How I got 8000 page views my first month blogging

Learn how I got 8000 page views my first month blogging. If I could do it so can you.

This post may contain affiliate links.  Please read my disclosure for more information!

I found out what a blog is around 4 years ago when I stumbled upon one of Michelle’s income reports from Making Sense Of Cents. I could not believe my eyes how much she was making a month. Four years later she makes on average 100K a month. Yes, you read that right that amount is per month.

I tried my luck at blogging back then but without success. I posted probably 5 posts in 5 months and did nothing else. This time around I decided it’s time to try it again and make it work. 

As I’m writing this my blog is one and a half months old and I am very pleased with what I achieved so far.

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How do my page views compare to others?

To get an idea of how my page views compared to other blogs I asked in one of the Facebook groups how many page views other members had in their first month blogging. Most of them had less than 200 page views, there were some that had around a 1000 and a couple that had more than 10K. 

I got 8000 page views, 8505 to be exact in my first month blogging and I am actually shocked to see that I did really good. And I got these page views during the famous summer slump. Happy dance here. I never in a  million years thought that I would reach so many page views in my first month.

Before I asked in the group how others did in their first month blogging I had a totally different plan for this post. I had a lot of people asking me how I managed to get so many page view so fast and I decided to completely change it. 

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Before I tell you how I made this happen I just want to clarify a few things:

• Up until 4 years ago, I had no idea what blogging is and I thought all the articles were written by journalists
• I don’t really like social media. I only had a Facebook account for my family and friends from back home
• English is not my first language (I think you already noticed my accent) so writing takes me longer
• I was never great at writing and it’s never been one of my passions
• I’m not a tech savvy but I learn fast
• My time for blogging is very limited. I have a full-time job and 2 little ones at home. 

No matter where you are in your blogging journey you can also make this happen. It’s not going to happen overnight and it’s going to involve a lot of hard work and commitment. 

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Click here and learn how to start your own successful blog!

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Let’s get you 8000 page views in your first month blogging

1.Invest time in research and learning

 At first glance, blogging is all about writing, but there is so much more than just putting words on  “paper”.  You need to make time to learn as much as you can about blogging for beginners.

I started working on this blog about 7 months ago. There was a lot of research and learning involved. I read a lot of blogging articles from successful bloggers and I did my best to implement what I learned. It’s not enough to read, you also have to do a lot of hard work.  

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2. Have a lot of content

You need to have at least 10 to 15 blog posts on your blog before you launch your blog. The more you have the better. I had 10 blog posts when I launched my blog and I posted another 5 during the month.

During this 7 months, I wrote quite a few blog posts, and I outlined and researched probably more than a hundred. Now I decide on what I want to post next and I improve or finish the post, decide what pictures to use, make pins and try my best at SEO.

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3. Write content that people want to read

You need to figure out what is going to make people visit your blog. If you’re wondering how in the world would you know what people want to read, let me tell you it’s not that hard. It takes time, but it’s not that complicated.

If you have your niche all figured out, find a few successful bloggers in your niche and spy on them. What are they writing about, what kind of posts they write? Do they write list posts, how to’s, or maybe a lot of round-ups?  I can tell you for sure that round-up do really well. 

Also while you’re at it take note of what they are writing about. 

No matter the niche you’re in you need to always make sure your content is going to be valuable and solve your reader’s problem.  

Find more ideas for blog posts

To drive traffic to your blog you need to write about stuff that people actually want to read about. Meaning you need to find what their problems are and offer them the best solutions. 

Another way I use to come up with ideas on what to write about is using BuzzSumo.com. 

Type in the search bar the URL of the blog you want to spy on and it gives you the top 5 performing blog posts.  You can do for free only 5 searches per day but that is more than enough. By doing this you get 25 post ideas per day. I used in this example lifehacker.com. You can see how many times the articles were shared on each social media platform.

I use this as a way to get ideas for my blog posts.  So please only use the topic as your idea and DO NOT copy anyone else’s work. 

Once I have an idea from BuzzSumo.com I read the article from the blog I spied on and then I search for other articles on the same topic. After I go through 3-4 articles I try to come up with ideas on how to write something better. I think what else I would’ve liked to find in that article. Do I have any questions about the topic that I didn’t find in the article and it would be useful for all the readers? I check the comment section in the articles I read to see if anyone had questions about the topic that I can answer in my own post.

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4. Incorporate SEO into your blog posts

While learning and doing research for my blog I realized the importance of SEO. For those who don’t know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. To simplify the heck out of it, you use specific words or phrases and tactics in your articles and that’s how search engines like Google find your blog when people type in those specific words.

I decided to SEO my blog posts from the start. Ok, let me rephrase that. I decided to do my best with what I learned so far. 

Why SEO?

While social media traffic is awesome, especially when you start out you also need to make sure that you have a lot of organic traffic (Google traffic). It takes time to build your Google traffic that’s why the sooner you start SEO the better.

I’ll give you a simple example of why it’s so important to SEO your blog. Today when I woke up and checked my analytics I noticed that the traffic was very low compared to yesterday. I didn’t think too much of it because most of my traffic comes from US and people were just waking up. Two hours later my page view numbers were still the same. I usually get a few page views per hour.

Around noon same story, zero page views since I last checked. During my lunch break, I decided to check out some Facebook groups and see if anything is happening with Pinterest traffic. As soon as I opened the first group page I was flooded with posts about people having their website marked as spam on Pinterest and none of their pins were working. And guess what? Mine was too. It was a glitch on their side and it got solved but a lot of established bloggers lost a lot of traffic and of course money.

When you have your traffic mainly coming from Google you don’t have to worry about social media glitches.  Do your best and learn as much as you can about SEO, but don’t let this stop you from writing and posting consistently. You can always go back and improve your blog posts. 

Where to start with SEO

You don’t need to invest in SEO courses when you start your blog, there are a lot of free resources you can use. My go-to for learning SEO are nailpatel.com and backlinko.com

Twins Mommy is another blog I love to read and Elna has some great tips on how to rank on the first Google page.

My blog is just one and a half months old but I can find most of my blog posts in the first 2 Google pages when I search for my keyword. They don’t drive a lot of traffic right now because the keywords are not searched that often. Still, this gives me confidence that whatever I did for SEO on those posts works.

I also try to SEO the pictures I use in my blog posts and this also seems to work. I find my pictures on the first Google page. You know how Google shows you a few pictures when you search for something. That’s where my pictures show up. I know it’s not the same thing as having your article on the first page but I click on those pictures a lot when I search for something. 

Also, they show at the top of the page when you search in images.

Are this images going to bring me tons of traffic? I don’t know, but I’m very proud of myself and I had to show you. 

Long form content

Make sure your content is long and filled with helpful details. It seems that Google likes better this type of content.

The longer your content is the more your readers will stay on your blog. I’m not talking about writing a book long type of content. If you have that kind of content break it down into multiple posts and link them to each other (aka backlink). Informative posts are extremely helpful but information overload is not good either. 

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5. Use Pinterest to drive traffic

Pinterest is amazing at driving traffic to your blog especially when you start out. 

I started a brand new business account when I decided to start a blog. At the time I had my blog live and ready for launching my Pinterest account was 7 months old. I did this for a couple of reasons. One was to have an active account when I launched my blog and second to create a habit. I’m not a person that uses social media a lot so to be active on Pinterest on a daily basis had to become a habit. I pined a LOT during these months. When I say a lot I mean my thumbs hurt from so much pinning and getting “burn out” kind of pinning if that’s even possible.  

I was only pinning to my own boards (I think I had around 60 ) and zero group boards. Even now I’m only part of 13 group boards. With the way everything goes with group boards right now I don’t know if it’s worth spending my limited time to find and apply to more group boards.

Use Tailwind to automate your Pinterest strategy

A month before I launched my blog I started using Tailwind. I wanted to test it and see if Tailwind really increases your Pinterest page views or is all because of the board groups all the bigger bloggers were in. 

If you want to see how my test went check out my post Is Tailwind Really Skyrocketing your Traffic?

I know Pinterest page views are not important, but the more page views you have on Pinterest the more chances people will see your own pins and more opportunities to click on them. And that’s what is the most important, get your pins in front of as many people you can so they click through to your blog. 

After I launched my blog I used Tailwind to schedule my pins to my own boards first and then slowly to the 6 group boards I was part of at that point. 

In Tailwind, you can use Tribes, and these are similar to the Pinterest group boards. You can be part of 5 tribes for free and you also get 30 pin submissions per month for free. 

I started using the Tribes probably 3 weeks after I launched my blog. 

Take advantage of your free Tailwind trial and get 100 pins for free by signing up through this link!

Pin your own content

I created 3 pins for all my blog posts for my launch. Since then I created more, I have 5 pins for most of my posts and I’ll keep creating new ones. I use Canva the free version, for now, to create my pins. 

On top of the fact that you have to create awesome pins that grab the eyes of the people spending their time on Pinterest, you need to make sure you SEO your pins and your Pinterest account. 

What do I mean by that?

You need to have a Pinterest account description in which you describe what topics /categories you pin. These will also be your blog categories. 

I will be honest with you, I still haven’t done it, but experts say it helps. I will be updating my Pinterest account now that I joined the Billionaire Blog Club.  Even thou this was my early birthday gift I steel want to make that money back and soon. 

Pinterest account 

Make sure all your boards are in the correct categories. When you create a new board the “other” category is automatically assigned to it. Make sure you assign the correct category in the edit section. While you’re in the board click on the pen icon and you’ll find the category and board description in the edit pop up. 

Board description is also very important, so make sure you use as many keywords in it. But make sure you don’t use only keywords and you make actual sentences with your keywords. Another moment of honesty. I still have a few boards without description.

Your pins need to have a very good description to help Pinterest understand what your pins are about. Carly from Mommy on Purpose has an amazing blog post about pin descriptions. You’ll find in her post everything you need to know about how to write pin descriptions.

Pinterest Strategy

As for a Pinterest strategy, I honestly don’t have one yet. I used a lot of the tips Carly wrote about in her e-book Pineterting Strategies. At this moment I couldn’t use her entire strategy because I need my pins to be around for a while and then I can apply it. It’s a great e-book filled with super useful information and it’s only $32 dollars.  She reached 200K page views on her blog by pinning only manually. If you want to know how much she makes per month on her mommy niche, subscribe to her email list. You’ll also get extremely helpful information from her emails.  

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6. Spy on successful bloggers

I have a few successful bloggers that I like to spy on and I’ve learned a lot by watching closely what they do. 

Try to figure out things they do but don’t write about in their blog posts.

If you think you won’t be able to figure out anything form doing this. I’m going to tell give you an example.

Remember Carly? I started following her on Pinterest way before I launched my blog. I used to pin a lot of her pins and I still do.

Paying close attention to my Pinterest notifications I was able to figure out one or two of her strategies. At the moment I noticed these things I didn’t have her e-book. When I read her e-book Pinteresting Strategies I found those tips in there.  And because I bought her book I’m not able to tell you what exactly I figured out because of copyright.

Trust me! It pays off to pay attention to what others do, especially if you are just starting out and your budget doesn’t allow you to invest in courses.

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8. Other Social Media

Up to my one month mark, I posted 3 times on my Facebook page and started joining Facebook Groups after the one month mark.

I’m not active on any other Social Media at this point. 

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9. Make money

During this first month, I got accepted by Google AdSense and had ads on my blog for 2 weeks. I made around $5 in those 2 weeks.  At the 1 month mark of having adds on my blog, that being tomorrow actually, I’m making that much a day. I made $7,64 today and is not even lunch. I know it’s not a ton of money but this is a confirmation for me that I can make it work.

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10.Conclusion

 I want to underline what I think contributed to my small success:

• Invest time in learning
• Write what people want to read
• Use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog from the first month.  If you have an older personal account, transform that into a business account and use it for your blog. The older your Pinterest account the better. If you don’t have one and need to start a new one start it as soon as possible and start pinning on a regular basis.   I’m saying this because I’ve seen that other bloggers that are just starting out and have brand new Pinterest accounts don’t get as much traffic from the beginning. 
• Awesome pins and great pin descriptions
• Focus on SEO from the beginning. It might not bring you traffic at the beginning but it will in long term.

Are you planning on starting your own blog? Click here to learn how to do it. If you are in your first month blogging and have questions let me know in the comments below.