New Traffic High - 1436 Users in One Day - WOOHOO!

The lockdown has been a time of reflection for me. I've been able to reflect on whether or not I've made the right decisions for my financial future, my family, and what I can do to make us even more secure.

Choosing to get started in affiliate marketing at Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best decisions I've made. I didn't know much about affiliate marketing prior to joining here, but since I've been here, I've been earning affiliate sales (starting with my 2nd month here).

I keep saying in my mind, I think I'll be able to earn much more in affiliate marketing after 9 years than I did with 9 years in the military, and I truly believe that. Let's see how it goes. It definitely doesn't start out like a military career with the income and benefits, but over time, it will match it, then pass it because of the incremental growth and compounding from a commission-based income.

My Obsession with Analytics--Hahahaha

I've been really obsessed with my Analytics lately. It's been so cool to log on and watch the real-time users go up and down at any given moment, and to realize these are real human beings visiting me. There are almost always people on my website!

I'm sure a part of the reason is because this lockdown is making everyone reflect on how they make money, so people are more open to trying something like starting a business or breaking away from the "traditional way" of making an income.

Since my kids are home from the lockdown, I've went back to my pre-childcare protocol. Hahahaha. I've been working really weird hours: early mornings up until wee hours after everyone is sleep. Last night, I decided to check my Analytics to see how many people were on my site at 1:30 AM, and it was fluctuating between 10 and 14 real-time visitors at that time in the morning!

When I woke up this morning, I decided to check my traffic for the month, and I noticed I hit a traffic high I've never noticed before: 1,436 visitors in one day. Wow!

A few days ago, I applied for MediaVine: a premium ad network. I've heard many people talk about their experience with them, and I want to try them. It took me two years to get where I am, but I'm here now, and I've learned alot along the way.

4 Tips For You to Increase Your Traffic

I don't simply want to leave you with my experience, I also want to give you some practical tips to increase the traffic to your website--these are all things I've done over the last two years...

1. Choose a Traffic Channel and do a "As Much as You Can 90-Day Challenge"

By now, I've done several 90-day challenges and some shorter than that. What I like about short term challenges is that they can:

• Help you see what you're capable of
• Increase your efficiency and skill
• Teach you things about the algorithms
• and Teach you things about the audience on the platform and their preferences vs. other Traffic channels

It's really difficult to get clear data on any channel with less than 90 days of consistency invested. For my 90-day challenges, I've done daily posting.

My Blog Challenge

With my blog challenge, I learned that daily posting on a blog isn't enough for me to get the results I want. I extended my challenge quite a few times, then eventually diversified my traffic with Youtube.

I realized later that the 90-day blog challenge created alot of content that keeps people entertained for awhile when they visit my site. Who likes being invited to someone's house who doesn't have anything to do?

My Youtube Challenge

With my Youtube challenge, I was posting more than 1 video every day. It helped me to get more comfortable with the camera, it built a desire to want more from Youtube, it built an additional traffic channel for meeting people, and it helped me to create a process for getting videos done consistently.

You can see my first 6 month Youtube results here.

My Pinterest Challenge

After making it into the Youtube partner program and stabilizing a workflow on my blog and on Youtube, I started a 90-day challenge on Pinterest that I'm in the middle of right now. When I started, I had about 900 followers, and 30,000 monthly viewers, which translated to >10 visitors per day.

What was cool was that I wasn't working on Pinterest, and I was getting traffic, so I decided to do a challenge, and invest more into it. Now, I've been posting daily to Pinterest for the last 30 days, and I've seen a significant bump in impressions and traffic as a result.

At this point, my Pinterest Analytics shows I'm getting almost 600,000 impressions/mo, 457.4k monthly viewers, and my highest traffic at this point from Pinterest is 226 visitors in one day, which is amazing!

To get results, I read and read about Pinterest, I took courses about it (like this one), and I create graphics whenever my family is busy, and I'm not working on a blog post or shooting a video. Hahahahaha. I've been doing this for the last 30+ days, but I think Pinterest is giving great quick wins in comparison to my previous challenges.

Try a 90-Day Challenge, a 45-day challenge, or even a 30-Day one. We all are locked in now, so doing an "as much as you can" posting challenge is more feasible now than ever!

2. Make an Editorial Calendar with Specific Tasks

For me, I like to see my progress. If I'm not recording my progress, I can be a workaholic and never feel satisfied. Even if I'm getting wins, I can overlook them and want more. When I'm recording my activity, I'm much happier with my progress because I can see it.

I use an editorial calendar on Trello to help me keep track of my marketing plan and the activities I need to do. Every month, I analyze what I did, how it worked, and whether I should continue with that activity, but I know it's not good to switch things up too much. 90-days is a better length of time to make changes because by then, you have more real data.

You can see how I use my editorial calendar in my traffic and income report here.

3. Look at your competition and Try Outpacing Them

It's not enough to say the article was thorough. It has to be thorough in comparison to the others on the topic in your niche, and marketed more effectively than the others that are competing with you.

4. Experiment, but don't dump experiments too quick

I love internet marketing and the science of it all. It can be really fun to experiment with all of the different things you can do online: Quora, Pinterest, Facebook, ads, etc. I've learned over time that experiments can be like shiny objects if you don't stick with them long enough--that's when I started committing for longer lengths.

I didn't spend long enough on Microsoft ads to get to the sweet spot, so I plan to go back and do some 90-day ad challenges, live webinar or social media live challenges, and email marketing challenges at some point: one-thing-at-a-time.

When you commit for longer lengths, it also helps you to avoid shiny object syndome because you won't have time for other things! Hahaha. Also, when you budget and practice self-dicipline, it also helps to avoid shiny object syndrome and to focus and make the things you're doing work.

Conclusion

I'm hoping it keeps going up from here. 1436 visitors in one day means more referrals and more sales, than when I had with less traffic. If you're focused on increasing referrals, and you're finding yourself focusing on design or other things, rethink the strategy, and consider doing a traffic challenge.

Hopefully this was helpful for you. Have a great day!