Grand Little Place

I didn’t post a March blog progress report because I let my feelings get the better of myself and was feeling a bit down about my overall progress.  But here I am back with a blog update.  Friends, this is not the best post I’ve ever written!  Overall I haven’t been as active with the blog as I want to be.  When all of my back issues started happening in February it ran into a season of busyness and then feeling disappointed and not sure what to do next.

I’ve blogged for my photography business and as a hobby long enough to know what doesn’t work.  When I started to feel like I wasn’t picking up steam I started wondering about what I could do differently.  I’ve been pulling away from a few different groups that I was trying to connect in that I was putting more into than I was getting back.  I’ve also begun researching some different training and courses that I can invest in.

Let’s get into the blog numbers.  These will be for March-April.  To read the February report click here.

• Blog Posts:  9 (vs 6 in February)
  • Clearly I dropped the ball here big time.  I had someone reach out to me about joining a blogging challenge.  I was reluctant but decided to give it a go.  In the end I really wished I hadn’t because the content, tho something I wanted to blog about eventually, ended up feeling like a chore to complete.  The content kind of sucked me dry and put me in a place I didn’t love.
• Pageviews:  588 (vs February 272)
  • Overall page views are up, with an average of 294 each month.  It’s pretty amazing considering the severe lack of content I’ve create or put out there.  I believe that this is mostly from my Pinterest traffic.
• Pinterest:  February 448 (vs February 391)
  • I am still confused by Pinterest and Board Booster.  I did a little bit of training for Board Booster and went ahead and set up looping and a did some scheduled pins.  Overall I’m not in love with BB but for lack of anything else have continued with it.  Approximatly 58% of my overall traffic in March & April came from Pinterest and I attribute that to the pins I’ve got set up on Board Booster.
• Instagram: 386  (vs February 206)
  • I did do quite a bit of Instagram engagement in March and some in April to help grow the following.  I’ve backed off some and have still seen a little bit of growth.  I’m a little unsure if I should continue to focus here or not.
• Facebook: 76 (vs February 72)
  • I went up 4 likes on the Facebook page.  I put very little into the facebook page and add very little content there so I’m 100% fine with whatever number it ends up being.
• Email Subscribers: 14 (vs February 11 )
  • Since I haven’t gotten my freebie set up yet I haven’t been pushing anyone towards the email list yet.  I gained 3 new subscribers this month, which is great because they are all people I don’t know

Money Talk:

Finances are still in the red but that’s still to be expected.  None of the numbers below are impressive but I still believe that they show that there is potential.

• Amazon Affiliate:  $0
  • I haven’t done much with Amazon yet.  I’ve added a few misc links but so far have preferred the ease of the widgets I can create on Shop Style Collective.  I need to utilize it more or they will revoke my account.  Yikes.
• Shop Style Collective: $0.30 (represents 6 sales)
  • I love the ease of use of their site and the widgets make great additions to my post.  Will continue to utilize this heavily in the future.
• Google Ad Sense:  $3.90 (vs .94 February)
  • When I joined the March blogging challenge I initially received a lot of hits to my website.  My ad sense account spiked overnight!  (Isn’t it funny how such a small amount of money feels like a spike when you’re talking about blog revenue?!  haha)

April Blogging Goals:

• Blog at least one time a week.  Ideally I’d be posting 2-3x a week but for now I want to be realistic and make sure I can at minimum create new content one time a week.
• Invest in Pinterest Training
• Release Email Freebie
  • I currently have two workbooks that are close to being released.  I need to buckle down and get something finished!

Thanks for hanging with me friends!