The December Report (Personal & Blogging Goals & Stats)
It’s my favorite time of the year (and the most wonderful time of the year, too, in my opinion.) I really can’t believe it’s the last month of the year, but at the same time, I’m excited it’s here! I wish time would slow down just a tiny bit so that I can enjoy my Christmas tree for as long as possible.
November was an exceptionally crazy month with the holidays and the people who live below me (if you get the Hey There, Monday newsletter, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.) It started off a little rough but it ended with family, food, golden snuggles, and some exciting future projects in the works, so I’m stoked about what’s to come!
I’m going to change the format up for these kinds of posts for the next couple months, so let me know if you like them or not!
November Goals Recap –
Work through Materials from the Ultimate Bundles Genius Blogger’s Toolkit – I purchased this huge toolkit of materials that only goes on sale once a year and have been slowly (but surely) working my way through the courses and eBooks. I have about 1/2 of the eBooks read and 2 courses done and have been learning a TON about things I can change or improve to continue to find success here. I’m really excited to slowly implement those things here and for the changes to come.
Conduct Reader Survey – Done! I launched a reader survey a few weeks ago and got some amazing feedback. It was really encouraging and refreshing to get some opinions from the people who frequent this space and helped me brainstorm new ideas and content to bring here for the new year. So, THANK YOU for taking the time to take it!
Plan out Editorial Calendar for the Rest of the Year – Done and done! I’ve got all my content planned out for the rest of the year and into the first week of the New Year! I’m really excited about the projects and ideas that I came up with and hope that you all find them helpful and enjoyable, too!
Consistently post 3X a week – I did pretty well on this for the first half of the month and then it was Thanksgiving and I decided to unplug from pretty much everything to enjoy my time with my family. I’m actually really proud of myself for doing that and feel more inspired and motivated to end this year strong!
Send out weekly email newsletter – I started doing this two weeks ago and am going on 2 weeks straight, so I’d consider that a minor success! It’s been really awesome to be able to open up about some more personal things through that email and I SO appreciate those of you who actually email me back! If you want to be on the Hey There, Sunday (sometimes Monday) newsletter, you can sign up here:
Personal – Get into a morning routine – While I definitely got better about getting up every morning and getting to work faster, I still don’t have a set routine down.
Personal – Continue to eat healthy and lose 5 pounds – Well I don’t know what I was thinking giving myself this goal during the month of Thanksgiving! Let’s just leave it at the fact that I ate a lot of pie. A lot. And I’m not sorry.
December Blogging Goals & Stats (and Income) Report:
I figured I would start sharing this here as a way to be transparent with my audience AND as an encouragement to other bloggers looking to grow their blogs. This is in NO WAY to brag, but to share my successes with those who have helped me find them and to hopefully show other bloggers that it IS possible to make blogging profitable!
Blogging Stats (From the month of November):
Pageviews – 7,313 (while this is a lot lower than where I was at the beginning of the year (25,000) this is a pretty good increase compared to the two months before when I was on the blog struggle train. So, I’m taking this as a good sign that things are going to start picking up again as I continue to produce good content and stay consistent!)
Instagram – 13,100 (an increase of 1,200!) My Instagram strategies have been really paying off in terms of gaining followers. I now need to focus on increasing engagement and posting more consistently!
Pinterest – 3,200 (an increase of 400!) I’ve been really focusing on my Pinterest game the last two-three weeks and have seen a great increase in followers AND referrals! I know that Pinterest just re-did the algorithm and people are seeing some negative effects, but it’s still working for me, so I’m going to just keep doing what I’m doing!
Twitter – 1,870 (an increase of 70) Twitter is my least favorite platform, but I would like to get to 2,000 followers before the end of the year because I like even numbers, haha!
Facebook – 1,295 (an increase of 114) I really haven’t been trying that hard to grow my FB page because the FB algorithim makes me feel like it’s not worth it. However, I did put a little extra effort this last week to try to get over 1200 and that worked really well! I just need 5 more to hit 1300, so if you would do me a huge favor and go to the HTC FB page and like it, that would be SO cool of you!
Income Report
Affiliate Links – $10.00 This is the first month I’ve made ANYTHING over a dollar from affiliate links, so that was cool to see!
Sponsored Content – $400.00
Total – $410.00 – Obviously not my best month compared to others, but it was a good month and helps me keep everything afloat and running here in blog land
Looking to monetize your blog with sponsored posts? Check out my FREE eBook to landing posts with Social Fabric, my favorite blogging network for Sponsored Posts!
December Goals – Blogging:
Like I mentioned above, I’ve been pouring through a lot of materials and coming up with some new ideas/strategies to grow and expand my blog. I’m really excited about the opportunities these changes and ideas will bring, but I also don’t want to get overwhelmed by all my ideas and give up because I gave myself too much work! So, December is going to be all about getting my blog in tip-top shape. That means:
Re-doing old Pinterest Images – I mentioned it many times before, but I had a lot of I’ve already started this and have done about 10 posts so far! I have a list of about 50 posts that I want to re-do the images for, so I’m hoping that if I try to do 2-3 a day, I’ll get them all done by the end of the month.
P.S. – Since I’m re-doing these images, I’m trying to get them circulated out on Pinterest. I would be SO grateful if you hoped on over to the Best of HTC Board and pinned anything that speaks to you. THANK YOU!
PINS BEFORE:
PINS AFTER:
FURTHER READING: 7 Pinterest Tips from a Pinterest Ambassador
Clean up Site-Layout – I want to do a few things on the backend to get the front end of my site working as well as possible. This means re-doing my “about-me/start here” pages, adding my most popular posts on the sidebar and re-organizing my categories and menus.
Create Blogging Business Plan & Social Media Plan for New Year – I feel like I haven’t ever sat down and really hashed out a plan or goals for my blog and I would love to start the new year right with a business plan and social media plan to keep me on track.
December Goals – Personal
Morning Routine – I’m putting this back on my list because I know that I can do better at achieving this goal than I did last month. I want to write it all down and stick to it for a few weeks and see how it all works out!
Do all the Christmas Stuff – I’ll be sharing a more thorough post of all the Christmas date-nights and activities we have planned here sometime next week, but I’m really excited about taking the time to just embrace the season and to live it as vibrantly as possible!
(p.s. I did a Christmas Decorations tour of my little apartment last night on Snapchat! Make sure you are following me there!)
Find confidence in Myself – I’m not sure how to really measure this goal, but this is definitely something I want to work on. I was really struggling with believing in myself and my abilities and skills for the last couple of months, and it was really bringing me down. I caught myself thinking really awful things about my capabilities and was just losing confidence in what I could achieve by the day. I’ve been trying to turn this around by changing my mindset and pushing myself out of my comfort zone with a few upcoming projects, so hopefully that will help me! Plus, I hopefully have a really big change in the works in regards to life in general that I think will really help me, so fingers crossed!
Pheeeew, this has been a long report, but I really enjoyed putting it together and being so open with you all. Here’s to the last month of 2016 and making it the best we can!
Let me know what your goals are for the month and if you have any questions from the blog stat portion of this report!
