Half of the year is gone by now, and while I don´t want to join the chorus of those that express their surprise about how time is flying (it isn´t, at least not always, but I will come to that another time), I do want to take the opportunity to reflect on how far I have come with what I wanted to achieve.
And to address upcoming changes, which I, ironically, also did six months ago, in my first blog post after my Christmas break. I promise it is not a series!
To get up to speed, I recommend you read the blogpost first (click) and then join me in dissecting how things have evolved since.
Back in January, after thinking long and hard about it, because thinking long and hard is what you do between Christmas and New Year Eve, as long as you are not feasting and getting drunk, which for me, with two little kids, rarely happens, so after thinking long and hard about it I decided I wanted to set up a strategy. For my blog. And for You Tube. A plan for me to decide which social media to focus on, where to invest my time, everything needed to work towards the goal of making money from blogging.
Which, complete honesty here, I still don’t do.
And I am not talking about going full time. I am talking about making any money. At all.
But that is not the point of this blog post, I just wanted to put that out there in case you were looking for tips on how earn an income with blogging. You won´t find them here, I am sorry.
Now I don´t want to sound frustrated, because I did indeed see results from my strategy. I had constant (organic) growth both in followers and in page views. I did work with amazing brands that provided products for consideration, I have a few videos that perform great in terms of views and above all that I never lost the joy in creating.
But when IGTV appeared, yet another platform I was supposed to fill with life, I realized that the price I was paying was too high. Or, like Kate from Kate Louise Blogs perfectly described it in a comment (do follow her for fashion and beauty, she is stunning and did recently start vlogging, which is a joy to watch) – I felt like I was stretched too thin.
The struggle to be consistent paired with learning more about the possibilities of editing and videography was too much, I felt as if I was constantly putting out content in a hurry that I wasn´t proud of.
So many of you did comment on my latest vlog to tell me how much they do appreciate the quality of my content, and it really means the world to me, but what matters in the end is how I feel about it.
The sky is the limit in terms of quality, but if you want to improve, you need to take the time to learn. To practice, make mistakes and start over.
So I took a break and thought long and hard (this time sitting by the lake in the never ending sunset in Northern Norway) and here is what I decided:
I will cut back to one video a week, my usual Monday one, and release other You Tube content as I see fit, no longer every Friday. To be honest I don´t think my life is as interesting that I need to vlog every week anyway, and it saves a ton of time in editing.
I will stick with the Friday posts though, mainly because they are a welcome break to my quite strict reviews and I enjoy just chatting along (as you will most likely have noticed by now, 630 words in – get to the point, woman!)
I will occasionally upload to IGTV (I already did a quick skincare routine), as I feel like it is the perfect format for quick reviews of makeup items and things. No one does a video on a single lipstick anymore, but writing about it lacks the visual qualities I think are important when it comes to talking about makeup.
And while the next video is already filmed and edited, I´ll try to get ahead of my schedule in the next weeks to have more time to experiment with editing. Which means, my Norway roadtrip vlog will be up whenever it is ready, instead of today.
That does not mean though that I will no longer aim to evolve and make money from blogging. But it means that staring at the lake in the never ending sunset taught me that in order to be creative, I need some time to let my thoughts wander, to meditate, to experience. Otherwise I won´t have anything to draw inspiration from.
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