Monthly Progress Reports & Updates - April 2016 Month 4
Hello, everyone! I've decided to start posting monthly progress reports. These will contain what I accomplished for the month, what I hope to accomplish the next month (And the months following), and just overall where I'm at with my site. These reports will serve two major purposes-
1. Keep new users motivated if they stumble upon them! The more success stories we have here, the better.
2. Help me look back and see how far I've come to avoid discouragement.
So, here's the stuff I did in the last 30 days that's worth mentioning.
- 217 organic users to my site - A further 40 or so likely came from social media, stumbleupon, etc.
- Bumped my writing up to an article a day - No exceptions!
- Performed major site redesigns and tweaks.
- Removed all Google Adsense ads entirely. I'll be keeping Amazon Native Ads for now.
- I signed up under a couple other affiliate programs, just to avoid putting all my eggs in one basket, but Amazon is still my primary focus. I rarely link to other websites.
Here are my goals for the next month.
- It's become clear to me that I likely won't be getting my second sale this month, so I'm pushing that goal back to this time next month. While this is a bit saddening, I did take almost all of February off to a severe bout of depression and lack of motivation. That means I'm effectively a month behind, so really I've only been working on my site for 3 months.
- Starting last night, I've bumped my writing up to 2 articles a day. It seems like a lot, but it's really not so bad once you buckle down and do it. It forces you to write shorter articles (By shorter, I do NOT mean 700 word crappy clickbait articles), and really condense your information more, trimming off all of the rambling. This should, hopefully, double my success rate. How long I can maintain it remains to be seen, but I see no reason I can't continue to work this hard for at least the next two months, especially when school is out.
- I'm drastically reducing the time I spend on WA. I have too many distractions in my life. Friends message me, I have a Steam library full of games to play, and I constantly check my Google Analytics reports for progress, and my Amazon associates page for sales. While I must check my email regularly to ensure Amazon hasn't booted me again (Because they requires immediate action, and I can't delay), I have a few resolutions in regards to avoiding time wasting.
Avoiding time wasting-
- Only visit WA once a week to catch up on PMs, replies to comments, etc. I was going to make it once a month, but I realized that's a bit ridiculous - I have lots of good friends and mentors on here I want to stay in touch with. I will pop in VERY BRIEFLY every now and then to give and receive website comments, but that's all, and I'll limit those sessions to 20 minutes each.
- Checking email only twice a day - This is something I've picked up on from the book "4 hour work week". Lots of good info in there.
- Download timesaver (I forget what this software is called), the program that tells you how much time you spend on certain websites. I hope it only tracks the active page, because I do tend to have websites like Youtube open in the background for playing music, and I do spend my nights (After working on my website) watching Netflix to relax.
I'll also be including 30-day and 90-day snapshots of my Organic traffic (Thanks to SumoMe's Google Analytics app, it's one of the only reasons I use it). Here's this months below.
BIGGER VERSIONS HERE: http://imgur.com/a/LM2do
30 Day Report (Organic Traffic)
90 Day Report (Organic Traffic)
Income Report (-$47)
Expenses
Wealthy Affiliate; -$47
Income
$0
Recent Comments
23
Well said Cohen, everyone charts their own course. If you know what your destination is the journey is s lot easier. Much success to you in a short period of time.
Sounds like a great plan! You wrote some funny things about google ads in your replies 'Russian singles' hahahaha. I feel the same way. I have a site geared to women over 50 and there was an ad for ED. I was just trying to follow the training, but I said "No Way is this happening" and erased the code. Thanks for sharing your plans! Robin
Nice progress Poly :) I hope you can keep up your good work there. If I may suggest:
- avoid checking analytics too often. We know that traffic can up and down every day, so it will reduce motivation when you see that your traffic lowered compared to yesterday. Been there, done that. (Suggestion: once a week if our site is still new)
- In case you missed your posting consistency due to various reason, try to 'repay' it later by posting more articles. E.g.: you posted only 1 article yesterday, so today better post 3 articles.
- Use relevant FB Group (or G+ Community) to share your article. It helps you tremendously, and increase a chance of being viral. First , post an article to your FB page, and share that post to relevant group. Don't forget to read the group's rule or you may be kicked out of the blue.
Cheers,
Ferdinand
Great progress so far. I've read that it takes about 6 months to a year to really start bringing in the cash. I know some people get lucky and rake in good streams right away, but not all of us.
May I ask why you are not using Adsense?
Thanks for reading! Yeah, 6 months is what I'm shooting for, 8 at the latest.
In response to your question... Early on the amount of traffic you get will bring you little to no money from Adsense anyway, so you're essentially throwing away traffic for pennies if they do click an ad. You don't get a commission if they buy something through that ad, so the only benefit you get is a few cents.
It also cheapens your site. Ads just look bad, and they're annoying. You have no control over what kind of ads show up on your site - You could have a gaming website, and your visitors could be getting ads for russian singles.
I recommend Amazon Native ads if you have to use ads at all - They are relevant, and people trust Amazon. I've never once been even remotely annoyed by someone who has had Amazon Native ads on their site, as a user, but Adsense ads are untrustworthy and often just lead to scams.
I completely agree with you. I find those ads so annoying and distracting one sites. It's like when you check out one of those lists that you see advertised on Facebook or somewhere, and the entire page is all ads. Super annoying. I haven't learnt too much about all the ads and links yet, but I'm slowly learning a lot from what people are posting so I will have a good sense once I pass through the training.
Thanks for you advice!
Cohen, this is one of the best blogs involving Time Management that I've ever read!
Keep up the great work!
Sincerely,
Therese
Hi, Therese :) Thank you for the kind words! It's a pleasure to hear from you. I'll do my best!
Great job! I need to do something to this. I'm all over the place and there are many days where 5 hrs will have gone by and I realize I did maybe an hour of actual work.
Thanks for the motivation!
I know the feeling, Tanja! It's tough to get rolling, but once you eliminate distractions (At least, the ones that you CAN eliminate - Family, kids, etc. are ones you must tend to, USUALLY ;) ), things become a lot easier!
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^ yep awesome. You'll smash it at this rate!