One Year at WA
I have been at WA for one year!
It doesn't feel that long at all. I've learned so much and have seen some success, which is awesome. I'm not where I thought I might be by now, but that's okay. The journey isn't over yet.
Income-wise, I had a goal of making at least $500/month. Definitely not there yet, but I returned to full time teaching a few months ago, so I have not had the time to dedicate to my websites on top of caring for my family. Thankfully, I will get to go back to part time in a couple more months, and one of my kids is in school now which will give me more time when I'm at home. I am looking forward to being able to be more consistent with the work on my site.
Traffic has been growing despite not churning out new content as often as I should. Probably not growing as fast as it would otherwise, but at least I'm not going backwards.
Here is the overall traffic graph for the last 12 months for my cloth diaper site:
As you can see, traffic really started moving in February and has been growing. So that's great! My CTR doesn't seem very good, though.
According to Search Console, I have one article that has a number 1 position in google SERPS. Woo hoo! I have over 250 search phrases that land my site on the first page. I'm pleased about that.
Income wise, I have made a grand total of $826.22. Possible I've made a little bit more with different affiliate programs here and there that I haven't made enough to receive a payout and have forgotten about. Record keeping is an area in which I can seek improvement! Heh.
Not an impressive yearly salary per say, but considering it takes a few months to even make your first sale, and then a few more months to make consistent sales, I'm not too unhappy with that number. It's just a start. Since I promote physical products, affiliate commission percentages are typically around 5%. It takes a lot of sales to get high numbers.
In the years to come, I expect this to grow. Maybe instead of $800/year, I'll be at $800/month! :) This was enough money to cover all of the expenses I had building my website (including the yearly WA premium membership) plus cover the premium fee for this coming year. I'm fine with that for now, but my goal for this coming year is to reach my $500/month goal by this time 2020.
I've also started a second website that I want to work on more and more, too. That one hasn't gone anywhere yet. I just don't have the time to get that one up and running right now. Soon.
Thank you to everyone who has offered me their support and expertise over the past year!
Recent Comments
14
Congratulations on your 1 year anniversary. Well done on the progress so far, any earnings are better than none.
Happy 1st Anniversary, Holly.
Awesome that you have great achievements with your online business. All the best and have fun earning passive income.
I wouldn't start another site. Double down on this one. With the authority you have so far, you can turn this into 8,000 a month fast.
Find other ways to monetize Like moving away from Google ads to media vine or ad thrive.
Capture email address, market and create relationships.
This is a big one, create your own pdf guide or Helpful tool or something. Sell it for 9.99 or More or less
Collect money through PayPal for now.
You have the traffic, now work to monetize it.
Thanks! I want to move to mediavine as soon as I can, but I’m only at about 7.5k sessions a month, so a ways to go get. But I bet I can work to get traffic up once I get some time to dedicate. Hopefully this weekend I can start getting back in the swing of things.
I think you did great in your first year (especially considering you're working and you have a young family!). Kudos to you!
Going forward on the cloth diaper site, I think you can probably negotiate to get higher than 5% commissions when you show that you're getting sales volume. I think you can also get higher ticket commissions when you show how to maintain cloth diapers: sprayers, wet bags, diaper bags, washing tubs, and other things like that.
You can also optimize your old posts to take advantage of all of the impressions you're getting without a correlating click. In addition to those subniches that directly correlate with cloth diapers, you can scale into other subniches that would peak the interest of that audience like babywearing, baby food makers, and other holistic baby care products/care ideas.
Next year, I'm expecting it to be more than double. 10X would be even better. Keep up the great work and stay encouraged!
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Congratulations Holly on your 1 year anniversary and your success so far. Great to hear...
Ray
Thanks Ray!