Update #30 – 2024 Traffic & Income Report

I’m super excited that 2024 is over!

There were so many personal and website challenges this year.

However, we are definitely ending 2024 on a website high.

If you’re new to this section of my website, this is where I tell you how things have been going.

It’s honestly so fun to write these updates every now and then. It’s a nice change from having to research, edit, and be extremely anal about what I’m writing.

Let’s go!

2024 Traffic

I started this website in March of 2023. Going into 2024, things were looking pretty amazing.

I was receiving Google clicks daily, even though only a small amount of pages were being shown.

Looking back on my 2023 Full Year Traffic & Income report, I was so ecstatic to have 149 impressions in a single day in December 2023.

Fast forward to March 14, 2024… I was on top of the world with 762 Google Search impressions and 62 clicks in a single day.

And then this happened:

March 14th was the day it all came crashing down.

I still do not know what happened. I do know that I changed the URL of all of my pages to not reflect the date anymore in an effort to have evergreen content.

I also know that Google’s Update happened around this time. So many other websites were impacted.

So which one caused the crash? I don’t think I’ll ever know. Both of those factors could have played a part.

I considered giving up for the first time. Instead, I took a break and went on some summer vacations.

I got sick in September and was feeling really unmotivated.

And Then…

On December 17th I had three Google clicks. I checked out my impressions and I was up to 47.

Could this be a turning point?!

IT WAS.

December was amazing!! Google doesn’t hate me!! My highest day was December 17th at 4,403 impressions and 175 clicks. Wow!

What did I do to end the year with more search clicks than I’ve ever had? I have no idea. I completely slacked off the second half of this year.

Let’s break down total visits by month this year. Note that majority of this traffic comes from Pinterest.

September was the highest month, but this was due to a Pinterest ad I was running.

Total search engine clicks in December was 1,046. That’s the number that matters.

I’m still running a small ad on Pinterest. This was a strategy I was playing to get the website more visitors and hopefully have search engines trust me more.

I do plan to keep a small ad running until I build up more organic traffic.

Here’s what the full year looks like from Google Console:

Social Media Updates

I’ve given up on Facebook. The only social media I’m keeping up to date is Pinterest.

I currently have 78 Followers on Pinterest. I guess I was too embarassed to say how many I had at the end of last year. Let’s say it was 0…

Can I double that in 2025? I think so!

Challenges

My biggest challenge in 2024 was finding motivation to not shut this down after falling off the Google cliff.

I’ve accepted that I suck at being consistent with marketing the website. It’s taking me out of my comfort zone.

I also suck at monetizing the website. I like writing – that’s why I started it. I haven’t really found ways to generate an income that I’m comfortable with other than ads. Not a huge fan of the ads, btw.

I haven’t sent out one email to my email list.

That’s enough talking about how I’ve been a slacker…let’s get on to some positives.

Successes

Gaining subscribers on Pinterest is a huge win!

Not shutting down the website = Win!

Generating over $300 this year = Win!

2024 Income

Let’s take a closer look into income.

The addition of Google AdSense really changed the game for me.

Majority of the earnings are from Google Adsense.

Affiliate marketing takes up the entire months of January to (almost all of) July.

Now let’s talk about yearly expenses in 2024…

I don’t have many monthly expenses. I purchased Divi Lifetime Membership as my theme in 2023 and I’m so thankful I did. So cost this year was $0.

Currently, I spend $29 on Sellfy to sell digital products. $29 x 12 = $348. Yikes. That just used up all my earnings, didn’t it?

For WordPress, I paid $354, which includes email. 😅

So I lost around $390 for the year. Actually, I lost more than that because I run a Pinterest ad.

However, if I had Google AdSense all year, I would have gotten closer to breaking even.

2025 Goals

Create a digital product to generate income from the website. I’m nowhere near to deciding what this is.

Send out emails to subscribers (not too often – maybe we try every other month or so). I signed up for Kit a few months ago and it has been really successful with helping me gain subscribers! I’ve tried out a few of their features, but I have yet to actually send out any emails to my email list.

I want to get to 200 Pinterest Followers. That’s going to require me pinning more.

Write. I didn’t write enough in 2024 for a few reasons. Three articles a month should be the minimum. This counts as one for January so I’m starting the year off great!

Make a calendar solely for the website. I’m doing that next week. I’m an organizational mastermind. I need to use this skill to get organized and hold myself accountable.

Welcome 2025!! Let’s see where this goes!