Operation Vegas 2020: January Update
Here we go again! Another month has passed by and it's time for another update on my progress.
I've been seeing some of the posts about the Vegas conference, and it just makes me want to get there even MORE. If you haven't seen them, here they are:
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/roopekiuttu/blog/wa-conferen...
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/roopekiuttu/blog/vegas-confe...
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/littlemama/blog/i-have-arriv...
It sounds like Kyle and Carson really go out of their way to make their Super Affiliates feel special.
I can't wait to post updates from when I'M there next year. :)
Am I close to making it already?
Oh hell no. Not at all. lol
But I WILL.
I don't know how or when, but it HAS to happen.
Whatever it takes...
Asking for Help
This month has been a month of ups and downs. A complete roller coaster ride. I think this is fairly standard in this business, especially toward the beginning.
You make some progress and then you backslide.
It feels like I'm taking one step forward and two steps back constantly.
One thing I've starting doing is reaching out to members to ask for advice or help when I feel stuck. It's OK to ask for help, and our members here are so generous!
If someone has accomplished something that you want to accomplish, find out how they did it!
(Thank you to littlemama and JohnMks for their help and advice!)
Poking Around Other Member's Sites
Another thing I've been doing a lot lately is going to other member's sites and seeing what they're doing to be successful.
I've been looking at sites from: JerryHuang, EricCantu and Grace (Littlemama). They all made it to Vegas. Why? How?
I go to their sites for inspiration and guidance. I see what they're doing. If I can copy what they're doing, I should be where they are next year.
(Of course, I don't literally copy their stuff. That would be bad! I just copy the basic ideas.)
I also get on their email lists.
How are they using email? How are they promoting WA?
I use them for inspiration and direction.
Jerry Kicked My Butt Into High Gear
The good news is that I had quite a few referrals this month. I had 11 people sign up under me.
The bad news is that none of them moved on from signing up. (Only one person added a picture, but no profile description.)
So I'm getting people, but perhaps the wrong people? This led me to look for answers within WA. Guess who had this same issue?
JerryHuang.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/wa-affiliate-program/super-a...
I read this question of his and immediately felt better.
What's even more amazing is that Jerry created a training to help solve this problem!
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/wa-bootcamp-hacks-h...
This. Kicked. My. Butt. Into. Super. High. Gear.
I've been going through this training and implementing Jerry's suggestions.
Things I've Implemented In January
- Joined Thrive Membership. I LOVE THRIVE so much. I didn't realize that I needed Thrive until I joined it.
- Updated my theme with a Thrive theme
- Changed from All in One SEO to Yoast
- Created a lead magnet, landing page sequence for my lead magnet, and a new email sequence. Last month I had 2 subscribers, and this month I have 10. I need to work on this.
- Per Jerry's suggestion, I created a new homepage for my site.
This month I plan to:
- Create a landing page to promote Wealthy Affiliate, instead of just having a review page (per Jerry's suggestion)
- Update my landing page for my lead magnet. I'm not selling it enough.
- Go through more email training and make that better.
- Update my WA review post.
- I have a "big" affiliate guide, and I need to figure out what to do with that since I have my smaller lead magnet.
- Plus writing, writing, writing my regular posts!
Traffic & Status Updates
Last month my status looked like this:
And here's this month:
It feels like I'm spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast. But then I see this chart, and it LOOKS like something is happening. lol.
Edited to add this chart. You can see I started working on this site in October. Here's what's happened since then. That's kind of fun to see. :)
According to Search Console, I have about 16 posts in the top 10, however, these bounce around and I can never find them when I search, so who knows?
My traffic last month looked like this:
I had this big spike from Pinterest.
This month my traffic looks like this:
I still had some traffic from my pin that went mini-viral. You can see that completely died off.
My traffic is where I want to pull my hair out. It just isn't going anywhere... And my bounce rate is WAY too high and time on page is WAY too low.
Which means I'm not targeting the right people, or I'm not giving people the info that they really want.
I've been pinning, pinning, pinning, but nothing else is quite sticking yet. I do get traffic from there, but just a little bit.
I get a few hits from organic Google traffic, but just a little bit.
This is where I get frustrated. Grrr! lol
Pinterest is Growing!
My Pinterest account is growing nicely!
In December, it looked like this:
This is what it looked like in January:
Um, that's HUGE growth!
I expect this to keep going up as I keep pinning. I pin at least one pin for every post (sometimes I create 2-4 pins for a post) and I schedule those pins to multiple boards throughout a period of time using Tailwind.
Now, I just have to get more of these Pinterest people to convert to traffic on my site!
Content Update
I wanted to post at least 25 articles this month. I really wanted to hit 30, but I thought I was going to use content from my other site. It just didn't make sense, so that didn't happen.
It says I posted 26 articles, but I ended up deleting one off of my site. So, it's really 25. I'm happy I hit this goal! Especially since I was busy making a homepage and an email sequence and a lead magnet PDF!
Goals for February
- 22 posts up this month (a little less since Feb is a short month)
- Increase email subscribers
- Really think about my audience and who the heck I'm targeting (I really think part of my traffic struggle is that I made my site more pink and girly, yet the majority of people who are into affiliate marketing are men. I really have to think about this. I would love if more women came on board though!)
- Update my lead magnet landing page to sell it more
- Create a new lead magnet on Mindset (maybe? I'm still thinking about this one.)
- Create a Wealthy Affiliate landing page
- Create an opt-in form for my "big" free guide
- Grow my Twitter account (I started a new one for this site within the past week or so)
- Grow Pinterest to at least 200k monthly viewers
- Figure out how to get more traffic!
I also think I'm going to test the waters a bit with PPC. Nothing crazy, but this is something I really want to learn how to do and do well. Why not? Gotta take every opportunity to make this work!
Thanks so much for reading this. It was SO long. lol If you have ideas for me of how to do something better, get more traffic, understand my audience better, I'm all ears!
I NEED to make it to Vegas next year. I know it will happen. It's already happened in my mind. I just have to match up my results with the image in my mind. :)
- Christina
P.S. Here's a main thread with all of my updates.
Recent Comments
48
Great post Christina. I'll be bookmarking for future reference as you have mentioned some things that I want to go back and look.
I hope you will be like Grace:
You decide that you WANT to make it so bad that you will invest the time, energy and enthusiasm that there will be no other option available.
"You decide that you WANT to make it so bad that you will invest the time, energy and enthusiasm that there will be no other option available."
Yes! You're speaking my language! :)
- Christina
Wow, great effort in this post!
It’s good to do research on how people successful. I also have the plan to do so.
Thank you for advice and sharing, Christina! Congrats too! :o)
Thank you very much! I think seeing what other people are doing has really helped me more than anything else so far. (Besides the initial training, of course!)
- Christina
Huge congrats on your traffic Christina!
Although you may not have sales yet, you are headed in the right direction.
Like you, I've been reading everything I can. Learning from other people who have success.
I've been in the marketing industry for a long time and connecting dots for other people. Now I am connecting the dots for myself with my own online businesses (aka affiliate marketing sites). And getting those dots connected right for my audience is a completely new ball game for me.
I am personally way behind you in traffic but share the same goal - "I want to make it to Vegas too!".
I follow Jessica Jobes and she puts your reality into a neat perspective.
Jessica says:
"The average website conversion rate is only 1% (and that's average!)... that means one out of every 100 visitors will turn into a lead or a sale, so you have to send in A TON of traffic to grow a mailing list."
"Don't "Do Marketing", Create Business Assets... "
In summary:
Don't focus on creating a bunch of content and only give the content one chance to succeed. Instead, treat your creations as assets that you expect will fail in the beginning, but you make it better and better and better over time.
If you’re making a blog post, think of it as an asset that you’re going to improve over time. Don’t think of it as just another blog post.
She recommends "sprint testing" to figure out how to make the content asset convert. You can leverage her strategy with PPC, specifically Facebook ads in her case because they are cheaper tests to run than Google ad sense or equivalent.
I also follow Pat Flynn who is an affiliate marketing icon and makes $50K per month from affiliate sales.
Pat Flynn’s rules for success:
1. Stay the course. Nothing works if you keep changing your mind.
2. Be different. Identify what others are doing and do something different to stand out.
Your advantage if you're a "latecomer" to a particular niche. You can see clearly what everyone else is doing in your space, and you can bring something new and completely different to that audience.
I'll DM you the full message from Jessica to prevent this comment from being any longer. I think you will get value of what she says.
I enjoyed reading your update!
Kim
This is amazing, thank you so much for all of this information!
I've never heard of Jessica Jobes until right now, but I'll sure be following her from this point on!
I love Pat Flynn's two rules for success. Those are great!
I'll be checking your message soon.
Thanks again!
- Christina
Hi there, first of all,thanks for all this information. As a person trying for the same results this is really useful. In terms of the question you asked regarding traffic numbers and why they are not staying I would guess maybe two reasons. Either it is a case of numbers or they are not getting a great experience when they land on your pages - no offence I have the same problem. I am going back to basics to try and understand what it is that people would find as a great experience once they come to my landing page or pages based on their persona (big word, haven’t quite figured out how to use this approach properly yet). Keep up the good work - hoping to see you in Vegas next time.
Thanks Hudson, I appreciate the feedback!
I definitely take no offense, as that's the conclusion I came up with too. How can I make it a better experience for people coming to my site?
That's why I've been snooping on other people's sites who have made it to Vegas. I'm seeing what they're doing and how I can improve.
Part of it could just be a numbers thing. Not enough articles ranking yet, so therefore there's not enough traffic to really understand what the people are looking for.
That's why I'm thinking about dabbling in PPC. Even just to see if there's anything that sticks that I can then use to understand my audience better.
Are you getting traffic to your site?
- Christina
Hi - no, traffic is improving slowly but not at your levels. I see the same as you in terms of staying - not too much. Got to put myself in their shoes and decide what would make me stay. Also could be that many are looking for a quick dollar which they will be disappointed to find does not really happen at WA, have a great weekend
That's definitely a good point. I always make sure they know that this takes time and effort. I bet most people HATE that. lol
Have a great one!
- Christina
See more comments
Very informative post. I am hoping that 2020 will be my year to Vegas too! But like you I have lots of work to do. Thanks for the links, I'm definitely going to check them out. Best of luck this year...perhaps we will see each other in Vegas!
Cheers, Eliza
I would love to see you in Vegas! I noticed there weren't a lot of women (I think maybe just Grace?).
Nothing against the guys. They deserved to be there. But let's change it up a little! More women next year!
- Christina