Dave Gates reporting in for my eighth Jewel-Osco Saturday Morning Sampler Savings Report.
Are you wondering what this is all about? Well for starters, I though it would be interesting to report how much I’ve saved by redeeming the coupons for free items at our local grocery store.
Secondly, I like building blogs and this experiment offers me the opportunity to create content and learn new skills.
We live in the Chicago-Land area and one of the major groceries stores is Jewel-Osco. This year I signed up for their MyMixx rewards program and downloaded their smart phone app.
A lot of blogs publish income reports on how much their blogs are earning. I’ve decided to take this concept and turn it around a bit.
Instead of reporting on how much my blog is making, I plan to report on how much I’m saving by redeeming coupons for free items. It’s just a little experiment, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you have any questions about any of the information from this report, please leave a comment and I’ll reply very early in the morning before the wife and kid wake up.
This report includes the following.
SAVINGS THIS MONTH
YEAR TO DATE SAVINGS
NUMBER OF COUPONS REDEEMED
LIST OF ITEMS
WEBSITE TRAFFIC
EMAIL LIST
BLOG UPDATES
MOVING FORWARD
SAVINGS THIS MONTH August 2017 ($10.76)
YEAR TO DATE SAVINGS ($150.17)
July = ($45.77) wholly cow
August = ($10.76)
NUMBER OF COUPONS REDEEMED THIS MONTH = 5
LIST OF ITEMS
- Phill’s Non GMO Cage Free Egg Whites (16 oz)
$3.99 Savings - OUI Yogurt(5 oz)
$1.49 Savings - Coco Community Organic Coconut Water (8.45 oz)
$2.99 Savings - Open Nature Greek Yogurt (5.3 oz)
$1.00 Savings - Fiber One Bars and Sweet Treats (5 to 6 count)
$3.79 Savings
WEBSITE TRAFFIC
Overview
Any blogger will tell you there is a lot of work behind creating the articles and maintaining a blog. But it is actually fun and interesting. There are many ups and downs along the way.
August was a slow month as you can see from the drop in users from 444 in July to 162 in August. I attribute this to the lazy summer days and back to school preparations for folks. I was also on vacation and out of town the first week of August, so I didn’t get to pay as much attention to my blog as I normally do. I was late in getting out my Saturday Morning Sample reports for July.
I feel I’m back to my regular routine and look forward to more active engagement on all channels.
If you are enjoying these reports please share and comment. I’d really appreciate it. One change I’ve made to this report is to include both last month and this month snap-shots. I think this gives a better idea how we are growing.
July 1, 2017 – July 30, 2017
August 1, 2017 – August 31, 2017
Here are the top traffic sources for this July.
Here are the top traffic sources for this August.
Mobile vs desktop traffic.
July 2017
August 2017
EMAIL LIST
One of the things I find most challenging is developing and growing a mailing list. I’ve signed up and registered for an email newsletter service with MailChimp.
My plan is to track the growth of this list. Since I joined in January, we have a great base to start with. One reason I haven’t been focusing on it is because I’m working adding more content and articles.
As you may have guessed, this is a part-time job. I’m finding it challenging to manage being a dad, working full-time at the day job and pursuing all my passions. But I feel like this is an important project and I’d like to definitely see it through this year.
For all you long time bloggers, I know you’ve always said to start growing your email list. Well, now is your opportunity to join my list and help me grow this thing.
Results for August 2017: – no changes from last month. I’m still stuck on 4 faithful subscribers. How do I increase this is going to be one of the focus for the remainder of the year and next year.
BLOG UPDATES
I’m still loving my theme from Studiopress. I highly recommend them.
I’m back to more solid reporting for Google Analytics, since updating the code from my recent home pages upgrade.
August was a slower month for redeeming free items. 5 totally free items this month. Thanks @jewelosco for the free items for MyMixx members.
I’ve been working on the monthly report you are reading here.
I think I also need to promote this page a little better. “How to Start Your WordPress Blog Today.” Yes, I’m still happy with their hosting and services.
LESSONS LEARNED
The purpose of this report and doing all this work is to report how much money the free items adds up to. So it really doesn’t matter if it’s a Saturday Morning Sampler Item or just a MyMixx item. If I can clip the coupon in the MyMixx app and get the item for free, I will include it here.
There have been at least two instances where an item showed up in the MyMixx list of coupons, but was NOT included in the Saturday Morning Sampler. Just in case you were wondering.
In addition to the Free items with MyMixx, Jewel-Osco also runs Facebook promotions. These are often one-day promotions where you need to report to the cashier the #wordoftheday. So now the challenge is do I include these items in the reports or start creating a separate report. Since I haven’t been tracking them entirely this year, this may be something I tackle in the future.
Do you have any other recommendations for this report? Don’t be shy, please comment and share below.
MOVING FORWARD
The plan for now is to continue visiting my local Jewel-Osco on Saturday morning’s for their Free items. Seven months have gone by pretty quick and I’m amazed at how much I’ve saved and how this blog thing is turning out.
I’ve also added a lessons learned section to this report to reminder myself of various things. It’s also a great place for you to reference my exact thinking and process for this project and the reports.
I’ll also be working on tweaking the blog, newsletter and writing. Stayed tuned, and please leave me a comment, don’t be shy!!
Follow me on Twitter, or watch me on Instagram.
Sign up for our newsletter. Do it NOW! I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for reading my July 2017 Jewel-Osco Saturday Morning Sampler report.
