I’ve been working super hard this week and got so much done it feels like I did three weeks worth of work in one week (to be honest, I probably did). I totally violated my two hours a day principle basically every single day, but I don’t regret it. I had lots of fun and accomplished a lot! As you can see I’ve learned about the existence of tables of content so reading through this post should be super easy 🙂 ENJOY!!!
What I’ve been up to
General updates
No general updates this week!
Blog updates
I made some updates to my recommendations page. I did a bunch of formatting so that the page is much easier to navigate. I also fixed the search result title appearance so that instead of “my recommendations” it says something like “a list of everything you need to build a side hustle”, I kinda forgot what I wrote to be honest. I’m interested in seeing if it will help at all. I also added several recommendations for WordPress plugins that I’ve been using.
I figured out how to fix the canonical URLs but I don’t want to fix them because if I do I’ll have to go through and fix every single URL I linked to. I’m not willing to go through that pain right now. Eventually I’ll find something that can just do it for me automatically.
I also got back mostly rejections from the affiliate programs that I applied to but I did get two acceptances! I also figured out how to get a discount code for Hostinger so if you go through my link you’ll get 20% off :). That’s more than I had last month so I would call that a success. Programs like Impact and ShareASale are really hard to get into but most companies seem to use them.
I changed my pinterest strategy because my pinterest is dying. I am trying out a new pin image format where I make lists that contain actual information, instead of just rehashing my blog titles. I also look for pins that are similar to mine, go to their account, and follow their followers. I am hoping to get more exposure that way because those people are already interested in the type of content I create. I’ve seen a little bit of results already but definitely not some crazy uptick or anything. I’ll update again next week with a better idea of if it’s working or not.
Outfit side hustle updates
I am proud to report that I have overcome my side hustle block and have made rather large progress in this department. I talked last week about how I needed a “landing page” to do my affiliate marketing properly and I had decided on making a blog. I was stuck though because I had no idea what I wanted to make my side hustle blog look like, but this Monday I decided to just go for it! I figured that if it was a formatting problem that I was stuck on, it would be infinitely easier to visualize if I had a “physical” website to play around with. This approach worked very well! I’m just going to go ahead and list everything I was able to get done:
- Setup domain name and hosting. (The domains from porkbun are no longer on sale I’m sad to report. I had to pay 11 whole dollars!!! Still, better price than the other domain services)
- Setup website and formatting. I picked a wordpress theme, made it my own, and designed my own logo on canva. I finally figured out how I wanted to present the outfit collages on my website and formatted the website to look how I wanted it to.
- Added wordpress plugins. I used the same spam protection plugin that I use for this website, and the same google analytics plugin. I decided to use Rankmath instead of AIOSEO for SEO though because I’ve heard good things about it and wanted to try it out. So far I don’t really see a difference in terms of functionality but admittedly I have used it for less than a week. So we shall see!
- Added content. I added content where it needed to be (about me, contact, etc). I also made two blog posts already! My goal is to get it filled out a bit before I start actively trying to promote it though so I still have some ways to go content wise.
- Added social media functionality. I added the ability to pin an image by showing a button that says “pin it” when a user hovers over the image. I also added a bunch of social media buttons that show up automatically on all my posts so people can share the posts. I also created an instagram account and added both my pinterest and my instagram account to the blog post sidebars.
- Newsletter. Now this one was a real stickler. I love how starting a blog is supposed to be affordable and then you get hit with the 15 dollar base monthly fee for hosting, and then another 15 dollar base monthly fee for starting a newsletter. I just can’t bring myself to be spending that amount especially in the beginning when I have no idea if this will work.
However I came up with a cost efficient beginner friendly (or I should say, beginner only) solution. Do things manually lol. I’m using Ninjaforms to create forms for email submissions and then WP Popups to create email submission popups. It took me a really reaaaaaally long time to settle on using this method. I initially tried using the Newsletter plugin but I hated it. The free version is more basic than basic and it’s so ugly and uncustomizable. I want things to look like how I want them to, and this way I managed to that.
Also this setup will make it easier to integrate in the future with any newsletter plugin of my choice. I can just download the submissions as a .csv and upload them where I need to. Besides if I get to a point where I can’t manage this stuff manually then I’m probably making an amount of money that will offset the costs. There are only two functionalities that I’m missing right now that I’m going to try to integrate: automated welcome emails, and getting email notifications when someone subscribes.
I have to say it was way easier setting up the site and everything this time around cause I basically just followed my documentation from when I set up this blog.
Insights and takeaways
Try not to spend too much money
This might be a hot take but I honestly think it should be the rule of thumb. I know that a blog is like a business and in order for it to succeed you have to invest time and money in it. And there are definitely necessary costs for starting a blog- you can’t really get around the domain and hosting fees. But I just find that it is so easy to get convinced that you need to pay for something for your blog to work or to optimize it etc etc which is not always the case.
For a beginner, you really should be paying the bare minimum and trying to do things manually when you can. For example if you want to start a mailing list, you really wouldn’t need a whole dedicated system to managing that list and sending out newsletters when the only three subscribers are you and your two fake accounts. Eventually, if everything works out, you’ll probably want to and be able to afford maybe even having someone else manage it for you. I guess my point is, costs should scale as you grow. Don’t be paying for tools that a thousand-visitors-a-day-blog is using, because you most likely don’t need them.
Just start
I said this last week but I want to say it again. LITERALLY just start. Whenever you feel like you’re at a roadblock or you don’t know how to proceed, just try and mess around with things a bit. The entirety of last week I had just been stalling because I wasn’t sure what I wanted my website to look like. It seemed to me then that even if I set it up, I wouldn’t know what to do. Now I have so many things on my to do list I have things to do for the next two weeks. It happens naturally! Just pick one thing to work on and you’ll get inspiration for what else to add/fix along the way.
Don’t listen to the churn out content people
Frankly I’m not even sure why this is a thing? I see this on reddit all the time where people say that you should focus on getting a lot of content out. Someone even recommended making a post every single day! I don’t see how that is actually feasible at all unless you are some pro writer who doesn’t have a full time job. You will either end up using AI or just writing really bad content, both of which will turn people away. About three quarters of blogs fail, and honestly I think this is why.
Things take time and effort and if you focus on producing just content you’re going to end up ignoring the quality both of your posts and of your website. There is a lot you have to do to maintain a website besides just making content. Your website is like a baby, and content is food. If you keep giving it food that’s not all healthy and ignore all its other living needs, you’re going to kill the baby. That’s horrible. Don’t do that.
The last point I want to make is that we all move along at a different pace. It takes time to adjust to running a blog, and at the beginning things will move slow. As you start to know your way around things, posting content will become a faster process! But having a good setup and quality content at the beginning is especially important, and if you skip over it, eventually it will catch up to you!
About the time limits
Talk about practicing what you preach, eh. I totally went overboard this week with overstepping my time limits. I honestly just lost track of time and was really enjoying myself so I didn’t feel like stopping at any point. I think I might increase my time limits to accommodate that this is fun for me, but also start setting timers so I don’t overdo it.
Stats
This Website
I’m doing 30 day analytics instead of 1 week because it is easier to compare the week to week changes.
All time stats last week vs this week:
Traffic sources:
I’m not sure why my website is a source for my website? Maybe it means internal links.
Outfit Website
I don’t remember my other website getting any traffic at all upfront. I think some of it is from pinterest.
All time stats this week:
Traffic sources:
This Website Pinterest
MY PINTEREST IS DYINGGGG. I was at 5.2k monthly views last week and now I am at 3.8k. It’s okay though I’m testing out a new strat. Also I’m linking stats for the outbound clicks cause that’s really the only important one from any social media:
Outfit Website Pinterest
One of my pins is currently going “viral” as I went to check my analytics I got a notification that it had 18 saves. This has never happened to me before! Also I posted this pin like two weeks ago. Anyways the analytics won’t reflect that until tomorrow so you’ll be able to see the improvement next week!
Medium
My story stats (to monetize (and make money) I think I calculated that I need to get 500 monthly reads):
Email subscriber count for both websites
This website: 2 (1 of them is me)
Outfit website: 3 (2 of them are me)
Affiliate marketing
Nothing to show here yet.
Total money spent this week: $11.06
Total money spent: $18.05
Total money made this week: $0.00
Total money made: $4.30
Total hours spent this week: ~28.5 hours (look I happened to have a lot of free time this week)
Total hours spent: ~144.5 hours
Those are all the updates for the week! I hope this was informative! Let me know if you have any comments, questions, or concerns in the comment section below!
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