My Very First Income Report And Everything I Learned In My First 8 Months Of Blogging – $582.81

I went back and forth with myself before I decided to go forth with writing this blog post about my first 8 months of blogging. There were so many reasons I was against it while at the same time I had a lot of reasons to go ahead with it.

Some of the reasons why I wasn’t all that comfortable writing up this blog post was because I wasn’t sure how well I did or if my blogging journey would be all that interesting. I don’t have a showy title like the ones you see on Pinterest that says, “How I made $5k in the first month of blogging” or “What I did to make $8,532 in the first 8 months of blogging”. And I most definitely do not have an extravagant story of my blogging journey to tell you.

However, some reasons why I decided to write my first income report as a mom blogger was because other blogger’s income reports (especially the ones without the showy headlines) helped me continue my journey and stay consistent. It also gave me insight into how truly unique every blogger’s blogging journey is. No two blog income reports and blogging journey are exactly the same.

And I’m not saying that it’s not possible to make thousands of dollars in the first few months of blogging. But I am saying that it isn’t likely unless you have a lot of experience with SEO, have a set, well-thought-out business plan, and simply know exactly what you are doing from the get-go. That wasn’t me. And I’m going to tell you my personal first 8 months of blogging journey and my very first income report in this blog post.

Why I Decided To Start A Blog

My goodness, there are so many reasons why blogging stuck out to me. I looked up side hustles on Pinterest one day after a long 13-hour shift working as a graduate nurse on the telemetry floor. I was a brand new mama to a 3-month old at the time. Exhausted was an understatement.

I had just finished my accelerated BSN (bachelor of science in nursing) program throughout my 9 months of pregnancy, got a job as a graduate floor nurse on the busiest floor at the hospital, continued my breastfeeding journey, and was a wife to a drill sergeant.

After doing some calculations with bills and student loan repayments- there wasn’t going to be much left each month (taking child support into account). This was with both mine and my husband’s income put together.

When I looked up side hustles I came across several mom bloggers’ posts about how to start a blog or how they made X amount of money in their first few months of blogging. And totally not going to lie here. But those flashy headlines are what I initially gravitated toward. I would read blog posts after blog posts about these bloggers’ income reports for hours throughout the night and during every nightly feed.

These were regular, everyday people, like me who decided to start a blog one day because they thought they could offer some sort of value to people seeking answers to a specific topic. So it raised a question- if they can be successful bloggers making a full-time income, why can’t I?

Weeks Leading Up To Official Launch

After a full month of debating on starting a blog and talking to my husband and my mom about my plan- I decided to go ahead and start a blog. All of the income reports I read for a month straight had me so determined to make it work for me.

In the month of July, my husband helped me come up with a name for my website. That’s when Lifting Motherhood was born. Lifting Motherhood was going to be a resource for moms and soon-to-be moms to get answers related to fitness, motherhood, pregnancy, and other lifestyle topics. I wrote about 10 blog posts prior to launching the site.

Traffic By Month

Lifting Motherhood was officially launched on August 23, 2020, around 8 pm.. But I didn’t share my website on my personal Facebook account until the next day.

Month 1 (September)

Total Pageviews: 3,395

In this graph, you can see a spike on August 24th (the following day after launching) because I got a lot of support from my friends and family on Facebook after I shared the news of Lifting Motherhood.

Month 2 (October)

Total Pageviews: 2,769

Month 3 (November)

Total Pageviews: 2,001

Month 4 (December)

Total Pageviews: 5,153

Month 5 (January)

Total Pageviews: 3,642

You’ll have spikes like you see here depending on a lot of things. You might’ve had a Pinterest pin go viral, had more exposure due to social media, or have paid for Facebook ads or ads on Pinterest and brought more traffic for a certain period of time.

Month 6 (February)

Total Pageviews: 3,793

Month 6 might look deceiving because I had a Pinterest pin go viral on January 26th making the rest of my page views for that month look almost nonexistent.

Month 7 (March)

Total Pageviews: 2,041

Month 8 (April)

Total Pageviews: 3,308

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The Wins From My First 8 Months Of Blogging

Although I didn’t make thousands of dollars- there’s a lot of wins that came out of my first 8 months of blogging.

• my overall traffic went up, total pageviews for 8 months: 25,483
• SEO started kicking in which meant more impressions and clicks
• made some money from the different income sources I’ll go over next
• met a wonderful group of bloggers I would’ve never met otherwise
• helped with my postpartum depression and felt a sense of fulfillment
• gained patience and learned to be consistent

I have two bachelors degrees in science: public health and nursing. And blogging has been nothing like that I’ve learned when I went to school. It has been and continues to be a challenging, yet surprisingly fun learning experience for me. I would have never known the amount of time, effort, patience, and work it takes to be a blogger. But it’s so rewarding seeing my traffic numbers go up and knowing I might be making a difference somewhere, someplace.

Income Sources

Bloggers make money differently. This means some bloggers solely make an income via ads, others make an income from solely affiliate marketing or their own courses, and other bloggers have a variety of income streams. And money does not magically appear in their bank account after a certain amount of time. The different sources of income a blogger can make money from are:

• online course or other products they created
• displaying ads
• selling ad space
• offering services like a virtual assistant (VA), coaching, or other niche related services
• sponsored posts and brand partnerships
• affiliate marketing (FlexOffers, ShareASale, etc)

Like I said earlier, I did not make thousands of dollars. Let’s be real… I wasn’t even close. But here’s a breakdown of what I made my first 8 months of blogging and the different sources of income I’ve created for myself thus far.

My Etsy store was a hit during the month of December which is why I made a decent amount from the shop. And I just recently started getting good at creating LIKEtoKNOW.it collages to convert. As far as Amazon Associates and Flex Offers go- I’m still working on those streams of income.

I tested out Google Adsense for a few months and it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I felt like it looked really spammy. And I didn’t want to take away from my reader’s experience (nobody likes pop-up ads). I plan to wait until my traffic reaches the monthly threshold to get accepted into exclusive ad networks like Medicine and AdThrive.

Blogging Expenses

As for my blogging expenses, let’s just say I’m still in the negatives. But you have to treat your website as a start-up business. And what kind of start-up do you know where you don’t put any money down? If you ask me, blogging is probably the cheapest start-up business.

I’m just a bit boujee which means I’ve spent a good amount of money to make sure the speed of my website is near perfect, my website is visually aesthetic and user-friendly, and I wanted to make sure that I had the best stuff for my site. A lot of what I paid for upfront could have most likely waited until I started generating a steady income.

And I most definitely could have gone without buying some of the blogging courses I had (because there’s an endless amount of free blogging tools out there on the internet). However, that is all part of this blogging journey and you won’t learn until you make a few mistakes here and there.

One of my blogging expenses is ConvertKit and that’s the e-mail system I use to send out e-mails to my subscribers. I used to have MailChimp and switched over to ConvertKit because it’s way more user-friendly.

What I Could’ve Done Better

There’s a list of things I could’ve done better. But, some of the more important things I could’ve done better in my first 8 months of blogging would be better time management. At one point in my blogging journey- I lost focus on my website, my blog. I lost myself in the Instagram world, Facebook world, and all other social media worlds. But you live and learn.

When I was building up my Pinterest business account, I was up around 350k monthly views. And then my Pinterest account took a hit after the constant algorithm change. I’ll go over a brief overview of Pinterest below. But I do wish I could have invested in a Pinterest course much earlier.

The other two things I wish I could have done better is to not waste time on “perfecting” how my site looked (along with getting caught up in social media worlds) and spend money on anything other than resources that would help me build my website’s SEO or other website improvements.

If you were one of the few people that have been with me since the very start of my blogging journey- then you know how much Lifting Motherhood has evolved. I started with a simple, minimalistic black and white free WordPress theme. And along the way have learned a few website designing skills that have helped transform my website into what it is now. However, I spent weeks of obsessively reconstructing my website that probably could have been better spent typing up new content for my readers.

How I Started A Blog

1. Figuring out my niche and brand name

I knew I wanted to reach out to the mom community while incorporating health and fitness. I had 9 years of bodybuilding experience and became a first-time mom. And I was confident I could provide something of value to my readers. That’s how the name, Lifting Motherhood came to be about.

2. Pick a hosting site

After doing a lot of research and seeing what other bloggers were saying about hosting sites, I decided to go with Bluehost. It’s not only affordable but I’ve had zero problems with this hosting site. And their customer service is incredible. They’re available 24 hours, 7 days a week for support.

You get a free domain name for 12 months (the name of your website), custom themes, 50 GB SSD storage, and more when you sign up with Bluehost.

3. Create a Pinterest Business account

Initially, Google won’t bring you any traffic for at least 6 to 12 months because they have to trust your website. So bloggers turn to Pinterest which has been an amazing search engine itself to direct targeted traffic to your website.

Pinterest has over 450 million users that are potentially your audience. This is why it’s important to create a Pinterest business account in order to pin “rich pins” which are organic pins that sync your website to your pins for your readers to be directed to.

Along with being able to pin rich pins, you have the ability to pay for ads and see your analytics. And figure out which pins did great and which ones didn’t.

I created my Pinterest business account in September and it’s been a rollercoaster since. I went up towards 350k monthly views and dipped down to around 30k. And have been slowly going back up. Pinterest is a mystery game but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Pinterest game is that to stay consistent (just like anything else). Pinterest also loves fresh, new pins meaning you’ll want to make several different-looking pins for one blog post.

4. Research SEO

SEO means search engine optimization. And there’s a TON of free resources on Youtube, Google, and bloggers’ email courses that teach you the basics of blogging and sometimes even how to monetize your blog. I highly recommend exhausting your free resources the first few months of blogging before you invest in courses.

You’ll want to research everything SEO so you can optimize all of your blog posts, your website, and more for Google to easily crawl your website, gain trust, and drive organic traffic to your blog.

5. Get on a schedule and stay consistent

One of the best things to do is to get on a schedule and be consistent (you’ll never get tired of that word). Let’s say it’s more reasonable for you to write one new blog post a week and Tuesdays are the best days for you. Then keep that schedule going. Or if you have more time to post 2 or 3 new blog posts a week, spread them out on certain days like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That way your readers can always check back on the days you’re consistently putting out new blog posts.

6. Get legally prepared

As a blogger- you need to make sure you’re legally supported. This means if someone or some company decides to sue you or go after your website, you have the legal documents to back you up. And what better person to trust with anything regarding legal than a lawyer. What’s even better is a lawyer that creates easy-to-customize legal templates specifically for your needs as a blogger.

This is why looked into Amira’s comprehensive legal bundles. When I first launched Lifting Motherhood, I researched that you needed to have basic legal pages on your website. And as many free or cheap legal documents, you find on the internet- that is NOT the route you want to go because that can get you in more trouble.

I actually bought her starter legal bundle and then upgraded to her V.I.P legal bundle. You can check out the different legal packages she has specifically for your needs and her testimonials here.

My First 8 Months Of Blogging

Regardless of the amount of traffic I got my first 8 months of blogging or the amount of money I made- the most important thing about my journey so far has been the learning experience and genuine connections I’ve made. When you help others out, you’ll receive a great deal of support from fellow bloggers or even future bloggers.

It’s not a competition but rather a supportive community. And it’s so important to enjoy your blogging journey so you’re less likely to get burnt out. If you do find yourself getting burnt out, there’s nothing wrong with taking some time away to refuel your creative juices.

With this being said, my first 8 months of blogging was no walk in the park. I found myself going through a few slumps. Some days I got tired of being on my laptop 24/7, wasn’t sure if anyone was even reading my blog posts, and simply felt unmotivated at times. And I’m not saying you won’t feel any of this. But if you are reading my first 8 months of blogging income report- then you have surpassed one of the harder blogging milestones which is the first 6 months.

Welcome to the blogging community and feel free to reach out to me via e-mail or comments below!