My Gardening Site is Under Construction.
I Had an Epiphany.
One of my websites has been struggling for some time now. I haven't added to it for over a year because I came to the conclusion it was a waste of time and not going to perform well.
Then today I had one of those bright light moments. Up to now I thought I needed to make money from this site. That became my sole aim.
Isnt that normal you ask...
No. I forgot Kyle's training. Always provide your potential readers with answers to the many questions that they ask when initially doing their Google search. Create a re pore with your readers first.
I completely lost track of how I should be constructing my website. Instead of creating a relationship with my readers first, I stacked it with product reviews.
But that's not the only Issue.
I created an account with Amazon. That's okay you say! I don't agree. The average commission I receive from Amazon is around 3%. That means that if I sell a spade for $30 I receive 90 cents, I would have to sell a lot of them to reach a sustainable income.
So today is the start of a new direction with my main niche website.
The first thing I did was to place my site in maintenance mode. Then I deleted all the review articles.
What will be my Next Steps?
I intend to revamp, improve and lengthen all my informative articles.
Once that is completed I will remove the maintenance code and reopen my gardening website .
Next I will create new, compelling blogs. Ones that the audience will want to read.
I won't monetize my blog again until I regularly receive over 100 visitors a week from each informative article. I don't care if this takes me over a year to achieve, I am determined to do it right
When I believe I have enough of a consistent audience visiting the sight I will be looking at ways to create an income from it, but I won't be selling gardening tools for 90 cents income.
PS. I'm giving Amazon the flick.
Feel free to comment below.
All The Best. Jim
Recent Comments
67
It sounds like you have a serious plan Jim!
I have had a wild ride with Amazon. When they shut down my account they owed me over $600 and I had earned hundreds before that. No, I didn't sell that much of any product I reviewed. The benefit of Amazon links is that anything anyone buys on Amazon gives you a commission. If they clicked on your link to look at shovels and bought a shed for $500 you would get the commission on that. I know that doesn't happen often but you get a lot of pairs of shoes and books and pairs of jeans.
Anyway, I don't have an Amazon account anymore since they shut me down for writing about Covid. I am torn about trying to get back on with them since I have not found any other platform that compares. I don't like supporting them by being an affiliate however and I would love to find better alternatives. If you sell high end products it is easier to find alternatives.
Jessica
True Jessica. I'm going to look for something very different to monetize on my site. Maybe gardening ebooks, maybe my own ebooks etc., I'm not totally sure yet but I have given myself a year to get it right.
Hi! Jim, Nice to hear that you are pulling up your sleeve to start improving your posts. From my experience, I am confident Google like it and will reward you soon.
Here are two links, I got from Parameter's post, https://bulkresizephotos.com/en; https://batchcompress.com/en, it helps to re-sizes and compress images to below 30KB. You can get rid all image plugins. And keep your website page lighter below 134KB. KRAKEN sudden failed and give some trouble to some of my webpage, look like our website fate is better control of us not the plugin. They also asked to go Pro or donation.
Link management is also very important, replaced broken links and add link alt text.
When you update any post, choose the focus key phrase from your post title, keep below 30 words. Add the focus key phrase in the introduction, meta descriptions, H2+H3 Headings but below 75%, image alt text, every content paragraph (URL), and conclusion.
Delete Ads Inserter because the ads caused my website failed the Core Web Vitals.
Add FAQ to answer the user's question in any post. Not sure why you want to delete the review posts.
Since the end of May, I tried to update my old post, I found many good advice from the community and start updating my old posts. Until end of July, I still not completed yet but will not give up until success.
Sharing my updating old posts with you, I hope, is useful to you.
Great blog post Jim! You're doing the right thing, when it's time to monetize your gardening site I'm sure you'll have lots of people buying your recommended products. Gardening is really popular isn't it?
Amazon are a bit stingy, their average commission is pitiful. Clickbank is better for paying commissions, up to 85% in some cases. 75% seems to be the average. Best of luck with your project!
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Hi Jim,
Great minds think alike. I just wrote a blog on the approach you are planning on using for your gardening website. You may be interested to read it: The Jeff Bezos Conundrum And Valuable Lessons For Affiliate Marketing This is the only way to go. I have created two new websites and my sole goal is to build traffic first through interesting and helpful content before I promote any product.
Cheers.
Edwin
Great to hear Edwin. I'll definitely check out your link. Hopefully we can compare notes over time.