Oh-Oh! 666 Referral Milestone Reached.
No, I'm not a devil worshipper, LOL š
Fortunately, I'm not superstitious either.
Having said that, in a strange twist of irony this morning, I was writing an email to send out to my subscribers about the darker-side of online marketing and I was using some "evil" analogies for a little fun. And then my phone buzzed.
Admittedly, there's nothing weird about that, I get notifications constantly, but when I picked it up I thought I'd check my stats for the day and there it was...
666 referrals.
I was hoping to reach 700 referrals this month and share a new milestone (and proof that what Wealthy Affiliate teaches works) but 666 is more interesting I think? Particulary because I was writing that email when it happened :-)
By any measure though, I'm happy with my traffic and referral numbers this month (these are for the last 30 days by the way, not just July). And I'm not sharing these number to brag but rather to point out that what we do here works. I know how frustrating it is if you're just getting started and I remember I'd even take it personally if my posts were ranking poorly (as if Google knows or cares who we are, lol).
It just can't be said enough. We all go through the difficult early stages but the training works. You just have to stick with it long enough to let it work.
It can be frustrating waiting for Google and Bing to show you a little love but from their perspective (or at least, from the perspective of their algorithyms), they see countless new bloggers and website owners quit within the first few months.
By 6 months the number of people who give up is pretty high and they have no reason to think your site will be any different...
... that is, until you keep going beyond 6 months and prove it to them (in a really competitve niche it may take longer). But success only comes beyond the point where most people give up.
Kyle has said it before (and I'm paraphrasing here)... "you can't fail, all you can do is quit"
I can't say it any better than that so I'll leave Kyle with the final word and end it here :-)
- Jay
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Congrats on the 666 milestone.
I'm not saying there's any significance to this number but we had a locomotive with that number and it stayed in the shop more than out. lol
Oh no. that's not good.
So what you're sayin' is...
"I'm not sayin'...
... I'm just sayin" š
Thanks for reading KC, I appreciate it :-)
Jay
Congratulations Jay. You are correct. It takes time to build a business, especially with affiliate marketing. Any business for that matter takes a long time to see profit margins increase. Its true that organic traffic takes time. Thanks for sharing with us. It gives me the motivation not to quit and I been here for 6 months, aint gonna quit that is for sure.
Thanks Brenda, I love your comparison between building an online business and a traditional offline business. You're exactly right, they both take time to see a profit.
The advantage to an online business is that it costs pennies by comparison. The disadvantage to an online business is also that it costs pennies by comparison.
It's too easy to not take it seriously.
When you've got 100K or more invested into a traditional business, you'll do whatever it takes to make it work. It doesn't matter how long or how hard you have to work... you don't have a choice.
An online business is too easy to walk away from. It's too easy to put off until tomorrow, next week or two months from now. But if you treat it like a 100K business (which it is) you can't help but succeed.
Thanks for taking the time to read and post your comment :-)
Jay
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Wow! 666 is a major milestone and thanks for sharing that! I've just hit 100 referrals in 30 days, and I would be so happy if I were you to finally hit nearly 700 in 30 days! Can I ask, how much traffic do you have? Are you using SEO, PPC, or both? How long have you been blogging on the website? Is the 12% conversion to sales accurate for you?
Awesome, congrats on hitting 100! That's a major milestone and confirms what you're doing is exactly what you need to keep doing.
As far as traffic, it's around 80K per month currently and that's strictly SEO. My domain is just a little over a year but my site started on a different domain in April or May 2017. As far as the 12% conversion rate, nope... mine has been significantly lower but that has more to do with my particular audience and what they're looking for than it does with Wealthy Affiliate or anything else :-)
Thanks for reading and commenting Tiffany, I appreciate it,
Jay
Thanks for responding! I wasn't sure if you would consider my questions 'personal" or not. Wow! You're killing it with traffic. I'm about 1 year behind you in terms of site age.
I started mine in February 2018, and with the current growth curve, it would be interesting to see how much traffic I could have in 1 year, but 80,000/mo using SEO would be pretty cool. Thanks for the post and your comments.
It's helping me to challenge myself for the better. Do you publish alot? Daily? And, do you spend equal or more time on promotion (SEO, video marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, etc.)?
Hey Tiffany, it sounds like what you're doing is working and you're not far behind. The first year is definitely the toughest mentally because you're typically not getting the results you were hoping for.
But then you slowly begin to see your traffic go up and it's not from your current efforts, it's from all the work you put in the year before. If you're not used to it (and I'm not), it's kind of surreal and in a way it feels a little uncomfortable. Like you can't put your hands on it or control it. It's like being a passenger in a car when all you've known is being the driver.
As far as where I spend my time, I only started to see real growth when I stopped playing with shiny toys and focused on SEO and writing content. I was spinning my wheels and I remember at the time seeing Grace (Littlemama) posting her new articles to her Google+ page relentlessly.
I wasted a year and thousands of dollars on tools (gimmicks really), courses, paid traffic, someone to do the follow-unfollow thing on social and so on. I'm sure that stuff works for some people but for me it was just a waste of time and money.
I learned a lot during that year so I don't necessarily regret it, but as far as where I'm at now... I only started to see real results when I stopped chasing rabbits so to speak. I followed Grace's lead and last year I only focused on keyword research and content... but I focused to the point I didn't even add affiliate links, opt-ins, or anything conversion related to my content because worrying about conversions was just another distraction I didn't need.
That was good for last year and it's what I needed at the time. But this year I'm really riding (and dependent) on that momentum. I've published very little this year because most of my time has been spent going through all of those posts from last year and optimizing them for conversions.
I do very little social, just some minimum keeping the lights on stuff. I'll post a link to my latest posts but that's about it and I see very little if any traffic from social.
My big focus over the last month or two has been understanding email marketing because I think it's important for long-term sustainability. So I've been immersed in courses doing that. Once I'm comfortable with it and get into a rhythm with email my plan is to put my foot to the floor again and get back to publishing content on a regular basis.
Thanks so much Jay! Youāre story shows how each journey is different, and Iām so glad things are turning in your favor now. I agree with you about email marketing. I hope to continue seeing your uphill results! Best wishes.