State of the Blog Address – January 2015

UntitledJanuary was an interesting month.  I’ve read that it is a slow month for bloggers, but this blog definitely saw a boom!  I’ll get into that in a second.  Let’s talk goals first.

January’s Goals

Goal #1

Increase social media presence/followers

  • Pinterest – 525 Followers – Did not achieve – 521
  • Twitter – 60 Followers – Achieved!  60 total
  • Bloglovin & WordPress – 30 Followers – Met and exceeded, 31!

Goal #2

Network with other bloggers – 5 comments/week and research Blog groups.  Implement a method of tracking this.  Nope.  Didn’t do it.  Thought about it a few times.  Never did it.  Dang.

Goal #3

Increase page views – December – 5,542 – Goal for January – 6,000 – Kicked this goals butt!  8,048 page views in January.  And I’m going to tell you exactly how I did it.  Keep reading.

Goal #4

Stick to the posting schedule.  At least a little! – I’m going with achieved.  I was pretty consistent last month.

Goal #5

Do more research and pre-planning for posts.  – Gotta love these goals that aren’t technically quantifiable.  Yes, sure, I did this.

Goal #6

Photo shoot practice 2x per month.  When I wrote this, I meant in addition to when I shoot pics for the blog, so, no, I did not achieve this, however, I did you use my light kit on most of my photos and found a DRAMATIC difference in my pictures which basically directly led to more page views.

So, for February (yes, I know we are 7 days in already.  I have been goal-less for 7 days!):

Goal #1

Increase social media presence/followers

  • Pinterest – 550 Followers –  Lofty goal in  short month!  Due 2/28
  • Twitter – 70 Followers – Due 2/28
  • Bloglovin & WordPress – 34 Followers – Due 2/28

Goal #2

Hold steady with page views.  This month is three days shorter and while I am close to the same average page views, I’ll be happy if I can stay around 8k page views this month.

Goal #3

Work again on the look of the blog.  I think the header picture needs an update.  Same pic, just crisper.

Goal #4

Get back to more house posts.  I love craft stuff, but I don’t want to leave the home decor in the dust.

Goal #5

Find and start a free photography tutorial.  (I’m cheating a little on this because I have already found one.  I just haven’t started it!)

Alright, I promised to tell you how I increased my page views by by 45%.  I had three projects accepted on Craftgawker and 1 accepted on Dwellinggawker.   Guess how many page views I had referred from those two sites?  1,142.  Crazy, right?

 

How I Increased My Page Views

So, what are these gawker sites, you ask?  Well hop on over and take a look!  But don’t forget to come back, okay?

Craftgawker

Dwellinggawker

Back?  Is it, like, two hours later because you got sucked into the pages and pages of gorgeous crafts and smartly decorated rooms?  I know.  It’s insane.

So, how did this baby blogger, poor photographer get on a site that includes the likes of A Beautiful Mess?  (*WARNING!* Click that link only if you have another 2 hours to get lost in a beautiful craft and smartly decorated room hole).  It was easy, except not at all easy.  I submitted a picture and a couple of words about that picture that linked to my post. The submission process is incredibly easy.  I had beginners luck on my first submission and it was accepted on the first try.  Second one, same thing. Third and fourth, not so much.  I submitted pics that were rejected the first time on the third and fourth projects.  But, what is great about the Gawker submission process is that they give you very concise criticism of your photo and/or post so that you can fix the issue and then re-submit.  I ended up editing and re-submitting my last submission 3 times before it was accepted.  It’s totally worth the effort.  

And finally for this very wordy post, the dolla bills:

Adsense:  $23.40 – increase of $12.66 from previous month – Total for the year:  $23.40

PayU2Blog – $5.00 (I missed two quick turnaround assignments) – decrease of $15.00 from previous month – Total for year:  $5.00

Ok, signing off.  This was super long.

Interested in more information about blogging? Check out these:

Blog Income Report – Was Your February as Bad as Mine?

11 Questions with Billionaire Blog Club Founder, Paul Scrivens

Blog Income Report: I Earned $575 in my 57th Month of Blogging

 

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