October 2021 Monthly Blog Goals

Happy Fall!

September was a smashing success for me!

Every goal I put in front of me I managed to do and then some.

Of course, this post is another recap of September’s goals and what I have in store for October.

If this is your first time coming around to my blog and seeing this: welcome! I started these monthly goal posts in August as a way to narrow down what I needed to do to create a full-time income in a year.

Overview: While I have had my blog since November 2020 (and also wanted income within the first year of my blog being published), there were a lot of things that I needed to learn before getting to this point. In July started saying that now is the right time to get my blogging income where I want it to be.

Therefore in August, I started with my monthly blog goals to keep myself aligned with what I needed to do to get to where I need to be.

It has been difficult, but very rewarding as I have learned a lot in the last 8 weeks and I’m very excited to share with you all of what I have learned and the next steps for Lemonade and Adventure.

So, buckle up, because you’re going to be so very proud of me (plus this post is very long and thorough). (ᵔᴥᵔ)

Recap on why I started this series (aside from getting to full time income within one year):

How September Went

My main goals for September were:

1. 5 written posts throughout the month with the creation of 3 pins for each [✔]

I happened to try for 8 monthly posts in August and realized that it wasn’t something that my brain could compute. I had been trying to accomplish that goal from the start of April and it finally clicked in August that I couldn’t make myself write 8 posts if I wasn’t finding enough brain juice to do so.

So, instead, I dropped it down to 1 post weekly and tacked on an extra post just for good measure and I managed to write 6 (excluding this one)! I’m beyond proud of myself and I hope to continue on the trajectory to creating this steadily for the rest of 2021.

September Posts:

8 Personal Growth Podcasts I Love (And You Should, Too)
How to Have an Adventure By Yourself: 9 Easy Ways
17 Genius Christmas Box Ideas for Adults
50+ Marvelous Winter Bucket List Ideas You’ll Absolutely Enjoy
Our Terrific 5 Day Trip to Playa del Carmen ‣ The Hilton Playa del Carmen Review
Your 30 Day Self Love Challenge: Be Kind to Yourself

2. “Update pins” on older posts [✔]

This was an easy task as I updated pins on one particularly hard-to-rank post of mine on Pinterest: Thoughtful Self Care (Pin 1, Pin 2, Pin 3).

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I created 3 to keep on trend by creating a solid 3 pins per post. I am hoping that these pins work after learning some cool tips on pin titles through Carly Campbell’s eBook: Pinterest Traffic Title Hacks (I’ll explain more below).

3. Refresh information from Pinteresting Strategies update and SEO Bundle [✔]

I felt like this point would never get done. Good grief did it take a lot out of me. 

I was able to refresh information through P.S. for two weeks as I wanted to make sure I wasn’t rushing through it at all. However, the SEO notes I had? Took me over three weeks to finish. (ಥ﹏ಥ)

It’s so dense it’s nauseating and that was just notes from an eBook I had read back in April! Ugh. But I finished them both and now I’m realizing a lot of things that I needed to have done (or have slacked on) never got done. 

I think those will be the main things I work on going into next month, but they’ll be in the background rather than things I go crazy over.

4. Refresh SEO Knowledge [✔]

As I mentioned above, SEO is dense. I feel like it’s such an understatement. It’s a heavy, information-laden subject that is difficult to get through and impossibly hard to understand in one sitting.

If you’re not an SEO expert, you constantly need to retap into SEO information and refresh your knowledge on it as simple things can be forgotten very easily.

I added on to the refreshing of SEO knowledge not only through Debbie Gartner’s course but also by hitting up Stupid Simple SEO. It’s a course I’ve been dying to take and now that I’m taking it I had to take a step back.

My eyeballs were crossing just starting the modules. I only managed to get through the welcome module and module 1 and peeked into the second module and had to run away.

However, before I bore you to death, I’ll get to the next point as I’ll cover more about SSSEO further below.

5. Read through Affiliate Marketing + Email Marketing [✔]

OK, this was a failed point from August that I brought into September and boy did I over-deliver on results for this.

Since I knew that I had dropped the ball hard before I wanted to make sure I paid close attention to these two topics very well this time around.

Affiliate Marketing

To start, I read through Tracie Fobes’ Affiliate Marketing Strategies Guide and that was an absolute gem of information. I enjoyed the fact that she broke up her guide into four sections and talked in-depth about various kinds of posts and how to use them for the good of affiliate marketing.

Would I say I’m an Affiliate Guru? Not yet, but soon. ~(˘▾˘~)

I also went through the Passive Income Superstars Affiliate Superstar Toolkit 2.0 and was less than impressed with that format. I enjoy reading at my leisure, or at least having content broken up between video and the written word at the very least, and it was majority video.

I honestly didn’t remember what I got out of this course when writing this so I had to look. There were a lot of templates offered though so I have those stashed away and ready to use when, and if ever, I need them.

Email Marketing

I had originally been signed up for Kim Beasley’s The Entrepreneur Hub for email marketing and came to the quick realization that it was no longer being offered (even though I had signed up for it) as the site was offline. Unsure what happened there, but I did a little digging and it seems as though Kim has gone M.I.A.

So I had to look for another source. I remembered I had saved a freebie from HerPaperRoute on Lead Magnet ideas (which lead me to her blog post on how to get started with an effective and well-thought-out email list). I found her resource to be well written and exactly what I needed.

However, because I wanted more information I checked out Tracie Fobes’ website and stumbled upon her blog post on lead magnet ideas and another on opt-ins.

I wanted to read through the opt-ins mainly so I could understand how to manage a growing email subscribers list before it happens. I learned about automation and other things that needed to happen with email lists and it’s a topic I’ll constantly have to keep abreast with.

6. Update upcoming seasonal posts [✔]

As the holiday season is coming upon us I wanted to make sure I updated seasonal posts that are either right around the corner or would need time to get into the grooves of the Google algorithm.

Therefore, I updated two – one for Valentine’s Day and another for Halloween.

3 Blissful Ways to Treat Yourself to Self Care on Valentine’s Day 
50 Fun Things to Do for Halloween

The Extra Mile:

I think September has been, on record, my most productive blogging month since I started in November. Ball drop, who? Not me!

• Read through Pinterest Traffic Title Hacks by Carly Campbell

I knew roughly 65% of the information in this little book, but with the extra knowledge I gained, I am hoping that my pin titles are more on par with feeding clicks rather than passive saves.

It’s definitely something to look forward to as I’m creating new pins.

• Optimized “6 Productive Things To Do On Your Day Off” post

I SEO optimized the above post to rank it closer to page 1. I’m sure I’ll have to figure out backlinks for this post to rank though so that’s another challenge for another day.

• Updated Pinterest Board Titles
  • Blogging to “How to Blog and Make Money”
  • Fitness to “Fitness Tips Losing Weight”

After reading through my notes, and the update on Pinteresting Strategies, I’ve decided to update Pinterest board titles to better reflect what the board was about. I have no idea if it will work though. :’)

• Worked on Income Blog Success by Blogging on Point. 

This made a lot of sense for me to take since I want to become a full-time blogger within the year. It’s a quick course on how to get those income goals happening by breaking things down into small bite-sized chunks. It’s how my brain works so it helped me put things into perspective easily.

I completed the Income Goal Breakdown and now I need to find affiliate sources to get to that income goal by annual, monthly, weekly, and daily parameters.

• I got accepted to two Pinterest group boards. 😀

Great, huh? (─‿‿─)

Great News!

1. I gained one email subscriber on September 20th. I wasn’t aware though as I received no notification from ConvertKit. So, I’m deciding to start my newsletter with that one person in mind. Glad for it.

2. I also learned who my ideal reader was and the niche I’d like to work in a whole lot better, too. It feels like September was a month of breakthroughs.

3. Also, oh boy oh boy! I broke through 1K sessions of blog traffic as told to me by Google Analytics. I’m so happy. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ･: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ)

4. I’m officially an Amazon Associates member, which makes me enthused as I had to apply twice and everything has worked out.

5. And I was accepted into another affiliate program so that’s woo-hoo for me, too.

October

Foreseen Roadblocks

I far as I can tell, I have no foreseen roadblocks aside from the possibility of receiving a job offer (if any) and subsequently having to work full time again.

I want to get as much done this month as possible since November will be an incredibly busy month for me visiting family for Thanksgiving, therefore I’m keeping that in mind.

Posts

The plan is to publish 5 posts in total this month and to write 8.

The extra 3 posts will be for November if something goes awry with my writing schedule. I’d rather be safe than sorry, thank you.

SEO + Social Media

I’d like to get through Module 2 + 3 of Stupid Simple SEO.

In September my brain was becoming scrambled with all the videos I was watching and I needed a break. Plus, as you could tell, I did a lot and I think my brain just wasn’t having it.

I’d also like to strive for gaining one quality backlink on a post; that would honestly be the highlight of my year.

As far as social media goes: still on a hiatus from that. I’m debating archiving the current posts I have up on Instagram and leaving it blank. 

If you are interested in following that though you can find me over at @lemonadeandadventure. Maybe in 6-12 months when I’ve got a very good handle on this side of the dam I will break through the wall and post there.

Affiliate Marketing

Since I’m still very new to all of this I’m adamant about getting it done. As they say, “Practice makes perfect” and without practicing the skills I have read through, I can’t learn what works for my audience.

Therefore I’ll update posts with affiliate links where I think appropriate. 

Email Marketing (+ Subscribers)

Ah man, this has been at the forefront of my thoughts for a while. After reading up on email marketing (I have sooo many resources saved to my computer, sheesh) I have this newfound energy to connecting the dots through all of my work via freebies, lead magnets, opt-ins, whatever you want to call them.

I’m so excited to gain more subscribers, but I know that I need to create automation for my newsletter emails. I feel bad that someone has signed up and I have nothing to offer them and that was something I dropped the ball on so severely (and if you’re reading this: I apologize!).

Therefore, I have a lot to work on just under this heading alone. Phew, what a busy month there is to be had!

Update Posts

Oh, 100%. Gotta update posts. Especially since my new niche is under helping cultivate self-confidence for the modern woman. 

Surprise! I’m so excited to have a more defined niche under personal development, but that also means I need to rework some posts for this new niche. Thankfully I literally can see my niche in over 90% of the posts I have written (yes, even the holiday ones!).

It’s all about knowing how to connect the dots after all.

I’d like to update 2 posts this month.

General Plan

As you can see, this is going to be one busy month.

With November being a heavy travel month for my partner and me, the more I do now the less I will have to do come Thanksgiving week. Therefore, I will do my best to go above and beyond the call of duty again.

However, I know you’re here for the TL;DR version so here ya go:

1. Publish 5 posts total (with 3 pins each).
2. Write 8 posts.
3. Stupid Simple SEO: Module 2 and 3.
4. Update posts with affiliate links where appropriate.
5. Create freebies as email lead magnets.
6. Automate a mail sequence for new subscribers.
7. Update older posts to reflect the nature of the site’s more defined niche: self-confidence.

I’m Ecstatic!

Last month I had an affirmation: “I don’t chase. I attract. What belongs to me will simply find me.” I said it over a handful of days and then I stopped but the affirmation rang true for the rest of the month.

I know how badly I want to create a revenue stream for my family that allows us to grow a family and to give our children the life that we never had and I’m not stopping for anyone because what belongs to me will simply find me.

This post was for my October 2021 Monthly Blog Goals.