Week 1 & 2- Adding Content: What I did to improve my blog and grow traffic.

These past 2 weeks marked the first steps toward my goal of increasing my blog traffic and turning this into a full time business.

It. Was. Tough.

Prioritizing Your Blog Takes a Lot of Mental Energy

For me that was because it took me away from my current income streams. I find it hard to turn down paying work to focus on something that may or may not make me anything in the future.

Do you feel that pain?

When you need to pay bills it doesn’t make sense to turn down perfectly good money to possibly make more one day. But having a dream doesn’t always make sense and that was a sacrifice I had to make to make this dream happen.

I have met so many blogger that made the exact same sacrifice and struggled with the exact same doubts. This gives me confidence that it isn’t a futile effort.

Which Course I’m Taking This Week

This week I began the course ->>>>How to Successfully Organize a Blog with Multiple Topics

First I read it in entirety from start to finish, 16 pages. Then I started the whole thing over again.

I only made it through about page 6 in implementing ideas Even that will probably take at least another week or 2 to do before I can start doing more. The content is so in depth and there is so much work to do! It’s both frustrating and exciting.

What I Actually Did

This week focused on streamlining and organization.

I cleaned up my blog a little bit. It looked like a full on mess before. There was no order to the topics and I didn’t make connections between content.

1. Updated or made new photos: some of them looked really bad or were the wrong sizes. There is still more to do, but it was a great start.
2. Posted to the Facebook page: I don’t go on there enough, but it really needs to be more of a priority.
3. Wrote 2 articles: I’ll put links to both of them at the bottom of this post.
4. Added new content to the slider on the home page: It really needed fresh posts on it. It’s easy to forget to update it regularly.
5. Made a watermark for media: Our pictures really need to have our own stamp on them so we don’t have our work used without consent.

It Was All Worth It

5 things may not seem like a lot, but the amount of hours that went into it were almost a part-time job’s worth. That’s a lot of time to put aside for a personal project. Even so, it has done nothing but made me want to reach my goals more.

The traffic isn’t increasing yet, but that is expected in the beginning. I’m hopeful it will pick up as I steadily implement the new strategies I learn.

New Content on the Blog

The Lazy Way to Care for Thick Hair

How Laziness Has Made Me a Better Employee- 3 Tips for Increased Productivity