My sixth + seventh month blogging

My sixth + seventh month blogging report

Hi to all my beautiful people.

I’m back with another blogging report, this time I’ll be doing March + April instead of just one single month because I’ve been hella busy lately (you’ll see what I mean in the next paragraph) but I’ll go back to doing regular monthly reports after this one.

The amount of news I have to share with you guys this month is beyond ridiculous so let’s get started!

As usual, for those of you who are new here: hi, I’m Bianka & you can read my previous blogging reports here: month zero, first month, second month, third month, fourth month, and fifth month.

What happened lately!

• I decided to move abroad so I’m currently in the process of selling all the stuff I don’t use & scheduling recipes that are best made where I am right now.
• I started freelancing. Like, WOW. I remember thinking “how do all these food bloggers freelance as food photographers? My photography just isn’t good enough” just a few months ago and now I’m doing it. Note that I’m freelancing very occasionally at the moment because I just started out and I’ve been “experimenting”.
• I reassessed my blogging schedule so now I’m sticking to 1 new recipe/week instead of 2. I just can’t keep up with 2 new recipes/week while occasionally freelancing, batching content for my move, and selling my stuff/decluttering my home. Right now I have 6 months worth of content ready to be posted though so that’s great. I’m so happy I worked my a** off at the beginning of this blogging journey!
• I stopped caring about Pinterest and Instagram. This may sound bad and it may be (in a way) but honestly, social media is just so draining, especially Instagram. Right now I’m focusing on good content and SEO, Pinterest is growing (it’s a slow but steady growth) on its own so that’s great.
• I barely worked on the blog – AGAIN, but this time I felt a loss less guilty about it as I took the opportunity to step back, reassess my strategy, focus on content, aaaaand watch my organic traffic grow (yes, as time goes on, organic traffic does get better).

🗒 BLOGGING GOALS REVIEW

• 7914 pageviews (terrifying) – SUCCESS: I reached 8328 pageviews in April (April 1-April 30) without working on the blog and I’m so grateful!
• Add affiliate links to all my top posts – FAIL.
• Make 1 affiliate sale… please?! – FAIL.
• Send out a newsletter – FAIL.
• Post at least 10 recipes – FAIL.
• Get 10 links published – FAIL.
• 200k monthly viewers on Pinterest – FAIL: I reached 190k.
• Complete Unit 03-04 of Foodtography School – FAIL.
• Post 3 IG posts/week + 4-5 stories/day – FAIL.

Again, this might look bad but look, the main thing I’m interested in at the moment (traffic) is growing so I’m good.

👽 THE BOT ATTACK

Damn Spicy (or should I say GA) went through more bot attacks lately: one on March 23 and one on April 21 so I had to subtract roughly 1000 pageviews from March and 1100 pageviews from April.

These bots attack are a minor annoyance but I haven’t found a way to prevent them or filter them out.

📊 GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Here is March:

And here is April:

Avg. Time On Page is growing too, it’s now sitting at 4:05 and I couldn’t be happier!

The average Avg Time On Page for the food blogging industry is around 2 minutes, anything above that is really good news!

📊 TRAFFIC

March:

April:

Love the growth in organic traffic.

People say organic traffic starts taking off around month 6 so I’m excited for that!

Some people don’t see *ANY* organic traffic for their first six-eight months blogging so I’m really grateful for the organic growth I’ve been seeing.

🤍 YOUR FAVORITES lately

• Greek Lemon Rice Recipe
• Sticky Teriyaki Tofu Rice Bowl
• Chinese Eggplants With Spicy Garlic Sauce
• Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls
• Baked Feta Cheese with Tomatoes
• Spiced Somali Rice
• Meatballs In Beer Sauce
• Russian Piroshki 
• Custard Cream Horns
• Homemade Tapioca Pearls aka Boba Pearls

These have been pretty similar lately and it’s partly because I haven’t been posting a lot of new recipes and partly because my traffic is growing so a new recipe won’t be able to get up to the top posts of the month as easily as it used  to, even if gets a boost from other referrals!

👆🏻MAY BLOGGING GOALS

• 10k pageviews (yes, I went there)
• Post 1 recipe/week for a total of 4 recipes.
• Get 4 links published.
• 200k monthly viewers on Pinterest.
• Complete Unit 03-04 of Foodtography School.
• Batch more content.

As you can see my goals changed a lot lately.

I didn’t include affiliates, newsletters, and social media (aside from Pinterest but I’ll let it do its thing) as I want to be more intentional instead of hustling in all areas and obsessing over stuff.

So that’s where I’m at.

Well, lately my blogging reports have been a bit weird!

In February I met a guy that basically made me forget I even had a blog so my Feb monthly report was embarrassing.

In March/April I decided to move abroad and sell all my stuff and experiment with freelancing, so I had to reassess what blogging meant to me and where I wanted to focus my energy.

Let’s keep it moving, I guess.

All my love,

Bianka