Oh wow. April was SUCH a tough month for me. Last week, I had another ER trip from another ovarian cyst and a possible infection. With inflammatory arthritis and fibromyalgia, everything hurts more than it should. My immune system goes into attack mode when something bad happens like twisting an ankle, so you can imagine what it does when a cyst ruptures. So again, 2 ER trips with lots of cysts rupturing over the course of several weeks. Why am I talking about this, other than this is my blog? It massively affected my blogging this month. I accidentally went 2 weeks without blogging earlier, and then I was MIA after this past Wednesday. In April, I posted 8 times, compared to 11 in March. Plus, I didn’t do all of the promotion I usually do. With that said, let’s turn to the blog traffic.
Traffic Report
Current Statistics
Unique Pageviews: 12,718 (+236% from the start, -5.1% from March)
Bounce Rate: 8.52% (+10.2% from the start, +40.8% from March)
Sessions: 6,820 (+142% from the start, +12.5% from March)
Users: 5,049 (+162% from the start, +13% from March)
Bloglovin: 1,683 (+25% from the start, -0.06% from March)
Email Subscribers: 147 (+8.9% from March)
Social Media
Facebook: 824 (+37% from the start, -0.3% from March)
Twitter: 2,448 (+58% from the start, +3.3% from March)
Instagram: 1,262 (+214.7% from the start, 4%from March)
Google+: 175 (+1.08% from the start, +2.3% from March)
Pinterest: 2,496 (+172.7% from the start, +10.8% from March)
Tumblr: 3,545 (+0.2% from March)
Top Posts
- Chronic Pain and Loving Someone with It
- Accepting Your Body with Chronic Illness
- A Weekend in Boston
- Gift Ideas for Dad or Anyone
- Blog Post Ideas for Every Week of 2016
- Etsy Giveaway + What Happened Recently (sorry, folks, the giveaway has ended!)
- How To Pack for a Summer Trip
- 40 Blog Post Ideas for Lifestyle Bloggers
- We Need To Talk About Ableism
- March Blog Traffic Report
Traffic Analysis
What I Did:
- How I promote my blog posts, including ads I purchased, how frequently I share my posts, and at what times. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I was unable to do as much promotion for my posts as I normally do because of my health issues
- Wrote a couple of posts that got a lot of people talking – We Need To Talk About Ableism and Not All Disabilities are Visible
- Participated in multiple giveaways
- Multiple guest posts
What Worked:
- The posts I wrote – Remember, you can promote the hell out of your blog, but unless you have incredible content, who cares?
- I had a couple things that really helped this month when I was out of commission: my previously scheduled blog post promotions (as you see in my post about it) and using the WordPress PlugIn Revive Old Post
I Haven’t Seen Results From:
- Basically, the blog breaks and the health issues played a major factor in my blog traffic this month. It’s a bummer, but it is what it is.
What I Can Learn from These Statistics:
- Do you know what’s really frustrating? A week or so ago, I had over 15,000 monthly page views, but the month ended with barely 14,000. Like, come on. That’s so frustrating. If I had just been able to post on Friday and had all the social media promotions that go along with that, I might have been able to make it happen.
- The blog posts that were most popular show that my readers (all of you!) liked my posts about chronic health issues and blogging the most this months.
Previous Goals:
- 15,000 monthly page views – I was there before my ER trip last week. Seriously. I’m SO frustrated about this.
- 8,000 sessions – I wasn’t there, but I was getting close last week (7500) before the ER. I’m getting there!
Plans and Goals for May:
- 15,000 monthly page views. I WILL achieve this!
- 8,000 sessions
Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
I really like posts like this more than income reports because I feel like this really shows how much work you put into something. Yes, it’s fun to snoop into someone else’s wallet (isn’t that what we love so much about income reports) but I appreciate seeing the actual work which is something that isn’t always included.
I agree 100%! My plan has been to focus just on improving my blog traffic before I focus on traffic and income. I’m trying to get to 20,000 monthly pageviews because that’s what some of the big sponsored post networks require before accepting bloggers, and then I’ll focus on making an income with my blog. I’ll still do ads and sponsored posts, etc., but I want to deal with traffic first.
I hope you feel better! I had to travel a lot this month and my blog suffered, so I relate to the annoying-ness of not being able to do what you want!
Thank you! It’s certainly frustrating. When I am up to it, I try to schedule as many promotions as I can for the future just in case. It majorly helps!
What a great idea to create posts like that! I love following Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income who also publishes his traffic and income reports. I love such transparency!
http://stylesprinter.com
Yes! He has great ones. Transparency is great (and it helps people understand why I don’t work for free). I’m working for 20,000 monthly pageviews right now and then I’ll focus on income and traffic, but that doesn’t work for right now. Especially because some of the key networks through which the “big” bloggers make money don’t accept people who have fewer than 20,000!
That’s so great to set up goals like that as it helps you to grow faster! Good luck to you and your blog! You are doing everything right!
Yes, blogging networks could be picky, but they are still worth to try joining.
What is your #1 traffic strategy? I read a blog post you linked here and it seems like you are doing A LOT! However, which strategy would you chose if you have to pick one?
Thank you, K!
Oh I agree 100%. I’m just saying that I’m focusing on my traffic first and then full throttle into monetization, especially since a lot of the big networks require higher pageviews.
If I had to pick only one strategy, it would be picking a regular social media promotion strategy that you follow through for every post. It can be a lot, but once you get into the swing of it, it’s pretty easy. It takes me 5-10 minutes tops to schedule Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest posts every time I publish a new blog post.
I’m going to have to look into that plugin, I had no idea that existed! Thank you for sharing this. I truly hope you feel better and I’m so sorry for all the ER visits 🙁
– Dara // http://www.peoniesandhoneybees.com
It’s very helpful! And thank you!