How to stay motivated

It's easy to understand how one might get discouraged when nothing seems to be happening as far as income is concerned with your website. But Rome wasn't built in a day and the success you are anticipating won't happen overnight either. Just keep at it and when it's time for your efforts to start bearing fruit, that's when it will appear.

Anyways, rather than throwing a bunch of motivational quotes your way or giving you the same advice you will hear over and over again in your life, let me share some of the things that keep me going with my website building adventure here at WA.

1. Comments - Remember when you first had a Myspace page and then eventually your Facebook page, how excited you would be when someone left a comment on your page? (I did anyway.) Well, I get that same satisfaction now when someone leaves a comment on my website (and it's not spam). If you would like to get more comments, here is the link to Kyle's blog where we get to give and receive comments on our actual website from fellow WA members: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/authoring-writing-content/the-give-and-take-comment-thread-get-website-engagement.

2. Google Analytics - For the same reason I love getting comments, I also love to check my Google Analytics account to see how many people are visiting my site and how they are engaging in the content. I get to see who my audience is and how much time they are spending on my site. And as I create more content, the more time they are spending, which is pretty cool. Between the comments and this tool, I know I'm not doing this in vain, even if I'm not making any money just yet.

*In order to increase the amount of people viewing your pages, it is important to do keyword research before every single new post or page. Then you will know what to title them so that they attract the largest audience. I experimented with this. For the first month, I didn't do this. Then I went back and renamed half of my posts and pages and I saw an immediate increase in traffic.

3. Have fun! Keep learning, be patient with yourself, and let this be a hobby- When I first got started here almost 3 months ago, my website was nowhere near what I wanted it to be and I sometimes got frustrated with where I was at. My website didn't look the way I wanted it to and I couldn't figure out how to do certain things. Every time I solved one problem, another challenge would present itself and as long as I remained impatient, I would start to get stressed out.

It's hard to keep moving forward and overcome challenges when you are stressed out and frustrated. So slow down and take a break if you need to. You need to enjoy this or you will lose interest. This is one of the reasons you need to pick a niche you are passionate about. When you do, this will be a hobby, and when you have a hobby, you enjoy the challenges and will look forward learning new things not only about your niche but about how to express your discoveries through your posts and pages.

4. Don't expect to make money in the beginning - This is unrealistic and unrealistic goals are one of the fastest ways to give up on a dream before you even get started. Focus on your non-financial goals in the beginning (and the beginning realistically is probably at least the first year). Keep making money elsewhere as you work on building your dream into a reality; as long as you keep nurturing your dream of one day being able to support yourself solely from your online business by continuing to take at least one small step towards that goal every day, it will inevitably become a reality. I have experienced this more than once in my life so I know this is absolutely true and not just a fairytale.