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April 7th was my three month mark. I’m not even sure where to start this month. This was a busy month for the blog. Most of my 2nd month was spent dealing with illness and very little blogging was done, so in a way this was like my second month. I feel like I accomplished a lot; just don’t look too closely at my house or the dark circles under my eyes. I’ve seen 2 am more than I even did in college.
The most exciting thing this month was cashing in a previous gift and getting a new laptop to use in blogging. This was such a blessing! I was using my husband’s five year old laptop that was missing a couple of keys, had no working USB ports, and was so slow.
In this post I will be listing my goals for the month and then discussing my progress in meeting those.
These are the goals I set for my third month of blogging.
- Continue to organize Pinterest boards, join collaborative boards, delete Pinterest account I had initially started for the blog.
- I met part of this goal. I deleted the Pinterest account I had initially started for the blog. I decided the previous month to convert my personal Pinterest account to a business account for the blog and no longer needed this new account. I joined several collaborative boards and gained more followers in doing this. I would still like to do more organization on my Pinterest boards.
- Decide whether to use my personal Facebook account or a separate account for the blog. Learn how to use Google+ in conjunction with the blog and utilize it.
- I set up a separate Facebook account with a page for the blog and I am so glad that I did. The feed from the Facebook groups and pages I have liked would have clogged up my personal Facebook page. I have gotten friend request from some really strange people. Strange in…I don’t know why they want to be friends, so again I am really glad I chose to create a separate account.
- I am using Google+. I only use Google+ for the blog, but I have a separate page within Google+ for the blog, which does not seem necessary. I don’t know how to merge the two and get rid of the separate page. I currently have it set up in WordPress to link up my blog posts to Google+, but I usually have to edit them, so I am not sure I will continue doing this.
- Read the book that came with our camera.
- I did not complete this goal. I did download an ebook that is a small reference booklet for using the manual mode on your camera. What little I have read about photography and blogging recommends using the manual mode on your camera. I need to learn it quickly, because I knocked our camera off the table a few weeks ago. It works in some settings, but not all. We have an older DSLR camera that I believe only works in manual. I am hoping to utilize that camera while I send the other camera in to be fixed.
- Customize my template.
- I did not do anything more with this than to get a quote on what a customize header would cost and it was above our budget for the blog. I need to create a header/cover photo for my social media accounts and thought I could utilize the same one for all accounts. For now I will attempt something myself.
- Revamp welcome image and profile.
- I did work on this, but don’t be surprised if it changes again. As I learn new things, I will be modify it.
- Market & Monetize The Resourceful Mama using what I am learning from an eBook by Chelsea Lords (How I Made $40,000 My First Year of Blogging). Click here to visit Chelsea Lords.
- This book had a lot of great tips. If you are a new blogger or a blogger who would like to earn more money from your blog, I would suggest reading it. She lists each month how many page views she had and what her income was as well as the sources of income. The author is a food blogger, but I found a lot of helpful advice in the book. The suggestion to join group boards came from this book. Chelsea said in the book that she submitted her food pictures to a few different sites as an additional source of income. Um what could I do? I did a little research and found Beyond Your Blog. Susan lists several sites where you can submit your family/parenting articles. She offers several podcasts as well.
These were the goals I listed last month for the future.
- Sign up for Instgram account.
- I completed this goal early! I signed up for Instagram using my husband’s phone thinking I could post to the Instagram online…nope. I broke down and bought a smartphone and love it.
- Sign up for twitter account.
- Completed this one as well. I have it set up to automatically tweet my new posts, but otherwise I have not utilized it much.
- Purchase and learn Photoshop.
- I continue to use PicMonkey. I also occasionally use Canva.
These are my goals/tasks for next month.
- Join more Pinterest group boards. I am currently not part of any DIY or craftgroup boards and would like to join some.
- Create a header/cover photo to use on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Hometalk.
- Read another blogging book. I have been considering Ruth’s Soukup’s book How to Blog for Profit Without Selling your Soul. Would love any recommendations other bloggers may have!
- Get camera fixed.
- Increase following on social media accounts. My Pinterest account more than tripled this last month and continues to increase. Grant it, I only started with 30.
- Work on advertising. Before reading Chelsea’s book, I had one Google Adsense ad on my site. The funny part is that I thought many bloggers did not have ads. When I started using my new computer to view blogs, I quickly realized how wrong I was. My husband must have had something set up on the computer that blocked ads. I have since added the additional two Google Adsense ads and one Sovern ad. I also added an Amazon ad and signed up to be a Target affiliate, but have not put any of their ads on my site yet. I started doing a weekly “What I Wore” post and signed up for Shopstyle. I signed up for a Blogher account and have posted a few blog posts. I find it more difficult to post to Blogher, because I have to save my pictures to an online storage account (I use Flickr). I just recently reached my 90 days and plan to apply for Blogher advertising. Chelsea’s recommends in her book using an ad management companty. I plan to look into that, because I know I am not even close to utilizing my ads properly.
- Figure out what I am doing. I feel like I am somewhat all over the place with my content. I started out blogging kind of on a whim and did not do a lot research. I am trying to get a grasp on what readers want and how that fits with what I am passionate and knowable about. I have my About Kim page done and hope to get my About The Resourceful Mama page done. I have been holding off in completing it until I had good framework for what I would be blogging about.
- Find a balance! I have already started on this. I have backed off on trying to do some of the extra things for now; like submitting writing to other sites. I also have not done much updating and adding of things to my blog the last couple of weeks. I have continued to post six days a week. I lessen up on marketing a couple of weeks ago and saw a big drop in my numbers. It’s spring and I want to enjoy the weather with my kids.
- Increase page views. I have yet to get over 200 for a day.
Stop back next month to see how I did in my fourth month of blogging.
