March 2021 Mediavine Blog Income Report

Can you believe we are already in April? That means it’s time for my March income report.

At first, I was worried about sharing these monthly income reports with you since I’m not making a lot of money with my blog. But I have really enjoyed seeing my goals, income, and traffic broken down the past couple of months. I hope you have been enjoying these income reports and they are motivating to you.

I also hope these reports help you realize that not all bloggers are making a ton of money. There will always be someone more successful but don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or your middle to someone else’s end. We all have to start somewhere and getting started and sticking with it is the hardest part.

I started this blog 6 years ago (my first post was published in January 2015, though I celebrate my blogging anniversary in May since that’s when I went to my official domain instead of blogspot).

For years I didn’t make any money from the blog. Then I finally got so that the blog was paying for its own hosting and other expenses. And now it is actually starting to feel like all the hard work is paying off.

Why I’m Writing this Income Report

After getting accepted into Mediavine last year I decided I wanted to do an income report each month of my first full year in Mediavine.

I want to write this monthly income report as a way for me to track my progress as well as encourage other moms who are trying to make money blogging.

If you’re looking for an income report that will tell you how they made $10,000 by month 6 of blogging, you’re going to be disappointed. I’m hopeful that I will be able to make that kind of money someday but I’m not there yet.

While the numbers in my income report may not be as exciting as making $10,000 a month, they prove that making money on a blog is possible.

This income report also shows that by consistently showing up and working you can make money from a blog even if you aren’t blogging in a specific niche, or blogging about blogging (one of my pet peeves but that’s a story for another day).

If you missed it you can see my income report for February here.

A Few Things to Know

Before getting into my goals and income for March let me just clarify a few things.

#1 I will only be sharing my income from Mediavine. (Remember this is only 1 of the income streams I have for this blog)

#2 The income amount I share is the income before I take out expenses or pay taxes.

#3 Each blog will make a different amount of money with ads even if they have similar topics and traffic.

#4 I was accepted into Mediavine before the traffic requirements changed to 50,000 sessions.

March Goals

First off let’s talk about the goals I had for March. I had several goals including the number of sessions I wanted to hit, the amount of ad income I wanted to make, and tasks I wanted to complete.

Traffic Goal

My goal was to hit 15,000 sessions to my blog in March. I set higher goals for January and February and didn’t hit them so I decided to go for a more attainable goal this month. I know for some 15,000 sessions is nothing and for others that seems like a ton. It all depends on perspective.

I picked this specific goal for a couple of reasons, mainly because I didn’t hit my traffic goal the past 2 months and wanted to hit it this month. Also, the first quarter of the year is the slowest time on my blog so I set my goal based on the views I got last year and what traffic I have been seeing the past couple of months.

I’m getting excited that next month is the start of the 2nd quarter which is when I have typically gotten the most views, followed by the holiday season (4th quarter).

When planning goals it’s good to know the seasonality of your blog so you aren’t comparing high traffic months with low traffic months. Because trust me it’s hard to go from really high traffic to low traffic, especially when you’re comparing. (The drop from December traffic to January traffic for my blog was so frustrating.)

Side Note: I personally like to set my google analytics to compare the current sessions/pageviews with the same date last year.

Last year (2020) in March I had 8,456 sessions so hitting 15,000 sessions seemed like a good goal since month over month this year I have seen about a 100% increase in traffic.

Goal Met? YES!

My goal was 15,000 sessions and I got 19,055 sessions, which was an improvement from the number of sessions I had last year in March. It was also the highest traffic month so far this year! (I guess I should have stuck with the traffic goal I had in January and February)

While I wish I was reporting much bigger numbers for my traffic, I am excited by the growth. The number of sessions in March 2021 is a 125.34% increase from last March.

Content Goals

As I have mentioned before there are a lot of different types of content for a blog including: blog posts, Pinterest graphics and videos.

In March I set goals to publish 8 new blog posts, I didn’t have a goal for creating videos or new pins. (maybe next month!)

Goal Met? YES

I finally met and passed my goal for new blog posts! In March I published 10 new blog posts. It took a lot of work but I’m so excited I was able to get that many posts published.

I’m hoping to have some even bigger months later this year. Last year I did a couple of 30 day blog post challenges and it really helped my blog traffic grow. So I’m hoping I can do a couple of these again this year.

March Income Goal

For my March income report, I’m only sharing the income I made with Mediavine ads. You can read about all the different ways I make money on this blog here.

Since this was my first March with Mediavine I wasn’t sure what to expect as far as income so I didn’t have a very educated goal. So I set the goal of $300 from Mediavine ads since I made over $200 last month.

Goal Met? YES

Goal $300 from ads and I made $345.74 from ads with Mediavine. Which is a be a big improvement from March 2020 when I made $8.39 from AdSense for the whole month.

Email List

I have been slowly growing my email list and this year I want to do better at sending newsletters as well as growing my list. My goal for March was to send 4 email newsletters.

Goal Met? NO

I only sent out 1 email newsletter in March. Big fail for the month, I really need to get better at scheduling the newsletters ahead of time so I actually send them.

Review

March was the best month yet I hit 3 out of 4 of the goals I set for the month. I’m pretty happy about this considering I’m homeschooling and have 3 cute little helpers around all the time. I’m excited for the next month and to see all that I can accomplish.

Goals for April

For April I have a few goals many of them are pretty similar to those I set for March along with a few more.

20,000 Sessions
8 Blog posts published
2 blog posts scheduled (for a future date)
$400 Mediavine Ad income
2 new products

That’s pretty much it, I have other goals for other areas of my business (like Instagram) but we won’t get into those today, maybe I’ll add them later this year.

March 2021 Mediavine Blog Income Report