Progress Report February 2019

Another month flew by!

Gosh I know February is a short month anyway, but between focusing on my kids when they're awake to being on the computer pretty much every minute they are not, the year is really flying by. I can't believe its the start of another month already.

I find writing these monthly progress reports keeps me accountable (to myself) and will provide something interesting to look back on. So here is what February was like for me.

What were my goals and expectations going into this month?

• Keep up with consistent, quality content! This is my absolute top priority for the site.
  
• Spend a small amount of time researching whether I want to commit to any social media yet
• Decide on homepage layout
  
• Expect zero traffic to continue (except for traffic direct from WA via site comments)
• To write at least two posts per week: one review of at least 2500 words and one information article of at least 1000 words.
  
• For it to feel hard. Why? because I've been out of the loop with affiliate marketing for a year or so while looking after my small children. This meant I felt like I had a lot to catch up on in terms of technical stuff and how to even write. As I've been around a while, I also know it's going to take time for the site to profit so all those things make this new website of mine feel like a mega mountain to climb.
  

What has the month actually been like?

• I made my content goal! I have a publishing schedule for my site, and I've stuck to it like glue. I can't post every day, so I am for quality and consistency.
• I decided I won't bother with social media at the moment. I will just focus on creating quality content and SEO. I will revisit social media at some point in the future once I have a better idea of which platform will be most beneficial in my niche.
• Homepage: it was taking up a lot of time fiddling with different layouts (in a sandbox, like Jay suggests) and was not getting me any value towards my site so I've decided to stick with a blogroll for now.
  
• Zero traffic has continued. As expected. It's hard to see, but it really shouldn't be any other way. I have to tell myself to stay off google analytics and try to only check once a week if I really can't help myself.
• I have exceeded my post number for the week, hoorah! Instead of two posts per week, I write three! And my reviews have grown naturally to around 3000 words. On top of my three posts per week, I have found I have room in my schedule for two mega round up posts in a "best of" review format, which are about 6000 words each. This puts me on track to reach 100 posts on my site some time in August.
• Has it felt hard? Yes it really has. It really really has. January was all excitement at getting back into it and learning, February I've hit the point where I feel like I'm working a lot and not seeing any benefit. I know its coming, I know I must chip away. I know this works, I know this also takes time. I find inspirational quotes, reading about others success here, and taking good quality scheduled breaks really help with the motivation.
  
• Affiliate income: zero, of course. I'll start posting income reports when it starts coming through. I do make the odd dollar here and there from my sites I dabbled with before my children were born, but I am now laser focused on my one site and will just report on that as it starts to come through. I keep my old sites because the domain names pay for themselves. Ha.

What are my plans for March?

For the coming month, I'm keeping it simple. I'm focusing on content, content, content.

I make space once or twice a week to learn, research, and watch one of Jay's webinars. By the end of March I plan to have done the following:

• written 8 helpful information only articles of around 1000 words each
• written 4 review posts with affiliate links of around 2500-3000 words each
• written two "best of" style posts with affilate links around 5000-6000 words each
• watched 4 WA webinars

What are your plans for your site this month?