My fifth month blogging
Hey loves!!!
Back with another blogging report and damn… this time I’m so *NOT* ready!!
But for those of you who are new here: hi, I’m Bianka & you can ready my other reports here: month zero, first month, second month, third month, and fourth month!
SO.
I’d like to start off by saying that I f*cked up this month: I only posted 3 recipes (despite having a huge amount of content just sitting there ready to be posted) & I didn’t promote. Really, I barely worked on Damn Spicy.
I know, bad.
The reason behind that?
I fell in love with a guy. No joke.
Like, you know when you’re 18 and you fall in love and everything is sparkly and you can’t focus because all you can think about is that mf? Yea. And I’m not even 18 anymore.
Look, I don’t know. I gotta get back on track, that’s for sure. It’s just that the love chemicals are acting up ⏤ it’s a serious addiction. Ugh… whatever.
Let’s move on.
Welcome to my fifth month blogging report.
🗒 FEBRUARY BLOGGING GOALS REVIEW
- 5439 pageviews – SORTA, I actually hit 7323 but more on that later.
- Add affiliate links to all my top posts – FAIL
- Make 1 affiliate sale… please?! – FAIL
- Send out a newsletter – FAIL
- Post 12 new recipes – FAIL
- Get 12 links published – FAIL
- 150k monthly viewers on Pinterest – FAIL
- Complete Unit 03-04 of Foodtography School – FAIL
- Post 3 IG posts/week + 4-5 stories/day – FAIL
- Purge group boards and join other 4-5 good quality boards – FAIL
No for real, congrats to me.
I seriously need to get back on track because I basically wasted the whole month of February.
I mean, I didn’t waste a day in real life, if anything my quality of life increased and I’m happier & super excited to begin each day, seriously, but blogging ended up in the backburner and I have no excuses.
👽 The bot attack
So on February 1 I woke up to over 1k views/a day.
I was like “uhhh… either I went viral or bots are at work”.
Well… I didn’t go viral, bots were attacking Google Analytics data all over the world. People from literally everywhere reported a bot attack on February 1 and I was among them.
Thing is, my GA filters didn’t quite catch the bots so they ended up f*cking up my data for February, or February 1.
Long story short, I didn’t actually hit 7323 pageviews. It was more like 5200 or something like that.
It’s an estimate because I cannot go back and filter out the bots, so what I did to get 5200 was simply ignoring February 1st which isn’t accurate because I had some humans on Damn Spicy that day, I just don’t know how many.
Maybe 100 or 200 humans which would bring me to 5400. We’ll never know.
Well, I didn’t hit 5439. It stings.
And it’s on me because I didn’t really work for it. The good thing about this though is that if I managed to hit over 5k with *NO* effort, no promotion, no nothing… well… I’m excited to see what I can do if I actually get back on track.
5k is still a record for Damn Spicy and this time I hit it without doing anything at all. Good to know.
📊 GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Overall happy with the numbers.
Keep in mind February has 28 days (but I only counted 27 because of the bot attack) while January had 31.
*AND* I didn’t really move a finger this month.
So I’d say these are pretty good numbers.
My Avg. Time On Page is golden so I’m not concerned about that big dip in Avg. Session Duration.
📌 LET’S TALK PINTEREST
YOU GUYS.
Last month I was all fired up and I went on about how my change of strategy was all the rage (and it was) and how great it was working for me and then *BAM*, nothing.
I mean, I have a couple of viral pins and those are the ones brining in the majority of my Pinterest traffic but all my new pins are getting 10 impressions overnight instead of 1k.
Care to explain, Pinterest?
No for real, I don’t know what the hell happened but I’ve talked to other bloggers and *SO* many people out there are having the same problem. Their pins used to get thousands of impressions overnight and now they’re down to single or double digits.
Crazy.
Oh and I’m not using story pins. I think nobody should. There’s actually a “boycott story pins” trend going on on Facebook, check it out. It makes sense.
Anyway, I didn’t hit my 150k goal but I did hit 140k without doing anything at all and it’s okay, I won’t complain.
Pinterest has to get it together though.
📊 TRAFFIC
Some pie charts for my pie lovers (I’m so craving a coconut cream pie right now, btw):
The spike in social is all Pinterest. Like I said my new pins don’t get any traction but I have a couple of viral pins doing really well and I’m super grateful.
The increase in organic isn’t that exciting, to be honest, but it’s there.
🤍 YOUR FEBRUARY FAVORITES
- Greek Lemon Rice Recipe
- Meatballs In Beer Sauce
- Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls With Dipping Sauce
- Small Batch Brownies For Two
- Russian Piroshki Recipe With Potatoes And Meat
- Sticky Teriyaki Tofu Rice Bowl
- Chinese Eggplants With Spicy Garlic Sauce
- Custard Cream Horns
- Authentic Khachapuri Recipe
- Baked Feta Cheese with Tomatoes
ON KEYWORD RESEARCH
I took the plunge after talking to a few bloggers and decided to get Keysearch to help with keyword research.
I figured, if I really want to do this… why not get something that could actually give me somewhat precise data on specific keywords so I can stop playing guess with Google Key Planner and Keywords Everywhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I managed to rank first playing guess with Key Planner.
And Keywords Everywhere is pretty accurate.
But even when combined, they’re not as detailed as Keysearch.
So if you’re serious about blogging, go for it. SEO is where it’s at at the end of the day. Social media is so volatile, I mean… look at Pinterest, not to mention Instagram.
Oh!!! By the way… I started a TikTok but I haven’t posted yet so… we shall see. I’ve heard the algorithm is great and you kinda need it in 2021 so I gave up and made an account.
💰INCOME
Keep moving, nothing to see here.
👆🏻MARCH BLOGGING GOALS
- 7914 pageviews (terrifying)
- Add affiliate links to all my top posts.
- Make 1 affiliate sale… please?! (lol)
- Send out a newsletter.
- Post at least 10 recipes.
- Get 10 links published.
- 200k monthly viewers on Pinterest.
- Complete Unit 03-04 of Foodtography School.
- Post 3 IG posts/week + 4-5 stories/day.
That’s a wrap, folks.
Also, if any of you read my fourth month blogging report… I ended that post with:
“Oh, I miss LIFE… I’m currently dreaming of eating mangos & avocados on the beach with loud music & cute men with dark eyes & I’m not even a summer person.”
Yea, I found me one of those. A cute man with dark eyes that loves avocados, mangos, beaches and loud music.
Life is crazy.
I’ll talk to you guys soon.
All my love, xo.
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