It’s that time of year again – time to assess last year’s blogging goals and note down some new aspirations for 2023! It’s been a busy year of blogging for me – although as usual, when I look back, I do feel like I could have done more…
Let’s take a look at each goal from 2022 in turn, before moving onto my goals for the coming year.
Blogging goals from 2022
1. Achieve 600,000 sessions over the course of the year
At the end of 2021, I was averaging around 1,200 a sessions a day, but by the time I hit the mid-year point of 2022, Mummy to Dex was receiving between 3,000 and 4,000 sessions per day.
By the end of the year, Mummy to Dex will have received over 1 million sessions during 2022!
This is such a huge milestone for me and I am so grateful for every single reader who has hit my site.
2. Create 120 new pieces of content
In 2021 I pledged 50 new pieces of content and created 15. This year I set myself a pretty huge goal of 120 pieces of content, which was probably a bit ambitious considering the output I achieved in 2021. Did I manage to hit it? No. But, I did create over 60 new pieces of content which I think is a great achievement in itself.
I have tracked the ad revenue for all these new pieces of content. Some have fallen flat on their face and earned me pennies, other have consistently earned me $20 or more per month. In total, the content I created in 2022 earned me $1,400 which is not bad considering 70% of my traffic comes from Google and it can take months for some pieces to start ranking.
I will continue tracking these pieces of content in 2023 as seeing the earnings grow month on month help motivate me to keep writing and writing.
3. Earn £30,000 over the course of the year
In 2021, I earned double what I earned in 2020 so this year I wanted to really push myself to earn £30,000 over the course of the year.
I am pleased to say I overachieved on this goal – mainly thanks to my amazing ad partner Mediavine. Ad revenue has contributed to around 60% of my total blog earnings in 2022, despite lower than usual RPMs in Q4.
I even had my first ever triple figure day in November which was yet another amazing milestone for me.
I am keen to continue diversifying my income in 2023. I have started earning a decent monthly income from affiliate marketing which is definitely an area I’d like to grow further!
4. Set up email marketing
This is one goal I didn’t get around to fulfilling this year – I guess I was too busy focussing on my content goals!
Blogging Goals for 2023:
1. Achieve 1.2million sessions
I have set myself a goal of growing my traffic by 10% in 2023. I hope to do this by continuing to increase the amount of SEO rich content I have on my site and by growing the total number of ranking keywords on page 1. I also want to specifically concentrate on growing the number of featured snippets I rank for as well as growing the number of Top Stories placements I have for recipes.
To hit this goal I will need to average around 100k sessions per month. I am currently averaging between 80 to 90k, so I’ll need to work hard to see growth here.
2. Create 120 pieces of content (with the help of a content writer)
Once again I am aiming for 120 pieces of content in 2023, but I will be using the help of a content writer to help me achieve this. While I focus on recipes, my content writer will help me focus on SEO pieces in the parenting/baby theme.
As I also have a full time job, it would be unrealistic for me to aim for 120 posts written solely me (as we saw in 2022!), so using some of the blog’s earning to outsource to a content writer seems like good business sense to me. I am lucky to have found a really skilled content writer whose content ranks well and has even gained a couple of featured snippets over the last few months that we have worked together!
3. Earn £40,000 over the course of the year
My goal list wouldn’t be complete without an income target for the year. In 2023 I am aiming to earn £40k from my blog.
This isn’t going to be easy with RPMs being so low due to the current economic crisis, but I had a very strong second half of the year in 2022, so I have the confidence that this goal is achievable with lots of hard work, plenty of new content creation and by diversifying my income streams further.
I am particularly interested in growing my affiliate income (as I mentioned earlier) and one stream I’d like to explore is the new feature where you can upload video reviews to Amazon that will potentially feature on the product pages and can count towards affiliate income if the buyer watches and then purchases. An exciting new concept for 2023!
4. Grow DR to 40
For the last year I have pretty much ignored link building activity and in turn I have ignored by DA and DR. However in 2023, I want to bring the focus back to DR in particular and look to grow some strong links to grow this metric.
I am going to concentrate mainly on HARO requests and continue producing content that should be linked to organically as opposed to my old tactic of blogger links swaps.
5. Grow my secondary and tertiary blogs
Did you know I have two other blogs? In 2023 I am going to concentrate on creating new content for these sites too as well as working to grow their Domain Authority.
Travelling with Boys is a travel focussed blog that has a lot of potential. I started this blog in 2019 but then pretty much ignored it thereafter thanks to the pandemic. It currently has a DA of 16 which I’d like to get above 20 and it gets around 1k sessions a month, which I’d like to grow to 10k sessions per month. The outcome I’d like to achieve here is for this blog to be monetised by the end of year and earning £500 a month.
This Inspiring Life is my third blog which currently has zero content and a DA of 1 so lots and lots to do here! I’d like to start slowly growing the content on this blog and building some links so that by the end of the year the DA is above 10 and it’s getting 1k traffic per month.
What are your blogging goals for 2023?