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Hey y’all! As I started my journey of blogging this month, I read a lot of other blogger’s blog posts about blogging (say that three times fast).

Check out my other income reports here:

Some of these posts included “blog income reports” and “blog growth reports” where bloggers post all their traffic and monetary numbers for their readers to see, to be completely transparent about everything they do!

The first income report I read was by Create And Go, which they update monthly here. They have great info and you should check them out if you’re interested in blogging.

Create And Go is a very successful blog, with many followers and high SEO ranking. Comparatively, I found very few new bloggers that post growth reports or income reports in the early stages of their blog.

Most people wait 4-6 months, or maybe a whole year, to post a growth report – enough time for them to build a social media presence and gain authority online.

I have decided to start monthly growth reports now (at the beginning of my blogging career) to show the process from the very start of creating a new blog! So, here’s my first month growth report.

These blogging reports will include growth and income information, social media information, as well as my goals for the following month of blogging!

Check out my other income reports:

This is the overview of the growth report:

  1. General Information
  2. Views and sessions
  3. Acquisition
  4. Email list
  5. Social media
    1. Pinterest
    2. Instagram
    3. Facebook
    4. Twitter
  6. Income
    1. Amazon Associate

Let’s jump right in!

General Information

  • I officially launched Beauty, Brains, and Blush on December 1, 2018.
    • Since I’m writing this on December 30th, it won’t include information from the 31st when I post it.
    • A few posts were already written and published for launch!
  • I did soft-launch on the last day of November to make sure there weren’t any issues with going live. This allowed me to:
    • fix a few broken links
    • change the way my mobile site looked
  • I wrote a total of 17 blog posts (including posts published when I launched) with this growth report being post #18

Views and Sessions

I use Google Analytics to track all sorts of information on my blog (this info is from Audience –> Overview, looking at users by day & custom date range).

Here’s the users for December 1 – December 30:

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

From this info, you can see that:

  • I had the most users on the day I launched (when I posted on all social media and many friends visited my site!)
  • There were many dips up and down throughout the month, peaks coinciding with when I posted.
  • I didn’t have too many users, but isn’t too bad for the first month
  • My bounce rate is high

Next month’s goals:

  • 500 unique users
  • 1,000 pageviews
  • lower bounce rate(?)

Acquisition

I also use Google Analytics to look at my acquisition, or how people find my blog. First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

  • The vast majority (83%) of my traffic comes from social media links
  • A few people visit my blog directly (by typing in my URL!)
  • I already get a few organic search hits

Next month’s goals:

  • Increase my organic search acquisition by continuing to focus on SEO
  • Lower bounce rates
  • Continue to post lots on social media to keep that acquisition up!

Email List

I use Mailchimp to collect email addresses to add to my email list, and to send out email campaigns to the people who sign up!

Currently, I:

  • have a sign up email series that introduces myself to my viewers
  • have a landing page to gather more signups
  • send out an email for most of the posts that I post.

I admittedly don’t send an email for every post that I publish. This is why:

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

  • I have 7 subscribers. And I am one of them.

Not only do I have pitifully few subscribers, but most of them don’t open my emails. Because of this, I slack on the email campaigns because I don’t feel as though it is helping me at all.

Next month’s goals:

  • Read about how to get more email subscribers
  • Learn how to write better email campaigns that people want to read
  • Increase my list to a total of 50 subscribers

Social Media

I’ve personally used various social media for years, and have had a makeup-only Instagram account since spring of 2018.

But before blogging with a business perspective, I didn’t realize how much time I would actually have to spend on social media to make an impact.

I currently use 4 social medias, and will look at each of them individually.

Pinterest

This is my primary social media focus. I went from 0 to 44 followers this month, starting with a new business account.

I’ve pinned a couple thousand pins, all manually, and most of them are NOT content from my blog.

Why?

Because I don’t have a lot of content, and I want this account to reflect a variety of beauty ‘things’ that will attract followers.

44 isn’t a whole lot of followers, but my month reach has EXPLODED:

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

And here’s a desktop view that also includes the number of people engaged with my pins, monthly:

I’ve gathered that this number doesn’t mean a LOT on Pinterest, but it certainly makes me feel good that there are 260k people exposed to my Pins on a monthly basis.

UPDATE 12/31: Pinterest reach jumped to 273k overnight, up almost 14k since I took that screenshot yesterday on the 30th! 

Next Month’s Goals: 

  • Have a total of 100 followers
  • Keep pinning original content
  • Be more active on group boards

Instagram

I went from 0 to 108 followers on Instagram this month.

Using Instagram, I hosted a mini MUA search looking for artists to feature makeup looks on the blog! I was able to find a few great gals that’ll have looks posted on here in January.

Additionally, I’m trying to keep this account looking very planned and aesthetic by using Instagram’s blocks to create larger pictures on my account page, like this:

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

But I’m honestly not sure if I should keep it up or start fresh.

If you have any Instagram suggestions, let me know below!

Facebook

My Facebook page went from 0 to 44 likes this month, and most are my own personal Facebook friends.

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

I post on the page when I publish a blog post, but that’s pretty much it so far.

Next month’s goals:

  • Have a total of 100 likes
  • Post other makeup related things that AREN’T all written by me
  • Share these posts more on my personal Facebook

Twitter

Honestly, I’m not really using Twitter that much. I use the social media sharing button on my blog post pages to share a link in a tweet, and that’s about it.

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

I’m primarily just trying to document my posts on Twitter to have a good history for the future when I plan to use Twitter more.

Until I have a good following on other (more makeup-relevant!) social medias, I probably won’t do much else with Twitter.

Overall Social Media Goals:

  • More followers (including you!!! all my social media links are in the header and footer)
  • More engagement
  • Feature other makeup posts
  • Follow makeup brands and artists

Income

I debated whether or not to include this section, because I don’t have a blogging income.

I didn’t monetize my blog before I launched; the priority now is to gain traffic, social media presence, and search engine authority before I apply for Google AdSense or another ad service.

There is no way I would make any money if no one is visiting my site anyway, so I haven’t really “bothered” with trying to make money — yet.

I am an Amazon Associate, and will earn when people use my affiliate links on certain blog posts, like these:

But so far, this is my associate view of earnings:

First Month Blog Growth Report - beautybrainsblush.com

  • I made a total of… nothing!
  • My Amazon Associate links were clicked on 13 times this month, which is something.
  • Next goal = convert clicks –> buys???

I’m hoping to make this blog a source of income in the future, but that will take time and I’m okay with that!

Also, I should probably note that I would technically be in the red this month, since I did have some starting costs associated with my blog.

I paid for three years of blog hosting up front, which included my domain for the next year.

Additionally, I bought a WordPress theme.

So far, those are my only costs associated with the blog – other than my time writing, editing, promoting, and networking.

Other Notes

There are a few other things I feel like I should mention, but don’t know where exactly to insert them into this post, so here they are!

  • Most of my organic search comes from Bing, not Google
  • I’ve learned about SEO a lot this month, but still have a long way to go
  • My goal is to post 3x a week, but I haven’t been super consistent. I don’t write posts ahead of time enough – I need to schedule a week’s + worth of posts ahead of time, but I usually write them the day before I publish
  • I have an awesome phone camera now, and am looking forward to taking higher quality photos for the blog and social media
  • There are not many comments on my posts (only one), so maybe I need to comment on other beauty blogger’s posts
  • There are a few Facebook blogging groups I am a part of, but I haven’t been participating much in follow threads – I’m not sure if it would help, or if it would give me followers that aren’t actually engaged with my work
  • This will take a lot more time than I would want, but I need to remember to be patient with my blog!

Whew. That was a LOT of information.

I hope you found my transparency helpful. I’m planning on doing these blogging growth reports every month to track my growth, so I can look back on them in the future and help other new bloggers see realistic numbers!

Growth Report from my VERY FIRST month of blogging! Check this out and more at BeautyBrainsBlush.com! .png

Remember, I’m not an expert, I’m just a girl who started a blog! These are all the things I’m doing for my blog, and I hope it inspires you!

Check out my other income reports here:

If you want to talk about blogging with me, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment – I’d love to (try to) help! 🙂

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