March Update- 39 Referrals, 7 Premium

Wow this month has been a weird one!
With the whole world on lockdown with COVID, you may think that more and more people would be interested in starting an online business or learning how to make money from home.
But here's what happened to my traffic from Google:
This is the first time my traffic has taken a notable dip since it's started growing. It's safe to say this is how I felt at the start of March...
My wife and I were supposed to visit Singapore and our parents had booked a week each to visit us in sunny Qatar so I had thought this month was going to really lack on how much work I could do.
In the end I managed to do much more due to the lockdown and my traffic still tanked! Boo!
But don't worry there is a happy ending as you'll see later. But for now...
Here's the stats
SEO traffic- 6979 (up from 6164)
New posts- 22 (18 reviews)
Total posts- 236 (I also cleared out some dead wood this month)
Words written- 63,357 (including 4 emails to my list)
Refs- 39 (down from 45 last month)
Upgrade- 7 (same as last month)
Recurring- 15 (up from 10)
* Annual upgrades- 4
See my Feb Update here.
Takeaways
So it's certainly been a weird month but here are my takeaways that hopefully can help you too...
- My traffic halved overnight... but I still had more organic traffic from the previous month!
- Being consistent is far more important than worrying when traffic declines... traffic will vary (just be aware of this)
- I checked my main keywords on Google and they were all in a similar position. Therfore, I knew it wasn't Google penalising my website, but just a lack of searches compared to normal (pretty understandable as the whole world is pretty chaotic right now!)
- I'm glad I focus on what I can control more nowadays (how many posts and words written rather than things like position ranked in Google or how much money I make)... funny enough both my rankings and income have increased since I changed my focus!
- I left my sales page/ opt in's the same which has made it easier to track
- Using Thrive Leads and Optimise has helped me split test some pages and opt ins and I plan to update/ adpat some of these again this month
Here's what's happening now
Despite this mini set back at the start of the month here is what has started to happen now...
Plus, a very exciting stage of the journey has happened within the last week...
I've hired a full time writer! He's on his second day of training out of 5 and I'm already super impressed with him.
I used Jerry's amazing training to do this here...
That training is honestly epic! Even if you have no intention of hiring anyone right now I would still recommend going through this and checking out his training (espeically if you are promoting WA, as you are guaranteed to learn something from the young affiliate marketing master)
Anyway I hope that was helpful.
I'm planning on getting at least 20 reviews done in April and I'm excited to see where this traffic heads (I'm predicting my first 5 figure traffic month from Google and double digits from premium members).
How was your March? Is there anything else you'd like to know?
"Oh lala, congrats! ;)
I remember loving Jerry's training when he just released it and this year I'm ready to hire one!
Don't remember the part to ask the final applicants to write a review, so definitely would have to go through the training again haha.
If you don't mind me asking, how much are you paying for your full-time writer, especially with the current economy changes?"
This is great progress despite the traffic dip at the start of March. I think with so much going on in the world then, it's inevitable that people's behaviour would be different. Searching more necessities perhaps rather than online opportunities or reviews.
March has seen a nice upward trend for my traffic and I credit the review posts we have been doing for that. One in particular seems to be getting lots of interest. Next focus is on getting that traffic to convert into leads and sales!
Cheers
Dave
Google also had another update that had a temporary ripple effect. Now people are laid off, laden with debt, and in search of new income so your traffic is beginning to spike. Min is too but I don't have near the search traffic. YET!!!
Well, that's a great question at the end... so far my March has been sweet tweet nothing... but that's totally my fault. April is much better already!
Thank you for sharing your awesome story here. It's an awesome success and interesting to see how your traffic went down and picking up again.
My goal is to hire a writer but... that's still down the road. I really want to feel good about my writing first and I'm getting there. I'm a wicked perfectionist on the writing but my other personality colour of "just get it done" is kicking in.
I know you're going to Vegas 👍
I'll get there too. I have some referrals but no Premiums and that will happen too.
Got this bookmarked. Yes, Jerry has excellent training.
I look forward to your next success story Mike.
Please take care and stay well.
Monica