Last week I began my travel blog journey and setup explorewithalice.com. I had a pretty good start with 14 posts, so I thought I would continue the pace this week. Unfortunately I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped, as backfilling old content proved to be much harder than writing about recent trips. I had to do some archaeology of old photos and emails to remember what happened. Still, here’s what I managed to accomplish:
Content
I wrote posts about the bigger international trips from 2023 and 2022 (Philippines, Cambodia, Singapore, Toronto, Iceland, and Norway).
UI
- I used the PostX plugin to add a Destinations section on the home page.
- I used the PostX plugin to add filters to the posts page.
Stats
| Cost | $67 (Hosting $60 + Domain $7) |
| Posts Published | 24 (+10) |
| Views | ~350 (+50) |
| Revenue | $0 |
| Profit | -$67 |
Similar to last week, I received 4 submissions to my contact form offering help with SEO. The novelty is wearing off though, so I won’t mention this anymore going forward.
High / Lowlights
- ❌ Wrote fewer posts than expected.
- ❌ Took me awhile to figure out why the filter wasn’t showing up on the posts page (another template vs page issue)
- ✅ Shared the blog with some friends and got some great feedback (more of my voice/personality, more varied content, more selfies/videos)!
Final Thoughts
Since I didn’t get to all the goals from last week, next week I plan to continue with the same ones:
- Draft more guides and update existing guides with feedback
- Polish the UI and get more feedback from friends
- Do some SEO optimization
Hopefully I can get those things crossed out next week!