Last week I hit an exciting milestone and made my first dollar 💸! This week I looked into starting a newsletter and ended up creating one since it turned out to be surprisingly easy. There are quite a few options for sending emails, but I went with Substack since it seemed the easiest to setup. Fun fact: did you know you’re legally required to include a valid physical address in newsletters to comply with laws like the CAN-SPAM act (what a great name 😂)? Luckily Substack creates one for me so I don’t have to get a PO box — subscribe to find out what it is!
On to what I accomplished this week:
Setup
- Email – I created an email account [email protected] on Bluehost and setup email forwarding for it. Now I can respond from that address if anyone replies to my newsletter.
- Newsletter – I signed up for Substack using [email protected] and launched the Explore With Alice newsletter.
Content
- Published the first edition of the newsletter.
- Wrote about Yellowstone National Park, London, and Japan.
- Created IG post for Yellowstone National Park, Singapore, and Peru.
UI
- Found a fun photo of me and added a hero section to the home page with that image.
- Updated Recent Posts to only show 3 posts so it’s more compact.
- Created a page that lists all the countries I’ve been to and linked it from the About page.
- Added a subscribe section to the home page and individual post pages.
Stats
Overall
| Cost | $67 (Hosting $60 + Domain $7) |
| Posts Published | 47 (+8) |
| Views | ~600 (+50) |
| Revenue | $1 (+0) |
| Profit | -$66 |
Search
| Impressions | 27 (+12) |
| Clicks | 6 (+1) |
| Average Position | 2.6 (-0.8) |
IG
| Posts Published | 12 (+3) |
| Followers | 19 (+3) |
| Views | 1700 (+800) |
Substack
| Posts Published | 1 |
| Subscribers | 10 |
| Views | 51 |
High / Lowlights
- ❌ Fewer blog views this week compared to last week (50 vs 100) and not much new revenue.
- ✅ I’m moving up on the average search position!
- ✅ I have some great friends who have been diligently liking all my IG posts (thank you!! 🙏 )
- ✅ I’m pleasantly surprised at how many Substack subscribers I got in the first week.
Final Thoughts
The blog is really starting to feel more complete with 47 posts, an IG account, and a newsletter! Unfortunately this week didn’t bring as much revenue as I’d hoped, so I think it’s time I start sharing the blog more widely to get those views / revenue up.
Here are my plans for the next week:
- Draft more guides and IG posts
- Share blog links in Facebook / Reddit travel communities where people ask for recommendations or tips
Come back next week to see how much sharing helps boost those views!