If you’re wondering what this post is about, check out my very first Income & Traffic Report. I give you all the nitty gritty details there.
If you’re too lazy to head over there (and I get it), here’s what this thing is in a nutshell. Every month I’m writing a post to report on how the previous month panned out. After writing this up the first month I felt like total crap. BUT I decided to keep writing them for the next six months, because maybe over time they will get easier. If I’m wrong, oh well, I’ll stop, but for now I’m gonna keep going.
February Blog Posts
- Craving Creativity? Try Out Creative Journaling
- Ultimate Guide to Car Camping for Beginners
- Income & Traffic Report January 2019
- 6 Trekking Pole Uses >> guest post on Camping for Women
What I Worked On This Month
- For the most part February felt like a blur. I had trouble staying focused, and to be honest writing my January report kind of started February on a real slump. I felt a little discouraged and kept thinking to myself, “why the hell am I doing all this work?”. To pull myself out of that downward spiral I participated in a Creativity Challenge. I wrote all about it in this post. It was a week of thoughtful reflection, journaling and joy. I loved it so much that I joined Kira’s membership program.
- I continued showing up on Instagram daily, although I wasn’t as good about engaging as I’d hoped. Sounds like a goal for March!
- I worked through another module of Irresistible Email and made some changes to my newsletter format.
January 2019 Revenue Total: -$1.30
- Income Breakdown
- Amazon Affiliate Income: -$1.54
- Awin Affiliate Income: $0.24
Monthly Blog Expenses Total: $57
**A note about the links below. Several of them are affiliate links. Which means I make a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.
- Expenses Breakdown
- ConvertKit: $29
- Canva: $13
- Tailwind: $15
Well that was unexpected. I managed to lose money on Amazon. It’s a bummer, but I totally understand someone deciding to return a purchase…I do it all the time.
February Traffic Numbers
This month had some good news and some bad. My number of users and pageviews went up! Quite a bit for me, 918 views compared to 615 last month. While that’s good news the amount of time spent on those pages was a few seconds less, and my bounce rate went up. Something to think about for March.
Pinterest continues to be the biggest driver to my site. The one change I’m most excited about is I’m getting more organic search results through Google. This is great because it means I’m less reliant on social media. My goal is for that number to continue to rise over time.
Best performing blog post of February (same as last month!): Perfect 7 Day Road Trip Itinerary: Grand Canyon Plus Zion National Park to Bryce Canyon
January on Social Media
Most Popular Instagram Post:
This way by far the post with the most engagement in February. It was a carousel post with this as the first picture and a second second picture of me looking totally beat during this hike.
Once again the crowd has spoken. In the caption I talked about how hiking can look really idyllic on IG, but in reality you can quickly become a hot mess. People really responded to the fact that I posted both sides of the story, proving once again that what people want is a taste of reality. Thank you my people!
February was a short month, literally and figuratively. The time flew and I found myself falling short on several of my goals. I didn’t manage to go back and improve SEO on two posts, and there was one week where I didn’t even get a post published. Rather than dwell on that I decided to give myself some grace and keep moving forward.
I have lots of high hopes for Indoorsy Camper and while it’s easy to let one tough week set you way back, I’m doing my very best to fight those feelings.
One thing I’m very happy about was our first camping trip of the season sneaked in there at the end of the month. There was snow in Joshua Tree! It was cold. It was beautiful. It was fabulous. Don’t worry there will be a post about it soon!
Goals for February:
- Publish 4 posts this month. (including one that’s out of my comfort zone)
- Continue showing up on Instagram daily (specifically I’m planning to comment on 5 posts per day)
- Participate in at least 1 collaborative posts this month.
- Go back and update SEO on two old posts. (gonna happen this month!)