My 1st Month with WA - I've lost my website virginity.
I started at WA exactly one month ago to the day, and what a journey it has been.
What have I achieved?
Well, I've worked my way through a lot of training, and in doing so created a website that initially looked like a bare naked sad looking affair. However, after a little bit of effort, getting into a rhythm with my article writing I pumped out some articles, some of which I can proudly look back on and think to myself is bloody good.
I now have 13 articles, 3 of which are reviews. I read somewhere that reviews tend to convert better, so I intend to concentrate more on writing reviews in the future. Love to hear if this is the case from other WA members...
Wordpress - a learning curve, but worth it!
I am quickly becoming quite proficient at Wordpress and figuring out that with a little practice and concentration I can actually do this. I'm still not happy with my Theme, but I am less worried for the moment, I can fix this when I get a little more traffic. Stop wasting time tinkering!
I discovered some MUST HAVE plugins to help me write better and format my articles, these are:
- Display Posts - it lists all your articles on a page automatically so you can create a little index for your readers
- Fonts - Gives you a lot of different fonts and the ability so select the size and colour
- Column Shortcodes - this allows you to create grids, or columns for your articles, great for listing stuff
I read that we shouldn't have more than 5 Plugins on our Wordpress site, or it will make it lag - this is RUBBISH - not all Plugins are made equal. For example, many plugins simply create a little bit of uncomplicated code - like my Column Shortcodes - this has no effect on performance.
What made my website lag was a juicy 8MB image I had as a background - what a noob I was - but I learned from this. Now I use a great free utility called Caesium, it is an image compressor, you can fiddle with the quality, 35% is great and it makes your images tiny. You can do this using plugins such as EWWW Image optimizer, however this didn't fix my background, I prefer to shrink pics manually before uploading. My site now achieves great scores.
TRAFFIC!!!!
Do I have traffic yet - well, google analytics tells me I am getting some, however, is this my own browsing, or the families? as far as I can figure out I do have some traffic that I can't account for, so yes, people are finding me somehow, but yet to convert to any sales.
To be honest I didn't expect any traffic yet - so I will take this as a victory. Here is an analytics output (No comments or anything requesting over WA last 5 days)
Some of my articles are also ranking, one of them on Page 2 of Google - so I must have been doing something right!
WA Ranking
Now where does this ranking come from - hmmmmm.... all that I know is that yesterday i was around 300K and today I'm suddenly 35K - I think being here one month today is a huge factor in this sudden rank increase - but again - I will take that, I wonder what 2 months will bring!
I now feel quite competent to also help out other noobs starting out on the Live chat - one day I will take myself out of the Noob category, and perhaps that is not too far away for me....
How have I achieved this small victory?
Very simple, 4 steps:
- Learning something new each day - always moving forward if you learn - imagine how many new things you will know in 365 days!
- Persevering - never give up, keep trying, eventually it will work and you will learn something more valuable as a result
- Asking questions - just like kids, they learn by asking, my friend is google and the search button at the top of WA!
- Just doing stuff - getting in to the habit of working on your website each day becomes a routine that is hard to shake off
I'm already looking forward to what the next month holds in store for me - it is exciting and enjoyable.... no better job that I can think of..... and this is just in my spare time as I currently have no choice but to also hold down a full time stressful job....oh well, I see the light at the end of the tunnel.....
Thank you all for being such a great community....
Recent Comments
9
Hi Bryan looks like you are enjoying your journey, it is amazing what a little bit of applied knowledge can do.
Well done. I like your four steps per day and will borrow some of that attitude if I may - imitation being one of the best forms of flattery you know. Keep up the good work.
Haha, you are quite welcome - I may have borrowed those 4 steps from someone myself, I've read so many self improvement books that everything becomes a blur.......
Bryan,
Congratulations sounds like you are doing great!
Keep moving forward because I am sure that
website will end up converting soon,
Susan
Thank you for the encouragement Susan, I see so much success here, it is easy to keep going :)
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Well done Bryan it goes to show when you apply what you have been given with the training how well you can achieve especially just within the first month.
That is great to hear.
Keep going forward and now you can believe in yourself and in all you do because it is working
So well done and enjoy
Thank you for sharing as well much appreciated.
Andre