{"id":12263,"date":"2017-01-18T09:20:20","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T14:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=12263"},"modified":"2017-01-18T09:25:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T14:25:37","slug":"end-year-2016-check-looking-ahead-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/18\/end-year-2016-check-looking-ahead-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"End of Year 2016 Check In and Looking Ahead to 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post is a little later than I would have liked but I think the timing is appropriate. Today, January 18, is the 4th anniversary of Beyond Mommying. Four years ago, pregnant and disheartened, I started\u00a0out on this big blogging adventure with a single post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/18\/mommy-mantra\/\">&#8220;Mommy Mantra.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 I&#8217;ve since added over 1200 more posts and articles to my repertoire and shared my writing on more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/what-its-all-about\/more-from-beyond-mommying\/\">a dozen other sites<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m happy to be able to say that while across days, weeks and even months, Beyond Mommying has seen\u00a0many ups and downs, I&#8217;ve managed to grow substantially each and every year. My pageviews have more than doubled year over year and I had more than 50 times more visitors in 2016 than I had in my initial year of blogging (2013). In fact, my views and visitors so far this year have already superseded that\u00a0entire first year!<a href=\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/18\/end-year-2016-check-looking-ahead-2017\/end-2016\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12268\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12268\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/end-2016.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"749\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/end-2016.png 749w, https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/end-2016-300x192.png 300w, https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/end-2016-600x385.png 600w, https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/end-2016-390x250.png 390w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 749px) 100vw, 749px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>First let&#8217;s take a quick peek at Quarter 4 of 2016:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>My total pageviews decreased 14%<\/strong> (this was due to a really, really amazing July which inflated my 3rd quarter stats).<\/li>\n<li><strong>My total social following increased 3% with the biggest growth in Pinterest<\/strong> (which makes sense as Pinterest growth has been my main focus over the past few months).<\/li>\n<li><strong>My subscribers list grew 8%.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>My income was less than half of what I earned 3rd quarter<\/strong> but my expenses were also lower.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>And over the entire 2016 year:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>My total pageviews\u00a0were 2.32 times my 2015 pageviews and my unique visitors were 3.5 times higher.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>My total social following over 2016 increased 45%<\/strong> with more than <strong>50% growth on both Twitter and Pinterest<\/strong> and double-digit growth across all my social media networks.<\/li>\n<li><strong>My subscribers list is nearly 2.5 times larger\u00a0<\/strong>than it was a year ago and my <strong>open rate on my first e-mail newsletter this year was 50% higher<\/strong> than for the same time last year with <strong>4 times more clicks<\/strong> and 0 unsubscribers (a big win!)<\/li>\n<li><strong>2016 was the first year I made enough money to say I made money<\/strong> and the first time <strong>my total earnings on Beyond Mommying exceeded my lifetime expenses<\/strong> (including my initial setup costs in 2013 during which Beyond Mommying was not monetized and despite the\u00a0<em>huge<\/em> amount I paid last January for three more years of web service.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Goals for 2017:<\/h3>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t planning on setting goals this year. Sometimes goal setting to me feels like a jail cell, something that I&#8217;m imprisoned by and can&#8217;t get away from. Unfortunately, though, my recent computer dropping incident resulted in my needing to step up my blogging game and with that, set some necessary goals.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Earn at least as much in 2017 as I did in 2016 (this is necessary simply to cover the costs of my new computer and data recovery&#8211;yikes!)<\/li>\n<li>Continue seeing increased pageview and unique visitors growth. Each year I set a daily\/monthly pageview goal to achieve and maintain. This year my goal is pretty lofty (2.5 times last years goal) but with 12 months to get it done, I&#8217;m (nervously) confident it will happen.<\/li>\n<li>Continue spreading my voice and publishing pieces outside of Beyond Mommying. I&#8217;d like to place one article per month outside Beyond Mommying (paid preferred, obviously!)<\/li>\n<li>Work with more brands, companies and organizations to expand my network and bring you more great information, content and products to try out.<\/li>\n<li>Find my footing with social media again. I came into 2016 with guns blazing, ready to take on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,\u00a0<em>everything<\/em> and I quickly fizzled when the effort didn&#8217;t match the reward. This year I&#8217;m planning to work smarter, not just harder, and find out what really works.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>And who knows, maybe 2017 will bring some other great opportunities and advancements as well!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>What blogging or life goals do you have for 2017?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is a little later than I would have liked but I think the timing is appropriate. Today, January 18, is the 4th anniversary of Beyond Mommying. Four years ago, pregnant and disheartened, I started\u00a0out on this big blogging adventure with a single post &#8220;Mommy Mantra.&#8221;\u00a0 I&#8217;ve since added over 1200 more posts and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12272,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12263\/revisions\/12272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}