Operation Vegas: 2020 - December Update

Time sure flies when you're having fun, doesn't it? Another month has passed already! This month has been a whirlwind with so many things happening. In between growing this website and Christmas, we also adopted a dog. Meet Luna! She's a 2-year old 6-pound chihuahua.

OK, enough with that. Back to business! It's been a bit of a whirlwind with my site this month too. This month I:

• Signed up with an autoresponder (I went with ConvertKit) and I created a 5-day email course
• Signed up for a Pinterest course
• Signed up for an email course (I didn't look at that one yet)
• Signed up for Tailwind, which helps schedule Pinterest Pins

My husband said "What are all these charges???" lol But they will pay off. The Pinterest ones are certainly getting there already! I'll show you below.

Traffic & Status Update

Last month, my Google status looked like this:

This is December's Google status:

We're definitely making some progress here! You can see my average position decreased. I assume this is just that fun Google dance. I'm not too worried about it. I think this will improve in the next few months.

Now, I just looked at Google Analytics, and here's something fun to see:

I had a nice spike yesterday. That is from... Pinterest! Let's talk about that a little more.

Pinterest Rocks!

A few members here mentioned how Pinterest has helped them increase their traffic, so I decided to dive deep into that territory.

As I mentioned, I signed up with a program called Tailwind and I also bought a Pinterest training. This strategy is starting to work!

I just started a Pinterest account for my current site in November, I believe. This is what things were looking like before I purchased Tailwind.

This is as of this morning:

That's a big increase in just a little over a month!

The best is when you get an email that says "Your Pin is a hit!" I've gotten 5 of these emails so far.

The spike in traffic I got yesterday was due to one of my pins getting pretty good traction. It seems to be getting shared a lot and kind of going viral.

This is chump change compared to a lot of bloggers, but I think it's a great start and I can't wait to see what else I can do with Pinterest!

Because of Pinterest, I actually decided to change my theme, and now I have this bright pink as my main color versus orange. Pinterest has a heavily female audience, so I want to attract more attention. (Also, I'm a female and I love pink! lol)

I'm also kind of transitioning my site to a little bit more of a lifestyle blog. Not only do those do well on Pinterest, but it will also give me a chance to use some content from my other site that I'm shutting down.

That site is about health and food, so I can add a health section on my site. (Plus, I really think it's SO important to be healthy when you're trying to grow an online business, and I want to stress that in this new health section.) I'll try it out and see if it helps or hurts!

My traffic is still really low, but I really feel like I'm making progress. December was a crazy month and I didn't get as much writing done as I will in the upcoming months.

Content Update

My goal in December was to publish 20 articles. And I was able to hit that. (I think I actually got 21, but I'm not sure. I feel like this count is a little off.)

And a little update: I squeezed one more in there today!

In January, my goal will jump back up to at least 25 articles written. I'd love to get to 30. I can probably do that because I'll be using content from my other site. I'm going to do a little more blogging and lifestyle content along with the product reviews.

Other Notes:

• I had 5 sign ups in December, but none of them progressed beyond the free membership.
  
• I don't have any email subscribers yet.
• I am joining other affiliate programs (like ConvertKit, Tailwind and the Pinterest product that I bought) and I want to find even more streams of income in the next month.

I am really excited for 2019 and I know this is going to be a crazy, fun, fast-paced year. I expect to grow a LOT this year. It's going to be a wild ride!

Thanks so much for reading! And Happy New Year!!

- Christina