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6 Places to Cut Your Personal Budget to Spend More on Your Blog

March 27, 2018

Blogging can get expensive really quickly. And I’ll be the first person to look for free or low-cost hacks to save money on my blog. But sometimes it’s just not worth the time investment, and you know your blog would do a lot better if you could spend more on it.

To avoid racking up credit card charges that you can’t pay off, I’ve compiled a few places to cut your personal budget so you can reallocate that money toward your blog. That way you can say “I need $29/mo for this tool, where can I find $29/mo in my budget?” so you’re not going into debt.

Note: I will never tell you to pay less toward your debt in order to pay for blogging tools. So student loans, credit card bills, car loans… don’t touch those.

Overwhelmed by Google Analytics? Look at These 5 Things First

March 15, 2018

Google Analytics is an amazing tool for anyone with a website. There’s a bunch of useful data that can help you track and plan ahead for your business once you install it. But it’s so robust that it’s easy to become overwhelmed by Google Analytics. Where are you supposed to start?

If you’re a blogger, there are five key pieces I recommend you look at and get comfortable with first before going into an even deeper dive of Google Analytics’ features.

An important thing to note, first: the data in Google Analytics is determined based on the date range you provide. It typically defaults to the previous 7 days, but you’ll want to change it for the time frame you’re interested in. I recommend looking at the previous month or previous 30 days. You can change your date range in the upper right corner of any Google Analytics page.

The Ultimate Spreadsheet to Keep Your Blog Organized

February 22, 2018

When it’s more than a casual hobby, it’s critical that you keep your blog organized. Your blog files should be organized, you should have a to do list system in place, and you should have one go-to spot for all of your important information.

Over the last four years as a blogger, I’ve noticed trends of what information I’m always reaching for. And thanks to my love of spreadsheets, I decided to make one master spreadsheet with all of my blogging information in it. And I just couldn’t keep it to myself any more!

When you sign up for the Herd, the And Possibly Dinosaurs weekly newsletter, you’ll get instant access to a master Google Sheet that you can save to your Google Drive (or download the Excel file for, if that’s more your style) and customize for your needs. Here’s everything that’s included in it to keep your blog organized!

How I Make My Blog Graphics in 15 Minutes or Less

April 11, 2017

When you're a blogger with a full-time job, your time is valuable. So, how can you blog productively? Design productively! Here's how I make my blog graphics in 15 minutes or less so I can get back to the important things in life.

Hey—want some one-on-one help getting this set up? Book a 20-minute consultation and we can work through it via video chat!

When you’re a blogger who works full-time, productivity is a huge priority. (Okay, who are we kidding? Productivity is a huge priority for everyone.)

One easy way to be more productive is to speed up the amount of time it takes for you to create your blog graphics. Here’s how I create my blog graphics in 15 minutes or less, without sacrificing on quality or design.

How to Set Achievable Blogging Goals (plus a FREE workbook!)

December 30, 2016

Setting blogging goals is an awesome way to get shit done with your blog. But how do you prevent overwhelm and actually achieve these goals? Here's how to set achievable blogging goals, plus a free worksheet to help you out! Click through for the freebie!

Hey—want some one-on-one help getting this set up? Book a 20-minute consultation and we can work through it via video chat!

Aaah, the end of the year. The time when we plan out our New Year’s Resolutions and get super ambitious with our goals.

But, as everyone knows, we set these awesome goals in December and January, and they’re history by February.

Let’s take my 2016 New Year’s Resolutions, for example. At the end of December, I decided that in 2016, I was going to create two courses and two ebooks for my blog.

This is great if you’re blogging full-time, right? Lofty enough to make you work for them, but still relatively achievable if you’ve got the time for them.

Well… I ended up creating one ecourse and zero ebooks. And I had already started creating the ecourse in December of 2015.

So what stopped me from achieving my blogging goals? Oh, it might have been the fact that three days into 2016, I moved to a different state and wasn’t sure when or where I was going to find a job.

Do You REALLY Need to Hire a Designer for Your Blog?

December 14, 2016

This post contains affiliate links that I could make commission off of. All opinions are my own. Learn more.

Working with a designer is awesome. You get all kinds of ideas for branding and content upgrades that you never could have thought of on your own.

But the downside is the cost. It can get expensive to work with a designer.

I know this because I am one. I work with clients to build a brand and create templates for images and content upgrades. It’s a ton of fun, but the cost can add up quickly.

So, it’s time to face the facts: do you really need to hire a designer to work on your blog?

How (and why!) to Clean Out Your Email List

November 15, 2016

Hey—want some one-on-one help getting this set up? Book a 20-minute consultation and we can work through it via video chat!

I, like many others (yourself included, I’m sure) love seeing my email list numbers grow. I’ll get random emails from Mailchimp saying one or two people subscribed to my email list and it doesn’t seem like a big deal… until I realize I’ve got about 100 more subscribers than I expected!

Talk about an awesome feeling, right?

And yet, every four months or so, I go through my email list and clean it out. I find subscribers who aren’t opening my emails and unsubscribe them from my email list.

Say what?!

Here’s why it’s a good habit to get into, and how you can clean out your email list as well!

How to Budget Your Life & Your Blog (& a Free Spreadsheet!)

September 21, 2016

Budgeting is… not the most fun thing to do. But that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. In fact, it’s one of the most important things you can do!

So, where the heck are you supposed to start? Let’s walk through every step of the budgeting process. (Oh, and don’t forget to download your free spreadsheet so you can track your budget and spending habits!)

What are Content Upgrades? (Plus, 100+ of the best content upgrades to send out!)

September 7, 2016

When I first started blogging, I didn’t understand the need for an email list. My blog was just a hobby, and I didn’t really care if I made any money of it.

Well, I still moderately feel that way (I don’t want to have any ads on my site, for example), but I’ve changed my outlook on email lists.

After all, one of my main goals with my blog is to help make the intimidating aspects of blogging and design easy to digest. If I’m not getting my content out there… I’m not really helping anyone, am I?

I set to work on growing my email list using popups, subscription forms in my sidebar, you name it.

But my email list wasn’t growing.

What’s a girl to do? Easy: content upgrades.

How to Effectively Use Tags on Your Blog

August 31, 2016

There are a lot of features on WordPress. It's hard to know how to really utilize all of them! So what are tags, and how can you effectively use tags on your blog?

This post contains affiliate links that I could make commission off of. All opinions are my own. Learn more.

When I first started blogging, I was a bit overwhelmed by all of WordPress’s features.

Pages vs. posts is pretty obvious, but categories and tags… what’s the difference? What do you use them each for?

When I first tried to organize my blog, I was using about seven or eight categories (which is a problem in and of itself) to organize the general topic of each post.

Tags, on the other hand… I was just typing in random keywords into the Tags field. That’s how it’s supposed to work, right?

Well… not exactly.

How to Discover Your Ideal Reader (and a FREE worksheet!)

August 10, 2016

You want your blog to be successful, right? (Doesn’t everyone?) Whatever your definition of “success” looks like, you’re going to need to figure out who your ideal reader is. After all, your blogs success hinges on your audience.

So, how do you figure out who your ideal reader is? Well, the good news is it’s up to you what that person looks like! We need to be as specific as possible, though, so we make sure we’re getting the best of the best for your blog!

Let’s get started, shall we?

9 Ways InDesign Will Make Your Life WAY Easier

July 20, 2016

We’re all on the hunt for ways to make our lives easier, right? We’ve got things we need to do and things we want to do, and they don’t often intersect.

Well, good news. If you’re a blogger spending way too much time trying to grow your email list or increase your page views, InDesign can help. Here are 9 ways it will make your life WAY easier.

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