Update #33 – April 2025 Traffic & Income Report

This April 2025 Update is super exciting!

I have been looking forward to writing this post for a week and it’s finally here.

I had some really bad months last year, but things have been turning around. I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Thank you for visiting and hearing about my website journey.

I started this blog portion of the website because I just needed to vent. In the beginnings of owning a website, it feels like you are writing to only yourself. It can be very lonely.

Writing these (somewhat) monthly updates allows me to journal for the world to see and it seriously helps keep me motivated.

If you’re new, here’s a list of things I’ll be sharing:

Let’s go!

April 2025 Traffic

Ok so Google traffic is kind of steadily increasing.

From March 2024 to December 2024, Google basically blacklisted me for unknown reasons. 😅 So having a steady increase is super pleasing to me.

Let’s look at a snippet of the last four months.

My best Google impression day in April had 3,862, which is 111 more impressions than my best day in March.

My best Google click day had 113 clicks, which is sadly down compared to last month’s 117.

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

Visits for this month are sadly down.

I wanted to break 4,000 in April and I didn’t do that. I’m not going to beat myself up here for a few different reasons, which I will go over shortly…

Social Media Updates

I officially stopped posting on Facebook.

So let’s talk Pinterest.

I had 82 followers last month and I still have 82. Bummer.

However, I had 40,000 impressions at the end of last month and this month I’m up to 45,000 so that is improving.

I’ve been pinning more so I’m super proud of myself for that!

More pinning 100% relates to more impressions. Everything I read says that Pinterest wants to see you being active, so I’m trying to be more active.

I applied to a random affiliate program and I was rejected. I noticed the company went to my Facebook page, which hasn’t been updated in a while and I have very little followers.

So I seriously need to either get back into the Facebook game or take the link off my website.

I’m considering going back to Tumblr. I texted both my children just now (18 and 16) and asked them if anyone uses Tumblr.

18 Year Old Response: “No 😭 Maybe old people do – None of my friends even know what that is”

16 Year Old Response: “Uhhhh maybe some”

Me back to both of them separately: So what should I use for my website if I don’t want Facebook?

18 Year Old Response: (No response – Silence. I’m not pausing writing this any longer because she isn’t responding – It’s Friday night and who knows when she’ll get back to me.)

16 Year Old Response: “Insta”

In conclusion, I just want somewhere that I can post my articles and not interact with anyone (does that sound harsh?).

Maybe Twitter…maybe Instagram? 🤔

More to come as I make up my mind…

Challenges

Writing is usually one of my challenges.

This month I didn’t struggle with it.

I posted four articles, just like I wanted to. I took some days off work just to concentrate on posting, which I had never done before.

I’m actually three weeks ahead on articles, which makes me feel like I’m in a much better spot than I have been in the past.

I think I only needed to only tell myself to post once a week so I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I have a full-time job and two kids – I don’t have time to try to cram in 2-3 articles a week.

This is a long game for me.

I’ve also been getting a few emails from folks asking to guest post on my website. I haven’t let anyone yet because I feel like I need to vet them and do some research before I let anyone else write.

So, in conclusion, no real challenges this month!

Successes

HOLY CRAP GUYS!

I got approved for Journey by Mediavine!!!!

As I previously noted, I do not have anywhere near 10,000+ sessions per month like Journey requests and I was approved anyway!

I decided to install the Grow plugin on my WordPress account because one day I want Mediavine. After I did that, I thought “what the heck” and went ahead and applied to Journey thinking I would be rejected like I was time and time again for so long with AdSense.

But I was approved in less than 4 weeks! AHHHHH!! This is so exciting!!!

I’m only on Day 3 of having Journey at the time of writing this article, so I don’t have much to say about it just yet.

April 2025 Income

On to the money part…

April Breakdown:

Google AdSense profit: $18.53 (stopped Google AdSense on April 29th because I was approved for Journey)

Journey profit: $0.28 (this is literally one day – the last day of the month)

Amazon Affiliate Links: $15.48 (double last month! woohoo!)

Sellfy: $7.25

Total in April: $41.54

So this was the best month for me all year! I can’t wait to see what Journey does with my ad profit moving forward.

Let’s move on and talk about expenses.

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. Yes, I’ve talked about suspending this for a few months while I come up with some digital items to sell…but I haven’t done it yet.

$29.50 for WordPress.

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

I added a new expense in January. 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 honestly think this is the reason why I am seeing so more Google impressions compared to the first of the year.

I like RankIQ so much, I wrote an entire review on it here.

Total expenses = $107.50

Obviously, I’m still losing money. I pretty much have to more than double my profit to cover my expenses.

I’m going to keep RankIQ for one more month and then drop it for a little while until I’ve written 20+ new articles. Then I’ll utilize RankIQ to improve them.

May Goals

Write! – Let’s get out 4 articles again. I want to continue staying ahead. Summer is almost here and when the kids are out of school, most of my free time is occupied hanging out with them. Let’s try for 4,000 visits in May!

Pin – I want to pin at least twice per week. One for the new article I’ve written and one new pin for an older article.

RankIQ – Spiff up the most popular Google articles that I haven’t yet and then suspend RankIQ until later this year when I have written more articles.

Social Media – Bite the bullet, stop complaining about it every month and figure out what I want to do since I don’t want to do FB. Either do it, or stop whining (yes, I’m being hard on myself).

Final Thoughts

I am such a fast paced person. When I need to do something, I need to do it now.

I hate having things on my to-do list. The quicker I can knock them out successfully, the better I feel.

So having a website and knowing that it’s a long game is a struggle for me. I have such little patience.

I am so thankful for the people that reached out at the beginning of my website journey and helped pick me up when I was down.

I’ve had this website for over two years now. I know some people post about how they made $1,000 in one month or whatever by blogging. I’m not saying it’s possible…I’m sure it is, but it’s not my reality. I think for 99% of us, it’s a long game.

Thank you for reading – if you’re new to owning a website and feeling down, feel free to contact me.