It happened at 10am on a Tuesday morning. The boys were stirring in their bedroom about to burst awake and start my day of mom-ing. Yet, sitting at my computer the most epic battle of
“What are you waiting for?” and ‘What the hell are you thinking?!”
…raged on in my head.
At the most inconvenient time in my day I clicked it…. “BUY DOMAIN” and then walked away…
If you’re just joining in on this monthly income report series, my goal for 2016 is to expand this blog into a financial contributor so that I can stay home more and learn with my Hooligans.
To get the full rundown on my 2016 Game Plan visit my original Mommy Money on the Internet Post HERE.
The punch line for the year is to:
I have been researching, asking fellow bloggers their experiences and calculating the pros and cons of switching from my free .blogspot.com address for awhile {on both blogs} It terrified me. What if my blogs disappeared in the transition?
But my biggest fear of switching was losing all of my Pinterest Traffic. My blogs basically survive on Pinterest. I had once toyed with switching the url for the blogspot.com and the viral Pins then said “link is broken” so that destroyed my hopes and dreams at the time….
This blog, which is 5 years old and was built on the initial premise of being my crochet/craft blog, had the url of cottonnkandi.blogspot.com, but if you’ve been here the last few years you know it is named, A Cotton Kandi Life, after much evolving.
I decided, ultimately that if I wanted to be serious on the internet about monetizing and perhaps even approaching brands, being published on other blogs, etc.
- My blog url and title needed to match
- A .com would likely be perceived as more professional
I did the domain buying on the Wedding Blog first, which is MUCH smaller than this mom blog. When I came back to the computer at naptime I inspected the damage of my 10am leap over the cliff…
3 things that immediately happened when I bought a domain name
- All of my Pinterest Pins automatically redirected {game changer}
- All of my Google Comments on posts disappeared {not very many anyway, but some great conversations now gone on big posts}
- All of my Adsense Ads crashed
If I wasn’t going to lose Pinterest in the transition then there was absolutely nothing holding me back.
The comments will grow on their own so long as people can still find the post on Pinterest and the Adsense Ads… well, since they were only giving me pennies a day anyway… I decided I’d make my March Monetizing Madness Goal about the side bar where they used to be!
March enters…
Monetizing Myself
With all of this wide open real-estate in my sidebar I had the epiphany…
So all this time, I had be putting ads up and down my sidebar for someone ELSE and was making pennies. {barely} I was helping to sell someone else’s stuff and making pennies on commissions….
I filled in a few spaces with Amazon Ads instead {since the Adsense crashed} because I at least make MORE of a commission on an Amazon sale.
But then it hit me…. I HAVE stuff to sell! {all bloggers snicker once again at me being so behind the blogger curve}
I can make cute little sidebar ads for MYSELF!
New Plan:
- Create blog posts as anchor pages for all the stuff I’m selling and link all of my individual sales posts to it so it is easy for shoppers to find and then filter to all of my sale listings.
- Monetize those posts with links to my OWN dang products!
- Make memes and ads in the side bar that links to the main shopping posts for my OWN stuff.
Again I actually, instead of applying plan to my Mom-Blog {you are here} I took this to my Wedding Coordinating Blog. I’ve been planning weddings and events professionally for 7 years, so most of the “stuff” I have to sell is wedding related. My company is Green-Eyed Girl Productions here in the tangible land of Oregon. {for those of you who only know me online}
My clients over there are planning weddings and need to buy a lot of stuff. I even wrote my Digital Download, Wedding Planning Jump Start Package last month for that blog as part of my Sales Funnel Game Plan. You can read all about that in the February Report. I say it again here in March because one of the ads I made for it is added to my sidebar.
In March, Retails Sales are TRIPLE those in February!
SO instead of sending people waywardly around the internet, wherever Adsense think they should shop, I used my sidebar to send them BACK to ME!
Retail Sales Improvements
I went back through older posts that were for my retail items and added in product links and better pictures {this took ALL month, pictures and digging things out of boxes takes forever}
I used the app Toastie Studio for Etsy to create treasuries of my OWN shop items and added that treasury to the bottom of my themed shopping posts. I had links before, but adding the new pictures with the app makes it much easier to sell the image. Here is an example over on the Wedding blog.
I also used the Blogger widget feature “FEATURED POST” to add links and the image for my digital product posts to the side bars. This way, not matter where people are hopping onto my blog from Pinterest, they’re going to see MY ad in the sidebar, even after the X out of the pop-up!
Did I mention my retail sales tripled this month?
Self Promotions
I finally invested a little bit in the blog…. I upgraded my Mail Chimp Account for the newsletter so that it could optimize my delivery time, increasing email opens and readership. But mainly, I upgraded to access the Automation feature, which I’ll be focusing on over the summer. I hope to launch a big plan in the fall…
I transferred my Pinterest Account to a business account {which was much easier than I thought it would be!} I verified my website and immediately saw more repin activity. I’m not sure if that is the direct result of becoming a business account or a combination effect of increasing my Tailwind productivity.
I upgraded my Tailwind Account for Pinterest pinning. I can schedule 50+ pins per week to pin at optimum times onto multiple boards, with ONE click. My traffic report now shows pins from YEARS ago being repinned! I can see more stats and which pins are the most popular. If you are looking for some Pinterest pinning help, try Tailwind.
Sales Goals
Tradesy: March Report: $476.29 This is where I sell my wedding supplies. This is also the retail I made the biggest sidebar ad for on the wedding blog! 7x more income than February! Do you have designer clothing or even wedding items to sell? Sign up for a Tradesy store!
Blogging Goals
The blogs themselves do earn an income through the Affiliate links I use throughout them. Amazon was much better this month! I just joined in February and spent time going through old posts to ad Amazon Links.
Did you know that you can even get 1% back from Etsy? Yep, if you’re not already an Ebates member, Sign Up now!
A Cotton Kandi Life: Traffic & Income Report
Page Views per Month in March: 15,283 {under 24,000 goal} Page views took a plunge after buying the domain, but now I see “traffic source” from Google, which has never been there before! So Pinterest is now not my only source! I hope for bigger numbers in April.
Affiliate Earnings…
As stated in my original post I believe in order to accomplish a larger blog income I must continually work at increasing my Internet presence and “impact” which is calculated by the Klout App. Klout measures your internet REACH and how many people you’re influencing. Here are my current Klout Stats:
Goal: I have dropped to a score of 55 in March, likely because I didn’t post anything… I haven’t posted on Instagram for over a week! {Nobody noticed} I’m still an Expert on Public Speaking and Time Management, but NOW I’m also considered an Expert in PEPSI and SCRUBS!!! It’s true! Go LOOK!
Klout probably thinks this because of the Wedding Blog. My uniforms on wedding days are actually nurse scrubs because they are flexible and still look professional, and I obviously depend on Pepsi for survival… so, there’s that…
In Closing
Related Posts:
4 Ways EVERY Mom can make money from her Couch
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