Monthly Recap: May 2023
May has been quite the month. Filled with new creations and challenges but nevertheless an awesome month. The plan was to transfer all my planning and scheduling into a digital form. Which I’ve almost accomplished. I decided to use Google Calendar and mostly Google tools to plan and organize my work schedule in a way that would allow me to free up space for other activities. The only obstacle to that plan has been my sleeping schedule. When you’re used to waking up at noon every day for the past year, changing that habit is not as easy as it sounds.
In the hopes of re-organizing my life back to its normal tracks, I’ve decided to keep a bullet journal and create monthly challenges, trackers, and reminders. The only problem is, as cute and lovely as the planner looks, I forget to check it. It just sits on my desk. But if I want to be professional and “get my shit together” I really need to focus and work with my schedule. While planning out the schedule I’ve also noticed that I’m over-planning my days. Leaving little or no room for other activities. That will need to change in June. Otherwise, I will be facing burnout soon.
When it comes to planning and scheduling content for YouTube or social media, I believe I’m one month ahead. Which in theory should free up my space to create new products, designs, and art, right? Well, here comes the big question. Do I promote old products just in different ways or do I keep creating new ones?
The print-on-demand sphere is changing and sites like Etsy, Spoonflower, Society6, Redbubble, Tee Public, and even Amazon KDP are changing their policies and creating or increasing their fees. Which isn’t great for small creators like me. I was already earning little on these sites and now they’ve decided to take more away. To the point that some artists have started to boycott these sites and closed their accounts. I haven’t gotten to that point yet, there is still Zazzle.
But what it did made me do, is, go over all my designs and delete all the ones that are not selling. And I came to a realization that I had a lot of designs that were just sitting there and occupying space. So, from now on, I’ll be more thoughtful of what designs I post and for what reason. I am going to be focusing more on content creation, mainly YouTube, because I love teaching other people what I’ve learned, and also creating products for my PayHip store.
In May I also decided to create a podcast, called “Missinginart BlogCast” and it’s basically all my blog posts transformed into audio formats. For all those readers who are not so keen on reading a lengthy post. This way they can listen to it and do other things at the same time.
I still have to record the old blog posts, but the new ones are all done and posted, and I won’t be turning the monthly recap posts into podcasts. Just the blog posts that are relevant to what I do.
Going forward I believe that June is going to be as challenging as it was in May, mostly because I have a collaboration pending and if it goes through, I will be spending at least 8 hours from Monday to Saturday elsewhere for at least a year. This will cause me to be even more strategic about how I plan my month and my workload. It will bring in more money, God knows I need it, but my days will be even more filled than they already are.
My June goals are to finish creating YouTube content for the next 3 months, which includes making long-form videos and shorts (which I’ll be reusing as TikTok’s, Reels, and Idea Pins) and my blog posts. And also make Pinterest Pins for the next 3 months and schedule as many as I can. When it comes to Instagram, I need to make more drawings, because I’m mostly posting my art there and not my other designs, which I’ll need to change and throw a product in here and there. I also need to keep up with my FB page and Twitter, but I use the same posts for both just at different times, so that should be covered.
Creating pins and posts is easy and quick mostly because I utilize Canva Pro and Adobe Express. These two apps allow me to create content in bulk and release them on a schedule when the time comes.
I also have to renew my car insurance in June and have it checked out and ready for another year. That will take a few 100€ from my pocket and then I need to start saving for oil (need to be ready before winter thinks of popping back in), another 2K gone, and at the end of the year, I’m finally getting rid of this aligners and fixing my teeth, another 2k+ gone. The only problem is my savings account is currently balancing at 2k only. So, the saving process starts in June and a detailed budgeting plan comes with it. This only points to one thing – no vacation this year.
When I think about all the things that need to be done and planned it’s giving me a headache and the month hasn’t started yet. Overall, May was great, I accomplished more than I planned, and let’s hope June goes easy on me, mostly my wallet.
Love yall!
Missinginart
