Today, I am doing a little blog update from the beginning of year until now. I’ll go into detail about my process and how it’s changed, my average monthly statistics, and my goals for the rest of the year.
My Process, and How it’s Changed
At the beginning of the year, I had focused on completing the Zero To Hero challenge, trying to find my voice and my niche. I wanted this blog to document my journey through the challenges of opening a shop, and with a little about my likes and my personal life sprinkled in to make this more about myself. I also kept my flip thru videos of my planner(s) and my Chatty Crochet With Me videos, with some other videos here and there to keep it interesting. It was a lot of notebook videos, which is one of my bigger interests.
Some of my likes that I’ve talked about have been my pens, movie reviews (that include heavy spoilers), and my alcoholic drinking tastes. On the more personal end, I’ve also posted about my bad month in March, and my fears with opening a store.
I’ve also pretty consistently put up Freebies every week (there are 22 currently), which were either printable journaling cards or printable sticky note templates to use in your journals. Some journaling cards were a more serious look into your personal past, like the Memory Journaling cards, which were designed to think about someone you’ve lost, but a lot of the cards were more fun categorizing journaling cards, like the Tea Tasting journaling cards. The sticky notes were mostly things to help you keep track of things in your life, like the generic Sticky Note Weekly Habit Tracker or the Sticky Note Time Blocking Planner, both of which I use on a weekly basis.
However, putting out that much content out was not sustainable for my routine. I was doing one video and one blog post a week, plus a freebie, and I also included the My Recencies list back into my weekly routine (though it has been late, as usual). That’s four posts a week, and it was very exhausting. I couldn’t get a week or two weeks ahead like I was planning, and I wasn’t really doing anything else in my free time, so I had to change it up.
Last month, I implemented a routine that was much more manageable, it was three posts every two weeks, which included one or two videos, depending on the content of the week. I only took out two posts a month, but it felt much more manageable for my routine. Starting this month as well, I’m only doing one freebie a month, coming out in the second Saturday of the month.
Blog and Youtube Statistics
Now, the blog stats. I honestly try not to go through the stats too much, on the dashboard, I keep it hidden most of the time, unless it’s the end of the month.
I haven’t gotten any new followers on my blog or my mailing list, both of which just have me as the subscriber (ha!). I therefore have not written for my newsletter in several months, the last one being April’s. I don’t have any products ready, so I’m not too worried about this at the moment, plus I didn’t make or have time to do a newsletter, but hopefully with the extra time now without the posts, I hope to actually work on my store, and work on the newsletter as well.
On the blog, the views per month are averaging about 86 views per month. Facebook is (irritatingly) my main referrer, as one day I shared my moving story on my personal page, and got a lot of views for that post! I try not to go on Facebook, so it is really irritating that it is still such a powerful referrer, even though I promote on Instagram and Twitter as well. I would love to figure out how to get more traffic from Twitter and Instagram, I just don’t have that many followers on either platform…
The other thing that is very encouraging is that people are reading steadily. I like writing about myself (who doesn’t?) and about the solo journaling games that I’m doing, so I’m glad people are reading those. The link piles are also not getting a lot of traction, so I may discontinue those all together.
On the Youtube side of things, I am usually in the low double digits when it comes to views, averaging about 24 views per video, which isn’t terrible! I hope to keep a consistent schedule, and continue to scan my planners as people seem to really like those! The Chatty Crochet Videos are almost just for my own fun, if it weren’t one of my resolutions to finish one blanket a month during 2021.
My Goals For The Rest of the Year
For the blog and Youtube, I would like to continue this schedule of around 4-5 posts per month, and 2-3 videos a month, one post a month for freebies, and one post a week for My Recencies.
As for sharing, I think I will expand to sharing more on Reddit, which is a scary thought, but I already have a public account that I used for sharing my pens. I hope to be more consistent sharing on Instagram, and I will start to share more on my personal page on Facebook (more scary than Reddit, I’d say).
For readers and views, I’d like the readership to average about 100 views a month, and I would love the Youtube views to average 40 views per video. I aim to do these by talking about content that people tend to like, like more personal talking points (like this is kind of personal, right?) and continue my solo gaming series. For YouTube, I plan on brainstorming topics that people might want to hear about when I am crocheting, and I might change my crocheting filming method to focus more on the crocheting instead, though it will still be me being chatty.
And of course, to open my shop. I hope that, by opening more time, I can focus on putting things onto Etsy and open an online store off Etsy as well.
That’s it for now! I hope to check in after summer, around September, to update with another Blog and YouTube update.
