So…it has officially been six months since Bad with Directions was born. I’m extremely happy knowing this because I read/heard somewhere that a lot of blogs fail within the first six months. This is super good for me because I am still getting into the consistent blogging habit, but I am super determined to make this year about the blog! I’m ready to put the business cap on and really focus on what I can do to start making this baby profitable!

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Read my disclaimer to learn more.

Here is a quick blogging recap of what I’ve accomplished in six months (please be prepared for full transparency):

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Views

I have definitely gotten way more views than I thought I would in this short period of time. In July, when I started my blog, I had days where only one person viewed my site. The most views I had in July was 37 – a success at that time! August was a little better, ranging from 1-44 views – a nice and stable growth for me, especially since I started my internship this month and wasn’t spending a lot of time on my blog.

September ranged from 0-80 views…yep, ZERO on some days. But it started picking up in October, where I had 1-209 views. That’s a HUGE jump! You can imagine my excitement.

November 26^th was a milestone day for Bad with Directions. That was the day I reached 321 views. THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE! I should’ve thrown a party that day. That’s insane – even thinking about it now I can’t believe it! November 29^th followed suit as well with 320 views (so you can say November was a good month). And December ranged from 86 to 275 daily views. Which I’m not complaining about! I hope gone are the days where I have zero views.

All in all, I had a total of 14,038 views in the past six months – I really am shocked and super happy with how far I’ve come. And a lot of it has to do with the blogging community, my top supporters like Breakfast at Madison’s, and Pinterest!

I’ve posted my blog on my personal social media – meaning people in my real life know it exists – but I haven’t made it a point to market it too much. So I am very happy with the progress I’ve made being that 99% of the people who helped are people on the Internet. It’s also super nice because I’ve gotten a few emails from “fans” and people asking for blogging and travel help on Instagram — that’s what makes me feel super special!

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Posts

In these past six months, I’ve written a total of 44 blog posts…that’s about 7 posts a month. I’m actually surprised by this number because I felt like I didn’t post as much as I could have and like I have A LOT of ideas that never get around to being written and published. (I even failed Blogmas!)

I’ve written posts about applying for visas, traveling around Barcelona, travel tips, blogging, and life in general. The best post, however, was my “How To Make Maps in your Bullet Journal” post.

If I’m completely honest, I’m not too happy about that. It’s a post that’s very visually appealing (and gets most of its traction from Pinterest), but it’s a post people come to look at and then leave. You can tell it’s the most successful post as well since it has over 16,000 shares (which I love to see – but knowing the reality behind the number of shares and views on my blog makes me kind of disappointed).

I think I’d prefer having fewer views on my blog that are more evenly distributed among the other posts. I think this year I will have to find a way to use that post to its full advantage.

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Social Media

At the beginning, I saw a huge surge of social media followers on all platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and even on my WordPress subscribers. However, I will be totally honest and say I haven’t kept up with these at all.

I think I focused on Facebook for a good week or two and then dropped it – it’s maintained 61 followers since. It hasn’t grown and hasn’t dropped.

Next platform: Instagram. I started off deleting a bunch of followers so I could start fresh. It worked in terms of getting more engagement on my posts, but then what happened? I stopped posting… My posting became inconsistent and my last post was on November 2^nd… Let that sink it. It’s been TWO MONTHS since I’ve posted anything on Instagram, and I fluctuate between 740 and 760 followers. I keep telling myself I need to post more (because hey! I need to), but for some reason, I can’t.

Twitter has also been an on/off battle for me. Sometimes I get hooked and comment, like, and retweet everything, but I don’t know how to get more engagement with my own posts. Or the issue is simply that I’m not consistent with it. I actually reached 600 followers today! Woo! But then again, I’m more concerned with the level of engagement on my channels than the number of followers.

Now Pinterest has been my holy grail for marketing and getting views. I LOVE Pinterest for everything blogging, travel, quote, and life-related. It’s my favorite platform I’d say, but this last month I’ve been dropping in engagement as well. I went from having 4,000 monthly viewers to 573,000! But now it’s going down and is currently showing 441,000 monthly viewers. I went through a stage where I joined a bunch of group boards (which helped tremendously) but once again, I can’t get too far if I don’t keep up with it. I am happy with having 176 followers though!

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Money and Affiliates

So now, is Bad with Directions profitable? Not yet! But I’m sure it will be soon! I made a financial spreadsheet and am getting close to breaking even.

At the beginning, I spent on two things:

• Hosting: $12.18 with a GoDaddy year-long deal
• Theme: $59.00 at Pipdig (a little steep at the beginning, but totally worth it)

So I spent a total of $71.18. I’m also planning on switching to SiteGround hosting VERY soon because I’m not 100% happy with GoDaddy’s services. Every time I publish a post, my site goes down for about 10 minutes and then I get an email saying I’m getting close to exceeding my limits. I also have no idea if it’s my Internet at home or if it’s because of my hosting, but my blog takes FOREVER to load! Which is not good at all if I’m trying to get people to come on here and read. Anyway, I’ve heard amazing things about SiteGround and am planning on switching this month.

When it comes to income, I haven’t made an incredible amount of money – BUT for the amount of time I put into my site, the lack of social media consistency, and the fact that it’s only been six months, I am very happy with how much I’ve made.

I’ve signed up for a few affiliate networks such as:

• Share A Sale and
• CJ Affiliates

And have been accepted as an affiliate for the following:

• Amazon Associates
• 23 and Me
• Skyscanner
• Transferwise
• It’s All You Boo (a fellow blogger!)
• and a few others that I have yet to post about on this blog.

Most of my income has been earned from Amazon Associates and Transferwise (meaning I have money earned but not yet paid to me because I have to wait to meet a specific threshold).

But I have also made money off of a couple sponsored posts (a huge milestone in my eyes!) and I submitted my very first freelancing article today! If my article is accepted then I will break-even which will really make my week! My article was officially accepted today (Jan. 12th) check it out here (it’s about seven reasons to love San Francisco)!

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So what happens next?

I have a lot of ideas for Bad with Directions and for the upcoming year, so be sure to read part two of this post: My blog goals for 2018.

Do you have any blogging advice or tips?