One Year Blogiversary!

One year later, I’m still here! Ok, fine 1 year and 1 day later, eating celebratory bacon (at time of writing, 2 days later at publishing)… I missed my blogiversary. Yoshi (my parrot) fell extremely sick Tuesday night, sick as in I and his vet thought he was really going to die. I’ve been too busy this week playing bird nurse (I even had to take off work!). Anyways, Yoshi is getting better by the day and I’ve been really busy.

So what did I actually do for my one year blogiversary? Well, not what I had planned. I really wanted to host a giveaway, but real life got in the way. What I did manage to do is make an infographic to see how far this has all come. Mind you, I did not start tracking on Google Analytics until August, make an Instagram account until late September, a Pinterest account until October-ish, a Twitter in August and I think I started the Facebook page in April or May.

And hot damn, look at that! I made $13.77 cold, hard American dollars since I started this! I’m up $ 13.56 since late August when I wrote that super sarcastic post letting you in on all my secrets on how I’ve made 0.21 as a blogger.

My next money-making venture will be affiliate marketing… Apparently, the way it works is that if people click on my sidebar ad AND book, I’ll make some kind of commission. Those should be coming online in the very near future.

Since I have started this I have traveled in 7 countries, 4 US states, and 1 US Territory. Far more than that have been crossed off the list previously. I didn’t have room to add this to the Infographic. Oh well.

What do I have in store for year two do you ask?

Well, you’re probably not asking, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. Or you can leave the website and raise my bounce rate and not read it, I won’t be offended and it’s totally okay if you don’t know what bounce rate is, you can just ignore that statement. Well my year two plan, stunner here: I don’t know. I don’t know is probably the most said phrase in my repertoire. It’s the perfect answer, even if I do know and I want a little extra time to gather my thoughts. But in this case, I kinda know.

I’d love to increase my earnings because let’s face it: I’ve spent far more than $13.77 on this blog. But, if I don’t, that’s fine too. I’d like to stop sucking at Facebook and Pinterest, or for them to just disappear altogether. I have no motivation to put time into those two like I do Instagram. Instagram is my social media of choice in case you hadn’t noticed.

I’d love to work more at monetizing Instagram without it being lame and spammy, I love taking photos and working on my photography and will continue to. I would like to improve my engagement on Instagram, my follower number grows exponentially by the day (and it has far exceeded what I ever imagined in my wildest dreams), but my engagement (likes, comments) is slower to go up. I’ve wondered if people have thought maybe I was buying followers (my engagement is 300-1,000 likes per photo at the moment, despite having 22.5K followers). I’ve never bought followers for the record, but I feel like that’s lowish engagement numbers in comparison to the follower number, but hey, I’m not complaining.

And Twitter, I just can’t be bothered to give two fucks about Twitter. It’s useful to have to interact and try to share my stuff with other bloggers and share posts by other bloggers (Yeah, I’m sorry all you guys that faithfully share my posts on Twitter. I really do appreciate it, I really do. I just am crappy at reciprocating because I have little motivation to log on to it every day, but really, thank you!).

Oh, and I would love to have more subscribers to my blog. Yeah, I know, some of the posts (like this one) are somewhat meaningless babble. But whatever, I think I’m funny most of the time. But none of this is as important as what I’d like to do for the people who read this blog. I want to give you more useful information, show you more amazing places, convince you to visit some of these places and of course, take some awe-inspiring photos for all of you.

So, here’s to year two! And remember, you can always e-mail me, DM me on Instagram, tweet me, FB message my page… (oh wait, don’t FB page message me… I never check that. But all the others I’m very responsive on). Send me your questions, your requests (non-sexual), your thoughts, your love or hatred for me.. I’m usually open to those things. I have written a couple of posts based on questions and requests of readers. So, yeah, unlike my Mom would tell you: I do listen.