As 2016 comes to an end, and a new year begins, now is the time for reflection and hope for the new year. What did we accomplish last year? What did we learn this past year? What are our goals and aspirations for the upcoming year?
I occasionally ponder this question: Does anyone read my blog? Lol! I hope so. I hope I can become a resource to those who are looking for a good recipe, those looking for travel stories, those needing some cooking or DIY inspiration or those new moms looking for someone to confirm their mom struggles. I am not a perfect mom and wife, nor do I try to be. I make cooking flops at times…ask my husband. I yell at my kids sometimes when I should just be more patient. I can’t seem to commit to losing weight and this food blog doesn’t help.
Many of you may be wondering why I started a blog. The main reason is I simply wanted a fun and exciting job that I can do while being home with our boys. I’m very attached to them and don’t want to be away from them 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. I’m not ready for that yet. I love cooking and sharing my pictures on Facebook so, starting a blog seemed like a logical direction to pursue. So, let’s see where this adventure takes us!
No Plate Like Home is now 3 months young. It has been a volatile journey, to say the least. It started out strong the first month in September where I got my first 100 followers on Facebook and has slowly grown to a collective 352 followers (149 Facebook, 31 blog subscribers, 28 WordPress followers, and 144 Pinterest followers.) I really enjoy the writing, virtually meeting other great bloggers, sharing and photo taking although the photo taking is the most frustrating for me right now as I am far from a professional photographer but, I am learning and improving my photos, especially shooting in day light which, is scarce in Nov and Dec.
I had 1135 page views in Sep., my debut month, 729 in Oct. and 1047 in Nov. and 1735 in Dec. Upward progression is good.
I’m also not a website developer and struggle with getting the site working with all the bells and whistles sometimes. I was starting to get to know the WordPress and Siteground engineers on a first name basis from the help chats we’ve had almost daily at times. Plus, my laptop crashed sometime in Nov.
I moved to self hosting, which was a project in itself and set me back a couple weeks but, worth it to be able to install some great social media sharing plugins.
Blogging may seem easy to those who read blog posts or skim Pinterest for recipes or “How to” articles but, I’ll tell you, blogging is HARD work! So much goes into editing, website set and maintenance, and marketing. I spend just as much time promoting my blog posts as I do creating them. I spend hours finding great pins to pin to my No Plate Like home Pinterest account. When I changed my personal account to a business account, I only had 500 pins and 37 followers. Now, I have 5100 pins and 144 followers! I am hand picking my pins and have beautiful boards to show for it but, it is a lot of work! Kudos to bloggers! They work for every follower and page view.
I’ve struggled to get my posts on Foodgawker and Tastespotting and managed to get four on Foodgawker, which is a huge accomplishment as far as I’m concerned and only one on Tastespotting (related to submission problems.) I also surprisingly had my Tiramisu Eggnog featured in Tiny Prints , which did not generate the page view I thought it might but am happy they picked little ole me. I didn’t enter a submission so that was a complete surprise. I think I’m off to a good start but, I really don’t know because I don’t know what the benchmark for new bloggers would be. This is where I feel that I’m in a fog. Being successful at blogging comes from trial and error. What works for one blogger may not work for others.
Here are my most popular posts and pins:
|
Post Title |
Viewed |
Pinterest Pinned |
| Cranberry Lemon Cheesecake
|
391 | 305 |
| Christmas Cannolis | 250 | 121 |
| Tiramisu Eggnog Cocktail | 181 | 118 |
| A Motherless Daughter’s Decision to Become a SAHM | 155 | 14 |
| Homemade Italian Wedding Soup & The Less Stress Thanksgiving Planner | 128 | 50 & 12 |
| Peppermint Brownies | 111 | 167 |
Coming in 2017
- New Year’s Resolutions recipes to burn off the holiday calories
- Comfort foods, soups
- Valentine’s Day Lover Cake
- Yummy Super Bowl appetizers
- DIY furniture make over
- Florida travel with toddlers
- Easter dinner favorites
- Healthy Grilled meats and veggies and BURGERS!
- Scrumptious summer desserts
- Fall soups
- Thanksgiving desserts, sides and DIY
- Christmas recipes, DIY
- Christmas gift shopping tips
I’m looking forward to blogging next year for all of my followers, new and existing. I hope all of you have many blessings in the new year along with health, happiness and prosperity!
So what would YOU, my appreciated readers, like to see me write about in 2017? More travel posts? More dessert recipes? More healthy food recipes? Cooking tips? Mom struggles? DIY? Money saving tips? Please comment below.
I’d love to hear from you and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thanks again! I’ll do it!
I use Canva.com There are free photos, backgrounds, etc. Just play around with it until you can make a pin you like. You can also upload your own photos on it.
Thanks! You are very nice. I never heard about these 2 apps. I’ll look at them now. What program do you use to make a collage photo to post on Pinterest? I don’t have any app for that either. I just pin a photo from my blog. Thanks dear
I started pinning 100 pins per day. You can use Tailwind or Board Booster to help.
That’s good! I’ll try to pin more often then. Thanks for the advice
Thanks! Now most of my traffic comes from Pinterest. Try it.
Wow! You really did a awesome job! You are right about blogging. It’s not easy at all. I started my blog over 1 year ago, and I don’t have many subscribers or followers as you on Pinterest or Facebook. You did great! I don’t even know how to use Pinterest… all these social media is also a lot of work! I’m looking forward to see your next posts and recipes. Good luck ❤
Farrah, thanks so much for reading my end of year post and giving me much needed feedback. It is great finding so many nice bloggers and their interesting blogs. I’m seeing significant traffic growth now and am continuing to give it a lot of effort. I hope we’ll always stay in touch. I welcome constructive criticism! Good luck to you in this year! It is so awesome you will be a doctor! I will check out Bloglovin.com)
I think you’re doing an awesome job with your blog and had no idea it had only been around for only 3 months! :O Mine started out as just a personal diary of sorts for when I ran off to grad school across the country. I finally caved in and got social media accounts about 2 years ago and got self-hosted/branched out to actual-blogging-for-an-audience around then, hehe. You’ve already done so much more than me in these 3 short months! <3 I'm looking forward to following your adventures in the upcoming year–healthy recipes and pretty travel posts that I can live vicariously through are some of my favorites, but I'd never say no to more money=saving + cooking tips either! :]!
I'm glad we ran into each other in the blogging world! 😀
P.S. This is entirely optional but if you want to get an account on bloglovin (bloglovin.com) and register your blog on there, it makes it easier to read along with/catch up on other bloggers' posts and such! Makes it easier to follow my favorite blogs and if you're on there, I can add you! 😀
Thank you. I am really tried to launch it with a bang. I appreciated your feedback. It is difficult to work so hard not know if anyone even likes what you are doing. Good luck with your blog!
Wow, you’ve accomplished so much in 3 months! I just started blogging and you’re right, it’s not easy. The hardest part for me is to keep up the momentum. You’ve gone beyond just blogging to promoting the blog and getting it featured on other websites. Congrats!
Thank you Marjorie. I will remember to write about flops in the future. Thankfully, I haven’t had one in a while. Failing can lead to great accomplishments. Happy New Year!
THANK YOU SO MUCH! It is nice to hear that and get feedback. Good luck with your blog too. I plan to come back and visit and hope you’ll do the same.
Congratulations on 3 months blogging! You’ve made incredible growth in your blog! You say you have cooking flops, I’d love to read some. Sometimes we get so caught up with things looking/tasting/being perfect all the time that we need a bit of relief! Not just permission to fail but to know that those we look to for ideas also fail as well and that it’s okay! Also, your backup plan when the food is a flop, what’s your go-to when that happens?
I plan to write about a trip I took to Rome and Florence years ago. It was one of my best trips there. Very comical.
Lovely Joanne; best of luck for 2017! I would love you to write more on Italy, I really love that country:)
Thank you Jeff. That is great to hear. Best of luck to you. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your attractive creations!
I love that you started off 2017 with a featured photo of a cranberry cheesecake! 🙂 Best of luck with your blog. I think you’ve done quite a lot in just a short time.