Monthly Blog Stats and Income Report – November 2023
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Following my initial month of blogging, I’ve made the decision to commence my blog stats and income reports. So here’s my first blog stats and income report for November 2023.
While many bloggers only start sharing income reports once they’ve achieved substantial income, I aim to maintain transparency with you, my readers. I want to offer an authentic glimpse into the possibilities and challenges of running a blog in 2024 and beyond. Together, we can explore both the positives and negatives, learning together on this blogging journey!
This also serves as a way to hold myself accountable, ensuring I put in consistent effort and enabling me to track the blog’s progress over time. Reflecting on this first blog stats and income report in three or four years will be insightful regardless of the outcome.
For those who may not know, YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) niches are very competitive and pose ranking challenges, especially after Google’s sweeping algorithm updates in 2018. You can read more on this here. Even with these challenges, I decided to go ahead with a blog in the personal finance niche. We’ll see if that proves to be a good decision or not!
Please remember I’m not sharing these income reports to boast or brag; they are for my own records and to help my readers better understand the blogging world, both positive and negative. There will likely be nothing to brag about for a while yet anyway 🤣
Let’s get into the stats!
November 2023 Blog Stats
Posts
In November, I published 15 blog posts, a slightly lower number than my initial goal. However, as is often the case, other work priorities and personal commitments took precedence, affecting my blogging frequency.
On average, each post had a word count of approximately 1,500 words.
Interestingly, the most popular post was 10 Christmas Retail Jobs in the UK to Earn Some Extra Cash. This is likely due to the seasonal timing and a boost from Pinterest.
Traffic Stats
As it’s the first month, I wasn’t expecting crazy traffic, and the numbers reflected that expectation, with 38 users and 67 sessions. The spikes in traffic were attributed to social media, predominantly Pinterest. This aligns with the early stage of the blog, where organic search traffic is yet to gain momentum.
I did, however, start to rank for a few of my articles, even within a few weeks.
Interestingly, most of my traffic originated from the United States, considering that most of my articles are currently aimed at the UK.
I only started submitting my site and the posts to Google in late November, leaving limited time for ranking to take effect. As anticipated, most visits came from social media, particularly Pinterest. This is to be expected during the initial stages before the site becomes established.
I will go into more granular detail in future stats and income reports when there is more data to analyse.
November 2023 Income
As expected, no income was generated from the blog in November 2023. Since I have not started monetising the site yet, there was no opportunity to make any income.
However, looking ahead, I plan to implement Google ads and incorporate some affiliate links into the blog in December, gearing up for the new year.
This step will be the beginning of an effort to explore various avenues for revenue generation, aligning with the progression of the blog and its potential to become a sustainable source of income in the future. I will be sharing all of these avenues in future income reports.
What I Learned
What did I learn in my first month of blogging?
It is much harder than most people expect to get traffic during the early stages. Most of your traffic will come from social media before ranking in search engines, so you must be active and have a solid promotion strategy.
A pleasant surprise, however, was how easy it was to rank for some long-tail keywords within about two weeks. It will be interesting to see how these rankings evolve over the next few months.
The last time I built a WordPress blog was over five years ago, so the site-building process took some time, but I found it much easier, especially with the power of blocks within Kadence. This demonstrates the importance of staying on top of evolving technology within the blogging world.
December 2023 Goals
- Start to monetise the site: I will start by adding Google ads, paving the way for other potential revenue streams and ad networks. Additionally, I will be introducing carefully chosen affiliate links.
- Write 5-10 blog posts: This may be tough with the holidays, but I will do my best to complete as many posts as possible.
- Start publishing a few posts on Quora and Medium: To expand the reach of my content, I’ll start answering some trending questions on Quora and posting some blog posts on Medium, aiming to drive more traffic back to the blog.
- Create a Start Here page: I would like new visitors to the site to have a clear starting point rather than just navigating through various articles. I know when I first started out on my personal finance journey, it would have been good to have a guided introduction to the blog content.
- Design Updates: I will also update the site design continuously, as there is always room for improvement.
That’s it for my first month!
I hope this post gave you insight into a new blog and information on what you can do better when you start!
Please let me know if you have any questions or want to see any other stats included in this report. You can reach me through the Contact Us page.
