One Year Anniversary of In Search of Mexican

What happens when the one year anniversary of your blog and your big move out of the city happen at the same time? The blog post gets delayed! We’re still surrounded by boxes and eating with plastic forks but our computers are set up and my office is slowly starting to take shape. So I thought it was time to sit down and finally do that one-year anniversary blog post.

Blogging and I have a long history of not working out. I started my first blog way back in 2009 but after a couple of months, it was abandoned. I’ve done this a few different times, diving into different subjects over the years. So when I decided to start up In Search of Mexican I wasn’t really sure how dedicated I would really be to it. Would it end up going like all the others? I decided to give myself a one year trial run to find out. I started out with a plan. I knew what kind of articles I wanted to write, what topics I’d cover….and then none of that really came to be.

Wheelchair in front of obelisk

For a lot of it though, I know exactly why. I was having the time of my life while I was in Malta, that was when I decided I wanted to do a travel blog. With all the stresses of everyday life a continent away it sounded like a great idea. When I got home things very quickly returned to normal. Which is to say they weren’t normal at all. I had a job that I had loved but was draining every bit of happiness out of me. I had days when I didn’t want to get out of bed because it meant I had to do the job I had grown to hate. At the end of the day, I didn’t want to do any of the things I loved, and that included blogging.

Then I got fired.

While I would eventually come to see it as a blessing and honestly the best thing for my mental health the fact that I was fired hit me hard. I don’t want to go into any details about why it happened, let’s just leave it at being unfairly dismissed and I had even considered legal action. Instead, I decided to move on. That brought me through months of depression and trying to find myself again. From time to time I’d do a blog post, but it wasn’t really very high on my list of importance. Especially when I needed to find ways to make up that lost income.

 

Looking Back

Looking back, it was a pretty terrible year for me personally but as far as the blog goes I consider it a complete success! My blog posts average out to be about 2 posts a month, far shorter than my original goal of 3 per week, but considering everything (including some laziness) I’d say that’s really good!

My most popular article has been Flying Ryanair With A Wheelchair, in which I talk about my experiences flying from Dublin Airport and flying with Ryanair after the controversy a few months ago.

And right behind it with only 5 fewer views is Things to do in Butte County, California. That is a look at the small county where I grew up in Northern California.

In all, I only had about 10,000 page views all year. But the stat that really makes me giggle is how much money I made. I put in Adsense from the very beginning and made €3.

Even though I am an Amazon affiliate I’ve not actually made any money off of that, with good reason. I’ve not really put any links to Amazon on my site! Around Christmas time I considered doing one of those roundups of gifts that you see everyone doing and my nerves got the best of me. I decided not to do one of those posts.

Speaking of nerves, even though I write reviews for a living and have done so for the last 6 years for some reason I’m really uncomfortable writing hotel and restaurant reviews. I really have no idea why either! You want a review of a video game and I’m your gal. But a hotel? I freeze up. I’ve got notes and photos for several hotels that I’d love to put together into a post.

Which brings us to my goals for year two.

 

Goals For Year 2

I’ve been considering my goals for year two all throughout my move and I think I know what I’d like to get out of blogging this next year.

 

  • Get a post with over 10,000 views
  • Write two blog posts per week
  • Write reviews for hotels and restaurants
  • Make videos!
  • Write an article with an Amazon Affiliate link at least once every month
  • Get my social media and blog in a place where I’m ready to reach out to the travel industry
  • Become a better photographer
  • Collaborate on blogs once a month
  • Have a collaboration on the blog once a month
  • Have fun!

 

I’m really excited to get started on my second year of being a travel blogger. If you aren’t already following me on social media I would love it if you would!

 

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