My Blogger Roundup of 2017

Hasn’t 2017 flown by quickly!

I’m sat on the bed reflecting on what my roundup of 2017 looks like and I can say it is filled with both positives and negatives but absolutely no regrets. It is good to reflect on things because it gives me some clarity and also gives me a chance to make plans on what I would like to experience more of in 2018.

Perhaps you should do the same and come up with your highlights of 2017 too. Do share your best bits in the comments below.

Money Money Money

I’ve decided that affiliate marketing works for me. I didn’t have much success at the start of the year and to be honest, sometimes I was really discouraged.

I didn’t give up, however, but decided to read up on the subject and follow what other bloggers were doing. The treat I was missing out on was consistency. I had learned that in the affiliate marketing course I did, so I don’t know why I attempted to give up so soon. It does get discouraging at times to see that a thousand persons clicked on your links but only a few actually followed through with a sale.

Now, I do what I have to do and let the shoppers do their thing. I smile now with the successes I’ve had since that. Being relaxed a bit has seen me do better. Sometimes you just need to chill.

Recently I have been getting inspiration and encouragement from Katy and she is really good! I suspect that 2018 will be a good year financially.

 

Social Media

So we tried to grow and learn more regarding social media this year. Let’s just say that learning from others was the way to go this year. By joining Facebook groups we grew our reach, met new people and learned how to be more of an influence in the market. The group that has helped me the most is the UK Money Bloggers Facebook group.

Our Instagram grew and got more likes than the year before even though we stuck with sharing only everyday unedited photos. We don’t quite like the look of some accounts that look ‘staged’. I suppose it depends on the image you want to portray, so each to his/her own. What’s with this follow then unfollow malarkey? I made it a point in the last few weeks of the year to say that I am only interested in permanent followers.

Twitter I have yet to figure out fully, even though the numbers there continue to grow. I suppose it will come in handy one day when we learn fully how to use it. Don’t suggest a course, please! We have figured out that too many people put courses together and lure unsuspecting people into their funnels, wasting both time and money. You can read about how that happened to us here.

Pinterest continues to be our number one in terms of social media and was the best in terms of growth and ROI for us. We can’t recommend it enough and continue to help others to grow theirs too. It’s funny when you know how something works, you wonder how others can’t figure out the same. Well, the same is true for us and Twitter.

I’ve only just recently gone and done something which I’ve been planning to do for months! I finally created a Facebook group to share where one can find deals etc. It’s open to anyone at the moment so you can click here to join it. I would love to see at least 500 members in a month or so. But I am really excited at the prospect of seeing people share where they are finding deals that will help each other to save more. Afterall, why buy products at a premium price when you can get products that you need (and want) cheaper?

The DA

I know! If you aren’t a blogger then you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about here! Well, two months ago, I wouldn’t have known either.

In brief, it’s a number that each blog is given based on its ranking out of 100. For example, the BBC has a DA (Domain Authority) of 100. It has reached the maximum.

My little piece of the Internet has a good DA ranking considering that we’ve only been doing this thing (blogging) for just under 2 years.

Brands almost always want to know what your DA is to determine if they will work with you and so we aim to work even harder to improve it by doing more guest posts,  proper internal and external linking, and so on.

I have a feeling my ranking will be at least a little higher next month, Watch this space.

To be honest, apart from doing the regular ‘frugal things I’ve done this week’ posts, sometimes we are stumped and can’t seem to find new blog post ideas. That is, until we found this list of 120 ideas for posts!

Update!

My DA fell by one point! Need to get some guest posts done for you guys. Let me know. And if you’d like to submit a guest post for us to get your name out there and build your DA, you can do so here.

Recommendations if you Want to Become a Blogger

• Elite Blog Academy– because that’s where we learned the basics
• Maven– because if you are an influencer you can make some money
• Grayson Bell– because unless you were born with a WordPress Sim in your brain, you will need help figuring things out sometimes
• How to make money on your blog– just because you can
• QMEE– because you can make FREE money while browsing products or doing surveys online
• Grammarly– because even us seasoned teachers make spelling and grammar mistakes sometimes

So who knows what 2018 will bring! I am thankful that overall we had a good year and we want to continue to grow but also to give as much help to others on their journey too.

Grammarly