End of Year 2016 Check In and Looking Ahead to 2017

This post is a little later than I would have liked but I think the timing is appropriate. Today, January 18, is the 4th anniversary of Beyond Mommying. Four years ago, pregnant and disheartened, I started out on this big blogging adventure with a single post “Mommy Mantra.” I’ve since added over 1200 more posts and articles to my repertoire and shared my writing on more than a dozen other sites.

I’m happy to be able to say that while across days, weeks and even months, Beyond Mommying has seen many ups and downs, I’ve managed to grow substantially each and every year. My pageviews have more than doubled year over year and I had more than 50 times more visitors in 2016 than I had in my initial year of blogging (2013). In fact, my views and visitors so far this year have already superseded that entire first year!

First let’s take a quick peek at Quarter 4 of 2016:

My total pageviews decreased 14% (this was due to a really, really amazing July which inflated my 3rd quarter stats).
My total social following increased 3% with the biggest growth in Pinterest (which makes sense as Pinterest growth has been my main focus over the past few months).
My subscribers list grew 8%.
My income was less than half of what I earned 3rd quarter but my expenses were also lower.

And over the entire 2016 year:

My total pageviews were 2.32 times my 2015 pageviews and my unique visitors were 3.5 times higher.
My total social following over 2016 increased 45% with more than 50% growth on both Twitter and Pinterest and double-digit growth across all my social media networks.
My subscribers list is nearly 2.5 times larger than it was a year ago and my open rate on my first e-mail newsletter this year was 50% higher than for the same time last year with 4 times more clicks and 0 unsubscribers (a big win!)
2016 was the first year I made enough money to say I made money and the first time my total earnings on Beyond Mommying exceeded my lifetime expenses (including my initial setup costs in 2013 during which Beyond Mommying was not monetized and despite the huge amount I paid last January for three more years of web service.)

Goals for 2017:

I wasn’t planning on setting goals this year. Sometimes goal setting to me feels like a jail cell, something that I’m imprisoned by and can’t get away from. Unfortunately, though, my recent computer dropping incident resulted in my needing to step up my blogging game and with that, set some necessary goals.

Earn at least as much in 2017 as I did in 2016 (this is necessary simply to cover the costs of my new computer and data recovery–yikes!)
Continue seeing increased pageview and unique visitors growth. Each year I set a daily/monthly pageview goal to achieve and maintain. This year my goal is pretty lofty (2.5 times last years goal) but with 12 months to get it done, I’m (nervously) confident it will happen.
Continue spreading my voice and publishing pieces outside of Beyond Mommying. I’d like to place one article per month outside Beyond Mommying (paid preferred, obviously!)
Work with more brands, companies and organizations to expand my network and bring you more great information, content and products to try out.
Find my footing with social media again. I came into 2016 with guns blazing, ready to take on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, everything and I quickly fizzled when the effort didn’t match the reward. This year I’m planning to work smarter, not just harder, and find out what really works.

And who knows, maybe 2017 will bring some other great opportunities and advancements as well!

What blogging or life goals do you have for 2017?