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

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
August benchmark – 8,152, actual – 9,914
September – 8,524, actual – 11,500
October – 8,896, actual – 13,384

Who would have thought that October would be my highest traffic month to date? I did have a Pinterest spike for my shower cleaning post near the middle of the month. This spike definitely pushed me over the edge for traffic, clearing 13K for the first time. But I had steady traffic all month with higher daily averages than September, even without the spike.

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

Publish posts weekly with two evergreen posts per month. Check. In October, I published a consistent three posts per week with the following evergreen posts: Fall and Winter Avocado Toast Recipes, Tips for Taking Great Pictures of Your Own Kids, DIY Halloween Mason Jar Decor, Benefits of an Adoption Community, and 10 Ways to Improve an Old Blog Post.
Maintain consistent social sharing, particularly for high traffic and seasonal posts. Check. I have slightly modified my sharing schedule to prioritize high performing posts, which I’ll talk more about in 2019. I am still sharing all evergreen posts, just some more frequently than others. I’m about two months out for scheduling general shares and have most of my Christmas and winter shares scheduled.

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 October benchmark was 3,717 followers. My actual October total was 3,358 followers.

October is the first month in 2018 that I not only hit, but exceeded, my monthly target (I gained 157 followers). Of course, after months of not hitting my target, I’m still lagging a couple of months behind my benchmark. But it gives me hope that I’ll be able to end 2018 strong.

After September’s skyrocketing monthly viewers number and monthly engagement, my figures dropped back down a little in October. I’m still over the 1 million mark for monthly viewers. Partly I’ve seen the drop because I hit very high numbers in the middle of the month with the Pinterest spike (see goal #1). Naturally, after that, they’ve dropped back a bit.

I’m keeping up with my 2018 Pinterest strategies, which are as follows:

Schedule my own blog content and content from other bloggers via Tailwind. I’ve been working way ahead on scheduling lately and am currently scheduling about two months ahead.
Manage my photography group board.

Publish one article per week on Constant Content.

In October, I published the following articles on Constant Content.

November Home Checklist
Stress-Free Fall Entertaining
Tips for Photography in Bad Weather
Best Holiday Baking Tips and Techniques
How to Get Your Garage Ready for Winter
How to Stay Healthy During Cold and Flu Season

I submitted the final three articles late in the month. They haven’t been reviewed yet, so I don’t have active links for them yet.

I didn’t have any Constant Content sales for October. Currently, I’ve only written half the articles I need to meet the goal for this year. A large part of the goal was establishing some consistency with publishing again. Clearly, I’ve failed at that aspect of it miserably. However, as I’m in good shape with blog post scheduling for the next month, I’m still hoping to push ahead and make some final progress on Constant Content for the year.

Paint and decorate nursery #2.

As I’m completely done with nursery #2 and won’t have any major updates on 2018 back burner projects until 2019, I’m to skip over this goal for the last few months of the year.

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

To meet this goal, I need to edit a little over 90 photos per month through the end of the year. Currently, I’m up to date with my Europe editing. Yes, up to date! I published a post for Alhambra this month. By the time this post goes live, I’ll have a post for Gibraltar published with one more post planned for later in the month. I’ve pushed really hard to get caught up again and can’t believe that I’m nearly through these photos. I’ve already culled the remaining photos in the set. This means I have 180 photos left to edit this year to meet the goal.

I’ve been focusing more on editing than backing up this last month. I’ve finished backing up and clearing out photos through early July and have finished editing through early September. With the recent trips, my 2018 photo total remains high. I’m going to make backing up and clearing out a higher priority again in November to bring down this total number.

Read 36 books.

My October total was 5 books, bringing my 2018 total to 54 books. I’ve already met my reading goal for 2018. But I’m not slowing down my reading pace and am still sharing my reads here and in my bi-monthly reading posts.

In October, I listened to:

In October, I read:

I don’t have any re-reads for October. We started The Two Towers during a long weekend trip to Minneapolis, so I still haven’t gotten back to finishing Harry Potter.

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