An inside look at the first year of blogging.

Drum roll please. It’s time to announce the real New Blog.

Meet Chrissa of Physcial Kitchness. Chrissa is the fierce, dedicated, smart, funny, upbeat blogger that I have been tracking for a whole year now. 18 months ago I set out to find someone who hadn’t started a blog yet, but always wanted to. I sent out an email to all of my subscribers, I asked my personal friends, and I posted in various blogging related Facebook groups my intentions. I was amazed at how many applicants there were!

The first round, the “application” asked people of their plans for the blog, what they wanted to blog about, why they wanted to blog, what type of camera they used, and how much time they planned on contributing to their blog. After that, I narrowed it down to 10 applicants who submitted an actual post. After reading the posts I was pretty sure I wanted Chrissa to be the new blogger. Her energy, commentary, and talent excited me for her blogging potential. To make sure, I interviewed my top three candidates via Skype.

From there, we started working on a launch strategy, building her site (including checking off all the steps in my how to start a blog series), and chatting about all things blogging. In the beginning, I would coach Chrissa and giver her home work assignments. After a while (or erm, when sleep exhuastion + two kids caught up to me) I stepped back and monitored/helped from a distance or as needed.

It has been so much fun to watch her growth as a blogger and her blogging journey during the first year. If you’d like to catch up on her journey, you can do so here:

Launch strategy and report
1st month update
2nd month update
3rd month update
4-6 months update
6-12 months update

Also, today Chrissa is sharing her personal thoughts on the first year of blogging over on her blog. Make sure to check out her post as well!

Goals for the New Blog

These are the original goals we set for physialkitchness.com when it went live.

• Have a social media following and newsletter list before going “live”
• Steadily grow traffic and following without plateauing.
• Earn at least $2,000/month by the end of one year (working only part time on the blog)

First Year Blogging Statistics

Here’s a recap on Chrissa’s first year. As you’ll see we were able to accomplish the first two goals and I think Physical Kitchness will reach the last goal this year.

Social Media Growth

Pinterest 13,286 – umm, hello! Pinterest. At month 6 Chrissa only had 1336 followers. That’s a 10 x increase!
Instagram 1340
Facebook 844
Twitter 606
Bloglovin 95

Newsletter Growth

Income during the first year of blogging

Month	Income	Expense
1	$               –	$  209.35
2	$               –	$       7.00
3	$               –	$     15.00
4	$               –	$            –
5	$          8.88	$  115.00
6	$        50.56	$            –
7	$        59.91	$            –
8	$               –	$  117.00
9	$               –	$            –
10	$  1,484.00	$  100.00
11	$     421.00	$     85.00
12	$     670.11	$            –
Totals	$  2,694.46	$  648.35

In the beginning my goal for the New Blog – err Chrissa’s blog (so weird to be able to talk about her now!) was to have her making $2,000 a month by the end of the year. As you can see, we didn’t hit that goal. After expenses, she did make almost exactly $2,000 though.

What do you think? Is it possible for the average blogger to make money blogging? I’m conducting a little survey to find out. Will you take a minute to respond to it? Do bloggers make money – a survey

Chrissa’s traffic is amazing. Almost very day it seems I have someone email, tweet, or comment about how envious or impressed they are of her growth and traffic for the first year. I have full confidence that she will start seeing a monetary reward for all of the hard work she’s put into blogging. If she doesn’t, that’s okay too. Success is not defined by numbers.

During this past year, Chrissa has started a blog, learned new things, improved her photography, made lots of recipes, perfected work outs – all while being a wife and mom. She was also pregnant for nine months of the first year (she just gave birth to this cutie). Add all of those things up and I would say Chrissa is a very successful blogger/Mom.

Traffic Recap

That being said, let’s talk about a few more numbers. This is a screenshot of the entire year overview

Here’s an overview of the first year, viewed by days

Viewed by weeks

Viewed by months, note that the last month is only showing 10 days which is why it is lower.

I also had to go in and make my own graph (because I’m a nerd) to reflect that we’ve been tracking Chrissa’s blog from the 10th – 10th.

Top 10 traffic referrals of the year

Top 10 posts for the year

1. 8 Moves to Banish Back Fat Posted November 25th, 2015.  (This is the post that gave Chrissa her big break. Pinterest for the WIN!)
2. No Squats Butt Lifting Workout Posted November 11th, 2015
3. One Simple Move for Insanely Toned Legs Posted July 28th, 2016 (Pinterest featured a pin to this article in their email last week)
4. Hardcore HIIT with Weights Workout Posted Decebmer 2nd, 2016
5. Paleo Carrot Cake Energy Balls Posted February 29th, 2016
6. Home Page
7. Whole30 Scalloped Sweet Potatoes Posted November 9th, 2016
8. Paleo Strawberry Mug Cake Posted Posted April 11th, 2016
9. Five Whole30 Crockpot Meals in 5 Ingredients Posted January 11th, 2016
10. Salads on the Go Posted May 31st, 2016

Top 5 Pins for the Year

Since Pinterest is Chrissa’s biggest referral, I thought you might want to take a look at her top pins. These are pins that she has saved herself. If you want to see what your top Pins are, use Tailwind – a Pinterest scheduling and analytics tool. You can can try a month free for scheduling and always have access to their analytics.

1. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/247557310745668674 17,089 repins
2. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/74872412533311329 12,750 repins
3. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/96334879507884876 6,934 repins
4. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/96334879507980237 5,149 repins
5. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/96334879508633327 3,790 repins

Picture/Graphic change over the year

One of Chrissa’s big achievements, which really helps with Pinterest, has been her pictures and graphics. Here’s what they looked like the month she launched versus now.

Also, can we talk about how amazing Chrissa is for working out while pregnant? #girlboss

If you want to improve your photography (I’m still working on that department myself) you can check out this round up post I did about helpful articles on the web about blog photography.

Thanks

First, a special shout out to Chrissa for letting me track her for the year and talk about her blogging journey in full detail. Thank you for letting others learn with you as I shared the things you did on your blog.

Another big THANK YOU to all of you. For following along with the New Blog experiment, for constantly asking how she was doing, and for being just as excited about her growth as we are. Make sure to follow Chrissa’s blog to see where she goes next!

If you have a minute, I’d love for you to take a survey about YOUR first year blogging (and last month). Thank you in advance for sharing your statistics with us.

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