How to Blog Lessons Learned & Stats 2017-07

I know I haven't written in a while. I've been busy on my blog and social media so please forgive me if you've missed me. ;)

This is the first of a monthly series I intend to share with the Wealthy Affiliate community on how I blog, lessons learned, and stats.

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Musical Themes

I tried to use the Genesis framework which I bought in 2014 for $59. You're supposed to use a child theme with the Genesis framework. There are some free ones but most Genesis child themes are premium. I had the Foodie Pro child theme which cost me $25 in 2014. I hated the look even after tweaking CSS and HTML so I decided to try the Eleven40 child theme. It cost me $33.71 in July 2017. I really liked the look and feel but the menu drove me nuts. Again, I can't code very well so I decided to try a free theme again.

I spent an eternity going through thousands of free themes and settled on Olsen Lite. I only had to add a few lines of code in CSS to change the default font family and font sizes because I could barely read the words on my own website.

Something happened around mid-July. I think this is when my domain split into two separate websites: http and https. I didn't realize this until I changed to the Vantage theme because that's when I saw both versions. Crazy! For some strange reason I thought that changing the theme again might help.

By the way, I love Vantage and Site Origin looks like it will be around a while. For a great looking theme with tons of features, I recommend Vantage. I have no idea what impact it will have on SEO. I believe content and visual appeal matter most but what do I know about SEO?

Finally, I reached out to my "sponsor" Nathaniell who recommended that I contact Site Support. They were able to merge my split sites back into one.

Phew!

This did have an impact on traffic. The second half of July was horrible. I realize now that people were landing on my http version which was all jacked up because I was actually creating content on the https side.

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Traffic

I set up Google Analytics in July. I set up Bing Webmaster and Yandex Webmaster in mid-July.

I was wondering why traffic started dwindling mid-month after tinkering with my themes. It took nearly two weeks to figure out my blog split into two separate http and https websites! Mon oeil!

I didn't set up Bing or Yahoo until mid-month so I'm not sure how much traffic I received from them.

Learn to Be Great got 11 clicks from organic searches at Google, Bing, and Yahoo combined.

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Comments

47 comments this month. A little over 50% were from Wealthy Affiliates. THANKS!

On another note, a major source of my traffic has been from the backlinks I created by commenting on other people's blogs. I follow all of them and like reading their content so my intentions are pure. Do not underestimate other websites as a source of traffic. If your comments are noticed, people sometimes click on your links.

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Referrals

I joined Rockstar Finance and receive a lot of traffic from other personal finance bloggers from the daily feed. The feed brought the Financial Samurai to my blog who left a comment on one of my posts. That was pretty cool for this newbie because I've followed him for years and am a big fan!

Another great source of traffic has been the Wealthy Affiliate community. Many have come to my site to leave comments from the links I've left on my profile at Wealthy Affiliate. Again, THANKS!

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Email Subscribers

4 new email subscribers. I need to work on attaining more email subscribers but time is so limited when you work full-time, volunteer, raise kids, work out, tend to a spouse's needs, and many other "excuses." :)

I'll set up MailChimp sometime in August and really focus on this. I'll probably send out a monthly newsletter although it really should be weekly.

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Social Media

This is how I fared on social media. I got my @$$ handed to me!

• Facebook: 52 followers (+9), 53 likes, 2 shares
• Twitter: 148 followers (+143), 20 link clicks, 135 tweets, 7 re-tweets, 22K impressions, 1.6K profile visits, 97 mentions, 2.2% engagement rate, 166 likes, 81 replies
• Instagram: 38 followers (+38)
• Pinterest: Did not set up Pinterest yet.
• Google+: 0 followers (+0) - posted most of my articles and received some traffic but haven't figured out how to attract followers.
• Medium: I wanted to post a great article here but I'm a bit intimidated by the quality of the best articles. Writers on Medium know how to blog for real. Maybe in August...
• Linkedin: I wanted to post a great article here but it's got to be my best work because my professional reputation is on the line here. Additionally, I'm not sure if I want to promote my blog here just yet. Again, maybe in August...

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Summary

Blogging sure is a lot of work, not just on the blog but on social media and other blogs posting comments. I've added a few affiliate links but I am not focused on monetizing my blog yet. I want lots of traffic, followers, and subscribers first.

In my website's monthly blog status report, I wrote a brief blurb on why I chose to use Wealthy Affiliate/Site Rubix. It's pretty honest and good (in my honest opinion). You can read my full blog post here:

How to Blog - Monthly Status Report 2017-07

Yours in health, wealth, and life!

Founder, Learn to Be Great