Movie Blog Progress Report 2023 Q2

The second quarter of 2023 taught me so much and I’m excited to implement those lessons in quarter 3. I don’t have too much to say, I just want to get into starting off quarter 3 already.

But alas, I must slow down and reflect on the past quarter to best strategize for the quarter ahead so let’s do it!

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Movie Blog Progress Report 2023 Q2

My goals for 2023 Q2 were the following:

1. A profit of at least $1,000 (I got 29% of the way there)
2. At least 10,000 page views a month (got to 3,400 page views per month)
3. At least 3 sales from Amazon Affiliates so I don’t get kicked out of the program 😬 (I got kicked out of the program)
4. At least 1 sale of the Movie Review Journal (the only sale I made was when I bought a copy of the book for myself)
5. At least 100 ACTIVE email subscribers (YAY! I accomplished this one!! 118 current active email subscribers!)

So, yeah… a lot of shortcomings, the most disappointing one being that I got kicked out of the Amazon Affiliates program. But in a way, it’s a blessing. Now I can really focus on the programs that are yielding an outcome for me rather than wasting so much time and energy on programs that are not.

Also, I’m still a part of the Amazon Influencers program so not all hope is lost.

I knew my goals for profit were a bit ambitious given that I didn’t even crack $100 last quarter but I decided to shoot for the stars anyways and ended up okay really.

I really wanted a huge boost in pageviews and I began posting multiple movie reviews a week (at least 2 for a while but I think that because I was still under 100 posts for Google, they’re just now beginning to take my site more seriously (I have 108 published posts right now).

I didn’t plan on additionally publishing the Movie Review Journal to Amazon as well but it was a buzzer-beater decision to try to get more people interested in the journal. I haven’t really gone hard in marketing yet but I definitely want to pursue that more in the third quarter.

And with the emails I DIT IT! All of the email opt-ins that I created in the first quarter are working for me and the weekly email templates that I get from Liz’s Email Membership program make crafting weekly emails so much less intimidating. I more than doubled my email subscribers and they’re steadily growing still so I’ll take that win.

Movie Blog Income Report

Income for Q1 (March 25 – July 1st):

Affiliates:

Apr: $24.64 –> Legal Templates

May: $40.16 –> Legal Templates

June: $119.60 –> Perfecting Blogging + Pinterest

July: $67.60 –> Perfecting Blogging

Total Affiliates: $252.00

Ads:

Google Ads: March – June = $7.09

Ezoic Ads: Apr 20 – Jul 1 = $26.96

Total Income for Q2: $286.05

Expenses:

Movie Tickets: $215.66

Rank Math AI Credits: $19.00

Amazon Ring Light: $26.07

Amazon Movie Journal: $10.59

Total Expenses: -$271.32

Net Income for Q2: $13.73

I’m astonished that I have a positive net income, even if it’s barely enough to buy me an evening movie ticket.

Considering the fact that I spent more than 3 times the amount on movie tickets this quarter that I did in the last, I’m surprised that I actually made more money in the long run.

However, I did have a lot of big purchases at the beginning of the year so now it’s just time for those investments to pay off.

Concerning the greater amount of spending on movie tickets, I got Regal Unlimited but it only covers my movie tickets. My siblings often want to come along with me or I invite them and when they come with me I cover the costs so only about $90 of those dollars cover my tickets. The rest of the movie ticket expenses are for covering my siblings’ tickets (and I have 3 of them).

What I can say though is that I make enough on this movie blog to pay for my movie tickets and my sibling’s movie tickets so for now, that’s a pretty cool deal.

I also was approved to join Ezoic Ads! They no longer require at least 1,000 page views for acceptance.

It’s a bit of a learning curve to adapt the website with their Ad software but I can already see how much more profitable their system is so I’m excited about it.

Page Views

I currently don’t have quite as many page views as I had at the beginning of the year but if you look very very closely with a high-powered microscope, you can see that page views are beginning to slightly recover from the dip that started in February.

Maybe it dipped because I reduced my posts to 70 published posts instead of the 120 that it was at the beginning of the year. Now that I’ve replenished my published posts back to 100, pageviews are back on the rise. Content truly is king when it comes to page views.

Email Subscribers

This is the only goal I fully met in Quarter 2. I wanted to get 100 email subscribers and I just hit the threshold by the end of the second quarter.

I started out with 43 active subscribers and now I have 118 email subscribers. Liz’s email membership has truly been a Godsend for me.

Staying on top of weekly emails has been a breeze and a fun journey. Although I don’t get very many responses from subscribers, I’ll continue to try to be a somewhat reliable presence in people’s inboxes until they find I can help them with something.

Social Stats

Pinterest: 21 followers (up by 1)

Twitter: 10 followers (down by 1)

Instagram: 261 followers (0 change)

Youtube: 101 subscribers (up by 32)

Facebook: 6 followers (up by 1)

TikTok: 49 followers (up by 47)

So – I’ve decided that I flippin’ hate Pinterest. It takes way too much effort to yield such low output. Will only be reposting Tik Tok videos on Pinterest from now on. Not wasting all this time and energy on something so tedious and unyielding.

TikTok has been surprisingly good to me and so has YouTube. I did focus a lot more on creating video content since it seems to be the future and it’s been doing ok.

Although I give Instagram the same if not more love than YouTube, it is not very rewarding which is frustrating.

I don’t really utilize Facebook or Twitter much for anything other than reposting new blog posts so my lack of effort shows in the lack of growth.

Honestly speaking, social media is on the back burner of my worries right now. Focusing on pumping out consistent quality articles for Google so I can get Ad Revenue and Affiliate Revenue up is the main goal right now.

The other main goal is to advertise this Movie Review Journal as well.

A new, more focused strategy going forward will cut Pinterest out of the picture and maximize the social media platforms that have been growing for me, working for me, and having a more responsive community (Tik Tok and YouTube).

Top pages for Q2

The pages that got the most views over the past 10 months were the following:

1. 8 Genius Ways To Keep Track of Movies Watched (2022/09/03)
2. Movie Review Generators (2021/12/14)
3. Generic Movie Review (2021/12/14)
4. 7 Honest Reasons Why The Batman Was Bad & Unnecessary (2022/05/31)
5. How To Write A Movie Review Blog Post in 9 Easy Steps (2022/08/17)
6. Avatar 2 Is Disappointing: 5 Big Reasons Why It Fell Short (2022/12/18)
7. Is Where the Crawdads Sing Racist? | The Shocking Truth (2022/11/15)
8. Don’t Worry Darling Harry Styles Accent Explained (it makes sense) (2022/09/24)
9. How To Rate a Movie | 7 Popular Movie Rating Scales (2023/03/24)
10. AI Movie Review (2023/01/14)

“8 Genius Ways” remains the biggest conduit of traffic to this site. Gotta keep that post clean and up to date. Especially with the new movie review journal because I haven’t yet updated that post to include the Amazon link for the movie review journal.

I’m so glad that the AI Movie Review Generator is doing well and has already made it on the Top 10 list given that I spent nearly $1,000 to create it.

The 2nd and 3rd most viewed posts are also movie review generators showing that it is a valued commodity on this site and I should improve them and make more.

“The Batman is Bad” review continues to thrive moving from 7th place in the 1st quarter up to 4th place in the 2nd quarter, switching places with “Where the Crawdads Sing.”

Evergreen posts like “How to Write a Movie Review Blog” and “How to Rate a Movie” are doing really well too.

No new reviews that I published in the 1st quarter seem to be thriving. Just old reviews from 2022. Maybe I need to re-evaluate my SEO for my newer reviews.

The majority of my top 10 for this quarter are reviews that I created at the end of 2022. The only post from 2023 that’s doing well is “How to Rate Your Movie” and that’s an evergreen post, not a movie review.

I’m going to have to monitor SEO for movie reviews more to see what may be holding them back… or maybe they just take a little longer to rank… I’m not sure. We’ll need to see what the rest of the year looks like.

Goals for Quarter 3

Goal #1: Get that schmoney!

My savings account is running dry so my #1 priority is to maximize my payment now and get my revenue up.

There is more that I can do besides cross my fingers that my SEO strategies work and my affiliate links are used before waiting months to get a payout from that. I can get some money now.

I’ve spent 3 years honing my movie review writing skills, I’m going to branch out to other movie review sites for guest posts and most importantly paid posts.

This is to help get me some freelance opportunities and also to increase my experience on what is expected from an online publication when it comes to movie reviews.

Goal #2: Get Sales for the Movie Review Journal

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on the movie review journal. I’ve made it incredibly easy to access. Now, all I have to do is really lean in to get people inspired to make the purchase.

This is another stream of income that I’ve not spent time pampering and I want to see if a little TLC will really get the wheels turning and the money pouring in.

Goal #3: Post 3 Times a Week

If I post 3 posts consistently for the next 11 weeks, I would have 141 posts by the end of quarter 3 which I think would be the most posts I’ve had on this site yet. Or at least close to it because I think I may have had 144 at one point… Not sure.

But I think it’ll really help to establish with Google that I write movie reviews, that I’m consistent with it, and will set me up for a really prosperous fourth quarter hopefully.

Goal #4: Update Posts that are doing well

Want to make sure that the posts that are thriving are in the best position to continue to thrive.

Tangible Results I would like to see by the end of the 3rd Quarter:

1. A profit of at least $1,000
2. At least 10,000 page views a month 
3. At least 3 sales of the Movie Review Journal
4. At least 250 ACTIVE email subscribers

Despite the many failures, I’m still quite expectant for what the future holds. Each shortcoming is a lesson and I’m ready to try again but from a slightly different angle.

Hoping to find a business model that consistently works for this blog soon so stay tuned…

I think that’s all for me right now. See you next quarter!

Peace, love, and lots of popcorn,

IMO