That 2020 episode
2020 definitely felt like we were lost in a dystopian future novel. And now 2021 is “hey 2020, hold my beer.”
Working on This Ugly Beautiful City has given me solace over the past ten months. Being able to concentrate on this really kept me sane, even though I had to go in a different direction than I had planned for the blog at the beginning of 2020.
I had hung a lot of hopes on This Ugly Beautiful City on January 1, 2020. It was going to be the year I expanded it into a business, helping people plan their trips to Los Angeles and generally enjoy their time in this city more. I had hoped that 2020 was going to be the year I could go into business for myself, and start slowly walking away from my nine to five job.
Last year taught me a lot. It taught me that time is precious and time doesn’t really think about you in the way you think about it. I kept on wondering if it was a waste or not. (That answer is definitely no. 2020 taught me to be a better human to other humans.)
This year forced me to tap into my old introverted ways, who I was before I moved to Los Angeles. The person who was comfortable being alone, shut off from the world, and knew how to entertain myself. Sounds kind of odd coming from me now, the always-on-the-go constant organizer.
L.A. is a place to reinvent oneself after all.
Instead of woe is me-ing for the past few months, I did a lot of work behind the scenes so I could better serve my audience when people can visit Los Angeles again, whenever that may be.
Table of Contents
This is what I did in 2020
I did a major redesign
I realized that the original design wasn’t really serving anyone. Sure it was pretty, but it didn’t really have good UX. I spent most of this year tinkering with the design until I am finally happy with it–except for those social media buttons I can’t turn off.
I really thought about how you could jump in and out of the blog quickly to get the information you need. I rethought this design as how I go shopping when I don’t have a lot of time. If I just need pants for an event, I am going to go to the pants section. I am not going to look at dresses, then wander around to the shoes, and then spend time waiting for the fitting room with more than what they allow inside. I am just going to go to the pants on not waste my time on other things.
Say you just want to know about Hollywood, do you really want to read all of the almost 70 blog posts, just to find all of the times I mention things to do in Hollywood? Probably not.
There are so many ways for you to find that Hollywood only information. Either by going to the L.A. neighborhoods section, using tags to find the 21 posts where Hollywood is mentioned, or via search. (Look to the right of my logo.) Then you find all of the Hollywood information without having to read all of the other stuff if you don’t want to or have time to do so.
Also, I chose calming colors that reminded me of Los Angeles beaches that would help you feel not so overwhelmed in a city that can be so overwhelming.
Pages, and pages oh my!
This past year I added pages after pages of itineraries, pages that focused on L.A. neighborhoods and developed my page about what This Ugly Beautiful City is all about. Sometimes you need to be in something for a while to know the direction it is going.
These above the fold pages are also a quick way to navigate to the things you want to know. Do you need tips for first-time tourists? There is a page for that. Is my question something that other people ask about Los Angeles? There is a page for that too. I am visiting Santa Monica, has that already been covered on the blog? Now there is a quick way to navigate to it.
I set up the business pages on the blog
At a certain point of the year, I thought it would be good to think ahead to the potential reopening of Los Angeles. I developed two options for you to engage my services in the future. This will be my side-hustle for 2021, fingers crossed.
This page is dedicated to itineraries I have made for people who have visited me in Los Angeles as well as a place to hold my free and for purchase itineraries. There are some reviews there. Thank you for saying such nice things about me.
Los Angeles Itineraries
This page will hold Los Angeles based itineraries and their related blog posts.
Free Itineraries
You can come in, grab these pdfs, upload them to your phone or print them out, and explore a neighborhood.
Itineraries for Purchase
This is where my itineraries for purchase will live when I can get that going.
Services
This is what I want to provide you when you come to Los Angeles to visit, work, and live.
When you can travel, I hope you make good use of my itineraries and services pages.
I have a tagline
I love the name of my blog and I don’t want to change it. It does however, not lend itself to knowing what my blog is about. So, with a little help from my friends, we came up with this tagline:
This Ugly Beautiful City is an itinerary focused travel blog that features travel tips and guides for anyone exploring Los Angeles from a local Angeleno to a first time tourist who is passionate about food, art, and culture.
I hope that this quickly gives you an idea of what you will find in This Ugly Beautiful City.
I adapted my posts for the pandemic
I hate the word pivot at this point, how about you?
I focused on letting you know all of the things that were safe to do during COVID-19. Concentrating on the CANs in a year of CAN’Ts.
The rules and regulations, opens and closures, of this pandemic has been a job of media sorting.
When I came back from my hiatus, I put out a weekly explore Los Angeles from home. These were virtual events, wine tastings, and tours of Los Angeles that you could view or learn about anywhere in the world, whether at home in Savanna, Georgia or Echo Park. These still live on the blog for you to view anytime. I am going to add a weekly event list starting this week on my Facebook page.
In the above post, which is now in archive mode due to the increase in COVID cases, I concentrated on the things you still CAN do in Los Angeles if you are practicing safety measures.
Things you can do:
- Support your local restaurants by getting take-out or delivery
- Exploring your neighborhood on foot
- Heading to local beaches or parks
- Wear a cool af facemask
But again for those who do not know:
- You cannot gather with people outside your household
- Wander around without a facemask
- Eat in a restaurant
- Have symptoms or have a positive covid result and wander around like everything is normal
- Go to museums, movies, or gyms
I made a stronger point of supporting mom and pops in Los Angeles
We have seen the increasing amount of business closures and a disproportionate amount of those have been small businesses. Let’s make sure that when the pandemic is over that our Chinese food comes from some other place than Panda Express and that all of our clothing doesn’t come from Target.
I exclusively feature small businesses on This Ugly Beautiful City and the instagram series Los Angeles Mom & Pops You Should Know.
Somehow I was able to double my web traffic
I am happy to say that even though I took some time off to think for a few months in spring/summer, I doubled my traffic from last year. I was surprised as Los Angeles has been more or less closed for the majority of 2020. People who visited This Ugly Beautiful City from all over the world.
This is in part by learning about SEO, making my social media more dynamic, and joining some blogging groups that have helped me learn about blogging. If you ever want to talk about blogging, hit me up on any of the ways to contact me.
I started my deep dive of Santa Monica
This was a logical focus after Hollywood as it is the second most visited neighborhood in Los Angeles. I hope to show you that Santa Monica is more than Pier and Promenade.
I will get back to Los Feliz, I promise.
I made my first money as a blogger
I sold one book in my Los Angeles recommended reading list in my Bookshop.org store. This is the first money I have made as a blogger. It was a $1.07
I made the decision to not have random pop-up and inline ads and push being affiliate influencer because I find it annoying and not authentic to my voice. I don’t want to tout something as great when it isn’t and I got money for telling you it is great. In my about this blog page, I talk about how I want this blog to feel like you are sitting down with a friend for a coffee and getting some great recommendations about the city, I feel like posts like this one don’t help.
Yep, I made a SNL reference. We are the same age.
Not that I am knocking this, work that hustle influencers, I just decided in the end that it isn’t for me.
I hope that my income source will be selling itineraries and doing tours.
I finally got over 400 followers on Instagram
Man that was harder than I thought it would be. I don’t know if any of you have to do the social media hustle, but it is a lot of work. This year, Facebook made it hard for small businesses with not a lot of money behind them to be seen. Then, they acquired instagram and then that made it harder to be seen there too. I tried hard to be consistent, focused my This Ugly Beautiful City instagram on being more directional. It is still a work in progress.
I do love instagram for the photos, so I started a secondary instagram account featuring L.A. photos called @blue_losangeles. It definitely has a theme.
Because there is a chess game of blogger vs. algorithm…
I started a newsletter
If you aren’t looking at your social media feed within two minutes of my posting something, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter where I update you on what I posted in the last month, give you free itineraries, and games for prizes.
In my last newsletter, I encouraged SoCalers to support their local restaurants by playing a game of Los Angeles Take-Out Bingo. No one has claimed the first prize yet, so there is still time for you to win.
You can subscribe here.
I took an imposter syndrome class
I am now more comfortable telling you about my accomplishments. I have taken several classes from General Assembly in the comfort of my home. I strongly recommend them for skill-building. The class I took to get through the imposter syndrome was given by Jen Glantz who started the business Bridesmaid for Hire.
[BTW not sponsored, just a helpful recommendation for those of you looking to build skills while you are at home in Los Angeles or wherever.]
One of the main reasons I was able to accomplish all of this was because I stayed home. It was hard. I miss my friends and my old social life, but staying home was worth it if I get to meet you one day.
Next I will talk about the most viewed posts in 2020