Geez, it sure has been quiet around here. This is my first post in 3 weeks and it isn’t even a recipe. I haven’t posted a recipe in well over a month. I’m sorry! I promise that I have something in the oven. Literally, there is something baking as I type this and my house smells amazing. If it all goes well, that recipe will be up on my blog later this week.
In the meantime, may I suggest you make this watermelon mint frosty to keep cool on these hot summer days?
If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you know I’ve posted income and traffic reports for the last 9 months. It has been a really good exercise for me. It helped keep me going and growing for months. Now, I’m happy to report that I have a decent supplemental income coming in from my blog and blog related activities (freelance work, advertising, affiliate income). I did some quick math to determine my earnings in May and it was approximately $560. Not too bad, right?
Here is the thing, I am an analytically driven person. I love looking at the numbers but there is a negative side to that analytical drive; it’s easy to get bummed out when the numbers don’t meet your expectations. I’ve been in a bit of a traffic slump lately. My numbers are sitting around 30K pageviews a month. It is nothing to cry about, but a few months ago I was double that.
Why is my blog traffic down? It’s simple, I have not been working at it. I haven’t been disciplined about pinning on Pinterest. I haven’t been creating new recipe or blog posts. I haven’t been engaging in social media. These are all important activities for building/maintaining an audience. I just lost my blogging mojo. Actually, that is not the complete truth. I have been working hard on my chocolate website. That is my new baby and the project closest to my heart.
Don’t fret, I’m not throwing in the towel over here The Blenderist. This site is my playground and my creative outlet. As such, I’m taking the focus off financial growth and moving it towards something that feels more fulfilling. Of course, I would still like to earn an income from the work I do here; but I don’t want it to be based on traffic alone.
That is why I’m putting a halt on my monthly growth reports. Instead, I will write reports periodically on trends/observations that could be useful to other bloggers. If you are a diehard reader of my income reports, I invite you to email me any time and ask me any questions you have. You can also find me over at Food Blogger Pro (affiliate link), the forums there are the best place to get your blogging questions answered.
So, what can you expect from The Blenderist in the weeks to come? I’m still going to post recipes, that is non-negotiable. I will, however, scale back to 3 or 4 recipes a month. The rest of the content will be a better representation of myself as a “whole”. There is more to me than recipes.
I hope to step out of the kitchen and explore some other areas such as art, interior decor, black hair care, travel…it’s a big world out there!
