August 2016 Income Report: Using Your a Paper Planner With Your Blog

Alright friends, this month wasn’t all that much better than the previous month.

I am down to just about 100,00 unique visitors/month, which is well below half of where I had been.

I do think something is wonky with my Pinterest and I have emailed them.  Things perked up a bit since then.

I really have high hopes for the fall.

In an effort to not sink into a personal dark place I won’t enumerate how bad things have gotten, but instead just focus on the fact that I still made over $4,000.

Much of it sponsored posts, but my own products keep gaining traction.

Until, I changed hosts and they did something with caching, but that’s fixed now.  Running my seet labor day sale as I type this (check the pricing on the income spreadsheet, it’s a pretty sweet deal).

Anyway, the summer is over and BOOM.  I am ready to take the 4th quarter on.

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I do plan to post 3 times/week in September, giving me lots of good content to push through the holidays.

Let’s all hope for an increase. 🙂

But, I did have a topic I wanted to dive into a bit more today:

I had a lot of interest about my paper planner and how I use to it be a better blog.

I mainly use my monthly view to do my editorial calendar.  I also plug in the days that I’m working.  Since I do 12 hour shifts, basically nothing gets done on those days.  I also plug in any trips.  That’s the cute little car on this one.

You can also see how I use my paper planner in my regular life here, and don’t miss my post on how to print your own stickers or my favorite pens for planners.

I use a different color for each category.  Pink is pregnancy, yellow is MomHacker, etc.  That way I don’t have 12 pregnancy posts all next to each other and none the rest of the month.

One of the MOST helpful pieces in my planner (and probably the most used page) is my “new post” page — where I write down what to do when I publish a new post.  It has all the boards I can pin it to (and I use board booster to slowly dole it out to my favorite boards) on Pinterest.  It also reminds me to get it in my social media scheduler and send out the newsletter.

Yes, it’s all a habit at this point, but I still sometimes lose my brain.

I do have some “big planning” pages — but frankly, they never get used.  I have a google sheet where I plug most of my new ideas.  I need to kind of edit that area to make it more useable.

And because I am a total giver, I have it available for download — just let me send it to your inbox!

A word about this checklist:

• It is sized for the Happy Planner, but comes as a word document, so you can edit it for your own use.
• The board lists on the bottom are the secret boards I have for Board Booster.  They have awesome names.  Obviously, you’ll want to put your own in. 🙂
• This has my board and things I use (I use Post Planner for my social media scheduling) and weird things I do — like the “day pin” — it would probably take 12 years to explain my process, but I bet you have things you do with each post you could put in there.  Obviously, feel free to make it your own, but please don’t sell it as your own.
• The bottom part is a table with transparent lines.  That way it’s really easily changed!
• The check boxes are just copied and pasted, those aren’t bullets.

A word about my favorite planners:

Happy Planner is one you can get on Amazon and likely also at your local craft store.  There are 2 different ring sizes, and I bought the larger ones, but later decided to only use the smaller ones and only keep 12 months in the planner.  They have adorable accessories!

Erin Condren is probably the most popular planner system.  They have tabs that allow you to add things to their spiral notebook.  I really like their spirals.  They allow for page turns so nicely.  I think this might be my next one (as I am not the biggest fan of the Happy Planner rings.  Erin has very similar weekly and monthly sections.  I just think it’s more durable than the Happy Planner.  My happy planner page could easily be adjusted to fit in the Erin Condren as they are similarly sized.  You can use combs to add pages inside. 🙂

Another common one is the Mormon Mom Planner.  Think Erin Condren with a more Mom Emphasis.  They make 2 varieties — the Mormon one and the non-Mormon one.  They look really cool and I know they are my friend Lara’s planner of choice.  They seem to have more pages for planning, which I would really like.  Things like budgeting, goals, etc.  Very cool

All of these could easily be adjusted for blogging (as well as the rest of your life).

I hope you find it helpful!  If you found this post helpful — be sure to sign up for my blogging income email list, and check out all of my other blogging posts below!

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