Ninth Month of WA - Mixed Feelings
This month has been full of mixed feelings. A little bit of regret and anxiety from some of my sites, but eye-opening experiences and confidence boostings for my other site.
Here's last month post if you want to read it: Eight Month of WA - Progress?
Let's get into the bad news first.
KAZSMoney
After getting comments asking me how much money I've made off a certain program and watching videos that list out all the reasons why I shouldn't have the fake it to make it mindset, I realized that I am not suitable currently to write in the make money online niche. The main reason being, that even the products that seem like they're good and do have people that have gotten success from them such as Wealthy Affiliate, I just can't offer my personal experiences to help readers out.
Thus some of my posts may be deemed incaccurate and not suitable as a review and from the feeling of not being able to help others with this site, I have only written two posts on this site for this month.
So I'm in a slight dilemma right now. I'm thinking of maybe restarting on another site after I've made money in other niches but then all the hard work I put into buying the domain name and writing all those posts would go to a waste.
But after some time, I decided I'm going to leave the site for now until I make money on other sites and then come back to write about those experiences. I will also revise some of the reviews and posts despite it taking a lot of work.
Clear Learner
This is my site where I'm experimenting with a broader niche. At the core, it's based on education, more specifically, methods of getting really good at school and such but it does have plans of being involved in many subjects such as history, math, computer science, etc.
It's like a school basically.
Like KAZSMoney, I have written very little on the site this month. However, it's not like KAZSMoney where I can't really write anything, in this site I do know what I can write and I do have plans for how I want to grow this site.
I want to make a huge database of articles teaching certain topics and then build apps or courses that people can use to get better at, for example math, and then link to these articles if they need extra help.
This way I can help people pass their next exam or learn something new and make money. I can make the app or course cost money or make money through affiliate links that lead to supplementary textbooks or courses.
Of course, it's a huge task and something I probably won't be able to do myself. Luckily, I have a few people helping me to make this happen.
First, I need to write the posts.
Some Other Websites
I spent a lot of time this month reading and learning about different businesses and marketing techniques. Some things really blew my mind on what I could do and made me realize that I can revive some of my dead sites from the past.
So when I get the time, I will try different methods in the name of experimenting and see if I could get my old sites up again and making money to diversify my income.
Get Good At Badminton
My main focus this month was my badminton site. The first site I created with Wealthy Affiliate.
It started out strong when I first got into Wealthy Affiliate but I slowly lost the motivation to write due to school and work. And thus I was putting out one post per month versus one post every day from the summer months.
I'm glad to say that I am fully back on track now with even more motivation and ideas on how to grow my site. I'm still occasionally missing a day of posting but it has never been streaks of no posts. I have definitely improved my consistency of getting posts out.
And it's paying off.
I'm proud to say that every single one of my posts on Get Good At Badminton is indexed on Google and I have many posts high in the rankings.
Traffic growth has been crazy. I am now averaging 40 users from organic search results only (although social media doesn't make much of a difference) which is double the amount from last month! Like a bad day for this site now is about 20 users compared to a few months ago where 0 to 1 users plagued the site.
There is a problem though. This traffic isn't necessarily translating into money for the site. Although I do consistently get about 3 cents per day from Adsense, it isn't anything to change my life. I have still yet to make my first affiliate commission as well.
I'd say the biggest problem with this site is Amazon. I often found that the products I review are overpriced on Amazon (almost double or quadruple in some cases) or Amazon is plain missing the product or customizability options. It really turns readers off as I am getting clicks to the links but no sales.
I have thought of another to monetize my site and that is through email marketing with bigger commission products or building my own course. Building the course is definitely another big task but I am slowly accomplishing it.
I also need to get on YouTube ASAP. It would benefit my blog so much and help increase my ability to help readers. So that's another in progress thing.
Speaking of social media, things have improved since last month, specifically for Pinterest and Instagram. I honestly love these two for their organic reach. My Pinterest is now sitting at 8.5K monthly viewers as opposed to 4k from last month. This hasn't done much in terms of traffic to my website though which is unfortunate.
If anyone is reading this, I have looked a little into Tailwind and Pinterest automation. Has anyone had noticeable increases in traffic in their website after using this?
Instagram is also much like Pinterest. It lacks in website clicks (although I get a bit more clicks than Pinterest) but the amount of people on my account has grown. I am now at 83 followers to 54 posts and following 6 as opposed to 8 followers to 22 posts from last month.
I also noticed that the amount of likes on my posts have increased quite significantly from averaging 4 to a few hundred. I think it's mainly due to a change in what hashtags I am using.
And just to note, I have not spent any money on growing these social sites at all.
Facebook and Twitter has been problematic. My posts on both sites always sit at around 0-1 likes and followers haven't grown at all. Unfortunate but it is what it is.
Conclusion
Thanks WA members for reading this! As for the next month, I will spend more time continuing to increase the amount of content I can put out and try to make those affiliate commissions. Cross my fingers...
Have a great day everyone!
EDIT: A lot of this is documentation of what's been happening and random ideas being listed down. I am following Kyle and Carson's training and I do understand the time and dedication needed. Most of the ideas or experimentation projects I mention in here are meant for the future after I do well with one site first.
Recent Comments
12
Hi, Kevinshan.
I read your post "Ninth Month of WA - Mixed Feelings". First, I think you did a WONDERFUL job of self-analysis and self-assessment. That is one of the most important things you can do when trying to improve yourself as a person, improve your relationships with others, and improve your business success. Second, your post is incredibly helpful to anyone else who is or has struggled with monetizing their website. You were very specific in the problem that you had with Amazon, specific with your plan to improve, and specific with the pros and cons of Pintrest and Instagram. You have provided helpful information to all of us and showed that you have integrity and character----despite some adversity, you have analyzed your situation, made adjustments, and persisted. I believe that you will achieve success. Thanks for your post, and I wish you much success!
melinda
Hey, Kevin. Just take a few deep breaths. You’ll be okay.
I think I have a pretty good read on what your issue is, and I have some advice, but be warned… you’re probably not going to like it.
Building an online business is a huge undertaking. It takes time and more hard work than most people are willing to give. More importantly, it requires laser focus. And that is just for one site, one business.
You say that you’ve been at this for only nine months, and you’ve identified THREE sites – plus “some others” – that you are working on. That is not good. You are spreading your efforts out too thin, which is leading to you not getting traction on any of them.
Here is what I suggest. Decide which niche you are most passionate about (NOT which one is the most “successful” at this point… if badminton is not your real passion, dump it.)
Pick something that you are so excited about that it keeps you up at night and wakes you up in the morning. Then get rid of the rest of the sites. You don’t have to delete them if you think you might go back in the future, but that is the key… in the FUTURE.
Next, take that passion site and put ALL of your effort into that. Write an article a day. Write two if you can. Just pile it on harder than you've ever done before. I promise, if you were to get 30, 40, even 100 quality articles on a site like that, in another nine months we will not be having this same discussion.
The same goes for your training. You said you spend a lot of time this month reading and learning about different businesses and marketing techniques and then “experimenting”. Don’t. While education, in general, is good, in this case, again, you’re losing focus.
Once you have a successful site up and running, feel free to experiment and test all you want. But don’t waste time spinning your wheels on it right now when you have nothing. The whole key to experimenting is going in knowing that 99 times out 100 it most likely won’t work. If you are already successful, you can wait for that one in a hundred to come along. If you’re just getting started, however, you can’t afford to lose 99 times in a row. Stick to a tried and true, proven formula.
I strongly recommend you go back through the WA training from the beginning. Do not rush. Take your time, and just follow the training program step-by-step, and try not to move on to the next lesson until you have completed all the recommended tasks and checked them off the checklist. This is important because later lessons are often built on the foundation work you did previously.
Do not skip lessons, and don’t “experiment” with anything that is not part of the system. Do exactly what Kyle says to do and no less. Again, the secret to success is focus. You’ve clearly got the drive to succeed, and if you channel all of that energy into a single project, you’ll be unstoppable! :-)
I hope this helps. If you have any questions or need anything, please don't hesitate to ask.
Thanks for your comment! I am extremely passionate about my badminton site and that's where all of my efforts are going right now. I think I should have put in a note or emphasized "in the future" for my other sites. I've definitely heard this message before and I am taking it to the heart. KAZSMoney and Clear Learner happened a while back so I still list them here just for purposes of documentation and the other sites are random dropshipping sites I made a little bit of money on way before.
I can't get rid of the extra books and education though. Partly because it automatically gets fed to me because of school and also because the books and articles I have been reading actually motivate to keep focus and get more done. But I do understand your point of getting rid of distractions.
And don't worry about my experimenting part. Again I should have emphasized in the future because it really was just a random thought that I listed down for the purpose of getting it out of my head.
I'm sure patience and consistency is the key and in about 3 months my badminton site will probably double its traffic again as that's the time I found it took for my site to gain traction from posts in August last year.
Thanks again for your insight!
That's it, brother. If badminton is it, dump everything you have into that. I can sum this entire business up into two simple words: content and consistency.
Quality content is what your readers are searching for, so do your keyword research, identify what things they are typing into the search engines, and deliver a high-quality result for them and they will be happy.
Post that quality content consistently on a reasonable schedule and Google will start to pay attention. And then once Google sees your readers sticking around because your content is so good, you will quickly move up the rankings which, in turn, brings in even more traffic. It's a snowball rolling downhill effect.
Oh, and make sure you write for people, not the search engines. No keyword stuffing or any of that nonsense. Real readers hate that crap. Give them good quality information. Remember, Google is in the business of delivering search results that give their users what they are looking for. A happy reader doth a happy Google make :-)
Looks like you're in the right track. Just stay focus.
I am curious...
If there is 1 thing you can do to get better results, what do you think that one thing is?
Just putting out more quality content for my readers and followers. It's already getting me better results.
that's great! definitely quality content is a big part of your success. Just stay motivated by your passion.
See more comments
Don’t worry bud. It takes time. I knew nothing about affiliate marketing when I started about a year ago. I’m not majinh anywhere near enough to change my life yet. But I’m feeling more confident.
I have learned a ton. And I’m glad I made the investment in my future.
Best of luck and keep us updated.
Yep!