Blog update 3/30/18
Closing out March. The year's flying by! Trying to make use of my time efficiently and wisely.
In the past week or so, I've started feeling like things with the blog are clicking, and things are growing at a slow but steady rate. I'm very pleased with how things are going!
I'm going to try updating in specific areas each time I write, for better tracking purposes.
Writing
Writing is honestly still the #1 thing I struggle with. But I have had a perspective shift, I think due to the Elite Blogging Academy community (so glad I joined!).
Before I felt like I *had* to write 3-4 hours per night. And for some reason I would just end up doing nothing really productive. After reading about all the moms who work on their blogs on stolen moments throughout the day, I realized that I need to do the same. So now I'll just tell myself, ok, I'll work for 30 minutes or 1 hour and try to get X done.
It's made me much more productive, and also reduced my stress level around the blog, because I don't feel like such a big obligation weighing down on me. Being more realistic and chunking my time has been such a huge improvement for me.
I am currently working on a new post about how to design and build a website without design skills, and it's going well. Most of the writing is done, actually, and I just need to build the demo site and get all the screenshots in.
Email
I'm still using MailChimp, and I'm thinking of sticking with it for now, since it's free until 2000 subscribers. ConvertKit seems to be universally loved, but it's $30/mth and I kind of want to see if I can just keep MailChimp going.
I'm still figuring out what the heck to email my list about. People say you need to "date" your list, or to treat them as friends. So one area I need to work on is that. I just want to make sure I don't annoy or bore them, and that I give them helpful information.
Medium
Medium changed their algorithm recently to display heavily toward members-only articles and articles from big name companies like Bloomberg and the Atlantic. They've also gotten rid of the "trending" section, and just have a small sidebar with the top 5 articles on Medium.
It's put a huge dent in stats on free articles, specifically freeCodeCamp. I had a previous article that got 44k views, and for my recent absolute beginner's guide article, I thought I could reach toward 100k. But the algorithm changed right before the article was published, and so right now I think I'm hanging around 14k views.
I think I'll need to change with the times, I'm considering writing a members-only article just to see how it does. And the other plus side is that it could bring in some income for me as well.
Instagram
I've posted very consistently on Instagram the past couple weeks, and using the Hootsuite app to schedule posts as well. And I've gotten about 70 new followers in the past week. Instagram is interesting, because I'm not getting much website traffic from it-- but that will change as I get more followers.
And there are income generating opportunities once I get bigger-- I could get sponsored posts / ad posts, and once I hit 10k followers, I'll be able to link directly from my Stories which I could use for affiliate links and other promotions. So I'm working pretty hard right now to try to post every day or so, because the more I post, the more followers I get.
Reddit
I had posted a huuuge text version of my beginner's guide article onto Reddit, but it got banned because of some domains I was linking to (apparently). So I took a step back, started commenting on some programming/webdev subreddits, and then posted a link to the Medium article. It didn't go viral or anything, but it got a decent number of upvotes and some good comments.
I'm trying to invest in Reddit too by leaving a lot of helpful comments, and hopefully I'll build up trust in those subreddits where my links will get more traction.
Promotion
I haven't reached out to my references in the beginner's guide article-- I think that's the next target after I finish the post I'm working on. My hope is that I'll get some backlinks and traffic out of that.
I actually got reached out to by a successful web dev blog called Cloud Living-- they said they would share my article with their social media if I mentioned them on my website. While I wanted them to also give me a backlink, they didn't want to do that. I figured, why not just try it, so I agreed to mention them in my article. It'll be interesting to see if they follow through and if I get any traffic from their social media accounts.
Stats
It's been a good month! In the past 30 days on Google Analytics, I've clocked:
It's really interesting to see that my traffic has peaks when I post/promote an article, and then dips down-- but that the dips are getting bigger and bigger. I guess that means that my traffic is getting more consistent.
For email subscribers after cleaning out the list I'm just under 400 subscribers. Pretty crazy considering I only have like 7 posts.
Monetization
I actually made some money off of Amazon Affiliates, mostly because someone clicked my link and then bought exercise equipment lol. So I got $2. I've been reading about how Amazon's commissions are horribly low, like 1-2%. But hey, I won't turn it down.
Eventually I'd like to create digital products, like templates, long form guides in eBook form, maybe even bundles of some sort.
My long-term project is to create an online school, based off the School of Motion model, where people in the class would be brought through mock website projects. And practice building websites and getting feedback. This would involve a lot of work and maintenance, i.e. not very passive, but I think I would still enjoy helping people train.
Future Plans
My focus for the near future is to be consistent-- in writing, posting on IG, commenting on Facebook and Instagram. I also am trying to be more consistent with my time-- working more efficiently to get more done in less time.
In the past week or so, I've started feeling like things with the blog are clicking, and things are growing at a slow but steady rate. I'm very pleased with how things are going!
I'm going to try updating in specific areas each time I write, for better tracking purposes.
Writing
Writing is honestly still the #1 thing I struggle with. But I have had a perspective shift, I think due to the Elite Blogging Academy community (so glad I joined!).
Before I felt like I *had* to write 3-4 hours per night. And for some reason I would just end up doing nothing really productive. After reading about all the moms who work on their blogs on stolen moments throughout the day, I realized that I need to do the same. So now I'll just tell myself, ok, I'll work for 30 minutes or 1 hour and try to get X done.
It's made me much more productive, and also reduced my stress level around the blog, because I don't feel like such a big obligation weighing down on me. Being more realistic and chunking my time has been such a huge improvement for me.
I am currently working on a new post about how to design and build a website without design skills, and it's going well. Most of the writing is done, actually, and I just need to build the demo site and get all the screenshots in.
I'm still using MailChimp, and I'm thinking of sticking with it for now, since it's free until 2000 subscribers. ConvertKit seems to be universally loved, but it's $30/mth and I kind of want to see if I can just keep MailChimp going.
I'm still figuring out what the heck to email my list about. People say you need to "date" your list, or to treat them as friends. So one area I need to work on is that. I just want to make sure I don't annoy or bore them, and that I give them helpful information.
Medium
Medium changed their algorithm recently to display heavily toward members-only articles and articles from big name companies like Bloomberg and the Atlantic. They've also gotten rid of the "trending" section, and just have a small sidebar with the top 5 articles on Medium.
It's put a huge dent in stats on free articles, specifically freeCodeCamp. I had a previous article that got 44k views, and for my recent absolute beginner's guide article, I thought I could reach toward 100k. But the algorithm changed right before the article was published, and so right now I think I'm hanging around 14k views.
I think I'll need to change with the times, I'm considering writing a members-only article just to see how it does. And the other plus side is that it could bring in some income for me as well.
I've posted very consistently on Instagram the past couple weeks, and using the Hootsuite app to schedule posts as well. And I've gotten about 70 new followers in the past week. Instagram is interesting, because I'm not getting much website traffic from it-- but that will change as I get more followers.
And there are income generating opportunities once I get bigger-- I could get sponsored posts / ad posts, and once I hit 10k followers, I'll be able to link directly from my Stories which I could use for affiliate links and other promotions. So I'm working pretty hard right now to try to post every day or so, because the more I post, the more followers I get.
I had posted a huuuge text version of my beginner's guide article onto Reddit, but it got banned because of some domains I was linking to (apparently). So I took a step back, started commenting on some programming/webdev subreddits, and then posted a link to the Medium article. It didn't go viral or anything, but it got a decent number of upvotes and some good comments.
I'm trying to invest in Reddit too by leaving a lot of helpful comments, and hopefully I'll build up trust in those subreddits where my links will get more traction.
Promotion
I haven't reached out to my references in the beginner's guide article-- I think that's the next target after I finish the post I'm working on. My hope is that I'll get some backlinks and traffic out of that.
I actually got reached out to by a successful web dev blog called Cloud Living-- they said they would share my article with their social media if I mentioned them on my website. While I wanted them to also give me a backlink, they didn't want to do that. I figured, why not just try it, so I agreed to mention them in my article. It'll be interesting to see if they follow through and if I get any traffic from their social media accounts.
Stats
It's been a good month! In the past 30 days on Google Analytics, I've clocked:
- 2800 sessions
- 2200 users
- 4200 pageviews (I think this is double what I had last month).
It's really interesting to see that my traffic has peaks when I post/promote an article, and then dips down-- but that the dips are getting bigger and bigger. I guess that means that my traffic is getting more consistent.
For email subscribers after cleaning out the list I'm just under 400 subscribers. Pretty crazy considering I only have like 7 posts.
Monetization
I actually made some money off of Amazon Affiliates, mostly because someone clicked my link and then bought exercise equipment lol. So I got $2. I've been reading about how Amazon's commissions are horribly low, like 1-2%. But hey, I won't turn it down.
Eventually I'd like to create digital products, like templates, long form guides in eBook form, maybe even bundles of some sort.
My long-term project is to create an online school, based off the School of Motion model, where people in the class would be brought through mock website projects. And practice building websites and getting feedback. This would involve a lot of work and maintenance, i.e. not very passive, but I think I would still enjoy helping people train.
Future Plans
My focus for the near future is to be consistent-- in writing, posting on IG, commenting on Facebook and Instagram. I also am trying to be more consistent with my time-- working more efficiently to get more done in less time.
