August 2022 Writing Report

By Kimberly

Updated:

Having sky-high goals can be an amazing thing. They’re what get you off your bum, jumping and running to reach new heights. However, if your goals are so high that attaining them becomes impossible, they cross the line into depressing.

Looking back at my goals for the last few months, they’ve been too high. I’ve been dreaming a little too big. Especially when you consider it’s summer and I’ve been trying to make many fun memories with my family, too.

Given that, the first bit of August has been spent looking at how I can tweak the goals to be more realistic, attainable, and encouraging rather than depressing.

July 2022 Recap & TLDR

July was a busy month with the family. We had one week where some of our out-of-town family stayed with us (and we had a lot of fun). Another week we spent at Yellowstone. Another week we had swim lessons and fun stuff.

July was also hard for me because I don’t do as well in the triple-digit heat, and there were many hot days. My mental health does best when I spend at least some time in the yard each day, but then I get all melty and exhausted if it’s too hot.

My dear, kind husband got me a special cooling vest to wear, and that’s helped. But I still couldn’t get the sunshine and yard therapy that I needed without it exhausting me for the rest of the day. We’re working on figuring the heat out so I can still get my garden therapy in, but so I don’t get melty exhausted from being in the triple-digit heat. I expect it won’t be solved overnight, though.

Translation: I had a ton going on in July. I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to. Instead of my goals being inspiring, the anxiety from not getting all the things done was pulling me down.

Here were the goals for July:

  • Keep on swimming (both literally and figuratively).
  • Get the new writers onboarded fully.
  • Focus on ideation and topic creation.
  • Publish 45 articles for the month.

And here’s how I did on those goals:

  • I did a good bit of literal swimming. The business bobbed a bit, though. And that’s okay.
  • New writers are continuing to make progress – at their pace (which is how it should be. I oughtn’t to have tried making a goal dictating their paces).
  • Ideation and topic creation is happening, though it’s not fast.
  • Did I want to publish 45 articles? Oops. I got 13 published.

For your reference, 13/45 is 28.88% (let’s round up to 29%). That’s pretty poor if we’re talking about grades.

Thankfully, this isn’t a grade. Instead, it reflects how busy I was and that I didn’t schedule myself well.

So I spent some time reevaluating goals for the next few months to make them more attainable and realistic – given that school’s starting for the kids (we homeschool, but that’s still work I do), activities are picking up, and life happens.

I’ll tell you more about the goals later. First, let’s review how things went in July.

Site Report: as of August 1st

While there was a traffic dip in late May, most sites recovered in July (one didn’t). However, July is smack dab in the middle of the “summer slump” of advertising. In other words, RPM (ad revenue) naturally falls this year, and I can’t control that.

Month to month

  • Traffic: -1%
  • Revenue: -9%
  • Publishing: -19%

Year over year

  • Traffic: +75%
  • Revenue: +192%
  • Publishing: -50%

Year to Date

  • Traffic: +123%
  • Revenue: +509%
  • Publishing: +23%

So while month-to-month numbers aren’t super great, let’s look at the year-over-year and year-to-date numbers to remember that things are still going up. They just didn’t go up this month, and that happens.

Total gross revenue for the whole portfolio is still over $2,000 monthly.

Here’s the data I usually share, with a few updates, because I looked at my data more closely.

  • Going from $0 to $1000 monthly took me 24 months 26 months from when I first implemented this new website strategy. I’ve been blogging since 2013 and had never hit the $1,000/month mark until this point.
  • Going from $1000 to $2000 for the first time took 4 months.
  • Getting to above $2000 monthly consistently took another few 3 months.
  • I’m close to the next mark of $3000 monthly, but I’m not there yet. I fully expect to hit it before the end of this year, but I don’t want to count any unhatched chickens yet.

Here’s how the sites look individually.

Site #1

  • Gardening
  • New posts: 7
  • Total posts: 272
  • Monetization: Ads + affiliates

Site #2

  • Sports
  • New posts: 1
  • Total posts: 42
  • Monetization: Ads + affiliates

Site #3

  • Genealogy
  • New posts: 0
  • Total posts: 64
  • Monetization: Ads + affiliates

Site #4

  • Education
  • New posts: 1
  • Total posts: 2
  • Monetization: none

Site #5

  • Writing
  • New posts: 1
  • Total posts: 29
  • Monetization: Ads + affiliates

Site #6

  • Parenting
  • New posts: 3
  • Total posts: 126
  • Monetization: Ads + affiliates

Site #7 is also in the works. The first few articles have been sent to the writer teams.

August 2022 Goals & Focus

This month, then, the focus is getting out of the negative cycle of creating insane goals, not achieving them, and the subsequent negative chatter that keeps you from achieving future goals.

That’s why, for August, I’ve adjusted the publishing goals. I pulled it down from like somewhere north of 55 to 23. I can do 23 posts this month (this report counts as one of those).

I will also use August to prepare for September, when Income School usually does its twice-yearly Content Warrior challenge. I have no reason to believe they won’t do it – and I’ll do it on my own if they skip it for some reason.

Content Warrior challenge month is when you aim to publish 60,000 words of content – and it’s a fantastic challenge. That’s about 30 articles, so it shouldn’t even be a hard stretch. So 30 is my new goal for September. It’s down from the 70+ some goal I had not long ago.

My other focus for August is to set a timer for 20 minutes, get to work, and let myself get lost in having fun with the business. Having overly heavy goals sucks the fun right out of everything, and I want things to be fun so that I can enjoy what I do.

Now, changing my goals like this mid-year isn’t my favorite thing, but it feels necessary and right, so I’m going to go ahead and allow it.

An image of a wooden painted cactus wearing a sombrero.
“I’ll allow it.” Señor Chang from Community. It’s a classic.
This is not Señor Chang – it’s a wooden cactus wearing a sombrero.

The other thing I’ll allow is this: to give myself some time to get back into learning. Starting a work session (before I set the 20-minute timer) with a 10-minute learning session is one of my favorite ways to get into work. Especially if it’s watching an informational video.

In any case, that’s the report for July as of 1 August 2022. I hope my data and info help someone along the way – or if not, at least it gives me a chance to see where I’m headed, course-correct, and keep on swimming on my way to building my business.

I’ll catch you all next month. In the meantime, here are some of the resources I use and recommend.

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