2000 Clicks on Google in 28 Days - Important Lessons to take from it
I usually wait until I hit the milestone to write about it, but being a retired engineer, unless Google literally pulls the rug out from under me I will hit it tomorrow (I am at 1977 right now).
I think I have a story to tell.
I started at WA in June 2023. I watch people agonize about what niche they should go into. I just picked something. Why? Because I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING!! That's called being a beginner.
Did I pick a bad niche? no. I just wasn't able to monetize it.
Did it matter? no. I was learning. And you can change.
Yes I lost $15 on the website plus all that effort. But wait a second....
I was learning right?
This is why law schools do mock trials.
This is why medical students practice on cadavers.
I didn't care.
I went through the training, tried a bunch of things. Some worked, some didn't.
I went to class. Had no idea what Jay or Eric were talking about a lot of the time. But after a few months, everything clicked. Because the training all fits together.
One thing WA has you do is go through the motions. No one in their right mind would expect ads to work or amazon to start cutting you checks when they have no traffic. But you need to know how to do these things. So that's OK as long as you understand that.
This isn't like the field of dreams. Sometimes you build it and no one comes.
In my case I had traffic, I had some domain authority, but no monetization.
So I switched niches.
Now I had the mechanics down. And I started to think differently.
Write good. A lot. Figure out how to get it out the door quick in a slow steady stream.
Read it again. Ask myself "what's missing" and write some more.
And CTAs. I am still not good at that, but i am getting better.
In the last 4 months it's working. January was under400 clicks, February hit 1000 clicks, March 1500 clicks, and April is looking like it may end with 2500 clicks in 28 days.
And overall it's 7000 page views over the last 28 days.
Am I making 6 figures? Not yet. But I am making more than I spend, and need to figure out how to spend the money I am making so I can scale.
What the real lesson here is what Jeremy wrote about yesterday.
You can get traffic and make no money. You need to put the two together to make it work.
The corollary I will talk about is, you can have almost no traffic and make lots of money.
Why traffic with no sales? There are a bunch of reasons. First and foremost, you're catching your readers when they're not ready to buy (yet). Or they don't trust you (yet). Or you're not giving them a clear call-to-action.
The first course I took on blogging was from a guy who built a business around website consulting for drug rehab centers. He had almost no traffic on his site, but he didn't care. Because he was converting clients. Every conversion was $5K. A month. So if he had 10 visits to his LinkedIn post and one converted... you get the idea.
And I am making sales and getting commissions. So it's working. I just need to get better.
Recent Comments
29
Hi Michael,
Very encouraging stats, congrats to you for the milestones you are reaching.
And a very true and pertinent point about traffic, you can have little traffic and still make lots of money, or vice versa.
Question if I may, how long before you pivoted to a new niche? And when you switched, was your new niche something you loved more than the first? Or had you figured out by that point to redirect toward a more profitable niche, irrespective of your love for it?
Very positive results, good for you, hard work pays off.
Hoping your onward and upward trajectory continues!
All the best
Cherie
I think it was about 3-4 months after I started the cybersecurity niche. I realized that this would be a great niche if I wanted to become a consultant. Which I did not. Sales in this niche are really hard to achieve. Services aren't.
So after pondering for awhile, I hit on mini pcs. It took awhile. After about 4-5 months of growth, Google trashed my blog. So I pivoted to YouTube and started to see (small) gains. From January to November 2024 I probably made $150. Then I tried a new subniche and it just stuck. I made that much in January 2025, and am doing better each month.
Hey Michael,
Thanks for coming back to me. I do recall seeing your earlier posts about your cybersecurity website, and then along the way, saw you had switched direction.
Fantastic that you took what you had learned from the training and pivoted early enough that you hadn't invested too much time, clearly the right choice to have taken, and results are coming in for you now.
Hard work, no doubt, but clearly paying off! Congrats, and long may it continue.
All the best
Cherie
It wasn’t a waste of time. I can create cybersecurity blogs about mini PCs and vice versa. Essentially that gives me external links with some authority since the cyber blog still has a DẠ of 13 or so
Congrats man, seriously well done. Huge props on the progress and sticking with it.
As one of the newer folks here, seeing your journey laid out like that gives a ton of hope. Following your story was an awesome read. Thanks for sharing it so openly.
Rooting for your continued growth
Shawn
One thing great about affiliate marketing is that we are not competing against each other. Ok maybe MMO but even that is huge
Absolutely Michael that’s one of the biggest reasons I stay here at WA. No pressure no competing. Just building at your own pace with real support behind you. We’re all carving out our own path and even in something like MMO there’s still room for everyone to win when you focus on value. Appreciate the insight man and have a great day!
Shawn
I love this, i just learned something, you don't need a bunch of Traffic, Just need the right Product at the time, Thank you MT great Post
It’s a combination. Imagine you are a rolls Royce salesperson vs a salesperson at a used car lot
You need to be really focused on your audience and give them exactly what they are looking for
Inspiring story Michael. I've woken up to the tune of reality recently and, although I haven't changed niches, I've begun focusing on one while becoming more clear about how to brand myself going forward. I am truly beginning to personalize the niches I'm involved with, focusing on my main one for now but with a clearer vision going forward. Keep going. Keep growing.
Bob
Awesome Michael, it has been great to see your growth in the past year, and it appears things are really starting to "click" for your campaign and you are in a position of scale.
It seems slow when a business in growing if you put it under a day-to-day microscope, but when you zoom out and look at your growth since January of this year, it looks very impressive. Nice work! :)
As predicted I hit 2030 today for the last 28 days on another 100 click day. Made even better as Saturday is mid weekend and traffic is always lower (180 sessions vs around 240 most of last week).
So things keep telling me to keep on the straight and narrow, maybe improve old posts as well which i am doing
See more comments
Some great points made in your post
Beginners want to be perfect and making money instantly but it doesn't happen. It takes time to learn the skills and trial and error to see if it will work for you and your niche.
The second is continuous learning. When I started online back in 2000 a one-page sales page did the work and you got sales. Today the search engines are looking for more proof that you are an expert or can become one in your niche. It takes time to build that into your website.
Congratulations on your achievements - well deserved and shows hard work can pay off in the long run.
Thanks. Yes I have seen Google Core Updates decimate my traffic. Lesson learned, you need to diversity. And it's not hard, you just need to index on Google AND Bing. After that I discovered clarity and realized this stuff can work in spite of Google. I made a few adjustments, Google saw me again and here I am!