Month 6 Update: Beaten up but not Quitting

byophyax

445 followers

5 years ago

I'm quite off-track. I'm no longer actively working on my websites, other than in the now and then.

I just reread all my blogs, and my goals at WA. When I joined, I had a 1-2 year time window for real success, and this hasn't elapsed. But I also had a 6 month trial period in my mind, to see early signs of financial success, and that's elapsed, and that's where we are now.

Anatomical Dissection of Failure

The reasons for the lack of financial success are numerous. Where do I even get started?

• Objectively, my 6 month goal post was too optimistic. I didn't know 6 months ago that very few of those who will ultimately be successful online actually start to see it within the first 6 months.
• I've not at all nailed down my niche, hence my efforts have been scattered in many directions.
• While I enjoyed writing some content sometimes, and I am proud of my creative efforts, I failed to develop a writer's attitude, especially the capability to write regularly, and perhaps even more importantly, the ability to write sought-after articles.
• I made rather little progress on the marketing side. Yes, I do have some Amazon products on my websites, but I could not bring myself to write product reviews on anything, and hence stayed frustratingly stuck with the training, unable to complete Level 3. With that, I couldn't really treat my efforts as part of seriously building a business. There is a lack of "can do" attitude.
• I read through all the training. I could see having much difficulty with doing Level 4, the social networking. For example, I created all the social accounts, a Facebook page, but never posted anything.
• It's great that I wrote quite a bit of content, like 75000 words. 52 published articles, of which 29 indexed in Google, and 40 short YouTube clips. This showed I could overcome all sorts of barriers. However, I realized the quality was poor, and I set up to increase the quality about 2 months ago, and I've been paralyzed with perfectionism since. I'll overcome it, but not yet.
• As you so well know, the chain for success starts with: writing great content -> getting traffic -> conversion. Across my websites, I had about 40 clicks from a roughly 1-2% click-rate, and no conversion. My best page has a ranking of only 52. The links in the chain are all broken. The fixing has to start with improving the content. This means I need to get better at helping people. Without being paralyzed by perfectionism.

Statistics Update

Finally, I have no more coverage errors in the Google Search Console.

I have 6 more clicks this for cpcpworkshops.com, bringing the total to 13. I have 27 clicks for amazingToilets.com. These are the cumulative over 6 months, rather than on 3 months, hence some jumps when comparing to my Month 5 Update.

We had only 2 new articles in the last month, one from Lynn and one from myself. 3 more articles were indexed in Google, bringing the total to 29.

My best YouTube video has 143 views, 6 likes, 1 spontaneous comment. 7 other videos have about 10-20 views.

What's Next for me?

Lynn and I are off to Portugal for a fabulous 16-days vacation! We'll get back October 5th. Next, I'll apply to an entrepreneurship program, which will give me 1 year of government funding if admitted.

If admitted, I'll develop a scientific consultancy business, for which I'll build a brand new website through WA. I'll keep developing my other websites whenever inspiration shows up.

Maybe I'll teach piano to beginners, and I'll have a companion website for piano lessons. If I do that, this will be very time-consuming. I'll continue the creativity and well-being website with Lynn, especially with improved YouTube content.

If I don't get admitted, then I need to get a job, and I'm leaning towards something in finance, maybe like a quant structurer, maybe something institutional client-facing. Then I'll probably drop all website work.

In any case, I do plan to renew my WA and domains in 6 months time, for another year.

I've reorganized my figure skating schedule so it is now all in the evenings, 3 times per week in 3 different locations, so that it is possible for me to get a regular job without this meaning the immediate end of my skating practice. Last Saturday, I did a training which allows me to be an assistant-coach to figure skating beginners. We're also continuing the acroyoga practice, but no time for much else. Concretely, I have big doubts that Lynn's plans of running real-life creativity and well-being workshops can actually happen in the next year, but we'll see.

I'm not going to continue with monthly updates, unless I return to working more actively on WA. Let's say I'll write at least an update at month 9. I'm putting a reminder in the calendar.

To end on a good note, WA has been a great framework for me to learn about affiliate marketing, to build websites easily, and to push myself to develop some creative content.

I'd like to thank very much the many members who have spent their time and efforts on offering encouragements, or Site Feedback criticisms, which I both go back to reread sometimes, and for their Site comments.