My theme incident nightmare!

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4.1K followers

Hello WA family. Sorry, I haven't posted in a while although I should be doing it as part of the SAC and as a result, my ranking at WA dropped. Well, the reason is that I had a nasty theme problem to take care of.

If you haven't read my previous post describing what was happening, here's a recap.

Basically, I had a free theme that I really, REALLY liked from when I started my MMO website back in Dec 2017 and it worked really well all through 2018. At the beginning of 2019, things were going so well, that I even expected to hit 4 figures at the end of June, which sadly didn't happen because in April, things started going downhill.

Traffic as well as referrals were going down.

I went from having 48 referrals in February to only 9 in June. I didn't even have any new sales for 3 months, which was even worse! I thought I was going good... :(

From March to April, I didn't know that I was on such a severe decline because I still made some sales, and even though I was on vacation, I still worked on my website and I was happy to get accepted into the SAC at that point too.

But the downward trend continued, even if I put more effort and started publishing everyday. I did some research and found that my images could be the issue and I started optimizing them one by one.

Little did I know that it was all the theme! It was categorized as mobile-friendly so I didn't think it was the theme from the beginning. I came to know that because even though I was optimizing my images, it had almost no impact on the loading speed of my pages.

So I got a premium theme and prayed that things would get better. My page speeds did get better but not my traffic nor my referrals!

My daily visitors was around 100 - 120 back in Feb and I was hoping to get back to that, but after the theme change, it went down to 40 - 50 per day! That really got me worried. After a couple of days, I did some research and found out that it could take a few months to go back to normal or to improve.

Again, I crossed my fingers, worked as hard as I could, even posted more regularly on my Youtube Channel and after almost 2 months of hard-work, I believe that it is getting better. I'm already doing better this week than I did last week.

My posts are more targeted and I'm getting referrals with WAY less traffic than I had before, so that's gotta be a good thing, right?

I'm already at 18 referrals at halfway through July, which is double what I had last month, and there is still more days left. I feel pretty good about this come back... :)

It's probably going to take a few more months to go back to normal or to surpass the 100-120 visitors I had per day back in February and March but I know that it will happen. This is a major setback in my plans but it's not impossible to overcome.

There were other positive results that I have to report, and it's the fact that I now have over 300 subscribers to my email list and over 40 subscribers to my Youtube Channel, 31 of which subscribed in the last month! It's so exciting!

Watch-time and views have gone up drastically and I'm hoping that this is going to continue. I've never stuck as long with anything as I have with Wealthy Affiliate and I'm really intending to make it work!

Thanks for all your encouraging posts in the past couple of months. Reading them really kept me going, even though I so wanted to give up and start a new website. But the little voice in my head told me "if I didn't take care of it and the same happened with my new website, I would have had no idea how to rectify it, right?".

I'm so happy that this is ove with and I'm now able to come back to the community and contribute once again.

Thanks for reading and I send you hugs and kisses!

Reyhana

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Recent Comments

44

REY!! So good to see you! Glad you (hopefully) got everything resolved! You'll be back on top before you know it girl!! Shaunna

It's so nice to see you too, Shaunna.. :) I missed being active in the community. I really had to fix this bug though.. lol

Thank you! Wishing you the best as always!

Way to nut it out Reyhana.
Themes are a thorn that's for sure
There is a new change developing in the industry all around the "mobile page speed" where mobile friendly means not much so its good to stay ahead huh:)

Many congrats on your success.
Rob

Thanks, Rob. Never a dull moment at WA.. lol...

Yes, there is a change happening and I want to be ready for it when it comes around.

Wishing you the best!

I'm glad everything worked out for you in the end and you were able to resolve the issue!

Thanks, Krystle! :)

It's really hard to determine which theme really does good work for our online business. It's good you were able to see those things and fixed it.

Thanks, Jimmy. it really is! Specially when you don't know a lot about coding, like me... lol

That's right.

Way to go, Reyhana!! I am glad to see you back here with more posts...mostly, I am happy to see you got your resolution to your problem.

Keep moving, nowhere to go but up now!!

As always, I wish you the best!

Bob M

Thanks, Bob. It was really a big struggle but things are improving greatly now... :) I also wish you the best!

👍😀

Reyhana, congratulations to you on your perseverance and hard work. Yes, your traffic and referrals are now going to flood (back) in and reward you for all the effort you have put in your website.
Thank you for sharing!
Best,
Alenka

Thanks, Alenka.. :) It was tiring for sure but well worth it!

The traffic is getting better and so is the number of referrals, so you are so right when you say that... lol

I hope that it keeps trending upwards but a few sales wouldn't be too bad... lol

I loved sharing! All the best!

Great news that you're managing to work through this. Dedicated resolve are strong in you. (Sorry, went all Yoda)

HAHA! That's okay.. we need a little fun.

Thank you!

You're very welcome Reyhana.

We all face some issues in learning this business. Well done on solving yours. Jim

Thank you, Jim. It took some time, a lot of learning, testing and hard work, but it was worth it! :)

Yes, we all face troubles but affiliate marketing really isn't for the faint of heart!

Hey Reyhana - well done for keeping going and sorting the problem! :-)

I know it's so disheartening when setbacks like this happen but it sorts the men from the boys - or girls from the women :-) - and the ones who get back on the horse and keep going are the ones who will be successful.

Yeah, too many metaphors :-)

I'm sure your site will continue to grow and I look forward to further progress reports.
Ian

Thank you Ian.. :) I've gone through rough patches with WA before when I was still new but now, I know better than to quit! Things always work out in the end, if you're willing to find the solution.

It's easier to quit than to work things out, but that's why those who quit never win, right?

Haha yupp, life is full of metaphors but if we didn't have fun with them, it would be boring.

I really hope that it will be an upward trend from now on. Thanks for your encouraging words!

Can you give me your site URL I would like to look at it please. I don't yet have a you tube page. I do use social media and hashtags. I'm killing it that way.what is SAC and MMO ?

I have the same question 👆

are they something I missed from WA?

Sure, send me a PM and I'll send you my website URL. I'm the other way around... lol.. Social media is not that great for my niche except for Youtube, but then, I haven't given the other social media platforms as much attention as I should.

I'm happy that you're getting results though.. :) It says you're doing something right.

SAC means SUPER AFFILIATE CHALLENGE for WA and MMO means MAKE MONEY ONLINE.

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