2018 Goals Update: July

2018 Goals Update: July | https://www.roseclearfield.com

In an effort to keep myself accountable, I’m sharing monthly progress updates for my 2018 goals.

So the week of Tommy’s birthday, my grandma passed away and Tommy’s first cousin was born. In the midst of these events, Tommy has been teething and we’ve been preparing to get back in the adoption waiting pool. Needless to say, it turned into a much busier (and more emotional) month than expected. As such, I didn’t get back on track with my Constant Content and Europe photos goals. But I’ll share more about that in a bit.

Reach five figure monthly blog page views.

To reach 10K page views by the end of December, I need to increase my page views by about 372 per month. Here are my 2018 monthly page views benchmarks and actual views.

January benchmark – 5,610, actual – 7,373
February benchmark – 5,982, actual – 10,151
March benchmark – 6,354, actual – 12,129
April benchmark – 6,736, actual – 9,956
May benchmark – 7,108, actual – 8,072
June benchmark – 7,408, actual – 8,050
July benchmark – 7,780, actual – 9,303

July 2018 Google Analytics roseclearfield.com | https://www.roseclearfield.com

After my 2017 page views tanked in July, I was a little worried that I’d see a similar trend in 2018. Even though I’ve continued to post consistently (unlike last year), my page views trends have remained very similiar. But continuing consistent posting really paid off, and my July views surpassed my May and June views. I was hopeful that I would do better than last year but didn’t ever believe the numbers would be this good. I’m honestly not sure exactly why my views were significantly higher. I had a slight uptick in traffic early in the month for the 4th of July. Obviously, the  uptick only accounted for a few days of the month. A handful of other posts did better than normal but not significantly. I’m still stoked, considering that last July was by far my lowest traffic month of the year. We’re calling it a win.

There are two primary methods I’m using to achieve my page views goal, which are as follows.

With nursery #2 finished and going back into the adoption waiting pool, I’ve been pushing to schedule more and more content in advance. I already have a number of posts ready for August and will be working on September posts this month.

Reach 4,000 Pinterest followers.

To reach 4,000 Pinterest followers by the end of the year, I need to gain 138 new followers monthly or 4-5 followers daily. My July benchmark was 3,303 followers. My actual July total was 2,992 followers.

Clearly, I’m still lagging behind on my Pinterest followers goal. However, July is one of the few months in 2018 that I came close to reaching my target number of monthly followers with 122 followers total. This figure is nothing to brag about, I know. But there have been a lot of months in 2018 that I didn’t crack 100. So I’m celebrating this little milestone.

Even better, my engagement numbers were way up in July, the first huge jump I’ve seen in 2018. I don’t put a lot of stock in Pinterest analytics, as they vary so much from one day to the next. But the overall trend is still exciting.

Honestly, as Boardbooster had so many ongoing struggles to stay legit, a battle which they ultimately lost, having it gone hasn’t hurt my Pinterest numbers as all. If anything, things are going better now. July was one of my best Pinterest months thus far in 2018. And adjusting to a slightly different scheduling flow hasn’t been bad at all.

To review, my 2018 Pinterest strategies are as follows:

Publish one article per week on Constant Content.

Publishing on Constant Content was another wash in July. As I have done such a good job scheduling ahead for the blog and our personal schedule is much more open (for now, fingers crossed it stays that way) in August, I’m hopeful I’ll get back on track here at last. I did sell one title that I’d published prior to 2018, Preparing Your Car for Winter (yes, in July, someone must be planning way ahead), for a total of $35.75.

Paint and decorate nursery #2.

My final major task for getting back in the adoption waiting pool was to put together a new profile book. I was waiting to make the book until we got our most recent family pictures, which we received shortly after Tommy’s birthday. Our book is done and in the hands of our adoption agency. We also had to send one more check and then fill out some paperwork, so the agency can list our profile on their website. If you missed my post earlier this week, I shared more details about going back into the adoption waiting pool. (You can also see some of those new family pictures in that post and in our new profile book, which I link in the post.)

Needless to say, making an adoption profile book is a time-consuming task. (If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself.) It went a little quicker the second time around, as I wasn’t starting completely from scratch. But I still devoted a lot of time and energy to this task the second half of July. Given everything else going on this month, I didn’t have a lot of spare time, hence a couple of my goals still didn’t go so well in July.

Boats on the French Riviera Coast | https://www.roseclearfield.com

Finish editing my Europe photos, and keep up with current editing.

I kept completely caught up with culling Europe photos (1,540 total). I didn’t get through editing a full month’s worth of photos, which means that I’m about a month and a half behind right now. In July, I published posts for the French Coast and Monte Carlo. I have a Sagrada Familia exterior post scheduled for August already and am planning to get a Sagrada Familia interior post up this month as well.

July wasn’t a great month for 2018 editing. I took a lot of photos, and I still have quite a bit of editing to do. I did finish out a number of June folders, but I didn’t do any backing up. Getting some more 2018 folders finished out will be a priority in August.

Read 36 books.

My July reading total was 3 books, bringing my 2018 total to 38 books, meeting this goal for the year. I’m not planning to slow down my reading pace and look forward to continuing to share more reading picks here.

In June, I listened to:

In June, I read:

In June, I re-read:

Stay tuned for a double month reading post next week!

[Disclaimer: There are a few affiliate links in this post. Thanks for your support!]

Did you set any 2018 goals?

I’d love to hear how they’re going! Feel free to leave a goal update link in the comments!

Previous goal update posts:

2018 Goals Update: April | https://www.roseclearfield.com

2018 Goals Update: April

2018 Goals Update: May | https://www.roseclearfield.com

2018 Goals Update: May

2018 Goals Update: June | https://www.roseclearfield.com

2018 Goals Update: June

 

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