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September… everything is back on track after summer and I am more inspired and focused than ever on my blogging! I think starting with these income reports – as I did back in January this year, fired up my dedication much more than I expected. I have always loved blogging and parenting, but trying to be more serious in terms of income takes this to a whole new level. Love it!

September was a good month. Income continued to increase and I’ve started to see results from my investment in Melyssa Griffin’s Pinterest growth course – Pinfinite Growth. This is very exciting because I found the course expensive and detailed in my August report how I decided to still invest in it. It looks like it was a really good decision!

September 2016 is my ninth blog income report. You’ll find earlier blog income reports here.

Now, let’s see how I did with Easy Baby Life during September!

Blog Income September 2016

• Amazon – $72 Not much to brag about and slightly less than in August
• Mediavine Ad Network – $2,237 That’s a 14% increase compared to August :-)

Grand total – $2,309 That’s a 13% increase compared to August. AND my second month above $2,000! I am super happy!!!

Blog Expenses September 2016

• Boardbooster – $5. I am learning more and more about how to use it. Very practical for pinning content to Pinterest. If you haven’t given it a shot yet, please do! It is FREE to try out.
• Aweber – $29.99 (Still considering other alternatives – maybe ConvertKit – what do you think..?)
• Sucuri for website protection – $16.66 per month (I paid for a full year immediately during spring, $199, but count cost for 1 month each month of the year. SO. VERY. WORTH. IT.) My site hasn’t been hacked once since I started with Sucuri. (And I know that IF it would be hacked, they will help me clean it completely without any extra costs at all.
• Cost for my new host A2, where I now splurge on a Managed VPS account – $55 (per month with all bells and whistles, 2 year contract)
• VA services – $35 New this months. I decided to get an extra pair of hands and eyes for creating social media images and some other tasks. I’ve never tried this before. Feels great so far!

Total costs – $142

Net Income September 2016 – $2,167

First ever month with net income above $2000. :-)

Let’s have a look at traffic numbers and finally RPM for the month.

Blog Traffic September 2016

Here are some screenshots from Google Analytics to show my traffic for September 2016.

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Page views were up around 10,000 compared to August; from 302,780 to 312,499. Nothing surprising since vacations are over.

Those of you who have followed these income reports during the past months, maybe remember that I woke up in April and realized the Pinterest train was definitely leaving the station without me. I got myself an account and started reading and experimenting with how to connect with Pinterest users and hence increase my traffic from Pinterest. I learned (sort of) how to use both Boardbooster and Tailwind, to scheduling pins to Pinterest.

In July, I saw my Pinterest traffic growth 55% to 1,400 blog page views. 55% is cool, but 1,400 page views are not so cool – especially compared to my Google traffic!

So in the beginning of August, I decided to do something I almost never do. I bought an online class to learn how to drive traffic to my blog with Pinterest. After quite a bit of hesitation and research, I decided to get Melyssa Griffin’s Pinterest growth course – Pinfinite Growth. It took less than a week before I started to see results. During August, my Pinterest traffic grew by 55% to 2,170. Now, what do you think happened in September..? Take a look below!

Hint: Pinterest went from 2,170 page views to 9,491 page views and passed Bing to become my 4th largest traffic source! And I am not even half way done with Melyssa’s course!

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And for some more excitement – I am half way through October when writing this, and Pinterest continues to increase. :-)

Now putting all this together and calculating RPM (revenue per 1000 page views)…

Grand RPM is $7.39

This is a nice improvement compared to August and the first time ever over $7. It is all driven by higher display ad revenue. Thanks, all advertisers and thank you, Mediavine!

Now, after getting Pinterest in order, next step will be to try to do something about my affiliate earnings, which are more or less nothing. And based on the success with Melyssa’s Pinterest course, I’ve started researching affiliate selling classes. :-) More on that in the next income report!

That was all for my September 2016 blogging income report! I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have on this. Please share by leaving a comment below! :-)

Find all my blogging tips and income reports here.

Please let me know what you think about these blog income reports by leaving a comment below! :-)

Paula Dennholt

Paula Dennholt founded Easy Baby Life in 2006 and has been a passionate parenting and pregnancy writer since then. Her parenting approach and writing are based on studies in cognitive-behavioral models and therapy for children and her experience as a mother and stepmother. Life as a parent has convinced her of how crucial it is to put relationships before rules. She strongly believes in positive parenting and a science-based approach.

Paula cooperates with a team of pediatricians who assist in reviewing and writing articles.