Goals and Income Report for February 2017

February was a tough month personally. February 13th my grandmother passed away at the age of 94. We had been very close my entire life. I was the youngest grandchild by seven years and lived right next door to my grandparents growing up. They took me every where with them!

I have been missing my grandmother very much. I am so grateful that I had her in my life. She really inspired me to be a better person, put family first and express my creativity.

But after the disaster that was last month, I am super happy that the blog is on course once again. I was able to publish six posts even though I took a week off mid-month.

Also, I have been very inspired by the work I am doing as a Virtual Assistant. I think soon I will be able to share more with you but let’s just say that I have been reading about some very amazing women.

Why share my income?

I started this series with sharing my expenses in getting my blog set up. It was important to me to share how much it cost to get my business of the ground. Now, I continue to share the goals I set for myself each month and (the little bit of) income I am making.

Traffic was down this month but I wasn’t really concentrating on promoting posts. I know I can do better on that and am hoping that working through Elite Blog Academy (EBA) will help me with that.

I purchased EBA in December when it was on sale at last years price. After trouble with getting my login info when it finally opened in February, I got started last week. I am looking forward to working my way though. I have started the first section and already am making changes to my blog structure.

February Goals

1. Put together a second webinar – Nope, didn’t happen. Still trying to figure out what to talk about in a webinar.
2. Submit four guest posts – I submitted two, (one has been published!) and have two more lined up for this month.
3. Create a free email challenge – No, this didn’t happen either…
4. Join more Pinterest Group Boards – Yes! I applied to over 30 and got accepted to 10.
5. Stay positive! – Done! This was much easier this month. I really focused on what was going right and what I was going to be doing in the future.

March Goals

1. Work on EBA 10 hours a week – I am really excited to be starting Elite Blog Academy this month. I was a bit late since I didn’t get the log in info with everyone else but I finally got to start on March 4th. I am going to take my time and work through the whole thing step by step.
2. Finish Sticky Blogging – I am loving this course! It is all about writing better content that will attract your true fans. Writing has never been my strong suit (and now I’m a blogger…kinda weird) but I am so much better just from doing it more often. Now I really want to focus on good, strong writing skills.
3. Write and submit two guest posts – I have two bloggers who have already agreed to publish my guest posts, now I just need to write them!

That’s it for this month. With EBA being my big focus I don’t want to set too many other goals. I will still try to publish a blog post once a week, plus a Mom to Mom interview if I have one, but I am not going to beat myself up if I don’t.

I’m actually pretty happy to see the number of goals go down. I am being more realistic in what I want to do with my time. I still have quite a bit of VA work to do on top of this blog. Work has been taking over my life a bit and I am really trying to find some balance with family time.

These last two weeks I have been putting the kids to bed more often and it has been really fun. My oldest daughter and I are reading “Green” and have been really enjoying it. I don’t often get a chance to read the chapter books with the kids since their father puts them to bed most often.

Expenses

ConvertKit – $29.00 – I love ConvertKit! It makes content upgrades and freebies so easy to distribute!

BoardBooster – $30.00

Canva – $12.95

Teachable – $39.00

SmarterQueue – $19.95 – This is my new social media scheduler and I love it! Makes creating recurring post so easy!

Total – $ 130.90

Income

So I didn’t make money again this month…but I am happy to see a few affiliate sales coming in to my accounts. I have not reached the payout amounts yet but those accounts are starting to grow.

Just a note, I am counting income when it is payed to me not when the sale is made.