HONEST Blogging report: Six Months

I am not one to do a monthly income report.

*this post contains affiliate links and images, clicking through helps support this blog, with no added cost to you! Thank you!*

To be honest, I don’t want to make time for it! BUT, it is a good thing to do some sort of report throughout your blogging or business journey, especially if you are wanting to influence others along the way. It helps you and others see how far you’ve come, and what goals to set for the months and years ahead. So, I’ll try to keep this short, sweet and to the point.

Six months seems like the perfect timing for me and my blog. It’s about tax season ’round our house, and I’ve made an income with my blog these first six months (it’s been itty bitty, but YAY!) so I’ve got to keep everything LEGAL and accounted for. Tax season time is also my halfway point to a full year in the blogging biz. Did I plan this perfectly, or what?!

I’ll start with my expenses over the past six months:

Siteground Hosting: $188 (annual cost)

Ultimate Bundle and Pinterest courses: $150

Promotions and Marketing (Tailwind): $122 (annual cost)

Misc Items (accessories, cute clothes, and planners, etc): $120

Total Cost to start-up business and Blog: $580*

*this is a year of expenses to be running my business, this is SO cheap for a business start-up! Just excited and wanted to make a note about it… Moving on.. 😉

Now, the income we work so hard for!

Affiliate Sales:

Siteground: $50 (this is in no way an expression of how Siteground is as a hosting service, just a great example of me not promoting it well. Their customer service, load speed and everything about them is a-ma-zing I PROMISE!)

Amazon: $24

Shareasale: $1.50 (insert sad face)

BluChic Themes: $0 (haven’t been promoting this as well as I should, so here’s a plug. Having a paid theme makes life so much EASIER with your blog, they are seamless and well constructed, check em out!)

Google Adsense: $15 and growing!!

Branding Services: $60 (working number, estimating $500 income this upcoming month!!)

Total Income over the past six months: $150.50 ($650 by the official “six months”, I say this because I’ve surpassed my start-up costs and honestly… I wanna brag. 😉 )

Lastly, let’s look at traffic over these past six months:

August – 347 Pageviews | September – 1,057 Pageviews | October – 1,152 Pageviews | November – 2,738 Pageviews | December – 3,071 Pageviews | January – 15,755 Pageviews

Wow, this was refreshing to write out! Let me also say, for the record, these aren’t full-time-taking-over-my-life-and-putting-my-family-behind-my-blog kind of numbers. These are numbers from me working about 20 hours a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on my boss baby girl’s days. And this is also all about ME and my dreams of writing, reaching out to mothers, and designing during my time in my home with my daughter!

My goals six months ago are far from my goals now. I was thinking I’d only bring in a little income on the side for us and our household so I could stay home, but now I can see it as a true SECOND INCOME! Especially as I work more and more, LEARN more and more, and continue to be passionate about sharing solutions and building dreams. (anyone else hear The Greatest Showman in the background as they read that last sentence? No? I am who I wanna be. THIS IS ME!)

New Goals:

I look forward to bettering my bounce rate, increasing my affiliate sales techniques and refining my Pinterest marketing game! All while creating amazing new content, and designing brands and websites, and getting through teething with my firstborn.

Hope this was honest enough for you all! Still have questions? I’m an open book, comment below.