01 09 10

Subtitle

A personal look at the trails and triumphs of creating. Creating a business, creating a Sacred Self Care practice and creating your authentic self.

Monday, February 27, 2017

January 2017 Traffic, Income and Goals



January has finished and I did my review. I know things did not go as I had planned them but that's okay. At least I know why and what I can do differently. Writing things down is really helping me. But early in the month I realized I needed some form of accountability. I've got my notes but those are easily ignored. Being an introvert makes me hesitant to just buddy up with a stranger so my blog (and whoever reads it) will be my accountability partner. I've already shared my goals and objectives for this year in my last post. Now, I plan to share my monthly and quarterly reviews. This will include traffic and income reports and wellness reports. Some areas will be more detailed than others since this is a blog focused on creation; particularly creating a successful business.





This post is coming late because I underestimated how time consuming editing all these images would be. I got a few more orders than usual this month and let's not forget I still have a full-time job as well. I promise that February's reports will not be this late now that I have format to follow.

A few reminders, I have two businesses but I clearly indicate which stats you are seeing from each. Also, you can click on each picture to make it bigger so you can see the details better if you wish. So here without further ado are my January 2017 reports:

 January 2017 Traffic: 

In this section I will show how my growth strategy from my goal setting is working out. You will see stats on how many followers, users and buyers my website, blogs and social media accounts have. As well as what I am doing to attract and grow those numbers. 

Scarlet Moon Creations:

For those who are new, Scarlet Moon Creations is where I make and sell bath and body products as well as pagan and magical tools; all with a focus on self care.


Now for this business my main point of sale is my shop on Etsy so let's look at how January went traffic-wise. I had 328 overall views and 2 sales last month. Honestly, January is a very slow month for me regarding sales. This year is the first I have ever gotten sales in January so I must be doing something right. I got more views and favorites than ever before as well. I usually get, last minute sales in February for Valentine's day.



The above charts tell me what people coming to my shop are looking at and for. It seems I need to prep for holidays like Ostara with earlier promotions than I thought. I do get a lot of last minute shoppers so this is good to know. For those who do not know the Pagan holiday of Ostara, or the Spring Equinox, is in late March so if this many people are looking this early for something to help them celebrate I need to let more people know this early that I have what they want.

The other big takeaway here is more people are looking for my pagan products than my non-pagan ones. And that is mostly because my SEO is better on those. So over the course of the next year, I will be sifting focus a smidge.

I blocked out the revenue amount because Etsy calculates things slightly differently than I will show below in my income report and I don't want things to get confusing. But from the graph above you can get a gist. 

Blog & Google Analytics
So this is the traffic overview of this blog you are reading now in January 2017. Not shown? 3 email subscribers via Mail Chimp and 82 views on the 2 blog posts published this month.



As you can see I basically only get big jumps when I post, no one is coming back for more otherwise. And people are leaving pretty quickly. From this, I know I need to promote my posts more and go back to using google adsense to get better keywords. I honestly, have no idea why I have that big jump in the first days of the new year but my bullet journal post definitely brought in a whole new crop of viewers mid-month.



Now from these next charts you will see where my few visitors came from last month. Most via organic search via google and bing search engines it seems. So I'm not doing absolutely terrible when it comes to keywords and search terms but I could be doing better since my overall sessions are low. The next biggest channel is Social or social media and there is a big difference there. And since that is where I share my blog posts most often, I need to fix that as well.



These final stats about the blog show my users behavior. The page views and most popular pages overall in January. That /sharebutton.to is unfortunately spam referrals and I am working on getting rid of it. So ignoring that, my bullet journal post was the biggest hit last month followed by /, which indicates the main blog page. Then I can see some of my more popular posts from last year are still getting new views this year.
And now onto social media traffic.

Facebook
Oh Facebook, you live to make my life complicated. Facebook will not show me my previous months stats in nice looking graphs if I miss it by a day or two. However it will let me download lots of excel data for a previous month. And you don't want to see that. So for now I will give you a general idea of how things went in January and look forward to more detailed graphs in the next traffic reports.

Page Likes: 762
Avg. Reach (unique users): 488
Post Engagements: 12

My numbers here are down a bit since I did not post as much as usual this month and I'm afraid February is not looking much better. Bad Lashette.

Instagram
Instagram is a funny one. They recently started their insights but it seems to only show you a week at a time unless it is impressions for each post. I am committed to posting something once a day. But with the new stories feature, I'm not sure how that might affect what I post. Whatever I decide, IG has been the platform where I get the most interaction with people which I like. I am participating in my first giveaway so I'll be sure to discuss those results in next months report. In the meantime you can check out the giveaway here.

Followers: 409

And finally Pinterest. One of my favorite places to be online. In January I had a total of 106 followers here. 



But my reach has once again begun to increase. This is one thing I like about Pinterest, it steadily shows your pins to more and more people who are interested. 


Overall in January my impressions were up only because the 4th quarter of last year I basically neglected Pinterest all together. So even a little activity on my part was better than nothing. But I do still have lots of pins on my profile for Scarlet Moon Creations.


Top 5 pin impressions are all other people's images. Then came two of my Imbolc product pins which is great but they have almost 50% less impressions meaning they have been seen by less 50% less people than those first 5 pins listed. The pin with the most impressions got 400% times as many impressions and only 1 person saved it. 


And as far as this blog goes. It does not do nearly as well as you can see. The Bullet Journal post did the best last month though. I am adjusting my blog images to be more Pinterest friendly this year. And from what I learned here I need to spread my posts out into other boards and topics.

Excelsior Events:

And now my other business. The one I only talk about sparingly here. Excelsior Events, Inc is an event planning services company that I started last year. It takes a very different approach to market this business and make it successful. Most of what I do is in person and not online. But I do want to have that online presence since my target market is modern and alternative clients.

ExcelsiorEvent.com

According to Wordpress, I had 38 Views and 21 visitors in the month of January. 


My most popular page seems to be my home page followed by the Wedding Ceremony blog post I published but did not really share around. I believe I will see the stats for this go up as I have plans for it in February. I share all my blog posts on my Facebook page and tumblr account automatically, so those are accounted for here as well as all three big search engines. The top10-way site is another spam site I need to remove form my results. And I still have only 2 followers. 

The same situation as mentioned above. No pretty graphs.
Page Likes: 63
Avg. Reach (unique users): 60
Post Engagement: 13

I literally only posted the two blog posts from my website on my Facebook page in January. My engagement was higher than I was expecting and that turned out to be because I shared my blog posts on my personal profile which brought more unique users to it. Once I realized that I made that apart of my sharing plan for all future posts as well as some other Facebook promotions in February.

Pinterest
Now this business is more suited to Pinterest in this time of DIY Weddings. My blog posts have been crafted to appeal to potential clients via this social media platform. As of January, I have 2 followers.



As you can see I have a more steady and sharp climb in my reach. I believe because there are lots more people looking to plan their events, particularly my current focus weddings, than to buy products.


Impressions were a bit all over the place.


Top pins were the same across the board for impressions, clicks, saves and likes. But I realized something a bit late. I should be blogging about the great finds then pinning those images from my blog pages to pinterest. I will be doing that from now on.



Also, same as with my other Pinterest account, I need to spread my blog posts out into different boards and categories.


 January 2017 Income: 

I will be listing all income and expenses together here from both businesses. Since one of my objectives is to earn a certain amount from both as a total. 

Income

Etsy: $36.25

Expenses

Etsy Fees:$3.17
Supplies: $15.23
Ingredients: $19.10
Legal Zoom: $7.99
Payroll (turns out I don't need this yet): $44.09
Insurance: 70.83
Bank Fees: $12.00
Total: $172.41

Net Income: -$136.16
YTD: -$136.16


 Goals: 

Here I will discuss my goals and how I did or did not meet them for the month. These goals come from my project lists which are breakdowns of my annual objectives, listed here. 


January Review:

  • Renew driver's license -Turns out I need to take a day off to get my eyes checked and I had no time for that.
  • Update etsy listings -I did nothing for this and this was my biggest goal
  • Update officiant page I did but no I want to do more updates, lol.
  • Sign EE up for mail chimp Handled
  • Launch 3 new body butters -Did not finish this :(
  • Design ads -Another big activity I did not do.
  • Finish EE marketing plan -Nope.
  • Write two blog posts each - Yes! I was worried and it was close but I got it done.
  • Call accountants again - Yes again and they are working on my taxes.
  • Pay off con end bill -I really need to find an old bill with my account number.
  • Sell microwave -No
  • Sell shoes -No time
  • Sell books -Again no time
  • Self reiki This was great. Maybe do it earlier in the month though.
  • Use dumb bells 3x per week -I didn't even think about doing this.
  • Figure out google analytics I am so happy to be able to understand what I am looking at. I plan to share with you all.
  • Make posting schedule But did I follow it? OTL
  • Bring desk and metal kitchen thing in from storage -I need help with this obviously.
  • Daily draw readings It helped that I joined some challenges on IG. 

February Plans:

  • Finish January goals, ha!
  • Finish EE Financial Plan
  • Attend event planning networking event
  • Create Wedding checklist
  • Buy BTS merch
  • Organize photos
  • 2 blog posts each
  • Join Etsy & Amazon affiliates
  • Join Cruise with A&K
  • Consolidate student loans
  • Create card reading opt-in
  • Shred unwanted papers
  • Work out 3x per week
  • Continue savings
  • Create email lists for EE launch
So here it is the first behemoth reports form yours truly. I hope this was all understandable. If you have any questions or comments feel free to ask. I'll see you next month.

1 comment:

  1. I loved your post! Its great to see how a fellow blogger and business owner is planning each month and then reflecting on the good, and the bad. Gave me some food for thought for my planning. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete