One Year Blogging: The Highs, Lows, and What's Next

It seems like I’ve been waiting for this day for forever. And finally it’s here! Exactly one year ago I launched Finding Uphoria! And today we celebrate!

Can I just start off by saying that it’s hard to believe that I started this blog only one year ago given how much it’s grown. It’s gone through some major changes since the first day I launched. The theme, the writing style, the set up, the photos. Everything.

But reaching this point after going through all of that proves to me it was all worth it. Plus being able to celebrate this one year with you guys makes it even more special!

When I first started this blog I had a basic understanding of how everything worked due to the launch and fail of my previous blog Uphoria Fit.

But other than actually starting the blog I had no clue what I was doing. I purchased a blogging course that, to be honest, didn’t really help me. And I purchased a Pinterest course that helped me A LOT. I listened to more podcasts than I can count about blogging, and studied other bloggers for inspiration and techniques. Eventually I was able to find my style and carve this little space on the internet.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next year of blogging on Finding Uphoria. But in the meantime it feels good to reflect on the ups and downs that got me to where I am today. Today is a day for celebrating wins, seeing what could’ve been better, and making new goals for the next year.

If you’re interested in starting your own blog I highly recommend doing so. It’s a great creative release and can bring in some extra coin too. Best part is, I’ve already talked about my best blogging tips and how to get started so you can share your passion with the world.

One Year Blogging: The Highs, Lows, and What’s Next

One thing’s for sure, blogging is much harder than you would think it is. Creating content that people are interested in and care about takes effort. And being able to show your personality in writing is even harder. But if you can manage to do both it’s only a matter of time until your tribe finds you.

The whole purpose of me starting this blog was to help women who struggle to gain weight like me, find all the information they would want/need in one place. I remember spending hours doing research on weight gain and hardly finding anything about it for someone that actually WANTS to gain weight. And I told myself that if I ever figured it out, I would share my journey and information about it with the world. Because I couldn’t be the only one that wanted it. And I was right.

Slowly but surely this blog blossomed and now I’m helping thousands of women like myself look and feel amazing. So it doesn’t surprise me that all of my top posts are about weight gain.

Other Accomplishments This Year

One of my main goals for my first year of blogging was to build up an audience and traffic to the site. Basically I didn’t want to be talking to myself. My goal was to get at least 15, 000 page views a month from my blog. Well it happened a lot faster than I thought and currently I’m getting over 32,000 page views a month. So I’m super grateful for that.
Another one of my goals was to grow my Instagram account to help with getting brand attention. I’ve had a few small brands approach me, but they either didn’t align with my blog topics or they didn’t seem like something I would want to promote. Quality issues and what not. What I’ve realized is that a lot of well known brands require a certain number of social following before they actually work with you. Having my blog has definitely helped my instagram grow and I have a bigger following than I’ve ever had before which is nice. I still have a lot of work to do but it’s good to see that my hard work is paying off.
This year I got my first payout from google adsense! Talk about a long time coming, it took me 9 months to reach that $100 threshold but I was super proud that it finally happened. And I was able to do it again in 2 months time so those first nine months were worth the wait haha!
I launched my first 2 workout programs, the most popular of the two being the full body gym program for beginners. I definitely want to come out with some more gym programs in the future because you guys seem to really love the first one.

Blogging Struggles

Motivation

When I tell you blogging motivation is fleeting, believe me. If you don’t have a lot of free time or at least stick to a good schedule, time will pass you by and you’ll forget that you haven’t posted on your blog or social media in a couple of weeks.

I’m not the type of person that loves to live their life online. I prefer to be in the present moment, but with that comes me forgetting to take pictures at fun events or even just forgetting to stay active in some way on social media. But hopefully I’ll have a more consistent work schedule soon so it’ll be much easier to upload a blog post once a week.

To be honest, sometimes I lacked workout motivation too. That too goes along with poor scheduling. But what I’ve learned is that the key to working out when you have no motivation is to just do it. Forget motivation and use your discipline to push you through. If only my creative process worked the same way.

Profit

Even though I’ve been blogging for over year I’m just starting to see any profit. You’d think with the numbers I have I’d be full time, but affiliate marketing has not been my forte and my numbers aren’t high enough for a lot of the brands I want to work with yet.

The thing is, blogging requires you to really put yourself out there because a lot of these brands have no clue who you are and what you’re about. You have to convince them that you’re a great fit for their company and a collaboration will be beneficial to them. If you can’t manage to do that you’ll either get no response when you pitch to them or you’ll get a no. You’ll here a thousand echos and no’s before you hear yes.

It’s all good though. These things take time and I know one day, when I’ve worked with some of my favorite brands, I’m going to look back at this one year mark fondly.

Instead of brands or affiliate marketing, a lot of the money I’ve made from the blog has come from ads and selling my workout plans or online coaching. With that being said, most of the money has gone right back into the blog and that’s just how it works. I know I’m still in the building stage and everyone’s blogging journey is different so I’m not too worried about it.

What’s Next

So what’s my new goals for Finding Uphoria?

Honestly, I just want to continue to see more growth not only in traffic but in connection with you guys. I want to build a little family through this blog and extend it to places like Instagram and YouTube.

So I plan on making more youtube videos and sharing more thoughts and experiences with weight gain along with workouts and other aspects of my life.

I also have a couple of new goals too. One of them being to join Mediavine, which is another ad company, and hopefully increase my income. They have a minimum requirement of 25k session a month and something tells me I’ll be hitting this goal pretty soon.

The other goal is to reach 50,000 page views a month. It’s a bit of a reach but based on how things are going I think I can do it. Plus it gives me something to work for.

Lastly, one of these days I want to be able to do a giveaway as a way to say thank you for supporting me all this time. Whether you were here from the beginning or are just finding me I appreciate every single one of you. Thanks! And cheers to another successful year!

One Year Blogging: The Highs, Lows, and What’s Next

One Year Blogging: The Highs, Lows, and What’s Next