designing for my site. I felt like I was burning the candle at both ends.
Although I was working like crazy I know that it will all pay off in the end. Sometime you have to just keep telling yourself that so that you can keep pushing forward because there will be days that make you want to give up but don’t.
February’s FOCUS
Coming off of January’s wave I wanted to make sure that I was able to keep up the income and traffic. I focused most of my attention on the creation of freebies in the form of printables for the site. I wanted to make sure that I had a new one at least once a week because they bring in a high level of traffic and have a greater tendency to go viral and be featured on other sites.
My second area of focus was on creating resource pages that would get older content more views and also help boost some of my affiliate earnings. If you aren’t clear on what resources pages are you can check out mine on the navigation bar. Get Fit and Blogging Tips are my most popular. I also cover resource pages in week 2 of the Blog Smarter. Blog Better. email series so go sign up, ITS FREE!
For the majority of the month I exclusively focused on these two things because I have been listening to Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast and realized that I needed to create something that would help me make more passive income versus time consuming income like my custom design biz.
Speaking of the custom design biz I am working on revamping that now into a more passive income stream and getting away from doing straight custom work because after evaluating the time it takes me to create a design compared to the price I charge I am walking away with little to nothing. So its not a sustainable business model at the moment but I will slowly start rolling out my new plans for that. Not to mention the late nights and back and forth, it made me exhausted.
Passive income is income that requires you to put in all the hard work up front and then reap the rewards after that with minimal work going forward. It definitely takes some time to get it going but I am hopeful. I would suggest anyone that wants to make passive income check out the Smart Passive Income podcast they have opened up an entirely new world for me. The also have an awesome facebook group for of amazing information and very helpful and successful people.
TAKE ACTION
I am starting something new for the monthly reports by offering a few actionable tips that you can implement to help you on your blogging journey. Since this is the last day of the month you will have a full month to put these tips into action and see how they work for you.
1. Start making a list of things you can offer your readers for free to help grow your email list. Think information products! People love tips so think of some tips for your niche and create an opt-in offer. If you are looking for an email optin box I recommend Magic Action Box (it’s what I use).
2. Once you have come up with the free offer think of a product that you can create to begin building up your own passive income stream. Then begin working on your product. Don’t attempt do it all in one shot take your time and make it AWESOME!
3. Work on creating a resource page to help people discover information that they might find helpful.
INCOME REPORT
| Custom Designs | $ 396.00 |
| Google (Adsense + YouTube) | $ 225.03 |
| BlogHer (Ad Network) | $ 83.23 |
| BlogHer (Sponsored Post) | $ 567.90 |
| Etsy | $ 26.00 |
| Private Sales | $ 175.00 |
| Social Fabric | $ 210.00 |
| Cooperatize | $ 60.00 |
| Amazon Affiliates | $ 39.86 |
| TOTAL | $ 1,783.02 |
Okay so lets break this month down a bit. I accepted far less custom jobs since I wanted to focus on my own blog and the product I was creating. I am happy that one of my clients designs has really taken off I think the last I checked it has over 10k in repins on pinterest. It always makes me happy to hear good feedback about my designs.
Traffic was really good this month so that boosted my Adsense and BlogHer income. Etsy is really just a very very slow passive income stream for me. I would probably do better having the shop here on my site versus on Etsy.
Private sales just refers to ad and sponsored post sales secured outside of any network. Also I gave up using Passion Fruit Ads I just didn’t see the value in paying the $9 a month when I could just use paypal. So I am not longer using it for my private ad sales.
Since I wanted to work on my project I decided to take on my sponsored post because they aren’t nearly as involved or demanding as doing the designs. Doing this allowed me more time to work on my project and still meet my income goal for the month.
Amazon Affiliates income I believe is a direct result of creating the resource pages because that is where most of the affiliate clicks and then sales came from. Overall it was a pretty good month with me increasing income by $169.21.
TRAFFIC REPORT
Traffic picked up in February. I am still riding the wave of the Ultimate Fitness Tracker Printable traffic and I added some new printables to help keep traffic up. Here are my Top 3 Post/Pages for February (after the Ultimate Fitness Tracker):
1. Free Printable Fitness Stickers
2. Get Fit (resource page)
3. Custom Design (services page)
I had an increase of 25,139 pageviews from January. Just like with the income I believe that the resource pages had a really big impact because more and more content is being discovered that was previously being ignored as soon as it dropped from the homepage.
I can’t stress enough the importance of setting up resource pages on your blog. I have mentioned it now quite a few times in this post but I read somewhere that you have to hear or see something a total 7 of times before it sticks. So hopefully this sticks with you all!
TOP REFERRERS
February brought some new changes to my Top Rererrers list. You can see that #1 is Pinterest the sharing of printables seems to be really helping me with the pinterest traffic. Now you may notice that the #2 and #3 spot along with a few other sports say “list manage“. List manage is traffic coming from my mailing list. I can not stress to you enough the importance of building yoru list now because its yours and you have a direct path to people that care about your content.
Trailing right behind my mailing list is Facebook. Can you tell where all of my attention has been? Like I said a few months back I stopped wasting time on social media platforms that weren’t delivering results and focused on the platforms that I was really getting a return on my time investment.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Sign up for the Blog Smarter. Blog Better. mailing list… hint,hint.
- Resource pages are valuable and can help you increase pageviews while also helping your reader find content they care about.
- A free opt-in offer is key to helping your grow your email list.
- Start brainstorming products and/or services that you can offer to increase your ability to earn a passive income.
- Take action!
Lets Discuss!
What are your blogging goals for the month ahead? Do you have a plan of action to help you reach those goals?
I am working on developing my own products including a free eBook. I like the idea of resource pages so there is a one stop shop to read all of the relevant and serial content in one place. Very useful ideas!!! Thanks for this post.
I am excited for you and the products that you are developing. The resource pages are definitely helpful and pretty easy to implement.
Congratulations again on a great month! You are totally my idol! It is obvious how hard you work and I’m glad it’s paying off for you! I really appreciate you sharing your blogging tips and income reports, it makes a difference for bloggers like me just building our business. Hopefully I can be in the position one day to share information with others the way you do! Keep going strong!
Than you so much Michelle. The biggest thing is to just keep on pushing even when you feel like giving up. I am always giving myself pep talks in my head.
The first thing I wanted was say was dang I need to get into BlogHer but then after seeing your views it’s more like dang I need your views
The funny thing is up until this month I was thinking about leaving BlogHer because I was feeling pretty discouraged. I guess the moral of that story is sometimes you just have to stick it out and not jump ship to soon. Alicia you and your site are amazing. Your family is so freaking cute!