4 months complete at WA - personal progress post

bymistswitch

573 followers

5 years ago

This is mostly just a note for myself to remind myself of progress. I don't think there's any deep insight. Still...

I made my 5th monthly WA payment this week so that means I have 4 months finished at WA. I'm on my last training of level 3. 3-10 should be done this week, no later than Friday. The last month of so, I have been doing my WA writing while at work for my in-person job. I'm allowed to read or watch movies or work on my personal laptop as long as I can be distracted with phone calls or whatever so that works fine for me. I have more trouble sitting down to do the work at home. At home, I start to think of work that pays immediately - freelance clients or content mills. WA is the long game.

So far, my blog has

• 3 posts from August (between when I started and the end of the month)
• 2 posts from September
• Nothing at all in October
• November added 4 posts
• To-date in December, I have two posts done. My minimum goal is 4 but I'd really like to aim for 8-9 posts. It's not that I can't write them. I have the keywords. It's just that I'm erratic as a writer. I suck at treating it like work, even when it pays fairly quickly from freelance clients. I need to change that attitude but I'm not there yet. Also, I'm pretty invested in these posts being "right" and I don't have that problem with client work.

Despite the low number of posts, google analytics says I'm starting to get search engine traffic. A few people have also clicked on social media links to my site. It's progress, a win. Next set of lessons is all about social media engagement so I'm hoping to increase that source of traffic.

I read somewhere that you can't expect a blog to really start earning until there are 50-60 posts. For some people, that takes a couple of months. For others, it could take years. For me, I'll probably hit that mark about halfway through 2019. I cringe when the $50 comes out of my account for another month of WA. Other wordpress hosting would be cheaper for a single blog but it would lack the training options, the easily available help, and Jaaxy access. For now, it's an investment I'm choosing to make. I didn't do the Black Friday deal because of the need for a lump sum. While I can make $50 per month happen, a large chunk all at once isn't in the budget. I'm peeling aside a little at a time though so maybe once I hit my year mark, I'll be able to afford the second year.

When I started, the goals questions were:

QUESTION #1: How much money would you be happy earning?
QUESTION #2: How much would you be ecstatic earning?
QUESTION #3: And how much TIME are you willing to invest to achieve these goals?

I haven't figured out how to go back and find the post in the endless thread. I'm not patient enough to scroll back months. I asked myself them again.

1) A net (after taxes and business expenses like hosting fees) of 1000 to 1200 per month would be enough to let me quit my in-person part-time job. I could probably do it for less than that, more like 1000 gross but I'd rather have the cushion before quitting unless my health takes a sudden dive for the worse.

2) Around $2500 net would let me travel in the US in the RV instead of living stationary most of the time with only short trips. If I could make this much reliably with only blogging or less intensive options than my side-gig clients, I would be very happy. I might be able to reach the travel dream with less if we workamped part of the year or when our truck is paid off in 3 years.

3) Initially, I think I estimated that I could put in 15 to 20 hours a week. I only work part time so that should have been realistic. That's not what's happening though. My actual time in is about 60-90 minutes per post (research, writing, editing, pics, and live with wordpress stuff done like categories and meta for a post in the 800-1250 word range) plus WA in bits and pieces. I haven't counted in the time from my phone but in November, it averaged around 2-3 hours per week on the computer on things related to WA, plus some amount of time from my cell phone. That's not going to be enough to reach my $1000 goal within the year but ultimately, that's okay. My part-time job doesn't suck. We're not in dire need of cash. If I'm seeing progress by metrics of traffic and engagements, I'll just keep chugging along.

In January, I intend to join the Round of Words in 80 Days challenge group. They let you set your own writing goals. Then you blog twice a week to talk about your progress and talk with others in the facebook group. I have to set up a blog for that but probably just a free one on wordpress. It doesn't have to be anything big. Part of my goals for the first round starting in January include my business blog writing goals. Those are more article than personal posts and I want to include them with my fiction goals. I still need to decide what is 'reasonable' though for the smallnotstuffed site. I think if I manage 8 posts in December, starting in January, my goal will be 3 posts per week. If 8/month is a challenge, I think I'll keep aiming for that until it isn't so difficult.