February was a short month, but I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress!
I would still like to commit to putting in more hours each week, but I’m pretty satisfied with my consistency. And I think consistency is one of the most important factors for success.
Here’s how it went!
Income Report
As expected in the first few months (or years) of blogging, I did not earn any income. I did, however, have a couple of expenses this month.
RankIQ – $49.00
SiteLock- $95.88
Blogging Short Term Plans and Goals
In my last income report and update, I outlined my goals up until the end of this school year. In short, they were:
- Create a homepage. I have now done so, but it is more than basic for the moment.
- Publish at least eight more blog posts. I’ve since published two more and scheduled another. I’m ahead of schedule. Woohoo!
- Make other basic blog improvements. I’ve done nothing in this department yet, but I’m dying to change my theme. My contact and about pages also need some serious work.
- Start a mailing list. I aim to do this before March is over.
- Start a Pinterest strategy. I aim to do this by April.
- Join Ezoic Access Now. I will probably only do this if I have enough pageviews by then to make it worth my while. They don’t have a requirement, but they do recommend having at least 500 visitors per month. I am nowhere near that.
(For more details on these short term plans and goals, see January 2023 Blog Income Report and Update.)
February 2023 Thrive Beyond Teaching (TBT) Blog Progress
My blog is now monetized!
One change I made in February was my content plan strategy. I planned my first 30 blog posts using Project 24’s search analysis process. In February, I added another resource: RankIQ.
Even though I’ve only been using it a short while, it seems very promising and I ended up joining their affiliate program!
I’m excited to see how this addition to my content strategy helps my blog, and I’m equally excited to have my blog’s first potential income stream!
Please Note: I will ONLY EVER promote products or services that I firmly believe in myself. Scout’s honor!
I actually scheduled a blog post ahead of time… once anyway.
I have scheduled one blog post a week every Saturday for the last four weeks! That is a huge celebration for me.
It finally feels like I’m in a regular content scheduling groove. With the Google gods, consistency is key!
I even got to the point where I had one blog post scheduled a week ahead of time! Now that having a blog post scheduled for every Saturday feels pretty organic for me, I’d love to start regularly having more than one post scheduled ahead of time. Eventually, I’d like to get to a place where my content is all scheduled at least one month in advance. This touch-and-go life is not it!
I created a tentative product line plan.
I originally planned on starting on content creation over the summer, but I really think it’s probable that I will meet all my other short term goals above and be ready to get started on product creation by April or May.
This excites me greatly!
I’ve had ideas about what helpful products I want to offer teachers and teacherpreneurs, but I solidified those ideas into a plan in February. It’s tentative of course, but it’s nice to have a starting point, and I’m excited to get to the product creation phase of my business. The next step is to do some market research.
One thing that helped me get to this point was the mindblowing discovery of PLR products. Apparently these are products or product templates that you are licensed to resell upon purchase. You can edit them or leave them as is.
Even though I plan on creating my own products from scratch eventually, I think this is a great way to dip my toe into creating and selling products. But I will definitely be tailoring mine to meet the needs and wants of my customers.
I’ve got a lot more to learn about buying and selling PLR products, but here are the two resources I learned about them from.
Setbacks
I was so excited when I stumbled upon Google Search Console and all the great data it gives on my site. Then I saw this horrifying message.
I was beyond mortified.
I immediately added SiteLock to my web hosting plan. They ran several scans and confirmed everything was okay. I called BlueHost and they were super helpful as well. I went back to Google Search Console and requested a review. Thankfully, they sent me an email just today that all is well on Thrive Beyond Teaching (TBT).
That is a huge relief since the blog is the lifeline of my business!
Lessons Learned
Treating My Business Like a Business
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before in previous TBT blog updates and income reports, but it’s still something that is a work in progress for me.
I hate the term side hustle and this is so much more than that for me. Yes, there is a lot of hustling on the side since I work full-time in addition to this. But, I’m learning to change my mindset from employee to CEO.
It is a work in progress, and probably always will be.
But Still Making Time for the Ebb and Flow of Life
While I’m learning to prioritize my business and schedule it in as a non-negotiable the way I do my workday, I think it’s equally important to take time off. I learned the hard way earlier this school year the importance of rest and play.
That’s why I took one Friday off this month to celebrate my boyfriend’s birthday. I had my laptop with me over his birthday weekend in case I was able to sneak in some work while he was sleeping or something.
I wasn’t able to, and I was perfectly fine with that. It turned out to be such a refreshing, rejuvenating weekend for us both.
Resources
I am constantly consuming online business content. Here are a couple helpful resources I found in the month of February.
Closing Thoughts
I’m learning to accept the ebb and flow of my business. Some weeks I will kill it and be way ahead of schedule. Some weeks I will barely get anything done. What’s important is that I keep coming back and keep improving my mindset and my systems.
What’s important is I keep on building up this space and community where we can all thrive beyond teaching.
One brick at a time. ❣️
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