Update #29 – October 2024 Traffic & Income Report

October was rough.

I’ve had some challenges in October. I had the same challenges in September, but I honestly thought these would have been gone by the time October was over so I didn’t share much about them previously.

Because they are still lingering and no sign of them passing, I’ll explain more in the “challenges” section below.

This is a place where I share how much money I’ve made (if any 😅) and if traffic is picking up (or slowing down) for the previous month. We’re now in November 2024 so I’m sharing how things went in October.

Let’s dive in!

October 2024 Traffic

First, let’s talk about search engine clicks.

Not much has change since I updated you on this last month. I’m still not doing anywhere near as well as I was doing prior to Google’s core update in March.

I’ll share the snippet with you again so you can see the cliff slowly start to shift more to the left….

Google impressions/clicks for the last twelve months:

Let’s not focus on Google hating me and move on.

So October was down. Due to my mental state (see challenges section), I’m not letting this upset me at all.

It’s actually still significantly more than all other months other than September this year.

14 Clicks were from search engines which is also slightly higher than last month so that is a success!

Social Media Updates

I went from 69 to 74 Followers on Pinterest, which I’m super happy about!

I didn’t pin very much, but I re-pinned a heck of a lot. New boards were created and I and deleted some ugly pins I had made back in the day before I started really understanding Canva.

Facebook – I’m checked out and pretty much over it.

Challenges

Ok so here’s where I’m going to get a bit personal.

Something is going on with me and I’m getting multiple tests done.

I’m a pretty private person and I don’t want to go into too much detail… But I haven’t been in the right mental state to be able to get more than one thing done at a time. I can’t process things quickly or correctly most of the time.

I’m using all of my mental capacity to get through my day job and take care of my household… that is all the time I have. I wrote three articles in the month of October and I’m shocked I wrote that many.

Without going into too much detail, stress makes my mental state worse, so I’m not setting any goals or really looking forward at all right now.

An epiphany I had this week as to why I love writing so much:

First, I was on a conference call and said some janky comment that I immediately regretted. Everyone else probably forgot about it but I still think on it.

Later on a call with two people, I wasn’t really processing what was being said (blaming it on my mental state right now) and I had to repeat everything that we had just went over although they were clearly light years ahead of where I was at.

Where the epiphany comes into play: With writing on this website or writing any email, you can check everything, reread, edit, rethink, change, go back, whatever… time is on your side… editing is on your side… you are in control. Yes, I am still judged here and I am fine with being judged. But even in my current mental state, I can still take my time here. I can process at my own pace. Thank you, my website, for that small piece of victory in my life right now.

Successes

The first success was gaining some followers on Pinterest.

Second success was somehow writing three articles.

I’m jumping ahead here but the third success was Google asking for my bank account info because I’ve racked up enough money for them to need to deposit $100 into my bank (WHAT!!).

September 2024 Income

Third month with ads on the site! Still not breaking $100 a month though…

WHOA GUYS! I broke the $50 for the first time ever!!!

Even with lower traffic than last month, I made more from Affiliate marketing this month so income was higher!

Now let’s go back over the expenses like we did last month…

I don’t have many monthly expenses. I purchase Divi Lifetime Membership as my theme after having a whole lot of crappy themes and I’m super happy that I did! If you’re new to website building, check out Divi as it was a game changer for me.

So there were a lot of startup costs that I’m not calculating in my current monthly website spend.

Currently, I spend $29 on Sellfy to sell digital products.

For WordPress, I pay $29.50 per month total for domain, email, and site plan. (I actually pay for this yearly to get a discount.)

So I actually lost around $5 for the month of October.

I am getting so close to being in the green. I’ve debated canceling Sellfy… but I really do want to up my digital selling game instead. Maybe the $29 will help motivate me to do that sooner rather than later.

No November Goals

I actually enjoy re-pinning on Pinterest, so I’m going to do that to take it easy.

But there will be zero November goals.

There will be zero goals until I get better and I’m back at the top of my game at my regular job and being a mom to the two kids I love more than anything in this world. 🙂

Remainder of the Year Goals

This isn’t a goal, but it is somewhat of a promise.

I promise to post an income/update report at the beginning of every month for the previous month.

Hopefully my November update says that I’m all better and back in the writing game. I hope that I’m back to not having to try so hard to be “normal”.

This has all been sort of depressing and I’m truly not a negative person. But I haven’t been myself lately…so I cannot even begin to write peppy articles when I cannot even function when it comes to day-to-day activities.

Thankful

I am so thankful that although I’m not posting much, the website still has some activity.

And even if it does slow or even stop, I need to take this time to get better. Better for myself, better for my family, and better for those around me.

I do read other income reports. I remember reading one once where a blogger stated that she was so turned off by the fact that her blog was going nowhere, she decided to give up.

Six months later, she took a peek at her website, and it had blown up without her even realizing it.

I’m not saying mine will do that. I can’t even go an hour without checking on it. But I am saying that it’s nice that this website thing carries on without us even having to be involved.

As always, I’m thankful for you reading.