One Year Recap - The Dissapointment and Encouragement
I joined WA during the 2018 Black Friday Event. I was really into stock investing and building wealth and decided to make a site dedicated to helping those that had no experience investing and wanted to get started without being sold the moon and being promised returns that aren't realistic.
I wanted to start a site that really just helped people understand how to start investing and how to choose their own journey in building wealth responsibly.
I've created about 20 websites in the past back when micro-niche sites could be successful. This was about 7 or 8 years ago when you would find an exact match domain focused around 1 keyword, and then build about 6 pages with at least 500 words of content. With the right balance of on page SEO, you could be #1 in Google in about 3-5 days sometimes (worst case 2 weeks).
My full time career (active duty Navy) took me away and I didn't have time to maintain them so I sold the ones of value and left the IM industry for about 5 years. When i decided to come back (having slightly more free time), I knew the IM landscape had changed quite a bit so I joined WA to get back in gear.
Boy, how things have changed. I have a site with 37 posts (over 50,000 words in total) and these are my results after a year...
About 100 visits a month on average which has converted to one $5 commission, and one $60 commission (that I can't access until I reach their $300 minimum payout...). Needless to say it was discouraging. It turns out the Personal Finance and Investing Niche is some heavy competition...
The early on spikes are from WA Comments so the most reliable portion of the graph really starts around June 2019 when I decided to stop requesting comments. It has been a really slow grind and now that I'm in my second year of WA, I need to seem some movement or my wife's gonna pull the cord!
Although the results are more than a little disappointing, there is some encouragement here. Most site owners give up within the first couple months when they realize it takes time to rank in the almighty Google. Here's what I've accomplished in the last year:
- 37 blog posts (averaging 2000 words each)
- 9 videos on my Youtube Channel (approx 800 views and 6.4 hours of watch time)
- 20 Custom Pins on Pinterest
- 1 year of site age
- An amiguous valuation for the site between $271 (siteworth.org) and $510 (webuka.com)
- Motivation to keep pumping out quality content
- Refusal to fail.
Of all of these 6 and 7 are most important to me. I believe in my site and think 2020 is going to be the year for me. Good luck to all those out there that aren't where they want to be YET! Keep believing in yourself and striving to improve your sites and success is around the corner!
Recent Comments
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You and I started at the same time and seem to have similar challenges though your stats are better.
I like your number 6 and 7, I agree with you totally.
Thanks! Just keep pushing. Rome wasn't built in a day and there's enough digital real estate to succeed in any niche. Some may require more work upfront but in the end, our perseverance and drive are what will help us succeed.
Great progress, Eric! You have the right attitude--alsoI appreciate your military service!
Jeff
Hi - to be honest, 37 posts in one year is not a lot. Realistically, you should be adding 2 or 3 per week to keep Google's attention.
Where i hear what you are saying. The financial niche is not one that can be easily researched and written about without a lot of care since you're dealing with people's money.
When I had a Chihuahua site that focused on taking care of chihuahuas, this was a much more reasonable feat.
I leave my home at 5:00am and get home at 8:00pm so writing 37 well researched articles in a year is pretty quick when they average 2000 words each.
Hi - I am not criticising you, and appreciate the care you are taking when dealing with a subject which affects people's lives.
These type of websites are known as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) by Google, and this is what they have to say about them: "We have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact users’ happiness, health, financial stability, or safety".
Therefore, you are on the right track by paying care and attention to your content. However, the truth of the matter is, that consistent and regularly posted material will rank higher.
Thanks! I keep looking for ways to streamline my efforts and have found a little bit of time (changing routine to account for traffic) between when I get to work and when I have to walk into the building to crank out 300-500 words so I'm hoping to get closer to 45 articles this year.
I agree with you. I read the section of the Search Engine Quality Guidelines that discusses it. Building my Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness is what I've been focused on recently.
I knew you weren't criticizing me as a content creator but thought I should reply to that comment to show that the effort is there. I do write about a post a week currently. I have kept myself accountable by writing throughout the week and finishing on the weekend what I wasn't able to complete during the day.
Thanks for the replies.
Question? I know we don't know each other, but what about the advertising cycle? Bing Ads, FB Ads, Gmail Ads, and Youtube Ads. AdWords if you really know what you're doing. Since you've been around a while I'm sure you know all this. How has it worked for you?
I have a really hard time getting any conversion with Youtube and Pinterest Ads. I've tried them both a little bit but am trying not to sink too much into my site early on.
As for Google Ads, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads, the ad cost is incredible due to being in the finance niche so I stay clear. I have found that it can work on low traffic terms if you have a review with a high conversion rate and payout but I haven't tested it on this particular site yet.
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Hello Eric,
Well done and thank you for sharing! It does take dedication and committment which you don't seem to lack. You do have to be better than the competition and give customers offers they can't get elsewhere and we have some great deals here.
How is the trading going? That's a passion of my husband and I as it allows for multiple income streams with minimum hassle.
I look forward to reading about your success.