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So here is my second Income and Traffic Report at Soukaina Collections, as part of my new “Crochet Blogging Tips” section on the blog.

I’m not making thousands per month yet, not even hundreds, but I’m super happy with what happened this month. That was a very exciting month for me, read on to see what I mean…

Note: This post contains affiliate links, if you make a purchase through one of the links below, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

If it’s your first time on the blog, I started crocheting and selling my finished items in the real world two years ago (you can learn more on my About page), and on Feb 2019, my father advised me to start a blog and create my own pattern.

I then registered my domain (after a looong brainstorming session that lasted several days, but I think it was worth it). I then learned how to create a blog with WordPress, and how to drive traffic to my blog with social media and SEO.

This is how my brand Soukaina Collections was born.

Today (nine months later), I managed to drive a few thousand visitors to my blog and I’m really happy.

Income reports are well known in the blogosphere, and I’m doing this for several reasons.

First, that was suggested by my father, and he knows what he is doing when it comes to market an online business.

Secondly, the purpose of these reports is to teach my readers, customers, and friends what I actually do to market my crochet handmade business online.

Lastly, I strongly believe that putting my results and progress online will motivate me even more because I actually have to put some real numbers for you to see. Plus it may increase traffic to the blog a little bit as well (I’m wondering if people are still reading those income reports? Will see…)

Ok, so I plan to publish a new income report here every month for at least 6 months.

What can you expect to see here?

My results, failures, and progress.

Insights, experiments, and strategies that may help you to create or grow your own crochet, knitting or craft DIY Handmade business.

Before you read further, I think you’d want to know how I’m going to start making some money.

I plan to make money on my blog with affiliate marketing (Amazon and other affiliates), Ads (I may try Adsense, or I may just wait until I reach 25,000 sessions and apply with Mediavine), and as you probably guessed: selling patterns on Etsy, Ravelry, Lovecrafts and anywhere I can.

I will add MailerLite email software soon because email marketing is really, really important.

So this is my plan.

Oh, and I want to stress out that there is no “one size fits all” way of marketing your online business. You can choose to go with paid traffic, or you can decide to go the “free” (it’s not really free because your time has a cost) route, with SEO and Social media. You can decide to focus on selling paid patterns or giving them from free and make money from advertising and affiliate marketing or do a mix of both.

I am still selling my finished handmade items offline, however, I see it as a separate business, so I won’t put offline sales in these reports. I’ll talk about the income I make from the blog.

Here’s what you want to see:

1) Money:

Income: $31.19 (Last Month: $0!)

• Etsy Shop : $24.30
• Amazon (affiliate): $6.89

Expenses:

• Etsy Seller Fees: $5.56
• Siteground Hosting: Free

Profit: $25.63 (Last Month: -$1.50)

2) Traffic:

Important Growth Metrics ():

Traffic:

1,932 Visits
2,567 Sessions
3,901 Pageviews
(Last Month: 801 Visits & 1,929 Pageviews)

Traffic for each main source:

• Google: 504 (Last Month: 365)
• All Free Crochet: 852 (Last Month: 294)
• Ravelry: 297(Last Month: 18)
• Facebook: 167 (Last Month: 226)
• Pinterest: 121 (Last Month: 106)
• Instagram: 2 (Last Month: 0)
• Twitter: 1 (Last Month: 2)
• Other: 618 (Last Month: 10)
• Youtube: 5

My Comments:

1) Money:

I’ve made my first sale on Etsy!

And I’ve made my first sale on Amazon!

What a month!

As you can see, this month is way better than the previous one. And what’s really important for me now is that now I know that people love my designs. This is the most important thing for Soukaina Collections right now…

Etsy Shop: I have now fourteen items in my Etsy shop, I and also worked on Etsy SEO, I registered with the free version of Erank.com, and so far, I’m pretty happy with it. I can find the title and tags I need in minutes. I’m not really sure my Etsy traffic increased yet, but it’s a real time saver.

I’ve had a couple of sales in the shop and also created a new coupon (Buy 2 Get 2 Free). Most of the money I’ve made was from running sales. They seem to work well, so I’ll stick to it, especially at this time of the year.

Amazon: I didn’t do anything special to promote my affiliate links. All I do is adding my affiliate links in the blog post when I tell my readers what materials they’ll need to crochet the pattern. As an example, when I tell my readers that they need a hook, I just add the affiliate link with an automatically generated picture of the hook. When they click on the link, they’ll go to Amazon and if they buy, I’ll make an affiliate commission (at no extra cost for the buyer).

2) Traffic:

I almost doubled my traffic this month. Wow. The reason is that now I have eighteen blog posts, so Google is sending me some love. Plus the more I post the more I can promote on Social media, especially Facebook and Pinterest.

All free crochet also sent me a lot of traffic. People like my crochet baby dress pattern, my crochet hats and my new ear warmer. I need to create more dresses and even some sets. I believe traffic will double when I do that.

What’s working great at the moment is Facebook, they bring me most of my social traffic as you can see.

Ravelry gave me some more love as well this month. Some people tried my patterns, and many have some of my designs in their queue. No sales from Ravelry though.

Pinterest: I got steady traffic for them. I’ve been reading about Pinterest, and experts like the girl at Simple Pin Media say that Pinterest is rather a long term strategy. Sure, in 2015-17, all you needed to do was to create a few pins, pin fifty times a day. Then you’d join a couple of group boards and pin like crazy and in just two months, you could see thousands of visitors to your blog or shop. Unfortunately, it’s not the case anymore because (almost) every online marketers/shop owners are on Pinterest. So to stand up, you need a solid strategy. The most important thing here is: Pinning consistently and take beautiful pictures. Then, with the right strategy (and perhaps a few promoted pins), I may see the thousands of visits (and sales) per month. I don’t have that many images of my own to pin, so I need to create more designs. I need to up my game a little bit here.

I’ve got five visits from Youtube, which is weird cause I’m not on Youtube and didn’t post a single video there…

3) Goals:

So what I did with my goals…

• Increase overall traffic: increased
• Publish 10 new blog posts: I only posted five (school started, etc.)
• Reach 1500 sessions: Yay, I did!
• Make my first dollar: Yup!
• Make my first affiliate commission: I did it!
• Get an email marketing automation software: hmm, I’m super busy, and though I know it’s a must…I may do it this month if I find some time.

I’ve been keeping myself busy, and I think that November will be even crazier than October.

My main goal for November: Focus on the brand & start creating a product line in my niche.

Save it to Pinterest!

Ok, I must go now. I need to plan my strategy for this month!

Thank you for reading.

If you have any questions or comments, leave me a comment below.