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Starting the Blog – August Recap

ByLeah & Samuel

3 Months Down!

We have officially completed our third month of working on the blog and I’m back to cover everything that we did for the Little Moments blog in the month of August!

August was a fun month! Samuel and I went on a couple trips this month. We traveled to visit family in North Carolina and we went on a trip to Italy with our best friends! I’m sure we’ll be making some posts about Italy soon since it’s our favorite place to travel to. Being out of town so much did make it a bit difficult to stay ahead on the blog, but we’re still in a good spot.

If you are curious about what we did in the first and second months of starting the blog, you can read our other Starting the Blog series posts!

Like last month, I have also linked some of our new Travel Blog Posts down below in case you want to check them out!

Our Updates for Month 3

All the advice on the internet for starting your own blog always says to treat it like a business from the beginning. Well, that means we’ve completed the first quarter of my blog’s fiscal year! Below is a snapshot of all the items I want to update you all on, but keep reading for more details:

  • Update the Content Calendar
  • Prepare September Blogs and Pinterest Pins
  • Update Prior Posts with New Formatting
  • Go on Two Trips!
  • Website Traffic Analytics
  • Blog Investments I’m Considering
  • Income Report

Update 1 – Update the Content Calendar

My new content calendar method is still going strong! It’s simple and straightforward and I love that about it. I can easily tell when to schedule what blog post and when all my Pins should get posted.

Efficiency is key here because the less time I spend on things like figuring out when to schedule what, the more time I can put into writing the blogs and keeping active on Pinterest! The original method I was using in Google Calendar was definitely more visually appealing but took way more time to edit and rearrange the schedule then this method.

Below is a snip of the content I had scheduled for the first half of this month. Samuel and I have a system in place where we bold the item once it’s all set. For blog posts that means we’ve edited it (we have a blog checklist we go through for each post) and scheduled it to go live. For Pinterest posts, that means we’ve created and scheduled the Pin to post.

Update 2 – Prepare September Blogs and Pinterest Pins

I have mentioned this before, but Samuel and I strive to stay about one month ahead of schedule when it comes to the blog and Pinterest posts. It’s not a strict rule but making sure to have three or so weeks of content completed in advance helps with our work-life balance.

Basically, when we’re traveling, we don’t want to be stressing about content that’s supposed to go out tomorrow or the day we get back from a trip. For us, having a three-week cushion allows us to really enjoy our travels!

We currently have seven out of the nine blogs scheduled to live in September completed. I feel good about that, especially since we don’t have any major trips planned for September. November on the other hand, I’m hoping to visit a new continent, so stay tuned!

Currently, I don’t use any platforms that make Pinterest scheduling super quick and easy. That definitely has some disadvantages like only being able to schedule 30 days out and having to download all my Pinterest images from Canva and then upload them to Pinterest. These are small things, but they are tedious tasks that end up taking a good bit of time each month.

Something I’ve started to implement on the Pinterest side of things is bulk creating Pins and drafting them into the Pinterest scheduler. You can see below that I have 18 Pins I’ve created and prepped ready in draft status. These are all Pins that get scheduled more than the 30 day limit from now, so I have them in draft until I can schedule it for the correct day. That way I can have Pins created more than a month in advance and loading into Pinterest with the links, titles, tags, and everything else and then a couple times a month I can schedule them to go live and all the hard work is already done! This has been working well for me this month.

Another thing I did on Pinterest this month was claim my website. I’m not sure how this helps with the algorithm, but it’s supposed to rank your Pins higher in people’s searches because it’s connected to a claimed and trusted website link. This was a pretty simple process.

Update 3 – Update Prior Posts with New Formatting

This update is something I’m really happy about. I’ve been doing some research on what make a valuable and visually appealing posts and I have started updating all my previous blog posts to a new formatting. Some of the things I’m changing are:

  • Making Headings Size H2 (Big)
  • Making Subheadings Size H4 (Less Big) and Adding Descriptions to Them
  • Italicizing all Restaurant Recommendations
  • Bolding all Attraction/Location Recommendations

Small things like this can make a big difference in the reader’s experience and it makes it easier for Samuel and I to format our blog posts the same since we split writing them.

One of the main pieces of advice I’ve seen is that you want to create value-packed, “skim-able” blog posts. That means lots of headings and subheading so reading can easily pick up on the gist of what you are trying to say, but also provided details and expanding on what you’re saying in a valuable way in the body of your blog post.

Update 4 – Go on Two Trips!

We went on two trips again this month!

The first one was to visit my sister and brother who live in North Carolina. That was such a sweet trip and all my siblings were there, which doesn’t happen to often! We are so grateful that we have been able to visit family just about every month of this year! We don’t live close to any of our family and last year we didn’t get to see everyone as much because it wasn’t in the budget.

Our second trip was the more exciting destination! We went back to Europe, Italy to be exact! This marks the fourth year in a row that Samuel and I have been able to travel to Italy. It’s so special for us to be able to do that because Samuel is half Italian and has a lot of family there and I’m so grateful that I get to be a part of that family too!

This time visiting Italy was a little different though, because not only did we get to visit family, but we also met our best friends there and showed them around Italy! We had an amazing time!

Update 5 – Website Traffic Analytics

I want to keep this section similar each month so I can track my growth and so you can use it as a benchmark for your own growth in starting a blog!

In our third month of the blog, we had 42 new users! That’s a bit more than the 37 we had last month. Slow but steady progress.

Below is a snip of this month’s Pinterest performance. I kept up with posting two posts per day which led to 24 outbound clicks to my blog for the month! That’s more than a 150% jump from the 14 I got last month.

Update 6 – Blog Investments I’m Considering

There are three investments that I’m loosely considering for blog. I don’t think I’ll make the jump any time soon, but these are a few things that I’m actively thinking about incorporating in the future to improve my blog.

  • A Blog Course: I’m really considering paying for an online course on starting a blog. It’s been going well so far and I know that there will be months to a year before I see any sort of rewards, but I still think I can learn a lot of things that could probably help me speed up that process and make sure that I am on good track.
  • A WordPress Page Builder: When I first started the blog I purchased a WordPress template through Etsy. That was so worth the money (it was less than $25) and made my website look professional. A WordPress Page Builder is different though. This would help with creating more visually appealing blog post pages without manually coding it to do so (which I don’t know how to do lol). I think it would make the biggest difference on post like London vs Paris or Top 10 Travel Items because a plain background isn’t that appealing. I’m considering Thrive Architect or a competing service.
  • Canva Pro: I use Canva for creating all my Pinterest content and I’ve heard Canva Pro has a tool that makes Pinterest scheduling a bit easier. I think it allows you to schedule out farther in advance than the 30 days you’re allowed on Pinterest and it would save the time of downloading the images and uploading them to Pinterest each time.

I’m not in a rush to purchase any of this right away. I’m more so using this as a list of things I would like to do in the future to invest in the blog. I’ll add to it as I think or more strategic investments!

Update 7 – Income Report – $0.39

This is the second month of being able to make money with Google AdSense! I didn’t make much again and I actually made a few cents less than last month. I’m not sure exactly how page views and sessions translate into revenue, but it is worth noting that I reduced the number of ads Google can show on my website. I think it was drowning in ads, and visually it looks just a bit better without so many ads.

Like I mentioned last month, Google AdSense doesn’t pay out earnings until you’ve reached at least $100. This marks month two of working towards that first payout!

Summary: Producing Content, Strategic Improvements, and Traveling to Italy!

We just wrapped up the first quarter of our blog, that’s so exciting! Three months down and many more to come!

Samuel and I have a good system going with producing content and staying ahead of schedule. We are starting to think about investing more than just time into the blog, but we want to take the time to think through our decisions. We also grew a little bit in website analytics, Pinterest outbound clicks, and Google Adsense revenue.

On top of all that, we were able to visit Italy for the fourth year in a row. Italy will always hold a special place in our hearts and getting to vacation there with friends unlocked a new Italian experience for us!

Talk next month!

-Leah and Samuel

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