May Roundup

May Roundup. And you thought I had forgotten but fear not! Here is my monthly blogging roundup for May. 

Firstly, what have I been upto in May? I have been listening to Nothin’ But A Good Time on Audible, and I also have a couple of true crime books queued up for when I finish this one. Nothin’ But a Good Time is an oral history of the 80s Hard Rock Explosion by Tom Beaujour and Richard Binestock. It’s definitely a rollicking good listen, and I’m not a huge fan of that genre of music, but there is a definite charming innocence to it. I recommend it to fans of any type of music. It's also currently free with an Amazon Prime Trial!

Did you know that you can gift books to your fellow Audible friends and family? When I’ve run out of tokens, I often tap up my boyfriend for his (he has a huge cache tucked away of them), and it’s a really nifty little way to use up (his) spare tokens. 

I’ve started to watch Pose on Netflix, that taps nicely into my love of RuPaul’s Drag Race. And aside from binge watching (wrong turn of phrase there) My 600lb Life, I’ve been mostly sleeping and blogging and working. 

What did we blog about this month? 

• A delicious easy vegan puff pastry Asparagus Tart 
• We visited Camden Market, London and sampled some of the vegan food on offer there
• Raw Vegan Brownies with Miso Tahini Icing
• Vegan Dirty Rice and Cornbread 
• Made the most of the short Rhubarb season with this delicious and easy Cake 
• We also sampled the vegan yums at Borough Market
• Caprese Salad 
• Sourdough Bread and Roast Plum Salad 
• I offered up my tips for increasing followers on Instagram

What’s in season in June? We are moving into the most fabulous months for fresh produce. The strawberries and raspberries will be PYO soon, the Asparagus will be cropping up everywhere, and we’ll be washing the soil off new potatoes in our sinks.  Look out for our delicious no-bake creamy strawberry tart! I'm going to be picking up some fresh podded peas and broad beans too!

I know, however, that you’re really here for the blog stats and how I’m getting on.  

Blog Update and Goals

So, let’s firstly look at last month, and my targets…. 

My targets for Social and Blog for May were: 

• Instagram 3500 followers, av. 250 likes per post ✔  
• Pinterest 450 followers, 150k monthly views   Actual 421 followers, 31k MV 
• Blog 6k page monthly views  Actual 4280  

As I enter the fifth month of blogging, it becomes a little easier to get into a rhythm of productivity. You find out what’s beneficial (and long-term benefits are much better than short time “quick fixes”) and what to discard. 

If you read my April Roundup, you’ll remember that I hit 5k page views on my blog, but that this figure was inflated by a Google Story that went “viral” (or at least, viral to me). Since then, I’ve been trying to play catchup and am now working on building solid, genuine page views to my blog, and am seeing my organic growth increase slowly but surely.  Also, I am currently not using Google Stories.

Pinterest. I reached my target of 400 followers, stalling at 421, with a huge drop down to 31k monthly views. I’ve not devoted too much time to Pinterest this past month, I try to post daily, and I have used ads in the past, but found that since they had an “algorithm update”, that they were not yielding much benefit, so I’ve stopped paying for ads. I also took down my story pins as they were over-inflating my numbers. Story Pins currently don’t link to your blog, so serve no real purpose to me at this point. However, I am seeing slow, but steady growth on my pins. Nothing earth-shattering but it’s promising. 

Instagram. I think I was aiming for 3.5k followers by the end of May, and I did hit that target (just). I have a love/hate relationship with IG, and find I sometimes find a vein of followers that can boost my numbers greatly, and then I have nothing for weeks on end. I won’t jump through IG’s hoops of posting reels as I find them a pain to make (unless for a collab), but I do love the community there, and this helps maintain my numbers, and, more importantly, my sanity at times. 

Affiliate and Ad Revenue

Amazon Affiliate. 

I think I might have booted from the UK Amazon affiliate program because I didn’t get enough (or any) sales, except for a couple from my boyfriend (which don’t count ?) but my US affiliate page is doing a lot better and I hope to be accepted for that program in a few more weeks. To be honest, the majority of readership is non-UK based anyway, so it’s a better way to go. 

Media.net ads 

So, I think I earned 16 cents so far here. It’s slow going but that’s why it’s called passive income.  

Targets for June

• Instagram 5000 followers, 250-300 likes per picture
• Pinterest 450 followers, 50k monthly views
• Page Views 5k, with 15% regular organic growth by end of month against May
• I really want to increase my DA but am struggling with that so much.

What did I learn in May? That patience is key. But don't be passive. You need to be on top of your SEO keywords game. I recently subscribed to Ubersuggest and I have found it really helpful. My post on Vegan Drinks at Costa Coffee has been Number 1 in the google search for several weeks and has driven a lot of welcome, regular traffic to my blog on a daily basis. Other than that, it's that old saying about how blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.