My 6 Month Progress: 400K Words and 167 Blog Posts.Still Waiting on the Big Affiliate $
It's been awhile since I've written a progress report.... I joined WA on 25 January and created my focus website on 1 February. My first month or two, I was working on multiple sites, but I quickly saw how diversifying was slowing my progress and I shelfed the other sites for later.
If you go back to my previous progress posts, you can see I was having some success and I immediately started taking action once I got here. I took no time on skepticism or questioning whether it would work. I went all in immediately.
At 6 months, I was actually expecting to be further along than I am, but since coming here, I've had a reality check. Watching Little Mama, Jerry Huang, and others who write their case studies clearly has helped to have a more realistic perspective on what can be expected. I'm grateful for that because I may have quit without seeing that my experience isn't abnormal, but can still pan out.
Either way, according to Kyle's training, it says at 6 months, it's reasonable to expect:
If you're doing 3 posts per week x 6 months = 72 posts
If the 72 posts each get 5 clicks/day, then you'd have 360 visitors per day
If you have 360 visitors per day, then you'd have 10,800 visitors every 30 days
With 10,800 visitors per month, it should be safe to expect consistent sales and income, right?
I decided to do more than what was recommended because I expected to get a better outcome. I did lots of research on publishing frequence and even did a training called "How Often Should I Publish on a Blog?" with the stats to share. Check it out! So, my aggressive publishing schedule was a product of my findings. Sound reasonable?
I've been here for 6 months, almost 7. I have 167 blog posts on my site and 35 pages which means I've written just about one post per day on my primary site at How To Entrepreneur.
I'm pursuing the Internet Marketing Certification route, but my niche (entrepreneurship) is comparable to the Bootcamp route.
- I have had great milestones like I've had 4 premium referrals
- My highest income from affiliate sales so far has been $400
- Added to that, I've made $70 here and $100 there, but not in a predictable way where I can expect it to happen again
- I was earning a full time income online freelancing before joining WA, but since, I've been able to acquire contracts that I wouldn't have before
But, I'm nowhere near 10,800 visitors per month EVEN though I:
-Perform keyword research with every post
-I write daily
- I post twice per day to Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin (increased from one post/day to two in August)
- I post 5 or more pins/day to Pinterest (my main traffic source)
-and, I get lots of shares on my content (some posts have nearly 1000 shares)
What's the deal? Is Google just withholding the love because I'm getting very few organic visitors. Take a look...
Here's Tailwind App share stats from this month...
I'm proud that's showing good signs of going in the right direction, but, here's my traffic....
It looks like maybe it's going up, but not exponentially. WOMP! WOMP! I can do better than this I'm sure. In fact, you can see my site was doing much better before...
I did PPC to start the site out, then I pulled back because I'd prefer to get the SEO working more favorably, and it's hard to pay attention to both. If you look at my stats, February, March, and April had a PPC bump, but June, July, August, or September did not.
If you look, you'll see June was still better than July, August, and September, and my site had LESS domain authority and LESS content. The things is....I was doing better with my social media strategy in June than I was afterwards, but I wanted SEO.
Why isn't the organic traffic picking up more? I HAVE TO FIGURE THIS OUT. You can see Im putting in the work...
I have content planned out and lots of content written and published. I've been working 40 hours per week figuring this whole thing out, so it's not a matter of putting in the work.
I've managed my income by freelancing, hustling offline to get sales, and making B2B connections thru live networking, but I'd like for my site and my hard work online with SEO to kick into gear.
Even tho I'm not where I want to be....I'm not slowing down. In fact, I'm picking it up. My plan is to:
- Ramp up on social media using Tailwind (since I'm getting good signs)
- Write as much as I can 1-2 articles per day
- Go back and optimize old posts - I used to leave the SEO title where it has the separator and Site title, so it was longer than the viewable limit. I'm going back and tweaking old posts to have more of the keyword in the text, fixing SEO titles, and auditing myself
- I'm creating content based on keywords I'd pay for if I were buying PPC, so I'm targeting valuable keywords with high search volume and low competition using the trainings >100 monthly searches and <100 QSR metric
Any other suggestions WA family? What opportunities do you think I'm overlooking? Do you think I'm expecting too much for 6 months, and if so, what's up with the training? Kyle said those expectations are reasonable and I believe him. What am I doing that's stopping me from getting results consistent to what Kyle's said is reasonable? If you want to check out my site, it's at www.howtoentrepreneur.org.
Leave your comments below. I'll try not to be bullheaded, but I am an entrepreneur. LOLOLOL.
Recent Comments
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Well, I need to follow your lead and try to focus on just one website.
Grace, aka Little Mama, has been an inspiration to me for the last couple of years. I remember her asking very similar questions as you are.
In hindsight, it turns out that she was on the verge of achieving the success that she has now achieved. (Hindsight is great.)
So, my advise to you to to keep at it and not give up.
Thanks Sondra! That's great to hear. I'm going for it hard core. I'm not giving up! Grace said "When the going gets tough, you've got to get tougher". I think I'll follow that advice.
Congratulations on all your hard work. I am sorry I cant think of the magic solution at this time. Some sites just take longer before they go "Bang". Is the seo keywords you are chasing in your post heading consistent all the way through? I know somepeople aim for a 4-5 long tail keyword but they often write 6 or7 words which changes things.
I have been aiming for long tail keywords. I'll go back and try to saturate old posts more with keywords. Hopefully that will help. I don't want it to read awkward like I'm too intentional, but I'll try to find a balance.
Hi Tiffany. I feel your frustrations. I'm just starting on the bootcamp side. But if you look at Little Mamma's stats you will see she was almost exactly where you are when she started ramping up her blogs, and it worked. Now is the time to do 2 a day if you can. I know you will make it. Jim
I saw that. She was at 153 posts at 12 months, then she ramped up to 2 per day and went hard core on reviews. I really want to stick to the Internet Certificate plan rather than switch to bootcamp, so I've been watching people in my niche and choosing topics that attract entrepreneurs, but also have high search volume and low competition. I'm hoping the rankings will ramp up with pure hard work and good keywords rather than switching to internet marketing training reviews. I will add more reviews of business related things in the mix though.
Just a thought , are you doing enough internal linking from your informative blogs to review blogs etc., You need to drive your traffic towards the review blogs or people will take your site for granted, believing it only exists to educate them. Are you utilizing the "Call to Action" style links etc., Jim
Ok, sorry. I checked your site out and it seems you have plenty of 'Call to action' links. It might have something to do with sticking to the certificate certificate plan. You confused me when you said that, I assumed you had a product related Niche. Your site looks great. Jim
Thanks Jim for checking out my site. I'm sure the call to action isn't the problem. LOLOLOL. I have a clear call to action
at least one) on each post and it's very pointed and clear what the reader should do. I think that's one thing I'm doing well. I'm sure there's other things to work on though.
Booyah Tiff...you been working!. I do love your site Iif its the one in my mind) great tutorial on bing ads that helped me at lot!, thanks...
Thanks Derek! I appreciate your feedback. Hopefully it will start climbing the rankings soon.
Hi tiffany,
I think you are good with technology, that I can see in your post. I suggest that you may go back and check the contents of your blogs and post again and see the relation between your niche and the content and edit them. it may get rank and bring the traffick.
Its just a suggestion. try it.
Be blessed.
Appan
Hi Appan. Can you explain a little further what you mean by "go back and check the contents of your blogs and post again" or "see the relation between your niche and the content and edit them"? I want to understand. Are you saying optimize the posts more for SEO?
You just keep on pushing, it will pick up evetually at the rate that you are moving.
I don’t think its anything against what you are doing but I think that niche might just be competitive.
I didn’t see you mentioning anything about how all of those post that you have written are ranking. If you have a lot of post on page one and not getting clicks thats a seperate issue, but if you don’t have a lot of post on the first page then that should be your focus is getting those to rank higher.
I feel like you should focus on trying to get post to rank. You should have at least some post on page 1 with that much content.
Maybe go back and optimize the SEO. Push some of the post up by linking relevant post to them.
I am in the 40 post range and I have been able to get one post to get to page 1 by building a pillar post. Look up how to build an seo pillar post/page. It might help you bring some of your post to page 1. You can do it with your posts by just analyzing them and linking relevant post to each other. If you need help finding info on it shoot me a PM.
That's great feedback. More rankings should be popping up soon because I have been working on that. I have 3 pages that I consistently link to in each post, and I interlink to different posts (where relevant) in each page/post. I will dig deeper to see if I can do that even better than what I am. Thanks for that.
Make sure there is one link going from the pillar post back to one of the supporting post so it makes a full circle.
No prob! Keep it up! Your doing so good! I have been trying my hardest to push a post a day but I haven’t automated my social media yet so I still need to a lot time for that.
I use Tailwind for Pinterest (it works for Instagram too) and SymphonyTools for the rest. That combination works great for me. With Symphony, you can recycle old posts, the analytics are good, and don't have to go to another site to find images to add onto your posts. That combo works good for me.
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Hi Tiffany, congrats on your success so far!! You've done a lot of work and I believe it'll all pay off really soon!
While reading through the comments I had a thought...
How many product reviews are you writing?
I noticed users like Grace and Jerry write a lot of product reviews.
I'm not sure if this is the secret you need, but maybe that could be what makes the difference to your site traffic and conversions.
Since seeing their progress I've been writing more product reviews, and since making that change I've been getting more WA referrals.
So this could be something to consider if you're not already implementing it.
Hope that helps,
Stephanie
Thanks Stephanie! I've been thinking about if that's what's necessary to move forward. I watch Grace and Jerry along with other Super Affiliates who did the Bootcamp model. My original intention wasn't to do a bootcamp site, but the niche I really wanted to do (entrepreneurship) fit well with promoting WA. I really prefer the Internet Marketing Certification model though. I'll keep considering your advice. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your observations. I think that model definitely does work, but I'm not confident that's what I want to build. We'll see.