3 Blogging Goals I’m Focusing On This November

Every time I write my monthly blogging goals recap, I can’t help but think how fast a month goes by. 

When I do my goal setting, I over-estimate how much time I have in a month, and I tend to want to go after many goals. 

But as I review my goals, I realise how time-consuming one goal can be over the others. 

For example, it would take me more time to work on hitting a big goal, such as launching an online course compared to batch writing blog posts. 

This realisation is something I’m reminding myself as I set new goals this month. 

As always, before I get into my new goals, it’s time to evaluate my progress with my October blogging goals. 

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October Blogging Goals

Batch write my blog posts for October & November. 

Can I say that I achieved this goal halfway? 

Because I totally will. Haha! 

I was able to batch write and schedule my October posts while increasing my posting frequency. Some weeks I would post twice a week. 

Increasing my posting frequency wasn’t something I had planned, but I incorporated more personal posts like a South Korea travel guide and Halloween blogging tags.

I wanted to balance out these personal posts with the usual blog and business posts.

Back when I started this blog, I would rotate posting posts around my core topics of online business through blogging, personal development and travel.

When I reviewed my Google analytics last year, I saw that more people were reading my online business and blogging posts, which is why I decided to focus on those posts. 

But more than a year later, based on my latest Google Analytics data, what seems to be working is to rotate my core topics once again, especially since I hit my highest blog views ever in October! 

These were my top-performing posts: 

5 Business Lessons You Can Learn from Itaewon Class is still my top-performing post followed by How to Be a Successful Content Creator and Start a Blog, How to See 18 Places in South Korea in 5 Days,  30 Things to Do in Oxford, and A Letter for the Days I Feel Not Good Enough. 

If I try to analyse these top posts, what I can conclude is that online business and blogging still top the list, but my travel and personal posts seem to be climbing their way to the spotlight. 

Because of this, my content strategy will be to prioritise online business/blogging still but continue incorporating more travel and personal posts here and there. 

I’m excited to see how this strategy will continue to affect my analytics this month. 

Launch blog support service

The reason why I wanted to launch the blog support service was to give bloggers a more affordable alternative to blog coaching. 

This service is something I wish I had access to when I was struggling to grow my blog. 

I so badly wanted to hire a mentor to help me out but all the coaches I saw online charged a hefty price and some would require that you lock in for a particular period. 

While I don’t have anything against their pricing or lock-in period, it wasn’t realistic for me to invest in that when the price of their services would be digging into my savings and cost more than my salary. 

Fast forward to a year later, as a full-time blogger, and I saw an opportunity to offer an alternative to blog coaching when I was working with a few blogging clients through my blog audit service. 

I offered this privately to existing clients and to those who reach out through my email at hi[at]izzymatias.com, but last month my goal was to launch in my blog shop. 

I wanted to give bloggers a chance to work with me continuously through one monthly call and unlimited email access during weekdays with whatever blogging support they need. 

But still have control of how long they want to book this service as it’s renewable monthly. 

If they wanted to test it out for a month, they can. But if they see that they also want more extended support for three or six months, then they can book the service for that duration as well. 

While I wanted to launch the blog support service publicly on my shop store, this goal took a backseat. 

Instead of making it available publicly, I decided to focus instead on how to improve my current offers. 

I also worked on my store backend (this was a huge task and very time consuming since I was considering moving to a new store platform) and working on launching an affiliate program. I’ll be talking more about this later as it’s one of my November goals.

Do one money-making activity daily. 

I won’t say much about this goal except that I’m happy to report I did this. While it wasn’t always the same tasks or activities, it was still something that contributed to earning money online. 

And one thing I’m glad I did too was to automate my promotional tweets about my products as well as affiliate links.

I found a scheduling tool that allows me to schedule the promotional tweet once, and then I can choose to have it posted again every day or every week. 

It saved me so much time. 

Now to try it out with Instagram stories hahaha.

Grow my social media account following by 10% 

This goal’s outcome is mixed as not all platforms grew by 10%. 

Since I took a break from Instagram (hello IG burnout), I didn’t expect to grow much on this platform, which is fine with me. 

Twitter, on the other hand, did really well, and I even surpassed the 10% growth goal. 

I included my email list as part of the goal though it’s not a social media account because I also wanted to grow it by 10%. I was ten subscribers away from that goal, which is not bad. 

Moving forward, I’ll still be focusing on Twitter more this month since that’s the platform I’m enjoying the most at the moment. 

One of my other goals is to schedule 1 month’s worth of Instagram content and see how it affects my growth since I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Instagram in the last few months. 

While I didn’t get to tick off all my goals precisely the way I wanted to, I’m still proud of my progress, especially since I garnered my highest blog views ever. 

So now that we’ve reviewed my October blogging goals progress, it’s time to share with you my blogging goals this November. 

November 2020 Goals Summary

Continue batching posts 

Because I only completed this goal halfway last month (haha), I’m moving it over to this month. 

And I’m going to make it a top priority to be able to batch even my December posts because I’m attempting to join Blogmas albeit I won’t be posting Christmas-themed posts. Instead, I’ll be increasing my posting frequency. 

Speaking of posting frequency, I remain undecided if I’ll be posting for 24 or 14 days or maybe less! It depends on how much I can batch this month. 

I want to challenge myself but at the same time, I don’t want to overwhelm myself either. 

But I would love to beat last month’s blog views and make November my best blog traffic month yet. 

READ: Why your blog isn’t getting any views and what you can do about it 

Launch my affiliate program  

Launching an affiliate program for my online business is something I’ve wanted to do. 

However, it also involves investing more into my blogging business. 

Whenever I invest in my business, I consider the timing.

For example, one of my first investments was to purchase these legal templates to be able to protect my blog and business since every blog needs the standard legal pages (Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, and Terms & Conditions). 

And while I knew that I wanted to offer blog audits eventually, I didn’t purchase the legal template contract for blog audits until the time I was about to launch the service, which was months after I purchased the legal bundle.

I did this to keep my expenses as low as possible but also being strategic about when to invest and upgrade certain areas of my blogging business. 

Now that I’ve decided to launch my affiliate program this November, I need to invest in an affiliate program contract before officially accepting any affiliates to sell my products. 

READ: The Best Investment I Made to Protect My Blog

Another investment I have to consider is whether to stick with my current e-Commerce platform called Podia. I’ve been on the fence with moving since I love how Podia is easy-to-use and has a beautiful interface. 

They don’t charge any additional fees whenever someone purchases from my store. 

Plus, they also have a feature to launch an affiliate program and a membership. However, to be able to access the affiliate program and membership features means upgrading my monthly membership tier.

I’ve also considered making the switch to a more powerful all-in-one business platform, and have been testing it out to see if indeed it’s something that I need for my blogging business. 

Yes, it offers way more features than Podia but, to be honest, I’ve been hesitant to make the switch mainly because it’s harder to use than Podia. 

And when I was transferring my online course to their platform, I had to set it up as a membership instead of a course.

Comparing Podia and that platform, the latter was also not as straightforward to use when it came to accessing the online course. 

Those have been my major issues, but I still have some time left for the trial period of that other platform. So we shall see! 

I need to make the decision soon because I chose my deadline for launching my affiliate program this month plus I already have some blogging friends who have expressed their interest in becoming one of my affiliates. 

If you’re interested in this too, let me know in the comments or send me a message on Twitter at @izzmatias and I’ll be in touch with you as soon as the program is ready to go. 

Launch another money-making avenue 

I love launching new products and services. 

I find it really fun! 

I have two possible products that I want to launch this month, but my top priority aside from batching my posts is to launch my affiliate program. 

So which of those two possible products I’ll be launching depends on the progress of setting up my affiliate program.

Aside from that, I’ve also been contemplating for many months now whether or not to offer advertising slots for bloggers. 

I’ve booked ad slots with other bloggers, and it’s got me thinking of launching ad slots on here too to help fellow bloggers. 

However, the most significant thing holding me back is this internal fear and possibly connected to the imposter syndrome that so many other bloggers are already offering ads for bloggers. 

Do you know who initially thought of the advertising slots for bloggers idea? Please let me know as I want to credit the idea to that person. 

If I do offer it, I want to put a spin on my packages, so I’ve been thinking hard on what else I can offer to make it more valuable for bloggers and how I can differentiate my offer.

Would you guys even be interested in ad slots if I do offer them? 

Those are my top three blogging goals I’m focusing on this November.. 

To recap, these are my top goals for November

1. Continue batching posts
2. Launch my affiliate program
3. Launch another money-making avenue 

What goals are you prioritising this November?