Blogging: Weeks Five and Six – 2M Monthly Viewers on Pinterest and 11,000 Page Views in Month 1!

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The first full month of blogging went really well! We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but we are thrilled with the results so far!

So far we have joined Tailwinds (the Plus plan) and and about 20 Pinterest group boards. We’ve upgraded our Tailwind account to add the ability to join more Tribes and share more Pins. I decided to start small with the second Power Up option, which is the Tribes Max plan. For $119/year you can join unlimited Tribes and have 200 Tribe submissions each month. The next level is $239/year and increases your submissions to 400 per month. We can always upgrade and I am hoping we NEED to soon enough because that would signify great success with Tailwinds and continued growth to the blog and Pinterest!

Every time my husband leaves for work in the morning, or calls me during a particularly trying day, or when I am in Michigan and he is in Illinois it is a good reminder of our goal, which is ultimately to allow him to retire from his day job. He earns a great living, so we are most likely a ways away from being able to do this, but it is the goal. Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?

Ok! In the past week, we have had two days of 1000+ page views, which we are super excited by, and almost 12,000 page views in the past 5 weeks! I am having trouble finding any stats to show if we are on a good path in our first month, or if our views should be a lot higher one month in to the process. If anyone has any info, please comment so I can read up on your stats! (We *think* 12,000 page views in Month 1 is good, but we honestly have nothing to compare them to so we have no idea if we are kidding ourselves or not!)

It seems like it takes two days for my Tribe submissions and Pinterest group board shares to kick in. The days we had 1,000+ views were both two days after I shared a lot to group boards and posted to my Tribes. My goal is to pin to group boards and submit to my Tribes 2-3 times per week. I think I spent 3 hours on scheduling last Friday, but it paid off because Sunday we has 1,200+ page views.

The Looks Like Happy Pinterest boards are growing fantastically! We have 331 followers at this time, which is great for being about 7 weeks old. I was hoping to hit 300 by May 11th so we are ahead of my goal! AND we reached 2m (that’s 2,000,000!!!) monthly viewers! (You can also see that I am down to 200+ emails in my personal account, so I am making progress….) It seems like what everyone is saying is true: Pinterest is the key to growth.

So far our most successful pin is “Meal Prep Like a Pro.” It has been repinned 1,400+ times. Who would have thought a post about meal prep would be the one that is repinned the most? Not me!

We’ll see if Meal Prep Like a Pro: Part Two does as well! I am going to share and submit the original Pin to our group boards and Tribes today.

How did we get to 2 Million monthly viewers? BY PINNING LIKE A MAD WOMAN! As I said above, I have spent A LOT of time in the last week pinning to my Pinterest boards (with the help of Tailwinds – set it and forget it!) and also Pinterest Group Boards. We reached 2 million viewers when we belonged to 9 group boards, one of which has several sections so we are able to post many, many Pins to different sections in one group board. Now we belong to about 20 group boards and I haven’t pinned to any of the new ones yet. (It’s on my ever growing to do list!) Once I start Pinning to those boards we should see even greater growth.

Additionally, I submitted Pins to my Tribes on Tailwinds. BUT, like I said above, I *just* upgraded my account this morning, so last week when I was submitting to Tribes I had a limit of 30 submissions to work with and I was limited to the 4 (of 5) Tribes I had joined. That is not a lot of submissions when you think about it- it’s essentially sharing 30 pins in a month’s time, which is not enough if you are trying to grow a business. I shared just 27 Pins to my Tribes and pinned to only 9 group boards and reached 2,000,000 monthly viewers on Pinterest! I am pretty excited by this because now I can submit more Pins to more Tribes AND share more Pins to more group boards. I can’t wait to see what our monthly viewers increase to by June 1st….

Of course the key to our success, and ultimately everyone’s success, is that you Pin, Repin, Share and Post to and FROM all of the group boards and all of your Tribes. It’s circular, so you have to share other peoples’ awesome Pins in order for yours to be shared. I *love* that it is essentially bloggers helping bloggers grow! It’s like being part of a huge team, where you don’t know anyone, but you’re all working towards the same goal.

The other thing we are focusing on in weeks five and six is affiliate marketing. We spent Sunday evening figuring out Share A Sale. I was approved by a few merchants and on Sunday night, while my Hubby figured out how to make custom links crediting our account, and I applied to a zillion merchants. We have been approved by 66 merchants and we have 43 applications pending with additional merchants. I am hoping to begin incorporating affiliate Pins into my existing Pinterest boards, and I set up a “Looks Like Happy’s Favorite Things” board that I will add my absolute favorites to, aka “things I would buy if I could.” 😉

Here is an example of an affiliate Pin I added to my “H O M E” board:

It looks like any other Pin, but it’s actually an affiliate ad with this description:

#ad This gorgeous navy blue lacquer chair is also available in lime green! Give your home a pop of color with an awesome accent chair! #accentfurniture #chair #limegreen #navyblue

I am not 100% clear on the whole # thing, but my daughters are going to give me a little lesson on Sunday (Mother’s Day, so I was able to pressure them into it, lol!) when they give me my Twitter lesson. <granny emoji> Do people like #navyblue as much as I do? Beats me. We shall see…. (That’s also a $1,400 chair, which is not in this girl’s budget, but it is pretty flipping awesome and I waaaaaant it. #probablynevergettingit. <— Is that right? :p )

Finally, I found an *AMAZING* photographer who takes gorgeous stock photos. Kayla at Ivory Mix has a HUGE library of stock photos that she shares with her subscribers. Hundreds of free stock photos. The photo with the flamingo in the image at the top of this post is one of hers. I downloaded a bunch to use in my posts and pins and have every intention of showing her some love by purchasing bundles from her once the blog is making some money. (We have made $5+ so far, lol!) Check her out- I know I keep saying “gorgeous,” but they really are. These are three of the four images I was deciding between before going with the flamingo:

 

It’s funny, I was telling my Hubby that I feel like I haven’t done much lately- more that I am so scattered that I feel like I’m not completing anything (which is why there are 13 tabs open on my laptop and 24 waiting for me to finish reading on my phone…) lately, but in writing this update I guess I have been getting quite a bit done! I have to remember that this isn’t only about adding content to LLH, it’s about keeping several balls in the air to build LLH into what we want it to be. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun and doesn’t feel like work. I feel like I am on my way to accomplishing what we have drilled into our kids: Do what you love, love what you do.

You can find all of our Blog Updates here if you’d like to read more!

Happy blogging!
Allison

 

 

 

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