First month Blog Income Report as an introvert in 2024

Welcome to my first month blog income report, for my first month of blogging! I’m going to report what I did and the results of my first-ever blog and my first-ever Pinterest business account, that I’m using to drive traffic to my website!

CHOOSING MY NICHE

So, the first thing I needed to do when starting a blog, was deciding the niche, and with this, I was going back and forth with choosing!

I was trying to choose a niche I wouldn’t get tired of writing about because blogging is a long-term game, and I’m pretty undecided, so I didn’t want to get bored halfway through my journey!

Even though I saw some seasoned bloggers saying that it’s not THAT important to choose your definite niche at the beginning, I wanted to be set on my niche from the very start.

Personally, I always liked bedroom decor and organization, because honestly, having the privilege of being able to have my own bedroom while growing up, the only place I ever had the chance to decor and organize was my bedroom.

Even more now that I’m a 22-year-old, college student and immigrant, sharing a bedroom with my mother, I miss being able to decor and organize my safe place however I want.

Being in the situation I’m in right now, at least I get to decor online!

This is the reason why I choose bedroom decor specifically, and also because I believe there are a lot of people whose only space to decorate and arrange how they like is their bedroom.

I started this blog with the hope of giving them ideas on how they can personalize their space!

The advantage of this niche is that allows me to post on Pinterest to drive traffic, and because I’m an introvert and don’t want to post my face all over social media to promote my blog, this was a great bonus!

NAMING MY BLOG

Honestly, I had no idea what name I could give my blog! and this step is really important.

I didn’t want to use my full name or anything directed connected to me, because given the case that I want to sell my blog in the future, if it has my name on it, this won’t be possible.

I went on Chat GPT and typed something along the lines of “Give me ideas for a bedroom decor blog name” and I mixed some of the names the robot suggested!

“The F Nook” was created, and I feel like this is a really fitting name, the F of my name gives it a personal touch, but it also discret enough.

BLOG DOMAIN + HOST!

With all these basic things sorted out, it was time to buy the domain name and host!

I decided to get a hosting plan that cost 1.99$ a month, but when I went to buy it, it turned out I get charged yearly.

Since I didn’t have the money to pay for the hosting yearly at the moment I was trying to set up my blog (I am a broke college student and this was early December) I had to wait until late January to finally buy my hosting

Finally, I chose to buy my WordPress hosting and domain with bluehost.com, I paid 35$ a year, with no extra costs! (honestly, starting a blog is actually one of the cheapest online businesses I attempted to start ever)

If you want to start a blog too, I 100% recommend starting with Bluehost, their prices a really budget-friendly, even for broke college students, and they have great customer support.

TIME TO START BUILDING MY BLOG

Who would have thought that building your blog on WordPress was going to be so difficult?

I chose the Minimalist Blogger Theme and tried to edit it but at some point, I felt like I was trying to code, so I only managed to edit some things, even when I tried to follow some YouTube tutorials!

It gave me so much anxiety that I decided to leave it like that for the whole month of February, In March I purchased a theme on Etsy for 16$ (the one that you are on right now!) and this was my lifesaver.

CONNECTING MY BLOG WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS

While I was researching how to start a blog, connecting it with Google Analytics was one of the main steps I needed to take to track the traffic that my blog will receive (hopefully).

This step was really easy, there are a ton of YouTube tutorials you can follow that tell you exactly how to connect your website with Google Analytics, and this step took me less than 10 minutes.

GETTING MY PINTEREST ACCOUNT READY

I already had my personal Pinterest account, but after doing some research, I decided to start a fresh Pinterest Business Account, because this was going to allow me to see the analytics from my pins.

When you have a Pinterest business account you can see the analytics of your pins, and your monthly views. This will help me track the performance of the pins and see which pins are getting more views, and it will also allow me to claim my website, so the URL of TheFNook will appear on my profile.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Looking for the keywords with the most traffic in my niche helped me understand what the audience I wanted to target looked for, so I could start writing my blog posts.

Personally, doing the keyword research is the most difficult part of starting a blog, but I’m a beginner, so maybe it has to do with this!

These are some RESOURCES FOR KEYWORD RESEARCH I’m using right now:

Pinterest Treds Tool

This is my favorite tool for keyword research, I had to check some YouTube tutorials on how to use it but overall it’s pretty straightforward.

What I do is check last year’s trends and see when they started to grow on traffic, if it’s seasonal content, this is really easy to see, for example, summer content searchers start to grow in March, according to Pinterest trends.

AHREFS

For this tool, I use the FREE keyword generator from AHREFS to have an idea of what people are searching for on Google.

I try to focus on keywords that have a difficulty of less than 10 but have a high traffic volume (over 500), but sometimes these are difficult to find.

TIME TO START POSTING

After a bunch of trial and error and a lot of YouTube tutorials on how to use WordPress and how to write the perfect blog post I finally was done with my first post and with it ready I went and hit “publish”!

Finally, my first post was live on “The F Nook”, this was such an accomplishment for me!

MONETIZE YOUR BLOG

My goal is to get into an Ad Agency but I need to drive traffic to my website first, so I decided to try affiliate marketing instead.

Because my niche allows me to promote decor and organization items you can find on Amazon I opened an account with the Amazon Associates Programme.

Amazon is used in almost every part of the world, but mostly in the US. Since I’m targeting specifically that country base audience, I felt like it was the best and most trustworthy option.

MY STRATEGY FOR THE FIRST MONTH

After watching a ton of YouTube videos on tips and tricks on how to start your blog and how to get traffic, I decided to post 2 new blog posts a week, since I’m able with the time that I have, to post good quality posts, and post at least one pin per day on Pinterest.

I’ve seen people saying that you have to post multiple times a day on Pinterest so the algorithm picks you up faster as an active account but to be honest and realistic, at the beginning it’s difficult.

Considering that you don’t have many blog posts yet to promote on Pinterest, posting the same URL on Pinterest more than 1 time a day can get the algorithm to see you as spammy and this can ruin your impressions and the reach of your pins.

FIRST MONTH BLOGGING STATISTICS

I posted my first blog post on 29 January 2024 and as of today, 29 February 2024, exactly a month later these are my Pinterest statistics!

I ended the first month with 2.7k Monthly Views on my Pinterest Account.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS STATISTICS

These are the statistics on my blog from Google Analytics.

For the first month, I posted 2 blog posts a week, so in total I posted 6 blog posts on The F Nook.

AFFILIATES

This first month I had 2 clicks on my Amazon Associate Programme and made 0$.

This was the only affiliate program I was part of for the first month and I didn’t make any money, but with the visits to my site for this first month, this is no surprise!

CONCLUSION

You can clearly see that my numbers on Pinterest did not translate to traffic to my blog, since my numbers on Google Analytics are way lower.

But anyway, I’m really confident about my ability to build this blog, and I’m also really happy with the growth of my Pinterest Account.

if you are also starting a blog this year and growing as slowly as I am, keep going! All your hard work at the beginning will pay off in the end!