Hi! Thanks for stopping by!
My name is Elna Cain, and I’m a blogger, freelance writer, and a mama to twins.
I started Twins Mommy back last year as a way to engage with a new audience of mommies.
It wasn’t until April that I really wanted to grow this blog.
I wanted to start a new blog and grow my traffic, list, and income and share my story because I know a lot of you are struggling to grow your blog too!
Blogging just for the sake of blogging isn’t going to earn you income. Turning your blog into a biz and then monetizing your blog, well that’s where all the money is. And I’m chronicling that journey with you!
**If you want to start a money-making blog, check out my step-by-step tutorial on how to start a blog in only 10 minutes!**
Before I get into my traffic and income report, I just wanted to give you a little snapshot of what happened during my first year growing Twins Mommy. I started with 0 pageviews, and within three months, I tripled my traffic, subscribers, and followers!
My email list took off during that time, and after 7 months of trying to grow my list, I had over 2,000 engaged subscribers!
So, let’s get to it!
February Traffic and Income Report
My Big (hairy audacious) goal for traffic is: To get 100,000 pageviews by the end of the year
Here is January’s traffic:
Here is February’s traffic:
As you can see although I did go up in pageviews by over 1k pageviews, it did not help me reach my goal to get 100,000 pageviews by the end of this year.
The calculation for that is every month I need to hit AT LEAST 9,650 pageviews every month.
I sort of knew this wouldn’t happen since I only published 3 blog posts for February.
From December to January I grew by 10k pageviews and a big part of that is content.
I had more blog posts during that time than now.
While I would like to create more content, I know that I don’t just want to put out fluff content; I want to provide the best tips and strategies to help mompreneurs in the making.
One other thing I focused on in February was income. Out of those three blog posts, two of them were affiliate type posts.
Usually there isn’t a lot of engagement on affiliate type posts and it totally showed with the lack of new pageviews for my blog.
As far as what will I do to gain more traffic, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing but I know making more posts will ultimately help me grow my traffic.
I will also add more descriptions to my pins that are optimized for SEO. This means adding keywords to my description and ensuring the pin image title shows what the pin is about.
Let’s look and see if I accomplished my goals:
Guest Posting
Goal: Guest post/podcast on 2 blogs – SUCCESS!
February was the month of podcasts! I’m starting to really enjoy speaking on podcasts. While I’m not a refined speaker and I am an introvert, I love sharing tips and my story into entrepreneurship.
Here are the podcasts I did:
- Martine Ellis, the Creative Me podcast – Episode 33 Writing for the Web with Elna Cain
- Learn to Love Email Podcast – Episode #7 How to Build Your Email List with Elna Cain
Making Money With My Blog
My Big (hairy audacious) goal is to generate at least $1k/month from promoting products by April. – ACCOMPLISHED!
My mini goal for reaching my BHAG is to convert at least 1% of visitors that come to an affiliate post. So did I accomplish this goal?
February Income
- ConvertKit, SiteGround, Tailwind, BoardBooster, OptinMonster – $ 2044.70
February Expenses
- Tailwind – $15
- ConvertKit – $ 80
- MailChimp – $50
- BoardBooster – $15
- Hosting – $7.50
- Buffer – $10
Net: $1867.20
Wow! I can’t believe my blog made more this month than last month – practically 10x more!
I accomplished my BHAD goal!! ( I will still keep this goal as every month will be a new month to try to hit that goal)
*Update: I have successfully have made at least $2k every month since. Some months up to $6k/month!*
Before I go into my ideas of how this happened, I want to preface this by saying you can do this mama!
I know you may feel defeated and frustrated that what you are doing isn’t working.
I want to share my income reports and strategies to help you become a successful mama!
February really was spent working on affiliate posts. I made two posts – one for ConvertKit and one for Tailwind – and made sure to make pin-worthy graphics for them.
I also made sure to put a link to my start a mom blog post on old posts that made sense. For example, I realized that this post was getting a lot of visitors and repins.
I decided to add my affiliate link as well as create a mini tutorial on that post.
I also added a link to my welcome email series for new subscribers.
So, to recap:
- Created more affiliate based posts
- Added affiliate links to relevantposts
- Added a mini tutorial on a similar post with high shares
- Added my affiliate link to my welcome series for new subscribers
One of the things I wanted to do when I started monetizing this blog this year was to have more affiliate products to promote.
Well Thrive opened up again, but it’s pretty exclusive. You have to apply and ensure that you can sell 10 times a month and have enough traffic. I didn’t get accepted. They felt my audience wouldn’t yield those numbers.
I’m a bit upset by that since I’ve used Thrive for my other blog, love it and it’s a better option for mom bloggers who want to do really nice landing pages and opt-in forms.
For now, I’m happy with the affiliates I have now, but know that I don’t want to rely on all my income with one income stream.
Goals from last month:
- Add “start a blog” link to menu – FAIL
- Create a video – SUCCESS (I did one for my ConvertKit post!)
- Create tutorials for my other affiliate products – SUCCESS
Goals for March include creating a free email course to prime my audience, get going on making my course (got Teachable for my other blog’s course but will use this platform for my upcoming TwinsMommy course) and promote on my FB group (but strategically).
Email List
My Big (hairy audacious) goal is to grow my email list to 10k by September – ON TRACK!
February was a short month, which means lower email subscribers in the month.
I needed around 850 subscribers for February but I’m still calling this on track since last month I made over 1k subscribers (so I can shuffle some for February).
I did not do many list-building tasks this month. Since my focus was on affiliate marketing, I decided to let growing my email list go on autopilot.
I’m in the process of creating another epic freebiebut this will take some time to get the content.
Until then, I have to create more pins that show my freebies (which I’ve been neglecting), share my freebies on FB list-building threads and create dedicated pins for my freebies.
Goals from last month:
- Making more opt-in forms on my blog – FAIL
- Find time to create a landing page for opt-ins – FAIL
- Create more offers – FAIL
Ouch, that looks bad. Yeah, I just wasn’t focused on list building this month. But, I’m hoping March will generate more subscribers.
Recap for February
Overall, I’m still growing in all places – my traffic grew by 1k pageviews, my email list grew by 850 subscribers and income grew 10x from last month!
I will continue to try to generate at least 10k pageviews, 30 subscribers a day and $1k a month.
Over to you mamas – did you smash your goals for February?
