Do you ever feel like your life is a roller coaster and you are just along for the ride? Literally I felt like that this month. Half way through this month, I was recruited for a job with a digital marketing agency, put in my two weeks’ notice at my current job and am starting tomorrow at Leap Frog Interactive. WOW. Let me just say it’s been a busy month. Needless to say, I love the ability to schedule posts in WordPress, without it I think I would go insane, literally!
Wannabite has really gone crazy this month!!! (YEA!!) I got into a good groove posting and got my first sponsored post! We hit all time traffic highs and our social media efforts have exploded, literally. I’m super excited to get into the numbers with you!
April 2013 WannaBite attracted over 21,000 unique visitors!!!!! Say WHAT?! I’m still completely floored. That is nearly double last month! I’m so excited about the growth, words cannot express my gratitude to all of you that read this little hobby of mine! My goal was only 15,000 but to be over 20,000 is amazing. You’ll start to notice a few things in our numbers and how in every Traffic and Income report I always stress SEO. This month FINALLY, Google really started sending traffic my way. Good solid content, and an understanding of how to write that content, is key to getting good search traffic! I’m an SEO professional, that’s what I did at my old job and that’s what I’m doing at my new job! I could write volumes on SEO, but that probably would get boring really quick!
As I mentioned in March, organic search continues to increase at a good consistent pace. Google is recognizing that WannaBite is a good blog with good content!! I also connected my personal Google+ profile to WannaBite this month. I’m not sure if that is what caused the massive organic traffic spikes, but they seem to be sticking around, which is encouraging! I wrote a post recently about Google Authorship, if you are a blogger you should seriously check it out!
Mobile traffic is another key metric I follow closely. As we all know, smart phones are becoming so important in our daily lives. That also means that more and more, we use them to access blogs. Because of my emphasis on Instagram, a mobile only app, I have seen an abnormal amount of mobile traffic. Most sites get about 20-30% of their overall traffic from mobile devices. In April, 55% of all traffic was mobile. That has increased over March, which was only 52%. I can’t really decide if that’s a good thing or not, but hey, it’s increasing, and I know that’s good!
No surprise here again. Pinterest continues to dominate the referrals. WeUseCoupons, my other blog still maintains the number two position, but I predict it will begin to fall in the rankings in the coming months. Remember that Instagram isn’t tracking (from the mobile app). It is tracking when you get a visitor directly from Instagram.com though.
Six of the top ten pages from March are back for April. Our Crockpot Chicken Teriyaki recipe is really going crazy as you can see. (Good SEO and a little luck guys!) Not much else to say about that!
SOCIAL
So I have been really learning a lot about social media this month. I’ve been doing some testing and as I hinted in our March report, Facebook has gone amazingly well. I started a Facebook ad! It’s not to much money and it’s really giving amazing results! Facebook was growing well before, but now, it’s a nice force to be reckoned with. I haven’t really posted heavily on Facebook, but am starting to see nice consistent traffic, instead of massive spikes and then nothing. Pinterest also grew because of a giveaway we did with multiple bloggers! I’ll be doing a few more of those soon, stay tuned! Below are the current Facebook numbers and the perfect growth from March.
Facebook: 5,359 likes (+1000%)
Instagram: 17,042 followers (+20%)
Twitter: 59 followers (+15%)
Pinterest: 5,108 followers (+18%)
More shares and likes are happening on Facebook than ever! It’s exciting!
INCOME
So I know many of you read this for this section only. How much already! This is the first month I broke triple digits and I did it by A LOT. We made a grand total of $344! Below is the break down, but it’s very encouraging. I applied for BlogHerAds and a few other things. It’s fun to earn a little extra money!
Earning Breakdown:
Adsense: $84
Social Fabric: $245
Social Spark: $15
Total: $344
Have a great week!
As someone who found your blog through Instagram I’m super excited about your success! Congratulations on your stellar report! As a new blogger I’m constantly learning new things and your post has given me insight on what websites I should be focusing on.
Ahh Thanks!! Glad it helped a little!
Congratulations!! That’s so exciting for you! I originally found your food on Instagram, and it looked so good that I started to check out your blog too. 🙂 You mentioned how you increased your number of fans on Facebook for April, but do you have any tips for increasing followers on the other three social media sites as well?
Nathan, you are freakin’ awesome. Whenever I read your blog posts, I can imagine you in person with your energy presenting this information and almost jumping up and down. Have you considered doing more affiliate marketing? I am curious to see where you could take that. When I posted my link to this comment, I linked it to my page about Affiliate Marketing. I really recommend it. It’s how I pay my rent now and it requires way less work than some of the things you have listed here. If I can get my act together and get my nerve up, maybe I’ll present about it at our Cincinnati Bloggers meeting! See you soon.
Thanks for posting this – I applied to Social Fabric and listed you as a referrer. Thanks!
Well, social media really does help in driving traffic to a website. A lot of people; business online owners really resort to social media when they want huge traffic.
I noticed you are local, I’m based in Cincinnati and work for a digital agency, LeapFrog Interactive downtown! Nice to see a local!
Your facebook growth is amazing! Please, please talk more about it in your May report. I would love to hear about the ad you created, ie what did it say, what did it look like, how long did it run for, etc? You are inspiring me! Thanks so much for sharing this info.
I absolutely will!
Great job! How did you craft your Facebook ad to make it do successful? What ad settings did you use?