Happy New Year & Blog plans for 2019

Happy new year! May the new year bring you all you wish for! Today’s blog post is all about looking back on my blog in 2018 and a look ahead to my plans for my blog in the new year. I used to do a full year overview looking back on the year that was, but that got more and more difficult to do every year and so I decided to limit the look back to my blog only. Here we go!

The blog in 2018

2018 was a great year again for the blog. It saw only a small rise in visitors but I really think I found out where I want this space to go in the future. I had a bit of lull over the summer. That is always the time when my visitor numbers go down, because it’s summer and everyone is traveling, swimming or doing other outdoorsy things and not indoors reading blog posts. So it always discourages me a little bit, but then come fall time the numbers start picking back up and my numbers started to rise again so that is good.

In terms of PR or working with brands that is not something I did in 2018 at all. I tried it a little in 2017, but I have found it to be very difficult to keep up with press releases and contacting press agencies and brands to really develop a relationship that gets things done. I simply don’t have the time. All my effort goes into creating content, not into promotion, visiting events and establishing contacts. It is something that I didn’t make a priority and I actually don’t really mind it.

2018 also saw me focus more on my Youtube channel. That is where I have grown most. I now have nearly 1200 subscribers on the platform and I have found that there is certain content that I feel works well in video form, while other content works better for me in blog form. Reviews are what I love doing most on the blog, but I have found that fashion content works better in video.

There is definitely a split between the two though. People who read the blog do not always watch my Youtube videos and vice versa. There is very little transfer which is why I am trying to not overload everyone with videos and still have a good balance between blog content and Youtube content on here. If you have any suggestions what you would like to see, then please let me know in a comment down below.

Some numbers

Because I am sure people are curious, I thought I would draw up a list of some numbers behind the blog in 2018.

• On average I reached 13500 unique visitors each month in 2018
• My posts got nearly 10,000 likes
• In total over 2,000 comments were left on blog posts
• The best month of 2018 was January
• The worst month of 2018 was September

Top 5 blog posts of 2018

1. Essence Glow to Go highlighter palette (review click here)
2. I Heart Revolution mini eyeshadow palettes (review click here)
3. Catrice HD Liquid Radiance foundation (review click here)
4. Catrice Galactic Liquid highlighter (review click here)
5. Essence Insta Perfect foundation (review click here)

Top 5 most popular blog posts of 2018

1. Catrice Light Correcting Serum primer (review click here)
2. Syoss Keratine Repair shampoo & conditioner (review click here)
3. Catrice 24 H Made To Stay foundation (review click here)
4. MAC lipsticks: Relentlessly Red, Captive, Rebel & Darkside (review click here)
5. Catrice Ultimate Matt lipsticks (review click here)

As you can see a lot of Catrice and Essence content does very well on my blog. They have been at the top of my ‘best of’ lists for years and also on Youtube, my Essence and Catrice videos attract most visitors. Lucky for me that I enjoy trying their new releases and I have quite a few standard favorites that I reach for all the time as well. So that is content you can still expect coming your way again in 2019.

The blog in 2019

So let’s talk the new year. Because there are a few changes coming up in the next few weeks. You may have already seen that I have done a little bit of rebranding with a new font, a new header and a new end card. I wanted to streamline everything more and make it look more cohesive. Let me know what you think of it!

But that is just the outer packaging that has changed. Some of the content will be changing too. Here are the main changes:

• I will stop doing weekly fashion posts. As I mentioned, I find it works better in a video format and so I will be focusing my fashion content on my Youtube channel from now on. I will still be making fashion content, but it will be less frequent and it will always be in video form (and of course I will post it on here). I may still do the odd ‘What I Wore’ outfit posts, because I love documenting my outfits, but I hope to be able to turn those into videos too. I also hope to get more inspired again doing fashion content, because I haven’t really been digging the fashion out there at the moment. In fact I can count the clothing I bought in the past 4 months on one hand and there is currently nothing on my wishlist. So I am very interested in projects where I make the items I already own work for me in a new way. My girl Cassy over at Baubles and Knots has inspired me with her wardrobe challenges and in 2019, I definitely want to do some of those.
• I want to start doing 3 videos a week. I am not sure yet how feasible that will be, but I want to try. If it ends up costing me too much time, I will simply switch back to 2 videos a week. I am unsure whether I will be able to get content up consistently enough, but I already filmed some videos during my Christmas break that will allow me to post at least 1 video every week for the next 10 weeks to come, so I think it may work out. Depending on whether this works out for me or not, I will be doing some content in a video rather than a blog post starting very soon. Think Shop my Stash and my Book Review blog posts. I think those could make some easy to do videos and might work better in video form than in a blog format.

So what does that mean for the schedule in 2019? Starting next week, the schedule will be as follows:

• Monday: beauty review
• Tuesday: video
• Wednesday: beauty review
• Thursday: video
• Friday: miscellaneous (i.e. non-beauty such as: books, lifestyle, fashion, music or beauty content if I feel like it)
• Saturday: beauty review
• Sunday: video

If the third video a week doesn’t work out the way I want it, I will make Tuesdays the miscellaneous day again and make the Friday a day where I post about more beauty, because that will make a lot more sense.

I definitely also want to do some new series, mostly on my Youtube channel. Like I said, shop my stash and book reviews I want to move to my Youtube channel, but I am also itching to do a Throwback Tutorial on some of my favorite eyeshadow palettes. However I will say more about that in a video coming up next Sunday. I will be doing a full face of Essence products and talk about the plans for my Youtube channel in that video in more detail.

What are your plans for 2019?