Monthly Goals and Expense Tracking: August 2016

Well, I still can’t call this an income report. I’ve been working hard to implement all the suggestions from Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, but it will take a few months to really see the results. I am pretty please overall with my progress this month, here is a reminder of the goals I set.

July’s Goals

1. Finish two blogging courses– I finished Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and wrote a review of it last week. I did not finish my other class, but I will continue to work on it over the next month or more. I have been amazed at home much work it is to implement what I have been learning. This blogging thing is not for the lazy!
2. Submit my first guest post on Soul Paint Co.– DONE and published! I also got to guest post on Corinne Kerston’s blog.
3. Continue to publish twice a week on this blog– I think I missed one post in the last six weeks, not too shabby!
4. Grow visitors to 100 a day – I have had a few days with over 100 visitors and the last week of this month has been all over 50. I will be focusing on getting more visitors next month for sure.
5. Increase my Pinterest follows to 600– DONE! I am super excited about reaching this goal! At this point a little over half of my page views are coming from Pinterest.
6. Increase my newsletter subscribers to 100– Not so much. I’m at 35 subscribers, which is up from 18 so almost double. I finally created a cool opt-in (you can find the sign up at the bottom of this post or on the home page) so I am hoping that helps with the number of subscribers this month.
7. Create and Implement Business Building Challenge– Total fail. There are many reasons for this, I started out strong and then got distracted with other projects. If I do another challenge I will take the time to write the whole thing out before it starts.
8. Create more freebies– DONE!

I have been learning so much and feel like I am really making great strides to becoming a “real blogger.”

Now that my two big kids will be in school during the week I am hoping to create a schedule where I will be able to work during the baby’s nap and in the evening so I don’t get behind in either my own work or my VA work. I’m not setting quite so many goals this month as we ease back into school and the new schedule.

September’s Goals

1. Increase Pinterest followers to 1000 – I am going to look for 5 more group boards to join and continue to use BoardBooster and Tailwind for pin scheduling.
2. Increase newsletter subscribers to 100 – The new opt-in I created seems to be helping. I am planning on creating a few new freebies and hopefully I can break 100 subscribers this month. I’m really excited to take Meera Kothand new course, Email List Simplified too!
3. Increase visitors to 100 day – I should just write “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”
4. Submit two guest posts – I am working on brainstorming up some topics and then will decide where I should submit too.
5. Create Content Calendar – I want to set aside some time to brainstorm out content til the end of the year.
6. Outline my First Course! – You read that right! I have an idea for a course and want to sit down this month and plan it out. I am super excited!

Expenses

This month was not too bad, but I did spend more than I expected. I decided to sign up for a year of Tailwind and CoSchedule which are paid upfront. Then it was a few monthly charges…

• Tailwind – $119.88
• CoSchedule – $180.00
• ConvertKit – $29.00
• SumoMe – $25.00
• BoardBooster – $10.00

Total – $363.88

I expect this month to be less, I will still have the monthly charges for ConvertKit, SumoMe, and BoardBooster but I don’t plan on signing up for any more services at this point.

All in all this month was a big step forward. Here’s to hoping that next month I write an Income Report!