Last week I setup a newsletter and sent out my first edition. This week I was planning to share the blog more widely, but ended up diving deep into page speed optimization. This was because I noticed the home page has gotten noticeably slower after adding the hero image, IG feed and Substack section. Here’s what I accomplished this week:
Setup
I ran a PageSpeed test and found major issues with image delivery and blocking requests resulting in mobile scores ~30/100 😳. I asked ChatGPT how to improve, and followed what it suggested:
- Compressed the hero image using Squoosh and re-uploaded it.
- Replaced default IG feed widget with the plugin Smash Balloon Instagram Feed, which serves optimized thumbnails instead of originals.
- Installed Jetpack Boost to optimize the CSS, JS, and image delivery.
- The images were still too big with Jetpack image optimization, so I also installed EWWW for extra compression.
- Removed the Substack embed to reduce external scripts.
After all that (and a lot of trial and error), my performance score jumped to around 70/100, which ChatGPT insists is good for an ad-monetized travel blog and that I “do not need to obsess past this point”. I think it got tired of me asking about performance 😂.
Content
Monetization
I noticed that 90% of my traffic comes from mobile, but I’m not currently serving ads on mobile because I’ve only enabled siderail ads. I created an experiment on AdSense to enable bottom anchor ads on mobile to see how it would affect revenue.
UI
- Added a Substack link to the footer since I removed the Substack embeds to improve performance.
Stats
Overall
| Cost | $67 (Hosting $60 + Domain $7) |
| Posts Published | 52 (+5) |
| Views | ~700 (+100) |
| Revenue | $1 (+0) |
| Profit | -$66 |
Search
| Impressions | 37 (+10) |
| Clicks | 11 (+5) |
| Average Position | 2.3 (-0.3) |
IG
| Posts Published | 15 (+3) |
| Followers | 20 (+1) |
| Views | 2000 (+300) |
Substack
| Posts Published | 1 (+0) |
| Subscribers | 13 (+3) |
| Views | 61 (+10) |
High / Lowlights
- ❌ It took awhile to figure out what plugins to use for the optimizations since different plugins support different features and I don’t want multiple plugins doing the same thing.
- ✅ Home page is much faster now! ⚡
- ❌ Still not much new revenue.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t realize how much goes into making a website fast! It’s cool that so many tools exist to help with performance, but figuring out the right combination took time and I wish WordPress or Bluehost handled more of it automatically.
Since I spent most of this week focused on page speed optimization, my plan for next week is the same as my original one for this 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 find out how much growth I can pull off!
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