In an effort to keep myself accountable, I’m sharing monthly progress updates for my 2019 goals.

Reach 70,000 monthly blog page views.

Here are my 2019 benchmarks and progress to reach my monthly blog page views goal.

January – target: 37,343, actual: 42,806
February – 40,312, actual: 43,398
March -43,281, actual: 51,102
April – 46,250, actual: 65,303
May – 49,219, actual: 33,309
June – 52,188
July – 55,157
August – 58,126
September – 61,095
October – 64,064
November – 67,033
December – 70,000

I knew that my blog traffic would drop off after April. I didn’t expect to have such a significant drop off. Pinterest had a major glitch right in the middle of May, and you can see where my traffic tanked on the Google Analytics graph accordingly. I haven’t had a monthly page views number this low since December 2018. It’s scary to watch your blog traffic drop so much. But sometimes it happens.

The Pinterest glitch was a good reminder that I need to update my Pinterest strategies, which I’ll talk about a little more in the next section. It’s also important to remember that my May 2019 blog traffic is more than quadruple my May 2018 traffic. I’ve come so far with this blog over the past year.

Page view tactics

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 May, I averaged 2-3 posts per week with the following evergreen posts: 30 Dessert Recipes for Two, DIY Scrapbook Embellishments, Waiting to Adopt: Answering Weird and Offensive Questions, Basic Card Making Supplies and Tools, and Tips for Taking Toddlers to Church.
Maintain consistent social sharing, particularly for high traffic and seasonal posts. Check. I’ve been keeping up with social sharing for all new posts. I’ve been scrambling a little bit with sharing high traffic and seasonal post shares, as I’ve been working to create new pins and share a little differently than I have over the past two years, which again, I’ll discuss more in the next section.

Reach 7,000 Pinterest followers with three million monthly viewers.

Here are my 2019 benchmarks and progress to reach my Pinterest followers and viewers goal.

January – target: 4,177, 1.3, actual: 4,296, 1.58
February – 4,434, 1.44, actual: 4,630, 1.66
March – 4,691, 1.5, actual: 4,980, 1.82
April – 4,948, 1.77, actual: 5,356, 2.38
May – 5,205, 1.96, actual: 5,598, 1.43
June – 5,462, 2
July – 5,719, 2.14
August – 5,976, 2.28
September – 6,233, 2.42
October – 6,490, 2.56
November – 6,747, 2.7
December – 7,000, 3

I ended May 2019 with 5,598 Pinterest followers. My numbers were definitely down in May. Every other month in 2019, I’ve gained over 300 new followers. I gained a little over 240 followers in May. But I’m still way ahead of where I need to be to meet my yearly goal. June has gotten off to a great start, and I’m not worried about falling behind on the follower benchmarks any time soon.

I expected my Pinterest viewers to drop off in May. Again, I didn’t expect such a significant dropoff. The viewers number just plummeted all month. While I haven’t driven nearly as much traffic to my blog, I’ve had consistent re-pins through this low period. I know that in time, I’ll regain traction with my blog traffic.

Thus far, my 2019 Pinterest strategies have been as follows:

Schedule content from other bloggers via Tailwind.
Schedule my own content via Tailwind.
Manage my photography group board.

I am still using all of these strategies. This past month, I’ve also been using the following Pinterest tactics.

Create at least two Pinterest graphics for all new evergreen posts and share them both right from the start.
Creating at least one new Pinterest graphic for all older evergreen posts and using it for new social shares.
Pinning blog content shares on older posts right from the blog as opposed to re-pinning from Pinterest.
Manual pinning daily. I still schedule the vast majority of my Pinterest content. I used to pin manually daily, and it did help. But I got away from it and am making it a regular routine again.

Finish and publish ebook #2.

Blog Photography Hacks went live on April 1! If you haven’t picked up your copy already, get one now. I really appreciate everyone who has bought a copy, especially those of you who have left feedback.

I’ve slowly been doing a little more work on ebook #3. At this point, my goal is to finish all of the photography for the book by the end of 2019. We’ll see how things go over the next few months before I set a more definite work/publishing schedule beyond that point.

Publish one article per week on Constant Content.

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

Ways to Enjoy Your Garden More This Summer
Top Tips for Sleeping on a Plane sold
How to Have Fun, Stress-Free Weeknight Dinners with Kids sold
Tips for Having an Amazing Concert Experience

I had two sales in April, which were the above mentioned sales, for a total of $110.50.

Finish out all 2018 and earlier vacation photos and keep up with current photo editing.

Vacation photos

Currently, I have the following sets of vacation photos not yet finished that I’d like to wrap up in 2019. The notes in parenthesis are my progress at the end of 2018. The notes following the parenthesis in bold text are my progress thus far in 2019.

November 2015 – Hawaii (haven’t finished editing) Finished editing.
August 2016 – Montana (haven’t finished editing) Finished out completely. Created and ordered a photo book, backed up and edited photos, cleared out all RAW files.
October 2016 – New Orleans (finished editing, need to make a photo book) Finished out completely. Created and ordered a photo book, backed up edited photos, cleared out all RAW files.
May/June 2017 – Mediterranean cruise (finished editing, need to make a photo book and order prints) Finished and ordered photo book part I and part II. Ordered and displayed 8×10 framed prints and 4×6 unframed prints for my hanging kitchen display.
September 2018 – Montana (haven’t finished editing) Finished editing.
October 2018 – Washington D.C. (haven’t finished editing) Finished editing.

I didn’t make any progress on vacation photos in May.

Current editing

With the exception of my ebook #3 pictures, I have everything backed up and cleared out through the end of March and except for one folder, everything edited through late April. I did okay on the editing front but a terrible job on the backing up and clearing out front in May. I need to get back on track again in June.