Blog Growth Stats for December 2017 What I Did And My Results

Last updated on July 25th, 2018 at 11:53 am

Well, it’s that time of the month again. It’s time for my blog growth stats for December 2017. I know that a lot of people don’t think that I should share my blog growth stats with you.

But I actually enjoy it. Writing these growth update reports is a great way for me to keep track of what I am doing to help me create a successful blog. Plus I can show you all the hard work that I am putting into this blog.

This will help you understand everything that it takes to grow a blog.

I Worked My Butt Off

December was a very busy blogging month for me. I managed to get 4 guest posts published and I even ran a case study on my blog by publishing an 11-day blogging series. If you missed it you can see the posts from the series here.

I still need to get them linked on all the posts, but I’ll get that done sometime this week. Hopefully 🙂

So let’s see, where do I start?

Hospital Visits and Getting A Cold

Before I get into details of all the blogging tasks I did in December to grow my blog, I first have to tell you about my hospital experiences.

Thank goodness I wasn’t the one who had to get admitted into the hospital. I’m good, other than I came down with a really bad cold last month.

My partner Karen ended up getting a 10mm kidney stone after our Maryland trip. I woke up at 6:00 AM one morning and she was in absolute pain on the couch.

So I drove her to the emergency room. They had to schedule surgery to get the kidney stone out so they released us from the emergency room that same day, since they couldn’t do anything.

Around 8:00 PM that same day, we ran back to the emergency this time it was a bigger hospital. Which is what we should have done from the start.

Long story short, they ended up doing an emergency surgery that night to relieve some of the pain from the kidney stone.

They weren’t able to remove the kidney stone that night because of all the inflammation.

She has to go back for a second surgery to get the actual kidney stone removed later this month.

Fighting A Cold

I ended up getting a bad cold. (which sucks, because I hardly ever get sick) To this day, I still believe it’s because I have spent so much time in the hospital this month.

So I took NyQuil and got tons of rest. Thank goodness I had my 11-day blog series written in November.

Today, I feel a lot better. But I am still trying to take some time off from blogging to make sure that my body is ready to go full blast in the New Year.

Celebrating the Holidays

December is a busy month with the holidays. I’ve been visiting family and friends in between my freelancing and blogging business.

This means that I have been waking up really early to make sure that I had enough time to do my daily blogging tasks. Although, I have to admit that I didn’t spend a lot of time commenting on blogs.

Now that the holidays are officially over, I will be able to relax and focus on blogging. Yes, I am still freelancing, but I am working hard so I can hopefully stop freelancing this year.

Blog Growth Stats for December 2017

I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one who had a busy December. Now that I’ve filled you in on what’s been going on with my personal life. Let’s get down into my blog growth stats for December 2017.

Google Analytics Blog Growth

At the end of every month, I like to dig into my Google Analytics to see what’s actually working and what I should focus on to help me reach my blogging goals.

As always, I provide you an image with my page views and my blog stats. Here’s a snapshot of what my Blog Analytics looks like for the month of December.

I won’t be creating a video this month as I have so much on my plate right now. But if you want to see what my blog is doing, be sure to read the rest of this blog post.

Hopefully, you find it helpful and informative. Personally, I love sharing these posts because it helps me stay accountable with my blogging tasks and I can see what I accomplished that month.

Wrote My Second Kindle Book

First things first, I finally managed to get my second Kindle book written, you can purchase it here. I am so glad that I finally got it done because I had been putting it off for several months.

So it was nice to close out 2017 by publishing my second Kindle book.

Writing More Kindle Books

I picked up an eBook from Ryan Biddulph called  How to Create and Publish a Successful eBook so I could make sure that I am doing everything I can to improve my Kindle eBooks.

As you know, Ryan has written 126 eBooks and I know that he has a ton of successful nuggets to share to help me cut my learning curve in half.

This year I am going to be focusing more on creating eBooks. My goal is create at least 1-2 ebooks per month. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but with my freelancing and promoting my blog, my plate is already full.

Here is the link to my Amazon Author Page so you can see my slow forward progress of Kindle writing

I’m just going to use the same method that Ryan used when he started building his online eBook empire.

Case Study On My Blog

As you know from all my previous blog growth reports, one of the biggest challenges I have had is increasing my page views. I know I know, I shouldn’t focus on page views.

While I don’t focus 100% on page views. The truth is that as bloggers we all know how important blog traffic is. If you’re not getting your blog in front of eyeballs.

Then you are NOT going to make any money or get any subscribers. You need to write amazing content but you also need to know how to promote that content.

So I ran a case study on my blog. It’s too soon to tell what type of results I’ll get from this case study, but I may end up writing a blog post on it in a couple months.

Of course this depends on whether I felt that the case study was actually helpful for my blog growth.

Changing My Blog Schedule

I’ve decided that if I ever want to leave my freelancing business, I am going to have to increase my publishing frequency. So I’ve decided to increase my blog content from twice a week to three times a week.

I’ll still be spending time writing guest posts and using Pinterest, but I really want to leave my freelancing gig. I am going to test out my new content schedule to see if it moves me closer to my goals.

Blog Promotion for December

My blog promotion techniques haven’t changed much from what I have been doing. As you know, I spend time commenting, guest posting, using Pinterest to grow my blog and SEO.

So let’s take a look at my Pinterest stats for December.

Pinterest Blog Growth

My main thing on Pinterest is I am using Pinterest Boards and Tailwind Tribes to help me grow my blog. One of the things that I have been trying to do is create more than one pin for every blog post. (although this doesn’t always happen because I have so many other things to do.)

I did manage to create two pins for maybe 3 of my blog posts from my 11-day blog series.

If I get a chance, I plan on going back and creating some more pins for my other posts. (although that’s not high on my to-do-list)

Pinterest is still my biggest traffic referral out of all the social media channels. I know what you’re thinking, is that traffic actually converting to subscribers?

After all, the traffic doesn’t mean anything if people are just visiting my blog and leaving right away. Well, that’s what I wanted to know as well.

Here’s what my Thrive Leads report says about my conversions from Pinterest. So here’s a screenshot from my conversions report so you can see how people are subscribing to my blog. I did blur out some of the information on my report…sorry:)

Improving My Subscribers Conversion

One of the things that I have been focusing on is improving my subscriber conversions. After doing some research and reading some blogs, I found this amazing plugin called PostGopher.

It is a paid plugin, but I figured if it can help me improve my opt-ins, I am all for it. I picked up the plugin on December 17 and have only added it to my popular posts according to Google Analytics.

The only thing that I can say is that it’s definitely been worth the money that I invested. Check out the stats on the plugin, remember, I haven’t added it to all my blog posts yet. It’s on maybe 15 posts.

This plugin has definitely been helping me improve my email subscribers. That’s one of the things that I need to start focusing on more in 2018.

I’ll be writing a review on the plugin soon. But if you want to start using it, you can get it here.

You will need to invest in the PostGopher Extension Pack if you want to place your opt-ins using short-code. That unfortunately is a upgrade and a separate cost from the main plugin.

I picked up the PostGopher plugin because I wanted the freedom of adding the opt-in button where ever I wanted to. You can get the PostGopher Extension Pack here.

Google Organic Traffic

I love organic traffic, but as you know it takes a while to start seeing it. One of the things that I have been doing is focusing more on writing content based on low competition keywords.

If you missed my Long Tail Pro Review, you may want to check it out. I show you exactly how I use it to find the keywords for my blog.

I am using the Yoast SEO plugin to help me properly optimize my blog posts. The one thing I am NOT doing is building backlinks.

You’ve probably heard so many people say that you have to build backlinks if you want to rank your content. The truth is that I don’t enjoy building backlinks.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Starting a blog is half the battle, focus on growth #GrowWithSusan at www.susandemolive.dev” quote=”Starting a blog is half the battle, focus on growth #GrowWithSusan at www.susandemolive.dev” theme=”style4″]

Plus I’ve been burnt in the past for trying to game the system. This time around, I am not doing that. I am just focusing on being everywhere by guest posting and commenting.

My Google organic traffic is increasing slowly. As I continue publishing more content, the organic traffic should continue to increase over time.

It’s nice knowing that the blog posts I write today will eventually bring me traffic and subscribers months down the road. If you’re not optimizing your blog posts or are completely new to SEO, I suggest that you start learning about SEO.

You don’t have to know everything about SEO. But if you want traffic from the search engines, you need to make sure that you are spending time optimizing your blog posts.

YouTube Channel

At the time of this writing, I have 57 videos on my channel. Personally, I love creating the videos, but they don’t bring a lot of traffic or subscribers.

Since I am focusing more on my content and guest posting, that means that I need to slow down on my video creation. I am not going to stop creating videos, but I am only going to be uploading a new video once every 2 weeks instead of once a week.

I am going to focus my efforts on what is actually working to help me grow and build my email list. Since my YouTube channel isn’t responsible for a lot of my growth.

That means that I need to slow down. I did manage to publish some videos in December, here they are:

Videos Published in December

1. Blog Growht Stats for November 2017
2. How to Build Trust With Your Readers
3. How to Update The Genesis Framework

I won’t be publishing this many videos from this point forward. If you still haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can do so here.

Even though I’ll be publishing less videos on YouTube, I’ve already created several videos that will help you with your blog and you can find them on my YouTube channel.

Blog Growth Numbers

So let’s dive into my blog growth numbers. While I don’t really focus on social media followers, it’s nice to see if my numbers are increasing or not.

Here are the numbers from November so you can compare them to December.

November Blog Growth Numbers

• Email Subscribers (new opt-ins for the month): 10
• Overall List Size: 116
• Twitter Followers: 1205
• Facebook Followers: 35
• YouTube Subscribers: 72
• Pinterest Followers: 541
• Page Views: 3,398

I included my November blog growth numbers, this will make it easier for you to see how my blog grew. Of course, if you want to see all my blog growth reports, you can see them here.

November Blog Growth Numbers

• Email Subscribers (new opt-ins for the month): 27
• Overall List Size: 147
• Twitter Followers: 1230
• Facebook Followers: 38
• YouTube Subscribers: 80
• Pinterest Followers: 558
• Page Views: 3,202

My Blogging Goals for The New Year

I’m not really the type of person who makes New Year’s Resolutions. If I had to say so myself, I am pretty happy with everything that I accomplished with my blog in 2017.

Yeah, I wish I could’ve grown faster and walked away from my freelancing business. Don’t we all wish that our blogs reached profitability faster?

I’ve learned that it takes a lot of hard work to grow a blog. So nothing is going to change much in 2018. Other than the fact that I will be creating more Kindle Books.

As I mentioned I just wrote my second Kindle Book and released it on Amazon. I am pretty happy with the results that I have gotten from my book release and all I did was inform my email list.

I am not the queen of Kindle books. If you want to learn from the master, I recommend following Ryan Biddulph who has published over 126 books.

If you haven’t published one yet, I recommend that you do. Remember we all start with our very first ebook. It’s no different than blogging.

You just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you reach your blogging goals. Once you reach your goals, then you set some new ones and keep going.

Don’t be afraid to try something new this year. You will never know if something will work for you until you try.

Final Take Away

As you can see, I work a lot on my blog. When I am not freelancing, I spend time on my blog business. It’s growing slowly.

I know that it’s not as fast as some other people’s blogs. But then I don’t like to compare my results to anyone else’s. Like I’ve said before.

It doesn’t matter how much so and so makes with their blog. Their results have nothing to do with you and won’t affect how much you can make with your blog. You have to work hard to create your own reality.

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Hopefully you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. As you can see, I worked my butt off in December. If you’re serious about creating a profitable blog, you better be ready to work.

You don’t have to do case studies or do everything that I do. But if you want to turn your blog into a profitable business and use it to replace your job or create a second income, you’re going to have to test things out.

Don’t be afraid to test things out and see if they work. If they don’t no harm no foul, at least you tried.

Did you find this post helpful? Are you doing any of the blogging tasks that I am doing to grow your blog? Let me know, I love hearing what people are doing to grow their blog.