Twelfth Month of WA - One Full Year In!

bykevinzshan

647 followers

Updated 5 years ago

Wow, it has been one full year in at Wealthy Affiliate. This post will be a little different that all my previous posts as I will take some time to reflect and summarize what I have been able to accomplish within an entire year and also some goals for the next few months and years.

Read last month's post if you would like: Eleventh Month of WA - Sparks To Fire

This year has definitely been of ups and downs, realizations, hard work, slacking off, making mistakes, making progress, and a lot about discovering what I can do and what I may be able to accomplish.

The Mistakes

Being at a young age and entering the online business world so early means that I am prone to mistakes. Luckily I haven't encountered any scams that have significantly destroyed my ability to perform.

But I did make a lot of mistakes that helped me discover more about what I can do and my pathways going forward.

Each and every mistake is a valuable lesson going forward and it will not only build my ability to rebound from losses, but to learn more and avoid future losses.

My biggest mistake was trying to do so much so early and making unrealistic goals.

When I first started at Wealthy Affiliate, I started with my Get Good At Badminton site. I had all this motivation and the feeling of doing something refreshing as I had just failed with two dropshipping sites.

Going through the training was a breeze. I was writing a lot and following everything the training had to offer. In my early days, I was getting almost two posts out every day easily.

Naturally I thought that I was able to do the same but with mutiple other sites at the same time. And I thought, by doing this, I could double or even triple the speed and amount of money I could earn.

Many of the experienced Wealthy Affiliate members will probably know what happens next...

Instead getting around 6 posts out every day, I became inconsistent and floated around multiple websites. Even before finishing the Online Entrepreneur Certification on my first site, I put out another one in a super broad niche, and a third in the make money online niche.

Within this time, school started and all my extra-curriculars and the amount of posts I was able to get out drastically dropped. I had no energy, no motivation, and was conflicted between getting my school things done and focusing on my blogs.

I was spread thin and eventually as school intensified, the amount of posts I was getting out dropped to 0. I would go to school and then go to work, then come back home exhausted and unmotivated on the amount of posts I need to write since I had so many websites.

At the same time, my shiny object syndrome was kicking in. I saw these new ads on dropshipping and other make money online subjects and took a few leaps.

I bought and a briefly looked at some of these courses... without taking any action or only putting in minimal effort into them.

I continued to overestimate how much I could accomplish by the 2019 New Year. I was thinking, every month I can get posts out, learn more, and do more. The opposite happened.

Instead my motivation and productivity continued to tank and I basically became a dreamer. I would dream up of all the things I could be doing and create these elaborate unachievable plans.

But now I realize these mistakes going forward and I will change my angle of approach and increase my focus to succeed.

The Successes

I didn't make enough money. Didn't make make over $100 by 3 months, 6 months, or even the whole year. This is the point or actually earlier, where most people quit.

I have spent $564 USD on Wealthy Affiliate alone and I've only made $15.32 from Google Adsense and it's stuck in there until it reaches $100. (I've also made 3 sales from Amazon Associates totalling to $1.67 but for some reason my account got rejected again. Currently waiting on Amazon to respond to my email.)

Despite not making enough money, there is evidence that my sites can become successful if I become more consistent and focus.

Although shiny object syndrome and buying into other courses have significantly hindered my ability to produce more, each one of the courses provided a lot of value to complement what I'm doing with my business and allow me to create approaches that can be more profitable and better overall for my business.

I've learned so much this past year about online marketing. From SEO to email marketing to content marketing to Facebook ads to copywriting and funnels. Knowledge truly is power.

So even if I wasn't able to publish as many posts and earn money, I was able to learn more and ultimately, I feel like the knowledge may just be more valuable than the potential money I could have earned.

Of course, if I could do both that would be phenomenal, but the circumstance I'm in is too much for to do that currently.

But back to actual website progress.

Not all the months were do didilly that and lackluster work. As you may have read, I was actually getting an amazing number of posts out in the beginning and each and every one of those were targeting low-hanging fruit keywords.

Many of those posts are sitting on the first page of Google and my Get Good At Badminton site is getting consistent traffic now. I could remember days where getting zero people to my site was common. Now I'm averaging almost 100 people per day.

Part of the reason is also due to social media. I never imagined how powerful running a giveaway was. My strongest social media for Get Good At Badminton is Instagram and it was only recently started 3-4 months ago.

I went from 0-1,400 followers within that time and it's growing much faster right now. I'm getting an average of 20-40 follower increase per day depending on the amount I post and if I do my follow-unfollow strategy.

Social media now makes up to almost 1/2 of my website traffic and definitely consists of traffic that stays on my website longer and has lower bounce rate.

Seeing all this growth recently strengthens my belief that this process will work and that my site will continue to grow if I keep up the work.

I am proud to say that my badminton site is becoming more and more authoritarian in the badminton niche as each day passes. The long term establishment is certainly coming.

Future

I want to make my next year here at WA much more productive.

The most obvious step I have to take is to consistently put out more blog posts. Learning from my mistakes, I'm going to keep my goals relatively conservative in the beginning and slowly build up.

To start off, I want to be able to post at least 2 blog posts per week and make 1 video a month for my badminton site. I will definitely be aiming higher than this though, but just to start off and build habits.

Where I want to take my badminton site though becomes a bit of a different story.

I'm not sure that I want to continue as an Amazon Associate for Get Good At Badminton. Badminton vendors on Amazon are generally low quality and don't offer enough customizability option that they should.

Once my Amazon Associate rejection clears up, I will probably continue to make more reviews and quality content for my badminton site, however, if I gain enough traction and income, I think I would build my site to include its own badminton store.

Then I would be able to reap much larger profits as I'm selling my own products and also offer quality service to my customers and fans such as stringing and other offers.

The downside is that I need the money to do this. I need warehouses or other storage options and I also need to buy the badminton products wholesale in bulk upfront. This alone could cost tens to hundreds of thousands.

It is certainly not accomplishable for me in the next year but it is a pathway that I can go.

For now though, monetisation strategies other than Google Adsense and Amazon Associates are selling merch and creating my course and combining larger paying affiliate offers related to badminton, fitness, and health.

These things are certainly more feasible and I will be spending time to develop these things and work them into my content. It will go something like this:

Blog post (top 5 exercise _) --> get a free e-book on badminton exercises --> email list --> selling my course.

If anyone has heard of Russell Brunson or ClickFunnels, that's basically the method I'm going to implement into my business.

Building these courses will also be rather fulfilling as I will be able to help many out there who can't pay for regular expensive badminton training and improve and develop people's skills and passion for badminton.

Over time as I build habit and consistency and can post more, I would like to write on the two other websites I started as well.

But I will see... first thing is my badminton site!

Note: I have not upgraded to yearly on WA yet mainly because I don't have the updront money to be able to do it and also because I want to wait until Black Friday.

Thanks for reading!