Putting the Puzzle Together - National Puzzle Day!

Today (January 29, 2021) is National Puzzle Day.

Yes, it's one of those weird, "micro-holidays", mostly unknown to the general population. They give us writers new material occasionally. Businesses use them as an excuse for sales and promotions.

But National Puzzle Day takes on a new meaning when you are building an affiliate website business.

I wrote an article recently called "Keep Writing." I meant it as an encouragement for everyone, but especially those who sometimes wonder if they are able to write content that is good enough or if they can continue writing, week after week.

You can read that article here.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/dianek59/blog/keep-writing/a...

One of the many comments I received on that article stated that writing was only one part of what we needed to do.

He was right, of course.

I had only addressed one piece of the affiliate website business puzzle. That was my intent at the time. I wanted to encourage the more reluctant writer to not slack off and certainly not to give up altogether. And I think it did help some people.

But the commenter was quite correct.

We need to persist in other sections, too.

When assembling a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, you cannot stop with 497 pieces. What would that look like? You probably won't even see the image as it was intended.

The same is true of our sites.

You have your domain and site niche. Add a few pages. Then begin writing the content.

You might write 100 pages. You will probably get indexed along the way. The search engines will find your site, your pages. They may even rank you at times.

But the puzzle is far from complete.

You need to fill in the missing pieces to enjoy the full picture.

Those pieces needed for the writing portion:

• topic research
• SEO research
• good keywords from your research
• formatting on the page
• finding good images and adding the alt tags

And then, after you have published, your puzzle is still quite unfinished. It's time to find the pieces for:

• finding affiliates and adding those links
• promoting your article and even your entire site
• social media seems to be a must
• other channels, possibly including advertising
• and more!
• keeping up with the techy side of your site
  • analytics
  • plugins, updates
  • tracking what is working and what is not
  • optimizing for speed
  • updating previous content (even evergreen needs sprucing occasionally)
  • and more+++

Back to our jigsaw puzzle.

After all, it is National Puzzle Day.

Some people enjoy putting a huge puzzle together all by themselves. They find it relaxing. They might even cringe at the idea of sharing the experience with another human.

Other people consider it a social activity. You and one of your children, a spouse, or perhaps a puzzle-loving friend, gather around the table, each looking for those pieces that fit properly with the ones already in place.

Affiliate Websites are like that.

You can go it alone. Some want to. Others need to.

But you might also find ways to involve others to help. One of my daughters helped me with reviewing back content for a while. My sons have helped occasionally with the tech side. One of them is also involved with his own affiliate site, so he and I can trade ideas, too, as I also do with my daughter who is on WA.

And for those who don't have family involvement, other ways exist. You might pay a writer occasionally or even on a regular basis. Some people pay for help with the technical stuff. Others have social media help.

Saving money and can't pay? No worries! Your friends here at Wealthy Affiliate probably won't write a series of articles for you, nor will they design your new site.

But when you have a question about something or need an opinion or fresh idea,

the WA community is always here to help!

In the puzzle analogy, you are putting together your puzzle, WA provides the step-by-step instructions (training). When you need help with a piece to the puzzle, ask, and someone (usually several someones!) will step up to help you decide which piece of the puzzle goes where.

No, we won't build your puzzle from start to finish. That would make it our puzzle. But the WA community is nothing short of AMAZING when it comes to helping one another.

It's National Puzzle Day!

Where are you with your website puzzle?

(warning: The affiliate website puzzle is NEVER complete!)