2019 Progress Report

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to share my 2019 progress with anyone who cares to read it :)

2019 update

My website is now 25 months old and I have 244 posts published.

I would say I am in a competitive niche, but all niches are competitive. I am in the Health/Fitness niche just to narrow it down a bit.

Anyway, I saw some pretty solid improvement in 2019. My GA below show ONLY my organic sessions. This chart is actually from the inception of my website in late 2017. I wanted to show how far I have come, even though it has taken a very long time.

It's taken me a lot longer to get here than I had hoped or thought it would. I don't know if it's just me, my niche, or what but I want to let the new folks out there know that NOT QUITTING is half the battle. You have to stick with it and publish quality content on a consistent basis.

I have wanted to quit more times than I can count, but for some reason I didn't. Call it what you will, perserverance, stupidity, I don't know :) All I know is that for me, it's been a battle and one that I am not giving up on.

Here are my organic sessions by month for 2019.

I was so freaking excited the first time I hit 1k sessions for a month, now I hope to hit 10k soon.

How much money have I made?

Since you asked so nicely :)

I made about $2,500 in 2019, certainly not setting the world on fire, but a drastic increase over the $47 I made in 2018.

My income sources are ShareASale, Amazon, and Impact. Most of my $$ has come from ShareASale so far. I have found some affiliate programs that payout 10-15% which is nice.

So what's next?

I plan to continue publishing 3x per week. I strive for 1,000+ words on my posts. Sometimes it's a struggle to get there. Other times it's eazy peazy. I have found that rankings are not based on word count alone.

When I first started my website in 2017 "Best Of" posts were all the rage and I know they are working really well for some folks. I have had very little success with these types of posts and I gave up on them in 2018.

Recently I have been updating some of my early "best of" posts and my rankings are now improving. I have also defined my niche and audience better, so I think that will help.

Now that my website has some authority, I am going to give these "best of" posts another go.

I will continue to post informational and "how to" posts as well.

Also, my wife and I are starting a new project together this year so we will see how that goes. We will definitely use "best of" posts in this new niche project, I think it's set up well for that.

Wrapping things up

So, that's about it. It's been an awfully slow process, but some recent wins are keeping me going. I check my stats way too often, but that's how I roll.

I hope to see continued improvement in 2020. I feel like I have a much better idea what I am doing now with this whole affiliate marketing thing.

Honestly guys, it takes a while to learn how to write. I have always enjoyed writing, but once I started doing it a lot, my skills improved.

I wanted to be transparent here. I know there are a lot of people who seem to "get it" right away and have great success early on. I am not one of those people. But I plan to stick with it and persevere.
Work, my wife and two teenagers keep me busy as well, and I have to make time to work on my website. Thankfully my wife (and kids) are very supportive of my "hobby".

Okay, enough outta me. I hope you all enjoyed this post. Wishing everyone massive success in the year ahead.
See you around,

Steve