10 Dec 2015

Yow Yow’s Decline in 2015

The other day, a coworker of mine was doing research on how stats and analytics look for different platforms and she was looking for someone that not only had a WordPress account, but that used it pretty frequently and actually received stats. I told her I thought I knew a person that she could reach out to 😉

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As we sat down to our meeting, I felt the need to give her a quick rundown of how Yow Yow! was run over the last few years from the start to present time because… I was definitely feeling some insecurities about the stats that I was about to show her. They weren’t good. In 2015, they were the most disappointing numbers that we’ve ever seen in Yow Yow’s existence and of course, I knew why. I wasn’t trying like I used to. I was taking the easy route by cheating with posts that were “Sunday Words” or “Song of the Days” because they never required that much effort and it would take me less than a minute to post. I had stopped working with other brands and engaging with other individuals that I wanted to highlight on the blog because I knew how much time it would take to compose and put it all together. In 2015, I didn’t have the time I had when I was a college student – when I was a senior and when Yow Yow! was at its peak. It’s a sad truth and as I think about 2016, I’m still not even sure where we can go from here. There’s no chance that I’ll gain more time to work on Yow Yow! It still takes a backseat to my day job and that’s the way it should be. However, writing for the blog still makes me extremely happy and at the end of the day, I don’t want to let anyone down – especially those friends of mine that use the blog to keep up to date with the details of my life when we can’t chat everyday.

From the beginning, we’ve never had a strategy. Monetizing seems very very very far away. Even as I write this, I was hoping that by the end of the post I could say that I had a plan, but I don’t. At all. We’re just going to keep trucking away. Every night. After work until I have to go back to bed and do the same thing over and over again. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around what made Yow Yow! successful in 2012 in comparison up until now and after a day of thinking about it, I think it’s just… quality. I stumbled across this post that I wrote right after I graduated and realized that I really miss writing things like this.

If anyone has any advice, we’d love to hear it!