Monthly Review: What I did in May to reach my 2017 goals

Well, here we are again. Another month has come and gone and now we meet here for another monthly review.

I’m going to try my best to keep these a little shorter and a whole lot sweeter from here on out. And if you are new here, then you will want to read My Goals for 2017 so that this post makes sense!

So let’s not waste any time in the intro. It’s time to get to the good stuff so I can share with you all of the exciting things that happened in the month of May! YAHOO!

Goal 1: $5,000 in income each month

This month, I decided to take my focus off of making money. Instead, I spent a lot of time focusing on the big picture of my website and how I will generate traffic in the future.

So this included changing my logo on my website to make it fit my theme and look more professional. (I don’t plaster my logo on everything, so this change was easy and minimal) I added a Tools I Love page to my website to help promote the companies that I am an affiliate of.

I also focused a lot of efforts on building my email list. And over the month of May, I added 13 new subscribers! This may not seem like a lot, but I have only had my email list for 2 months now, so this is an accomplishment!

Lastly, I spent time mapping out a plan on how to generate more leads that will later (hopefully) turn into conversions. And my next step on doing this will roll out within the next week! Plus some big website changes! AHH!

So instead of focusing my time on offering other services, which is where I make most of my income, I spent time working on the longevity of my site which will help me in the long run!

But just so you guys get a full picture of my income, here is what I made in the month of May.

MAY Income: $2.72

• Ad Networks – $1.22
• Affiliate Marketing – $1.50
• Other Services – $0

Impressive, right? I’m just kidding. I love the process and the things that I am working on behind the scenes will pay off. I just know it!

If you have any questions about what any of these are, just head on over to my March & April Monthly Review as I explained them in detail.

Goal 2: Publish 50 blog posts

I wrote 6 new blog posts in May.

• Monthly Review: What I did in March and April to reach my 2017 goals
• 3 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Facebook
• Blogging Basics for Beginners: Everything you need to blog your way to success
• How I grew my Pinterest from 7k to 100k Monthly Viewers in 2 Months
• 3 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Pinterest
• Website SEO for Beginners: Everything you need start optimizing your website

Since the beginning of the year, I have launched 27 (this is 28) new blog posts to my website! That means that I am WAY ahead of my goal of 50 blog posts on my website by the end of the year!

I plan to continue this trend of 1 new blog post a week. Except for the weeks that I share my Monthly Review – they will have 2 new blog posts shared. Plus special blog posts for new releases coming to my website! Stay tuned 🙂

Goal 3: 5 guest blog posts

In March and April, I spent some time guest blogging for a local company here in Rochester. So that was 1 guest blog post opportunity checked off my list.

This month, I am excited to announce that I was featured on The Sophisticated Gal‘s website for her Girl Boss series! This was more of an interview than a guest blog post, but I’m going to count it as one of the same!

If you want to go check that out, click HERE to give it a read! And of course, show some love to Kristen for being a kick-ass girl boss herself!

Goal 4: 50k 5k on Instagram

I talked about this last month, and I’ll talk about it again. My goal of 50k Instagram followers was a shot in the dark. When I started my website, I thought that this would be a great goal to have. And now that I look at Instagram and evaluate my audience, I’ve decided to drop that goal.

My audience isn’t as active on Instagram as they are on other social media platforms. And honestly, most are on Instagram, but they don’t interact with my content in a way to drive traffic to my website.

So once, I get a handle on how I want my audience to interact with my Instagram account to provide tips and tricks in my posts instead of promoting my website, then I’ll call it an Insta-success for me!

But for now, my goal is to reach 5k Instagram followers by the end of the year.

My Instagram account at the end of April:

My Instagram account at the end of May:

And there you have it! I’m being completely honest and showing you all of my cards in this blog post. So over the past month, you can see that I actually lost 20 followers. And I only shared 22 new posts which isn’t as many as I should have shared if I wanted to gain more followers! So clearly I need to step up my Instagram game… maybe just a little.

Goal 5: 1k on Pinterest

Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest. You probably already know how much I love Pinterest by now. But let me tell you again: I LOVE PINTEREST!

Pinterest has done wonderful things for my website and blog. More than I could have expected when I started this journey a few months ago. Today, most of my traffic is generated by Pinterest. And I’ve already talked about that in my blog post on how Tailwind helped to grow my traffic by 191%!

Over the past month, my Pinterest has continued to grow 94% and now I have an average of 172k monthly viewers! That is just insane to me.

This growth and expansion of my Pinterest reach have helped to generate new followers for my accounts as well. Let’s take a look…

My Pinterest account at the end of April:

My Pinterest account at the end of May:

My Pinterest account grew by 82 new followers and now I only have 245 more followers until I reach my goal of 1k! Woot woot!

And that’s a wrap! I told you I would keep it short and simple… I mean this is half of what most of my other posts are so I’m gonna call this short.

If you want to check out my other monthly reports, just check out the keep reading section below!

XO, Cath

Keep Reading…

    

About the Author

Why, hello there! I’m Cathrin, the creator of The Content Bug. But since we are already virtual best friends, you can call me Cath. After working in the digital marketing industry, I decided it was time to share my love for online content creation, social media, and SEO with the everyday hustlers of the world… like YOU! You can almost always find me at a local coffee shop writing, reading and working on new things for The Content Bug. But when I have some free time, I love hanging out with my dog, going to a yoga class, and being outside. Stay connected with me on Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter to see what I’m up to!