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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Monday, February 6, 2017

Happy 5th Birthday Blog!

Image description: cake in the shape of a 5 with five candles
covered with blue frosting and M&Ms

Blog is now five years old!

Five years I birthed this little word baby upon the world. I've learned a lot since then–especially about what not to do. (Ten to twenty page navel gazing posts about prescriptive grammar don't make for particularly good blog entries. Who knew?)  Blog had an unexpectedly awesome January that really ended year four with some razzle dazzle.

Blog wants me to play Big Time (of course) and promise that we're going to hit 4 million page views this year. Not three million...FOUR million.

At least I can for sure do the first part.



State of the Blogion

Since I'm a huge fan of goals (especially well designed, well considered goals) I want to process my goals here at the outset of year five, and I thought for people who wonder how that happens might like to see my process more transparently. Just because I'm making about half my money from writing and have a big audience doesn't mean I don't work on the fundamentals and it definitely doesn't mean I have all my shit together.

[While goals like subscribers and page views are technically not fulfilling the second S of "SMARTS" goals, I find that I can influence them with some predictability when I'm doing all the right things that I can control.]

  • My goals from year four were hit and miss. Mostly miss. But I got a few. And I'm edging closer to the point where I can write full time, and pay my bills from it.
  • My readership is WAY up from the year before. Even before the sudden explosion of traffic from My Facebook Page, I hit my low end goal of averaging 1200 hits a day. But accounting for that, we blew the doors off the hinges like Angel in the opening sequence. (Did I just make an 18 year old pop-culture reference. Oh yeah.)
  • My follower/subscriber growth on everything but Facebook was lethargic. I have about 650 followers across various platforms (or social media where I share nothing but writing updates). That's basically up from 500 and was under the goal of 750 I was hoping for.  My stretch goal was 1000, and I didn't come anywhere close to that amount. 
  • I managed to keep blogging, every week day, despite cancer treatments, a ten year relationship ending (or changing, I guess), and moving...twice.
  • I wrote almost no fiction that wasn't my work in progress. That's a mixed result since I didn't split my fiction writing into WIP and "other." So technically I hit it, but I'm giving myself Fry eye. 
  • I didn't do any writing for the other blogs I usually write for. Bad Chris! No biscuit. 
  • I did okay with social media before the election. After I got really stuck for a few months watching the train wreck. It was.....not good.
  • I failed hard at writing more reviews of products and awesome lesser-known books.
  • I failed at cleaning up a post or tab every week.
  • I resumed "Season 2" but did not write an arc significant enough to wrap up at the end of 2016. 


These are my 2017 ("The Year We Fought Back") Goals:


  • Currently I'm getting between 5000 and 10,000 pageviews a day. I'm not sure if that's a fluke yet or not, but I'll set a goal assuming that it's not, and give myself a little latitude if things shrink down no matter what I do. I will try to average 5k per day. Stretch goal of 10k per day.
  • Cleaning up an old post, menu, or tab at least every week.
  • Resuming Season 2 with some sort of plot post at least once a week.
  • 900-1000 followers. (Or 250-350 more across all social media) Stretch goal 1500.
  • Predictable "meaty" entries twice a week. (Wed and Fri) and the stretch goal of another one on Thursday.
  • Personal update (with word count) on Mondays.
  • Restart VLOG posts once every two weeks.
  • Restart weekly Mailbox posts.
  • Writing for Ace of Geeks at least once a month each. Stretch goal of bi-weekly.
  • Fiction once a month. (Beyond book writing.) No flex goal. 
  • Finish book a mere two months late (Nov 31st.) Flex goal: finish book on time (Sept 31st)
  • Re-find those limitations on social media.
  • One review each month. Flex goal of one fiction and one craft book each month.

2 comments:

  1. I would love some sort of weekly check-in or daily check-ins regarding showing up even if it's just a few pages a day. Is this possible?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Can you say more? I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

      Delete