I started my first blog dedicated to my Passion for Art in June 2017.

Since that time I’ve had ups, downs and a lot of learning from experience.

If I were starting a blog from scratch today, I would’ve achieved these numbers in half or less of that time! That’s all because of experience, hard work and lots of learning.

So if you want to learn from my mistakes and progress faster,

join my Free 10-Day Email Course on How to Start a Blog:

Why Share a Traffic Report?

I think it’s interesting and beneficial to see exactly what numbers one can expect when starting a new blog.

I hope that this traffic report will be:

• Motivational for you
• You will learn from my mistakes and wins
• Will help you achieve these results faster than I have

I hope as you read this report, you will find ways to improve your own blogging strategy.

So, here is how it went…

16 Months of Blogging Progress

The screenshot below is NOT from this blog, it’s from my first blog YourArtPath – a blog dedicated to inspiring and teaching beginner/intermediate artists.

As you can see, it all started out VERY slowly! And that’s pretty normal to be honest, as long as you are seeing consistent growth (even if it’s tiny).

Also, the screenshot is taken from Google Analytics, check out this article if you are wondering how to set it up and what to analyze.

Here is why the growth was so slow at the beginning:

• I had very little content on my site. It takes time to build up your library.
• I had no strategy or idea as to what I’m doing (I wasn’t taking any courses at that point).
• I wasn’t using any extra blogging tools to help me get traffic.
• I didn’t know HOW to get visitors to my blog.
• I wasn’t building an email subscribers list to keep people coming back for more.

All of these things slowed my growth process tremendously. Now I see all of the mistakes I’ve made as a beginner blogger.

The thing is – the first few months are usually slow for those who are starting their first blog.

Lack of knowledge, experience and strategy are to blame in this case.

So, if you want to speed up the process, don’t be scared to invest in learning, experimenting, and tools.

First 12 Months of Blogging Break Down

Goals I Had In The First Month:

• Pick a Passionate Niche;
• Choose a Name and Buy a Domain Adress;
• Find a platform for my blog (I chose a bad one and that caused me a lot of trouble, now I host with and recommend Bluehost);
• Create a web design look (I considered buying a Premium Theme, but now I use a plugin for page-building Elementor Pro);
• Write the few first posts.
• Set up Social Media.

Goals in The Last Few Months:

• Start Collecting Emails with ConvertKit
• Create a few freebies for email incentives
• Improve my Writing Skills
• Come up with a Money-Making Strategy

Related Articles:
– How to Start a Successful Blog: Step-by-Step Guide.
– The Only 10 Plugins You Need on Your WordPress Blog.

Months 1-12 Statistics Overview:

Month #	Articles Published:	Pageviews:
1	7	159
2	8	258
3	5	440
4	2	340
5	3	592
6	7	531
7	4	690
8	5	938
9	4	1,354
10	6	2,066
11	6	3,946
12	4	4,990
Total:	61	16,304

Takeaways:

• I didn’t have a consistent posting schedule, yet Pageviews kept growing consistently almost every month.
• You should publish a lot of articles in the first few months, and then you can post less.
• Quality over quantity in content is super important.
• After 12 months, I had a total of 16,304 pageviews which is less than half of what I get now in one month.

Month 12-14. Big Changes – What Happened?

In just one month I went from 4,990 pageviews to 24,013 pageviews.

It’s a huge jump with almost 4X more traffic! And there was only one thing that changed: I decided to invest in my blog.

I tried getting traffic with Pinterest, but posting manually is SO MUCH WORK, and I wanted to be as productive as possible! So I decided to try an automation tool.

At the time, I wasn’t making enough income blogging to justify big expenses, so I went with a cheaper Pinterest automation software: BoardBooster.

It’s a software that would help me schedule pins to go off automatically to Pinterest. You would schedule images from your website on there and get traffic automatically.

I was a little skeptical at first and didn’t want to pay for traffic. I thought it was silly.

I do all of this work and create this stunning content and now I have to PAY for people to go and get value from it? Dumb.

Not so fast…

Instead of telling you how this investment worked for me, I’ll show you a screenshot:

This is a screenshot from Pinterest Analytics that shows how many monthly viewers my pins were getting from Pinterest.

You can tell that BoardBooster made an insane difference!

Getting BoardBooster helped me go from 40,000 (posting manually) to 470,000 in reach quite rapidly! I literally 10X it.

But, you can’t get BoardBooster anymore. And that’s actually an awesome thing!

Related Article: My 24k followers Pinterest Account Got Suspended: Here is What I did.

Months 14 – 16: Everything Happens for a Reason

I thought I have it all finally figured out, the traffic will be consistent and all is good in the paradise.

Nope.

I received one of the most terrifying emails at the time saying that BoardBooster is closing down.

I was freaking out!

So I started looking for a different tool like this because I realized that Traffic is super important and I can’t get enough of it by just posting manually.

I stumbled upon Tailwind and subscribed to their free trial.

I wasn’t expecting much, and just wanted to retain the same amount of traffic. Here is what actually happened:

That’s right, Tailwind helped me 20X the pins reach!

And what once seemed to be a steep growth, on this chart just looks like a little bump.

And that’s exactly how I went from the 24, 013 pageviews in the month #13 to 47,386 pageviews in the month #16.

All thanks to investing in my blogging biz and getting Tailwind (their trial lets you schedule 100 pins for free!).

The great thing about this is that what I pay for this tool for a year I make back almost instantly even just from having ads on my art blog.

• Note: Want to get the same pin design I used on my art blog? You can grab 10 of them below and edit to fit your brand/content!

Where Else Does the Traffic Come From?

Of course there are other sources of traffic to my art blog. Yet, they seem so little in comparison that I don’t give them much credit for the success I’ve had.

Here is an overview:

As you can see in the 16 months, 61.7% (76,937 sessions) came from Pinterest.com, Plus a few other Pinterest extensions.

There is also 15% of traffic from Google, which is thanks to optimizing my site for SEO and installing YOAST plugin.

That’s about it!

16 Months of Blogging: Traffic Takeaways

#1. It takes time to get Traffic

Blogging is not some get-rich-quick scheme, nor will you become popular overnight. It takes time whether it’s your first or third blog.

#2. You Can Get Traffic Faster

There are ways to affect the speed of growth with knowledge, persistence, skills and tools.

If you learn from people who achieved what you want, and are not afraid to invest in your blog – it will pay off.

#3. Posting More Articles Doesn’t Matter That Much

You can post every day if you want, but that might not have an effect on your traffic!

First of all, quality suffers as you pressure yourself to create more content.

Secondly, you need to make sure you spend as much time promoting your content as you do writing it!

Only then will you be able to grow quickly.

These are just some of my traffic takeaways, but you can also read about the 24 Things I learned after blogging for 2+ years.

Those are the 24 things I wish somebody told me when I was just getting started on my blogging journey.

If you have any tips that you would like to share on how YOU get traffic to your blog, leave a comment below I would love to read them!

And I hope you got some takeaways from this Traffic Report,