Hello 🙂 Welcome to the third weekly update on my journey to being a full time craft blogger and designer. Ooooh that sounds exciting when written down…. but to put it into perspective, this journey could take me the remainder of my working life and I might not actually be a full time craft blogger until I retire from paid employment in my 70’s!
This week I have been working on defining my goals and developing a tracker so I can measure progress. Some of my goals feel like an awfully big stretch from where I am now but all the advice out there says to aim high! The goals needed to be broken down into smaller targets for the next six months. Here they are from my bullet journal….. I will be adding to these targets as I work out what is most important and what works.
One of the top tips for beginner bloggers is to set up and manage your own mailing list. I learnt quite a lot this week whilst researching and setting up my mailing list. If you are reading this you might have been invited to join mine! I hope you will join 🙂 I will write a separate post on this in a couple of weeks when I can comment on how well it is working for me.
Focussing on the technical side of my blog this week I have also been researching hints and tips for bloggers on Pinterest. There seem to be so many blogs out there about blogging and many of them are promoting courses that claim to enable bloggers to turn their hobby into full time income. The courses are expensive!! I am not against investing in my blog. I have spent a little already on getting set up with my own website using 1&1 there is a link to 1&1 below (note this is an affiliate link which could give me a little income at no increased cost to you). 1&1 have several low cost entry plans where you can set up and really own your blog from the start giving more flexibility and protection for your work. Many of the plans come with free domain names and it is good fun checking out which names are available – checking costs nothing 🙂
At the moment, I believe that there is so much more I can learn from reading and researching without spending money on courses. I have a long list of things to work on and I will share with you anything that makes a big difference. The top tips I will be working on this week are as follows:
- Improve board descriptions on Pinterest – include key words
- Apply to join group boards – although this is getting a mixed press currently
- Declutter my blog
On the creative side this week I have merged two projects!! My sample blanket that was stalled because I couldn’t come up with a design I really liked, and the heart patterns from last week. I have made a pattern for the heart within a square and it is the same size as the sample square pattern I produced earlier this year. Here is a link to the free pattern for the sample square. I will be writing up the pattern for the heart square this week so I can share it in next week’s update.
I have worked up a few heart squares in the Drops Paris – 100% cotton yarn and here they are laid out in the start of the design I plan to complete. This is a great stash busting project. The other really good thing about this project is that it is perfect for working up on the train! I have worked out that I am going to need more yarn though…. not a help to my stash busting efforts. I have a room full of yarn and seem to keep needing to buy more!! 🙂
I picked up a tip from Kat over at KrazyKabbage on the best conditions to photograph large projects outside and I have managed to take this photo of my big Sunshine Flower blanket. This is the best photo I have taken so far – very happy with it.
In the evenings this week I worked a few more sections of my Spring Flower blanket. I am really pleased with the way this is coming on and I am documenting the pattern at every stage so I will have another item to list on Etsy when I am done. I don’t have a photo this week but will share again next week.
I will probably list the blanket on Etsy too but when I cost the blankets in terms of the time they take to make, plus materials, the price I need to charge makes them unaffordable. I am listing them with little hope of a sale but at least they show the patterns.
Finally a weekly status report. I am hugely excited by the leap in my advertising income which has almost doubled…… to 31p 🙂
- Pinterest followers – 556
- AdSense income to date – 31p
- Subscribers – 1 (me – it was a test)
- Etsy listings – 10
- Etsy sales – 0
- Page views last seven days – 34
I am starting to track page views – apparently this is key to success. Stickytapeandstring.co.uk is currently running at around 140 page views per month. Some bloggers quote 1000 per day as being the level you need to be taken seriously…. As I say – this is not going to be a short journey! More next week….
happy crocheting and happy blogging,
Annie 🙂