Monthly Blogging Report - March 2019

I can not believe that I have officially been blogging since November 2018. After 5 months of working over 20 hours a week (on top of my full time job as a chiropractor), I am finally feeling like I am starting to get the hang of things!

I started this food blog for several reasons:

I love to cook and create new, interesting and healthy recipes. For me, cooking is a stress relief. Also, I am truly a scientist at heart, so combining ingredients and seeing how they turn out makes me feel like a scientist.
I love the challenge of creatively taking unhealthy recipes and turning them into low carb, keto, Whole30 or gluten free recipes.
I love to eat!
I am hoping that if I can make a go of this, that someday, I will be able to have the freedom to work from anywhere (including my native home country of Canada!)
This work is significantly easier on my body then chiropractic and therefore, could potentially be a source of income in the future when I get older.

So, how did this month compare to the others? SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER!!!

Now, on to the reports!

Failures:

Amazon Affiliates - It turns out that I must not have read the fine print in the amazon affiliate contract (that certainly won't surprise my office manager! :-). I received a notification email that because I had not "sold" but 1 item, they were no longer allowing me to be an affiliate. I don't think I would have signed up for the affiliate program so early in the game if I had known this. Let's face it, I was still trying to figure out how to put amazon links into my blog posts the first 2 months of blogging. Anyway, in a way, this is a big relief as it is saving me a lot of time not having to post links. Plus, a $100 Insta-Pot only made me $4.50 which means that in order to make $450 in a month, I would need to sell over $10,000 in amazon products! Like that is ever going to happen!
Instagram - Last month, I had a lofty goal of getting Pinterest AND Instagram up and running. Needless to say, Instagram is a whole different animal and I have yet to find the time to figure it out.

Successes:

I created 18 successful posts.
I had a Pin go "viral". My Nut and Seed Bread (Whole30, LC, GF),which is one of my original recipes, had over 1700 people Pin it! It was very exciting to watch it happen!
I finally figured out the Tailwind program that is helping me schedule my Pins. As it turns out, in order for your Pins to rank high in Pinterest, you need to post over 30 Pins throughout the course of the day. Since I work full time, this makes it impossible for me to do. With that being said, Tailwind helps me maintain a constant presence on Pinterest without manually Pinning all day.
I added a weekly email of my posts via Mad Mimi. My email marketer is Mail Chimp and I honestly can't figure out why some people get post updates and some don't. I have unsubscribed myself and resubscribe several times and I still don't receive any email notification when new posts come up. I was really frustrated with Mail Chimp so I signed up with Mad Mimi. Mad Mimi shows me exactly who receives my emails as well as who opens them. This has GREATLY reduced my frustration as I feel like I am back in control. With that being said, if you have not received any emails from me, please send me a personal email at mycrashtestlife@gmail.com and I will manually sign you up.

Overall top 3 posts to date:

Nut and Seed Bread (Whole30, LC, GF) - 1800 Shares
Chocolate Souffle (Low Carb, Keto, GF) - 500 Shares
No Bake Carrot Cake Bars (Keto, Gluten Free) -389 Shares

Analytics for March

Page views - 7700 (compared to 1400 in January and 2800 in February)
New Users - 5400 (compared to 660 in January and 1400 in February)
Pinterest Followers - 76 (I unfortunately don't have any data for January or February)
Pinterest Monthly Viewers - 334,969 (I unfortunately don't have any data for January or February)

Income and Expenses

Income - I did not generate any income this month...I am keeping my chin up and hoping that by the end of the year, I will have enough monthly page views to sign up with Ad Thrive. In order for them to work with me, they require a minimum of 100,000 monthly page views. That means that I only have to get 92,300 more people to look at my website! (Please help my sharing my blog with anyone and everyone you know!)
Expenses - My only monthly expense was with the company BlogPros. They help to promote my posts on Pinterest and Facebook at a monthly cost of $39.

Profit/Loss

Beginning Balance: -$868.78

Income in March: $0

Expenses in March: -$39

Total Profit/Loss: -$907.78

Final Thoughts

Well, I guess it is safe to say that I can not quit my day job yet! Luckily for me, I love being a chiropractor so I can handle my full-time job as long as my body can hold up. As for blogging, I truly do love it and enjoy watching my food blog grow. Hopefully next month and every month thereafter, it will continue to flourish!