Although I have had a pretty bad run of things over the past couple of years, I am still determined to make this one the best yet. Despite having a few setbacks over the last month and a half, I'm actually still on track to do just that.
I only hope your year has been going better than mine.
At any rate, I have some things going on that I am quite excited about in the near future. And if I'm lucky, they'll play into getting the warehouse of my dreams to set up all of my brands. But let's just keep ourselves productive for the time being. It's good to dream, but the legwork still needs to be done.
Getting Things Organized
I've had to make quite a few changes to how my day unfolds. I thought I had a great schedule planned out but the life of a work-at-home freelancer is anything but stable. :)
Still, I'm keeping track of everything before it gets out of hand, which is a good thing.
One of my favorite tools to do this is the free version of Asana. I know I talk about Asana a lot, but that's only because of how well it works in my specific situation. If you need a good project management app, it's definitely worth a few moments of your time to check out.
Anyway, I've been doing a few things in the background for both the blog and YouTube channel that I hope will pan out. But it's hard to tell given the chaotic nature of everything I try to do in a week.
Vocal Experiment is Moving Along
I've been keeping up with my challenge of writing every day on Vocal Media. In fact, I need to write today's post as soon as I'm done with this one. And so far, I haven't written a post this month that has really gained any traction for reads. Seriously, seven out of the last 10 have 0 views.
The stats for Vocal are two days behind, so who knows.
It's kind of disappointing, really. Still, I'll keep up with the posts in the hopes I write something people want to read. That's the case in just about anything, though.
After all, if you cover topics no one cares about on your blog, you can't expect an influx of traffic. Perhaps I should focus more on a specific niche. I just wish Vocal had better analytical tools to help determine which articles are better on the platform.
I suppose I can set up yet another spreadsheet to record some of my own data points, which I'll probably do anyway for the Update video I have planned for March.
Trying to Keep Up the Videos
One of my goals for February was to keep up with my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule for uploading videos to YouTube. And so far, I've been able to do so. But like the Vocal articles, the newer videos just don't perform very well. I'm still trying to figure out why YouTube is sinking the impressions on my content.
The click-through rates are actually fairly good, ranging between 5% and 25%. So, I know people are clicking on them to watch...when they're actually being shown to viewers.
I still have to figure out why I no longer get credit for views off of my website when I embed the videos. I know it's one of the plugins I have running, but not sure which one. I'm planning on running an extensive experiment on WriterSanctuary.com to find the culprit, though. I would love to get credit for the views and watch time, especially from the Buy Me a Coffee videos, which don't do all that bad on YouTube.
Once I figure out which plugin is causing the issues, I'll be sure to write a blog post and possibly upload a video. If I can save someone as much time as I've invested in this, all the better.
We're talking weeks, here, scouring Google for this specific problem.
End of March Writing Goal for Kingmaker
I have set a deadline for myself to be done writing my next book, "Kingmaker" by the end of March. I'm a good chunk of the way through the book, I just need to get back to it. With everything that has been going on lately, it's just been difficult to squirrel away some time.
Nonetheless, I have a goal to self-publish three books this year, and I plan on doing so.
Out of all of the things I have written, this is perhaps one of my personal favorites. It's been a lot of fun writing the book and I hope others enjoy Kingmaker as much as I have.
However, I did reduce my word goal for the book. After researching the best word count for specific genres, I thought perhaps my sights were too high. So, I reduced it to 90,000 words. Does this mean I'm absolutely sticking with this goal? It depends on if the story is told or not. I'm not going to force myself to an exact figure, but I'll use the 90,000 as a guide.
So, once I'm done with the first draft, I'll probably start looking for beta readers. Mostly because I want to make sure the book isn't too confusing. I'm doing something new in that I'm writing it in both the first and third person.
It sounds confusing, but I think the way I am managing it makes sense. But, I suppose we'll find out once I have the entire thing completed.
How is Your Year Going?
Aside from some severe personal issues as of late, I still believe 2022 is going to be an amazing year. So far, I am on track to break a lot of personal records and have a lot of fun things planned for the coming months. I'm not going to let life beat me down. If I don't get back on my feet and continue, I'll never reach the goals I have set.
How far have you made it through your goals for 2022?