Seventeenth Month of WA - Happy New Year!

bykevinzshan

647 followers

4 years ago

Hi WA friends, I hope you all had a great holiday and happy new year! As many of you may know, I spent my Christmas in China and came back for a 5 day final push of 2019. Today, I'm going to give a quick update on that plan.

Today's blog post is also my monthly report so I will give a quick run down on the month of December. More importantly, however, January 2020 is the first month of the first new decade and the new me. So I'll also give a quick run down on my goals for this year and 5 years down the road.

If you haven't checked out last month's post, you can do so here: Sixteenth Month of WA - Limitations

Without further ado, let's get started!

December Progress Report

December was a slow month. Going to China stopped me from being able to publish posts on Medium and social media and I ended up not writing any blog posts for any of my sites because of laziness.

I was training and playing quite a bit. Intense badminton training during the weekdays and sightseeing on the weekends. I was exhausted!

As a result, I didn't make any improvements to any of my sites.

All my social media remained relatively stagnant. Facebook and Twitter had no changes at all. My Instagram may have dropped 30 followers or so from 2070 to 2040.

I gained one new subscriber on YouTube and the original video I published now has over 29k views. Pinterest currently sits at 11k monthly viewers and throughout each week, I gained about 1-4 followers without pinning anything.

The same cannot be said for traffic and earnings.

Instead of remaining at around 200 daily viewers and $0.10 per day, I dropped down to 100 daily viewers and $0.05 per day. Basically, my entire site's traffic halved.

It was even worse when Christmas came around. On Christmas day, I actually only had 39 viewers.

But it's not as if I suddenly dropped in rankings or something. I think these changes have to do with search trends in my niche.

I was looking into this drop and didn't really find out about any significant new issues. In fact, I actually saw some of my posts push further up in Google rankings.

One of my blog posts that was originally ranked #5 for a certain keyword was now at #1. A very pleasant surprise.

Some of my other blog posts that were already occupying the first spot on Google were still there, but it seems as if people have stopped searching as often for some of those keywords.

I'm not worried about this dip if it's an issue of trends. Trends will always come and go, but if I provide value and information that is evergreen, there will always be people coming to my site.

One of my goals for 2020 and the next decade is to write more, but I'll talk about that later.

Let's go back to the detail about how some of my posts were moving up the ranks in Google. Specifically regarding the website redesign plan I had implemented a few months ago.

The plan is working, but not necessarily producing the outcomes that I would have liked.

Improvements in ranking are great and all, but my bounce rate still remains above 80% and my session duration continues to average around 1 minute.

I will continue working on this plan and let everyone know the results when I have finally gotten through everything.

The Final 5 Days Of 2019, Failed But Satisfied

I wanted to get a lot done when I came back from China. I wanted to rebuild my Medium blogging habits, submit all my homework, and finish writing my e-books.

I created a plan in this post at WA: A Small Catastrophe, The Final Push Of 2019 detailing what I had to do every day.

I severely overestimated my own ability and underestimated the amount of work required to do everything I listed down.

But I'm not feeling down like I normally do when I can't finish everything. This time, the feeling is a little different.

Although, I didn't manage to accomplish the goals I had set out, I worked my butt off and learned a lot more about myself.

I learned more about my real limits and how much I could really do every day and I pushed those limits a little bit.

Now that I understand a little more about myself, I can make much better plans that adhere to what I can really accomplish with my time.

Here's what I got done:

• Medium blog post for each day
• All my current events assignments
• 2 essays for English, a Social Studies unit test, and an English reading comprehension test

Plus from the last two days:

• Medium blog post for each day
• 2 essays for English

Here's what I have left for school:

• 3 Social Studies essays, 2 unit tests, and 2 quizzes
• 3 English essays and 1 quiz

Right now I'm able to write an essay and a Medium blog post every day with ease. If I look at today, I actually wrote a 1,500 word Medium blog post, a 2,000 word essay, and now I'm writing a Wealthy Affiliate blog post.

Using these to-do lists and pushing myself has really helped me develop my writing skills. I don't feel tired at all compared to just a year ago where writing a single blog post may take days.

During the last five days, I did not account for some of the other productive things I did but didn't include into my to-do list. Those things include reading more, practicing the piano for more than a hour each day, and also starting a new training program.

That's why I'm feeling quite satisfied with the final 5 days of 2019 despite being unable to finish everything that I wanted to finish.

2020, Keeping Momentum

2018 and 2019 were the hardest years of my life. These two years were the years where I sucked at everything and totally lost sight of the path I walked.

The stories are quite long and a bit depressing. I faced many of my vulnerabilities and fears and published my thoughts and feelings on Medium.

I won't bother people here with those stories unless enough people want me to tell them. Comment down below or DM me if you would like me to share those stories here at WA as well!

Anyways, towards the end of 2019, I refound myself and the path I needed to walk. Now that I see the path, it's time for me to take steps again.

With a new approach and attitude towards life and business, 2020 is going to be the year where my internal transformations from 2019 pay off externally.

On Medium, I already made a detailed plan about what I'm going to do for the rest of January as well as general outlines for various projects I intend to complete throughout 2020.

But having read an email from Jim Edwards about the difference between goals and outcomes, in my post here at WA, I would like to focus on the goals.

The difference between goals and outcomes as described by Jim is that a goal is something that fully relies on what you think and can do while an outcome relies on several other factors for it to work out.

For example, a goal would be "I want to read 30 minutes every day in 2020" while an outcome would be "I want to make $100,000 in 2020."

The difference is that you can always control the goal but you can't always control the outcome. Making $100,000 in 2020 relies on several factors. The economy can't suddenly crash, Google can't come out with a new update that kills all affiliate marketing sites, Wealthy Affiliate must remain alive and well, etc.

Although many of these potential disasters might seem unlikely, it's better to focus on reaching a goal rather than its outcome.

So instead of setting a goal of making $100,000 this year, focus on the actions that might lead up to the outcome.

How does someone make $100,000 per year from blogging? Well, they probably have a lot of visitors that come to their site every day. How do we get a lot of visitors every day? We write blog posts targeting great keywords on a consistent basis.

If the desired outcome is making $100,000 this year, we should focus on a goal of writing more consistently.

2019 showed me that the Wealthy Affiliate training and methods work. Although I wasn't writing consistently (about once or twice a month), in March 2019 I started seeing my posts that I wrote in August 2018 gain traction. Then as each month passed, my numbers only continued to increase. 10 to 30 to 50 to 100 to 130... and I saw my first few dollars!

I have never made those dollars consistently, though because I slacked off. I wasn't being patient or diligent enough. Now that I have learned my lesson, I will go into 2020 putting my best foot forward.

My goal is to be able to write 3 blog posts every day eventually. I'm already writing one blog post per day via Medium (it's like a personal journal) and I intend to slowly build on top of that habit.

Once I clean everything related to school, I will add writing a blog post for Get Good At Badminton as one of my daily tasks. As writing two blog posts becomes my habit, I will add the third blog, KAZSMoney.

I don't think I will go further than three blog posts per day. I think three will be the limit especially since I have others things that need to be done on a daily basis. Things such as the promotion of my businesses on social media, playing the piano, and badminton training.

It's a big goal, but slow and steady is the key.

A New Decade

I am 17. I'll be completely transparent about that.

2020 (November) is the year I turn 18 and thus, radical changes are coming real soon.

As I graduate high school, I need to think about what the next decade will look like for me. I've been thinking about who I want to be and what I want to do for quite some time.

Becoming an adult means that I have to consider a lot of new things that I never had to worry about before. Taxes, housing, food expenses, utility bills, etc.

Thus, what I do in this year is super important. Success in my online businesses will be the difference between struggling with finances for the rest of my life versus freedom to do anything I want whenever I want.

The plan I made for 2020 is to make a truckload of money, invest a large portion into stocks and maybe real estate when I turn 18, and make sure I earn enough to cover my lifestyle so that my parents won't have to worry about me.

But in the end, I learned that doing online business isn't all about making money. It's about changing other people's lives for the better. Because only then, can I be proud of my online businesses.

So welcome, a new decade of helping others out and changing their lives with my messages.

What Changes Are You Bringing?

My goal this year is to be able to write 3 blog posts every day. What's your goal?

Let me know in the comment section down below on how you're going to change your life and the lives of others.

Joining Wealthy Affiliate has been one of my best decisions. Let us go into this decade together, make new friends, and achieve our goals together!