Another month goes by and my MMM blogging mojo has yet to return.  I’ve been concentrating hard on my main site and have also been working on another site, and this poor one has been neglected.  But despite neglect on this site, others are doing well and earnings are in, if reported a little late this month.

My lovely Virtual Assistant has been helping me schedule my social media and Pinterest, and promoting my site and things have been going well.  I’m keeping up with my increased schedule this year of at least one free pattern and one paid pattern and pattern sales have been awesome!  Thank you to you if you have bought one of my sewing patterns – I very much appreciate your support.

Affiliate earnings continue to excel although I have reduced the number of companies I am promoting at the moment.  I sometimes do a one-off, like in this post I did promoting a new sewing pattern for a cosmetics bag, which mentioned a mineral make up company with a link.  These are discreet and certainly not the focus of the post but this little link got  85 clicks and a few sales as a result.  It just goes to show that affiliate marketing can be subtle and discreet and you can slip in links for products that compliment your post instead of them necessarily being the focus.

Advertising networks – after a huge increase in fees recently from the Blogher network, I was very disappointed to learn they will be increasing again on 1st July and will now be taking 60% of my advertising revenue for themselves.  Comparing the return now on the two Blogher adverts to the two Adsense adverts, they are paying so much less, even though they have the top two ad spots on my site.  I signed up for a 12 month contract with them, but I’m seriously thinking of not renewing.  There is always the opportunity with them to get some sponsored posts or twitter promotions, but as I’m overseas I rarely get offered any.  I’m sure these top two ads spots on the sewing site are worth more than they are paying – anyone have any suggestions for a good alternative that pays a great rate – I’d love to know.

Search Engine Traffic – I’ve said it before, Google hates me!  I’m continuing to see a steady decline in my search engine traffic for the sewing site, despite there being more content than ever before and more back links.   I’ve sent emails to several recommended SEO experts and not even had a reply – I guess they are too busy for any new business.  The ones that have replied have been not only evasive about exactly what service they provide and how they do it, but extremely expensive – like $5,000 expensive!  I tell you – if you know what you are doing with SEO and can help out small bloggers with some basic training, an e-course to follow or even a fairly priced and transparent service – you should make a killing!  I don’t see anyone else doing it that isn’t either outrageously expensive, or just so over the top as to bamboozle me on page 1.  Get out an learn a new skill and you’d have it made in blogger SEO services….

I still haven’t made the 200,000 page views a month on the sewing site, and with page views less in May than in April, that isn’t looking like it will happen any time soon unless I can turn around this search engine traffic.  Obviously page views to this site have also taken a nose dive as there hasn’t been any new content to read, but fear not, this is just a break.  I’ve still got lots of ideas and tips and topics for new blog posts, and at some point my attention will return to these pages and you’ll see a sudden outbreak of new posts!

April Blog Earnings

• Google Adsense – $376.49
• Sverve – $to follow
• Infolinks – $59.23
• Blogher – $503.36
• ShareASale – $4,549.91
• Commission Junction – $122.42
• Escalate Network ads – $0.67
• E-book Sales – $79.09
• Sponsored Tweets – $2.21
• Social Spark – $55.29
• Amazon – $36.27
• Direct advertising – $228.43
• Blogvault – $12.00
• Sewing pattern sales – $821.86
• Other small affiliate sales – $173.43

• Total – $7,020.66

Expenses during the month were:

• Blogvault Back up (3 sites) – $19.00
• MadMimi Mailing List – $42.00
• Virtual Assistant – $92.46
• Advertising  – $18.08

You can find previous month’s figures under the My Income tab above. Traffic (both sites):

• March 2013 = 69,850
• April= 129,872
• May = 138, 752
• June = 147,100
• July = 149,000
• August =141,990
• September =140,933
• October = 158,710
• November = 164,092
• December = 132,559
• January 2014 = 165,222
• February = 190,266
• March = 203,989
• April = 206,428

Targets for May

• Concentrate on content for the sewing site, so I’ll have plenty pre-scheduled.  I have a vacation coming up and will need to take a break from adding new content and sewing for a few weeks.  I’ll let you know when so you won’t think I’m deliberately ignoring your emails!

That’s it, all I’ve got to share for this month.  Hopefully I’ll be bringing you some more blogging tips and recommendations over the next 4 weeks.

Authored by: Deby at Moms Make Money