6-Month Progress Report

Yesterday was my 6-month anniversary of upgrading to premium. I like to do these progress reports every so often for myself--record keeping along the way so I know exactly how I've grown. If anyone else finds these interesting, awesome. :) If not, ignore.

Background: I blog about cloth diapers. Commissions are about 5% across the board. I also have some posts in the green cleaning/living niche and some products I'm promoting there.

To date, I have written 94 articles. I have sold 16 items on Amazon, and had 4 other orders from affiliate programs outside of Amazon. All in all, I've made $56.88 (though none of it has been cashed out to me--it's too spread out, but I do think I've surpassed the threshold for an Amazon payout, so I should see some money from there eventually). I reported $13.90 in my 5 month progress report blog post, so income has quadrupled. But nothing to write home about. ;)

I think I'm in the "Google Dance" right now, so organic search hits are all over the place, but even on good days I'm only in the teens from search engines. The vast majority of my traffic is from Pinterest, and overall I'm averaging 1700 visitors per month.

I've been seeking some counsel and wisdom from a few different people about the direction of my site. I'm struggling because even though there is definitely a market for cloth diapers, finding keywords with a decent search volume is INCREDIBLY difficult.

I was emailing with another cloth diaper blogger who has been around a few years, and she was honest that her top posts had nothing to do with cloth diapers. The amount of people using Google as a source of information about diapers has gone way down. Most people are getting cloth diaper information from Facebook groups and Pinterest.

As far as purchasing diapers go, seems like many people are getting their recommendations from Facebook groups nowadays and not googling reviews. People are also becoming more obsessed with cheap diapers made in China and are not as concerned with buying quality ethical brands as they once were (which baffles me--I would think it would be the opposite).

All that to say, I've been kind of down the last few days. I have been feeling like my niche is a dud. I'm going to need to do some serious work to turn this into something that can actually generate money. This is my plan (which is still changing in my mind constantly, so it's a tentative plan I guess):

1) YOUTUBE. I already have some youtube videos out there, but I'm going to be focusing much more heavily on Youtube video reviews going forward. I know of many people that used Youtube to help them with cloth diapering.

2) Traffic. I really think ads are going to be how I primarily monetize my site given the low commission rates and low potential with google. To make money from ads, I need to get my traffic up...I need 10x more monthly sessions than I have now to qualify for Mediavine (which is my goal ad network right now). I need to be writing posts that attract more visitors.

I need to find keywords that get more searches.

3) Broaden my niche and/or focus on my sub-niche more. Earning 5% commission on $20 (or less) products in a niche that doesn't gather many google searches is not going to make any money.

My affiliate sales are practically divided down the middle with diapers being half of my sales and various green products being the other half. However, my general green posts only make up about 10% of my blog. This tells me I have more potential there if I can grow it.

I'm considering taking the "Ditch the Disposables" route (more general beyond diapers) and see where I can go with it. But when I do keyword research, I'm still really struggling to find good keywords with low competition but good search volumes. I know that is the key. I can't keep spending hours on articles with hardly any SEO potential.

4) After my site is one year old, if I'm not making enough money on it that makes the time investment worth it to me, I plan to sell my site. I won't give up affiliate marketing as I have other niche ideas in my head already that would be more profitable, but the amount of hours I'm putting into my site with the low potential for affiliate income has me worried. I want to invest my time into something that can actually grow into a decent income eventually.

Which brings me to my last point I'm going to blog about. I am a teacher and stopped working full-time after last school year with the goal of spending more time with my small children. My oldest will be going to kindergarten next year (this year now, I guess...eek!) and I wanted to make up for some lost time.

I stumbled upon WA somehow searching for ways to pay off student loans faster. I was instantly intrigued and obviously decided to go for it, but this wasn't part of my original plan.

I have an obsessive personality....I really mean it. I can't let things go sometimes, and trying to work on my site and grow it has been a huge focus of my daytime hours the past few months. As much as I said, "I'll just work on this 10 hours a week during nap times!"....I'm really incapable of that. Once I get fixated on something, it's hard for me to be low-key.

The time I've spent on my site has interfered with the goals I had for my family that I made when decided to cut down to teaching only one day a week. I'm mostly feeling down about the realization that my niche may not be that profitable after all... and that I decided to be home more to make up lost time with my son, but then I gave a lot of that time to my website, and now I'm worried that this site won't be worth it. If my site had more potential, I'm sure I wouldn't be feeling this way.

I'm still very glad I found WA because I do see myself making a future here and in affiliate marketing. I just wish I had the ability to balance my life more (and I wish I had more foresight about my niche selection). I know I've blogged here about trying to find balance, and it's still an ongoing struggle.

So going forward, I am really going to commit to the time committment I orginally stated (10-15 hours a week). I know many people will think this is a step in the wrong direction, but it's what I feel I need to do right now, especially because I still need to define a clearer future direction for my site. I plan to post an article once or twice a week, and spend the rest of the time promoting my site to hopefully bring up traffic so I can reach my goal of using Mediavine.

I don't know if I can stick to that given my obsessive nature, but I'm really going to try. I haven't written an article for two days now and it feels great to be able to focus on my home and family. I just need to let myself be okay with that.