Update #31 – January 2025 Traffic & Income Report

We’re through January of 2025!!

I see memes every now and then talking about how January feels super long. That’s literally how I felt the second half of last month.

For whatever reason, I couldn’t wait to mark January off and move on to February. So here we are!

Some wins and losses this month – but I consider the month of January overall a super win for the website!

Now please let me share why…

Let’s go!

January 2025 Traffic

Ok so I know I share this with you every month and this month is no different…

But let me say this for my own sanity… Please do not let me jinx this trend by sharing it. I’m sharing because I’m proud and hopeful that it stays this way or even improves…

What the heck! It was my best month ever with Google search clicks! I’m still out of the Google search sandbox!

If you’re new here, I was in Google jail from March 2023 until mid December 2023. That was approximately ten months of hell where I pondered if the website was crap or not.

I had maybe five impressions a day.

This is what the month of January looked like:

My best impression day had 2,087 impressions. My best actual click day had 126 clicks.

Now let’s look at total visits from all sources, not just Google:

Are you asking why my January is lower if Google is freakin’ soaring?

Good question.

I stopped paying for a Pinterest ad. I was spending about $150 a month in an ad in hopes it would help Google like me again.

Since Google likes me, I stopped the ad. I’m currently paying nothing out of pocket for marketing.

This may be a poor choice, but I’m doing it anyway for now.

1,737 of my January clicks came from search engines. The other clicks came from a wide variety of sources, but mainly Pinterest.

Social Media Updates

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

I had 78 followers at the end of December 2023. Now I have 81. So I gained 3. I’ll take it!

I have much less traffic coming from Pinterest because I’m not running the ad anymore so I’m thankful to have three that are willing to follow me. Thank you!

The goal was 150 followers by the end of 2025 (ok it was 156 but let’s round down to make an even number…).

Slow start to the year. If I keep going with 3 a month for the rest of the year, I’ll have 114 so I need to step up my game and start pinning more.

Challenges

My biggest challenge in January was writing. The kids had so much going on.

I had one child home from college so most of my time was catering to her.

Finding time to write that doesn’t impact my sleep schedule is difficult, but I’ll keep working on it.

I only posted three articles in January and that’s not what I want, but I’ll take it. I had a super slow end of 2023 so let’s just say I’m getting back into the swing of things and cut myself some slack.

Successes

Freakin’ staying out of the Google sandbox is my January 2025 success!!

Do I need to have any other successes!? No way!

January 2025 Income

Let’s take a closer look into income.

So why didn’t I earn more in January 2025 if my Google searches were up?

Because overall clicks were down on the pages that earn the most because I’m not running the ad anymore. I’m saving about $150 a month in the ad, so profits are way up! 😄

Google AdSense profit: $18.07

Amazon Affiliate Links: $4.47

Sellfy: $7.25

Total in January: $29.79

This is sadly about $20 less than what I had been earning, but let’s remember the $150 I’m saving.

Now let’s talk about expenses in January…

I don’t have many monthly expenses. I purchased Divi Lifetime Membership as my theme in 2023 and I’m so thankful I did.

Currently, I spend $29 on Sellfy to sell digital products. (which I don’t really have digital products…)

$29.50 for WordPress.

For subscriber/email list, I use Kit, which is free!

Now I added a new expense this month. RankIQ is something I read about on another blogger’s post. It’s $49 per month and I’ve already seen an improvement in my older articles by using this service.

I think this may have been a missing piece for me. I’m currently going back to older articles and using RankIQ to tell me keywords that I’m missing that could help bump up my post in search results and it’s actually working.

I haven’t started using it yet to tell me keyword suggestions, but the value I received in bumping my older articles the first month is worth it to me. I’ll update more next month when I’ve had a chance to do more than update older posts. But money well spent so far.

I may even write a review on it…

Total expenses = $107.50 (yikes! hit the $100 mark!)

So I’m losing over $75. Gosh. Need to step up my game. Maybe I need to pull the plug and cancel Sellfy until I actually have decent digital products to sell.

February Goals

Write stuff.

That’s basically what I need to do. Problem is, I’m going out of town for at least 10 days this month and I know I accomplish very little when I travel.

So let’s try to write at least four articles this month. Hey – This one equals one so only three more to go!

Thanks for checking in! I’m almost to the two year mark. Hopefully I’m still not losing money by year 3. 🙂