October was a great month on the blog stat side but I was disappointed with myself because I didn’t seem to get any further forward with my essay or novel. So - I decided to change my strategy in November. I wrote down the specific tasks I wanted to achieve for my videos, my essay and my novel and broke them down into small tasks for each bigger one. And - it worked! In week one I could already tick a major achievement off my list.
You can read about my writing month of October here.
Week Nine
This was the week I made the leap from filming and editing my vlogs in vertical format for IGTV to become horizontal for YouTube. I cannot believe this as I look back - I feel like I have been on YouTube for so much longer. I feel it is my natural home where I can be creative and experiment and just put together beautiful videos with a similar look to my Instagram feed.
On the very first day of November I had a brainstorm of everything that was going on in my head in terms of content I wanted to create because I wanted to address the fear I had about my essay and novel. Then I started to tackle my essay for my patrons on Patreon.
You can watch Week Nine here:
Week Ten
I focused on my essay this week with my new planning guide in my notebook. Because I’d broken down the essay into smaller tasks I felt it was more achievable. Soon I was handing it over to my husband to edit it. And then - it was finished and I sent it out to my Patrons. I won’t repeat what I said in this blog post or on my vlog (the post is called How I Felt Writing my First Essay for Patreon) but I was ecstatic. Imagine how I’d feel when I finish my novel?
I did various blog posts as well this week, worked on my novel a bit but my video for YouTube called PLAN WITH ME: November 2018 took me so long to edit and do the voiceover for. Frustrating but I am a beginner.
Week ten’s vlog is below:
Week Eleven
My son has been ill now for what seems like ages. He went abroad and came back with campylobacter which has really knocked him for six. This obviously has an impact on my output - not so much with time but the exhaustion of worry!
However, with him being off school I get him to help me download some titles for my videos which gives the videos more of a professional finish. I also design myself an intro title for the beginning of all my films with a typewriter bell pinging. It’s the little things that make me happy!
This week was mainly about the blog and my videos. The main video was about How to Make a Christmas Pudding which was a lot easier to make than the planning video.
I’m now starting to work on my Pinterest a little bit more. My views are down on my blog compared to October’s record-breaking month which is bothering me far more than it should. So I’m pinning more - not just of my content but other people’s. And on Pinterest my monthly unique viewers - starting at around 70,000 and my monthly engaged viewers - around 4,000 - are starting to creep up. (At the time of writing on 4th December my monthly unique is 215,000 and my monthly engaged is 7,900 - Pinterest is so worth doing.) You can find my Pinterest boards here.
Week eleven’s vlog is below:
Week Twelve
Due to my son being ill I just wrote a simple post at the beginning of this week. A broth that I made for my poorly boy. It’s all content! I felt behind with my work this week so I tried to get a handle on it all then started working through my lists one by one.
I had a Cosy Christmas Crime Novels video to make - with this video I prepared a script which helped so much on the editing and recording side.
This week I also did something different on my blog. I’ve joined two affiliate companies in the hope of making some extra pennies when I recommend a product (which I occasionally do) (and this is at no cost to the buyer). One is called Awin and the other Skimlinks. And through the Awin one I created an Etsy Bookish Christmas Gift Guide post. For doing this I was given a £10 voucher to spend at Etsy. Every little helps, right?
I write in more detail about this week in this post called The Weekly Writing Vlog | Overwhelm, planning and an Instagram ad. I was going to write weekly blog posts to go with my vlogs…but it all started to become too much. Maybe in the new year.
And you can see the vlog for week twelve below:
Other things that happened during November
Publishers are starting to send me books that they think my audience will enjoy. I think this has a lot to do with the A Bookish Baker Book Club and I’m always excited to receive books pre publication. Especially if they’re cosy, uplifting and heartwarming.
The A Bookish Baker Book Club is going from strength to strength. I’m excited about how this might go in the future although I haven’t been as around on the instagram feed as much as I’d like due to my son’s illness. I think I’ll have to look into getting someone to help me with it in the new year so we can continue making it a vibrant, bookish community.
I had two sponsored posts for Instagram through Takumi. One for Homesense (the photograph hasn’t gone up yet although it’s all done and approved) and one for Rowse honey.
My patrons increased on Patreon. Thank you if you’re one of them. I can’t tell you enough how grateful I am. I changed and added some extra tiers and I have a couple of patrons that I’m providing email support for. And someone else contacted me about providing email support twice a month so I have set up email support on my blog.
One of the things I hope comes out in posts like this one is that I don’t have everything sorted with my online content. I’m experimenting all the time and like to try new things. This month I’ve converted to YouTube, joined affiliate companies and released an essay through Patreon.
It’s daunting but also incredibly exciting and somewhat liberating to be doing exactly what I want to do. Thank you for following my writing and online creativity journey and if you ever have any questions do ask.
