In what has seemed like the longest and shortest year all at the same time, we can’t believe it but Q4 is here. Despite the roller coaster ride this year has been, our Mediavine publishers continue to impress us with their resiliency, even in the midst of a global pandemic!
We applaud them because instead of giving up, they worked harder, listened to their audience, stayed visible, updated old content and created new posts — while still sharing their knowledge and skills to help others learn and grow.
Much like our Publisher Interview series, our Content During Covid series also shares success stories of how different Mediavine publishers started their blogs, their top posts, best traffic sources, plus how Mediavine has helped shape their businesses and lives for the better.
The difference here is that this series focuses on how our over 7,500 and constantly growing list of publishers adjusted their strategy during Covid to create content that’s helpful and relevant, all while continuing to increase their traffic.
Join us for our interview with Jasmine of Feeling Nifty, a site all about learning how to get creative together with easy DIY’s for your home, IKEA hacks and painting. Jasmine believes that getting the most out of life (and creativity) happens when you explore new skills, so she loves helping her audience discover them.
We’re excited to have Jasmine on the blog, so please say hello and learn how her passion for tapping into peoples’ creative side helped her achieve the goal of increasing her revenue.
My name is Jasmine, I live in Ottawa, Canada and I’m the mother of two amazing kids!
When I’m not at my full-time gig or working on the blog, you can find me crafting my next art or DIY project, or snuggling on the couch with my kiddos.
I was unexpectedly laid off from my job in 2017. After that happened, with the blessing of my family, I took a year off to figure out what I wanted to do next.
During this much needed “me time”, I focused on projects that sparked my love of creativity and technology. The outcome from that year off was that I coded and published my first app in the Google Play Store.
Next, I started and launched my blog Feeling Nifty, and the rest is history!
I have been a Mediavine publisher since June 3rd, 2019 (yep, down to the day). I’ll never forget how amazing getting that approval email felt.
I heard about Mediavine through an online blogging business community that I was a part of (Dare to Conquer). Many bloggers in that community had great experiences with Mediavine and they came highly recommended.
Being new to the world of blogging I really depended on advice from the more seasoned bloggers, and how right they were! Mediavine has been among the best decisions I’ve made for my business.
My experience with Mediavine, beginning with the application process, to getting ads set up on my site, to the customer service along with helping to ensure that my site is running optimally, has been nothing but the smoothest and most positive experience.
What I love most about working with Mediavine is their integrity, transparency and the above and beyond communication through any challenge that might arise. I really respect that from a personal standpoint and also as a publisher.
I am a big fan of the Mediavine Dashboard. This helpful tool makes it so easy to track your progress and get data in a very visual way — yay for graphs!
The new capability to dig into RPMs on a per-post basis is incredible. Keep rocking it Mediavine!
I have been consciously aiming to create more easy/beginner painting tutorials, along with other simple crafts that use basic items to help inspire people and also to keep them busy during this time.
These are the type of topics my audience has been engaging with most during this time.
During this time I created a new sunset painting tutorial for beginners.
This came about after having a few readers reach out to me, mentioning that they’re painting more during the crisis to pass the time, so I thought it was important to include more (new) tutorials.
My cherry blossom tree painting tutorial has been doing very well (in terms of pageviews).
However, the content and information was pretty bare bones, so I refreshed it with new sections that give additional painting tips to my audience.
The existing posts that I’ve updated, specifically my cherry blossom tree tutorial, have seen a steady increase in traffic.
I am working on learning additional ways to optimize this post so I can improve RPM.
I engage a lot with my audience via Instagram posts. I try to post one per week, either about new creative projects to try or an inspirational quote — which people really enjoying hearing right now.
I also respond to all the comments on my blog, and to the emails and direct messages I receive.
Pinterest is my biggest source of traffic for my blog.
I take all my own photos and use in-process shots within my tutorials. I also create five or more pins per post, with different size pins and different headlines (using pre-made templates).
I have keywords in all my board descriptions as well as within my pins. I only post my pins to relevant boards (no more than 9).
Find out what your audience is searching for now. It can be through analyzing your own data (like which posts are trending), reaching out to your audience, attending webinars (if you use Pinterest, they recently had a great webinar about what people are searching for on the platform), market research tools or blogging communities.
Also, accept that things have changed (this was a big one for me to personally come to terms with). This may mean that topics you love to write about or know most about, might not be something you should currently invest time in.
The entire world is fighting the same battle, and many people are online looking for help in different areas and for different situations. Now, more than ever, there is a big need for relevant content as we are living in this new normal.
New ways of living, saving, cooking and celebrating. I think we as publishers are in a very unique place, where we are both living through this alongside our audiences and can empathize firsthand. We have the ability and experience to create content and share inspiring ideas that can help them get through these challenging times, while growing our traffic too!
Don’t give up on your blog. Your writing, ideas and forms of content creation are so very needed in the world right now.
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