Exactly one year ago I’ve made the desicion to start my Dutch blog. It felt good to write in my native language and to build a completely new website. After a few months, I descided to run my website in two loanguages so my friends and family who don’t speak Dutch, can still read what I am publishing. Pretty much all my (recent) articles are available in both Dutch and English. Today I am celebrating the 1-year anniversary of my blog, by looking back at the first twelve months and eating a donut. (I once read that blogger Jennie eats a donut for every single blog anniversary and I thought it was a great idea.)
My very first blogpost was written on the 15th of November in 2012, right after I signed all the papers for my high school year. I was going to live in America for one year and wanted to keep my family and friends in the Netherlands up to date by keeping a blog. At this point, my travelblog has had over 22.000 views and I think it gives a good summary of my time in the United States. Once I got back to the Netherlands, I realized that I really enjoyed having my own blog so I started my WordPress website. For years I’ve had different blogs, that I was writing for, for a short period of time, to quit afterward. In 2016 I bought my own domain, missclumsy.com and I’ve been making English content for this website for a few years. Until June 2018, when I decided to start my Dutch blog.
Merellisanne.nl
My Dutch blog, Merellisanne.nl is a personal lifestyle blog and I try to publish new articles at least once a week. I’ve been living in Paris since january of this year, so I am writing a lot of Paris related content. Blogging thought me a lot of new things and it gave me some great experiences. I got to bike through Paris for a collaboration (which made me descide to apply for a job as a tourguide with a different company and now I have a great job), had the opportunity to write some sponsored content and it motivated me to do some fun things, just so I could write about it.
Statistics
During the past year, I published 112 Dutch articles and translated 33 of those posts to English. The most popular article is: Met mijn ouders naar een ‘sex hotel’, (With my parents to a ‘sex hotel’) that was read over 3800 times. Most people found this article through Google because it is the first one on the page when you Google: sex hotel Greece (in Dutch). The article about the special hotel in Athens is definitely the most popular since the number two is: How to save money in Paris (when you’re 26 or younger), this article only had 465 views.
The majority of my blogreaders visited my website from the Netherlands (7300+) and 1322 people visited my blog from France. In total my blog was visited from 68 different countries.
Collaborations and making money
Nowadays a lot of bloggers have collaborations with companies. This could be a barterdeal (receiving free products in exchange for an article), paid content or receiving presspackages (companies sent some products and hope you write about their article, but you don’t have to publish anything). Besides that you can also make money by affiliation links (you make some money once someone orders a product through your link), publishing adds on your website or by selling products. I’ve done a few collaborations this year. A total of five barter deals, one sponsored blogpost and I got invited for an activity. I only collaborate with companies that I feel a connection with and receive products that I like anyways.
The future of my blog
Right now I am still really enjoying blogging for Merellisanne.nl. I actually feel like I haven’t posted as much as I wanted to. Right now I have a long summerbreak, so I am spending a lot of time working on my blog. My goal is to upload new articles every single day. Besides that I want to learn a lot about SEO, photography and I think that my articles could always improve. I am really looking forward to keep blogging.
Goals
After looking back at the past year, it’s time to look forward to the upcoming year. During my first year, my blog reached over 10.000 pageviews and my goal for year number 2 is to reach 50.000. Besides that I hope to do some awesome collaborations and meet some other bloggers. My goals is to upload every single day (so 365 posts) and I hope to improve the quality. I would like to learn how to get more blog visitors and find out what people want to read.
I am very currious to hear what you think of my blog and if there are certain topics that you want me to write about. For all advices and questions, you can always sent a message to merellisanneblog@gmail.com.
