How Much Do Blogs Grow In One Year? – My First Full Year Of Blogging

My first full year of blogging is complete and it’s hard to believe that I’m even typing that. This year felt like it flew by, seriously don’t you feel the same? I had an amazing year and have grown as a person but how much did my blog grow specifically?

Blogging is hard and don’t you dare let anyone tell you any different. Sure, it’s easy to post once a month but when you are trying to grow a blog into an income stream, then it can be a real challenge. You have to put in hours and hours every month. I estimate I put in roughly 60-80 and still feel like I’m getting left behind.

The truth is (and I’ve said this before), if you are wanting to start a blog just to make money, then you should go do something else. Do I eventually want to make some sort of side income from Young, Dumb, and NOT Broke?! Yes, absolutely. I’ve never hidden that.

But do I want to help people first and foremost? Yes.

If there is one thing I’m forever thankful for this past year, it has been my partner. She has shown nothing but support. When you are spending hours working on a project you believe in, you are taking time away from other areas in your life. Sometimes this includes a significant other.

Never once has she complained, she always is open to editing my work, and gives me support and feedback when I need it. Somedays I take this for granted but if you are going make any side hustle work, having a significant other like mine makes it much easier.

If I haven’t scared you away from starting a business online, then let’s talk about the growth I saw over the last year.

My Goals From 2019

I feel like it would be best to start this post off by talking about what I wanted to achieve in 2019. I’ll be honest, I had some lofty goals but I was aware of how hard they would be to reach when I made them. In addition, looking back, some of my goals were just bad. Not in terms of difficulty but I was setting goals on things I couldn’t control.

We’ll talk about that in a minute but for now, here are my goals from 2019:

I did a full write up on this a year ago which you can read if you want to know more about each goal in-depth but for now, let’s stick to some general thoughts. How do I feel I did?

Meh.

If I could sum it all up in one word it would be that. I’m extremely proud of the work I put in and the results I’m starting to see but I still thirst for more.

Where I Failed

Of the list above, the goal that I fell short the most on is pageviews. In the blogging world, pageviews is everything. Reaching 5,000 in one month just didn’t happen. In fact, I didn’t even come close with my highest month only hitting 1,800 pageviews. If you are going to make money from blogging, you need to have page views. This will allow people to see more ads, affiliate links, and any other products you may be selling.

I have a monthly pageview goal set for 2020 which I’ll release in an article next week (spoiler alert: it’s greater than 5,000).

The second place I failed was on my DA (domain authority) and PA (page authority). Earlier when I referenced that I had some goals that I shouldn’t have made, these are what I meant. DA and PA are scores that Google gives out based on all kinds of data. The higher your score, the more authority I have as a website. I have very little control over DA and PA so why even track them? Could I have reached out for more backlinks to my website or even paid for them? Sure, but I think there is little value there. For next year this is a goal I’m going to scrap.

The last place I fell short was releasing a new information product and I’m glad I did. Building another information product is a ton of work and that is work I’m currently doing. Yes, that’s right, in early 2020 I will be releasing an online course and I’m pumped. I’m glad I didn’t do this in 2019 though because I just wasn’t ready and neither was the brand of YD&NB.

(Another spoiler.. if you want to know when I release my course and get a hefty discount make sure you are a part of the YD&NB newsletter. You can join by taking our Money Personality Quiz)

Where I Succeeded

I did have some success in 2019 and proved to myself I could do things I never thought I could. The one I want to talk about specifically is putting out content. I put out a TON of content in 2019.

I’ll be honest. When I first started writing it was rough and I know it can still become a lot better. Practice does make perfect, or in my case, practice does make you slightly better and I practiced a lot.

To be specific, I practiced by writing 175,000 words and 107 articles.

My main goal from last year was to write 75 articles, with 10 of them being over 2000 words. I blew this out of the water and believe I built new habits that will allow me to keep this pace going into my second year of blogging.

What Growth Did I Have?

I hinted at it above but my first year of blogging led to a ton of growth. Did the website grow as I wanted it to? No, not necessarily. But my mental and emotional growth grew exponentially.

I’ve become a better thinker, communicator, and organizer.

To me, those are worth more than any amount of page views.

These are things that can be applied to any part of my life, not just to the blog. Putting time and effort into something you are passionate about is going to lead to good things. Unless it’s something illegal then it might lead to jail.

YD&NB’s Analytics

Enough of the emotional and mental growth. To me, that is more important than anything else but I also want to see the numbers. Numbers don’t lie and they show the real growth that is starting to take place with Young, Dumb, and NOT Broke?!

To start out, let’s look at an overview of the site. Here is a snapshot from my Google Analytics account:

As you can see, there is a nice upward angled growth curve showing. Does it blow up and grow exponentially as I hoped? No, and that’s perfectly fine. But going from under 200 users in January to 1,000 by the end of the year is a success to me.

When starting any business, whether that be a blog or whatever you’re interested in, you want to be the anomaly. You want to be the person that is an overnight success. Yes, I had this mentality but what’s wrong with being the tortoise in the race and building a great product over time? One that will last and have people that truly appreciate it and come back. That’s my new focus.

Another piece of information you can see from this is my page views for the year almost totaled 11,000. I told you I fell short of my 5,000/month goal and that’s okay.

Growth Is Happening

Even though I fell short in some areas, I’m going to keep my head down and continue to put in the work. Stick to things that work and ditch the stuff that doesn’t. Why? Because growth is happening.

The two charts that motivate me the most when it comes to YD&NB’s growth are monthly organic users and Google Search Console.

In January, I had 26 people visit my site from organic searches on Google. Last January, I was thrilled by that number. This past month brought me over 725 users. That’s a growth rate of 27x! Is that sustainable? I hope so but most likely not.

My Google Seach Console data also blew up. These two pieces of information are correlated so it should reflect a somewhat similar growth to monthly organic users. In this data set, I received 4 impressions per day on Google. Now? Over 4,000 per day. That’s a growth rate of 1000x!

Again, neither are probably sustainable over time but they give me hope and tell me that I’m doing something right in my first full year of blogging.

How Can You Help

If you want to help me keep growing (hopefully at these crazy rates) then keep doing exactly what you are doing. Keep reading, watching, and sharing YD&NB’s content. If you haven’t already make sure you’ve joined the newsletter. You can do so by clicking the image below.

Secondly, if you would like to subscribe to the Young, Dumb, and NOT Broke?!’s YouTube channel then click the button below. We are posting 2 videos per week, every week, for the whole year. A huge endeavor but we aren’t here to be ordinary.

Subscribe to the YD&NB YouTube channel

The Bottom Line

After my first full year of blogging, I can happily say I’m in a great place. Both online and offline, this hobby has made me a better person. The numbers aren’t where I thought they were going to be but if this was easy, everyone would do it.

Is there still a ton to learn and many things I want to do? Absolutely.

Am I proud of what I’ve done and what I continue to do? Of course.

If you are pondering the idea of writing online, I would suggest to stop thinking and jump in. Will your writing at first be pretty awful? Most likely but that’s the fun in it. Writing and publishing content online has opened up many doors for me and taught me lessons that I don’t believe I could have learned elsewhere.

With that, I want to thank every single one of you for making my first full year of blogging a success. Here’s to the new year and another year of growth.

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