WOW. Again, I always say this but 2019 went bloody fast. As far as a quick life update goes, no I didn’t fully do blogmas properly because I got into the Christmas spirit too early and lost all motivation. I had a such a lovely and long Christmas period off work but as much as that was good, I’m slightly panicking that I took too much time off work and now I’m falling behind on work. But you know what, I’ve worked hard and I deserved the break. It’s time to look back and reflect on 2019 and what it meant for my blog and set some goals for 2020.
The start of the year wasn’t so good for me, I’ll have to admit. January is always an odd month and that mentally, is difficult for me to build myself up on. I have so much that I want to do that I end up getting completely disorganized and lose the motivation to do it all. Then I got the opportunity of a job offer that I first felt was a good move for me but it quickly turned into a situation where I was told I couldn’t blog to do it. I didn’t tell anyone this but after initially taking time to consider it, I felt a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach and I wish I’d acted on it sooner. Regardless, the job fell through and then I was just itching to leave my job by this point to persue blogging. This year, I’m going to be working on that self-disipline more than ever before because I’m now FULLY SELF-EMPLOYED. But before we go into that, let’s touch back on last year’s goals and see if I completed them.
Earn £20,000 with UpYourVlog
It was a big goal to set myself but I actually smashed my target, which is incredible. To think that my blog and freelance writing could earn that much is mind-blowing.
Define My Blog’s Purpose
This is something that I have done in a way but it resulted in a second blog. I know that UpYourVlog has definitely become less personal about my life and more of a lifestyle blog for the masses. And I’m ok with that.
Improve My Photography
I’m still planning on getting a DSLR camera and the reason why I haven’t is because things changed with me leaving my job and having to spend money on more than what I anticipated. In the last year I got an iMac, a Macbook Air, new lighting equipment and a set-up to film videos.
Figure Out Affiliate Marketing
Still not spent time to figure it out. Might do it this year if I have any time whatsoever.
Know My Worth
One of the things with blogging is that because it’s all so new, it’s difficult to define how much you charge as an influencer. I still don’t consider myself big or even ranking high up but since meeting other bloggers and realising just how much work goes into my content, I’m charging more. It’s a learning process but I feel it’s one I’m getting better at.
Focus On Social Media
Social media is something I really have trouble with sometimes. I’m the type of person that enjoys living in the moment recently, rather than taking photos on my phone or camera, I think that comes from doing blogging and putting everything in front of a camera during my working day. However, my social media channels need to grow so I’m going to try and focus a lot more on them over the next year.
Start Back Up On YouTube
YouTube again is one of those things that I just need more time for. Starting from today, I’ve made myself a better schedule that I can hopefully stick to. I think I’d like to get my YouTube channel for UpYourVlog going with one video per week and trying to do UpYourDailies and upload whenever I can. It’s a platform that I really want to get on top of and make it something that brings in a passive income.
2019’s goals has been a mixture compared to 2018. I feel like I’ve made huge progress but in different areas of my work life when it comes to blogging and freelance writing. Talking of freelance writing, it was the thing that allowed me to go full-time with my blog in the first place. I’ve been self-employed now since October 2019 and I’m loving it. It is and was a little hard to adapt to a routine but it’s something I’m definitely working on more over the next several months. I have even bigger ambitions this year for UpYourVlog and beyond, so here are those goals.
Grow Tilly & Rouge
If you haven’t already seen it, go check out Tilly & Rouge. It’s my second blog that launched at the start of December 2019 and I already super proud of it. There’s a lot more work that needs going into it but I’m hoping to use what I learnt through UpYourVlog to make this site more successful in less time. Tilly & Rouge is a luxury lifestyle blog with it focusing mainly on beauty, fashion and home decor. It’s one that’s going to be more about me and less commercialised than this blog. This one will always be where it started, but I’ve got a lot more that I want to achieve over the next couple of years.
Get To 10K On Instagram
This in reality now seems like an impossible challenge but I’ve done more in the past couple of years than I thought possible. When you get to this level of followers on Instagram, I feel a lot changes for you as an influencer. I’m ready to start putting in the grind on the ‘gram to get to where it needs to be. Living my life on social media is not something that’s healthy to do all the time but it’s now part of my business that I need to grow.
Hire Someone To Do My Promotion
So I had a social media scheduler last year but that person ended up not being able to do it anymore. As I know have a limited amount of time, doing promotion on my social media channels is difficult. I’m talking about scheduling posts on Twitter and Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. I’m going to start looking at my budget from a business point of view and how I can use some of this to get myself a freelance social media promoter.
Diversify My Income
Instead of telling you my financial goals on here, I thought I’d be a bit more specific on what I want to achieve financially. This year and 2021 is likely to be the most costly of our lives. We have the wedding to save for, I have Sam’s 30th that I need to save for too. We’re heading back to the gym and getting ourselves a personal trainer – which will cost money. And finally, I’d like to start learning to drive. So all in all, it’s a pricey time. I’d like to diversify my income and to track it better through my current set up. That means seperating UpYourVlog’s income, Tilly & Rouge’s and then my freelance writing. I’m setting monthly goals and hopefully from there, I can build it up.
Goal-setting is something I love doing, so let me know in the comments if you have any goals for 2020, whether it’s work or your personal life. Let’s smash 2020 people!
