Have some cheese with my whine
It’s been nearly three months now that I have been in Wealthy Affiliate. While I am really enjoying the lessons, and the blogging, and the community, I am getting no results in Google or on Amazon. It’s filling me with frustration and doubt.
Okay, that intro probably cleared the room. For those few kind, indulgent souls remaining I will continue my kvetch.
My website has 22 posts. 54 comments. The posts were mostly built upon keywords Jaxxy said were “great” using Kyles keyword template. All the response has been positive. Google analytics show the traffic has increased slightly.
The problem is that all the traffic has been from personal friends who I’ve told about the site or other WA members giving comments to get comments. Not one person has shown up as a result of a google search. Not one,
I have also created a number of Amazon affiliate links throughout my posts, not in all of them and not blatantly, I hope. So far I have earned nothing. In fact, the only hit I’ve had was yesterday. I had tested a new link. Later I went to Amazon to buy something. I guess the cookie was still active because that sale registered, though I don’t think I get paid for it.
So, am I doing something wrong? Am I expecting too much too soon? Is this glacial pace normal? Tell me honestly, I won’t be mad. How long was it really before you started getting traffic from Google? How long was it before you made your first Amazon commission? How long was it before you were taking in enough to cover your WA dues?
Thanks for listening to my whining. Hope you enjoyed the cheese.
Recent Comments
24
Hi - 3 months is very early days. Google views all new sites with suspicion for the first 6 months and is unlikely to rank you highly before then.
Just a warning about Amazon - you cannot purchase anything through your own links. Not only will you not receive commission or have it count towards the 3 sales you need to make, but you could get banned from their program. Neither can you ask friends or family.
That’s another thing all the warnings about what Google doesn’t like have paranoid. Is their a naughty list I can check? Will google bury me for my sins without telling me?
Guess what? The monster has a heart. I wrote an email to Amazon explaining what happened and apologized. I received a very prompt and cheerful reply, thanking me for writing, saying they understand it was inadvertent and they wouldn’t hold it against me. They also suggested that in the future if I’ve been working with links, that I clear cache and cookies before buying anything.
I wrote back to Amazon with another solution that occurred to me and they said yes it would work. I have 2 iPads. If I do all my link testing on one of them and all my Amazon shopping on the other, I will never encounter my cookies and won’t have to worry about invoking them when I buy something and I won’t have to worry about clearing anything first. I knew if I thought about it, I could come up with a better (lazier) solution.
Jim,
It can take around 6 months just to get out of the Google Sandbox for the traffic to really start coming so you need to be extra patient and focus on 1 to 2 years out.
As others have pointed out, keep adding content. The more value content, the better. Keep moving forward.
To Our Success!
Melo
I'm not patient either, but the reality is what it is.
If it takes about 9 months to for a baby to be born, being impatient at 6 months doesn't help anything. :-)
Mel
You are not doing anything wrong. We all have a different path to follow and yours is just another drop in the Google bucket. Be persistent and keep writing, you will get noticed eventually.
To give you my experience I just started to rank "some" articles after I had written 55 or 60 articles or approximately 65,000 words. But it doesn't mean that you can't rank before that... It is what happened to me and I'm in the MMO niche...
Keep pushing, it WILL happen!!!
Denis
Oh, I’ll keep pushing. Earnings or not, I’m enjoying the writing even if no one is seeing it.
How many of your articles have actually been indexed by Google? For me, it's 19/36, better than 50%! You can find the answer by counting how many colored Google signs are in your Site Content published articles list. I'm in a very similar situation as yours, a few months ahead perhaps, but seeing little true traffic, though I do see positive signs: I do know there've been 6 clicks on one of my websites and 3 on another from organic Google searches. I know my click rates are very low, like 1 to 4%, though as high as 10% on one article.
Thanks I didn’t notice the little colorful G’s 13/22. Still feels like I can’t get ranked til I get noticed and I can’t get noticed til I get ranked.
13/22 sounds great. For the 9/22, especially the oldest ones, you could try to find out why Google isn't finding them on a case by case basis. Next, have you set up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools/Google Search Console? The former will tell you about visitors and the latter about the number of clicks. It'll probably take a couple of weeks to get these all set up and running, and with non-empty Google reports.
Jim - have you tried asking for website feedback on the Give and Take Feedback thread? You may get some useful insight. Please Give Me Feedback on My Website
I have but not recently. Since I’m too new to know what works and what doesn’t the best I can do is point out typos and grammatical errors. Instead I’ve been concentrating on comments. I feel 100% qualified to make comments. As we see all too often, you don’t need expertise, knowledge, or even intelligence to have an opinion.
But thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try a few more
I found out that you can use community credits for Site Comments or for Site Feedback as you wish, i.e. you can earn your credits through Site Comments, but then ask for feedback on Site Feedback.
It's give and take - so it's nice if you reciprocate. Don't let your inexperience stop you from offering up your opinion. Just be honest and do your best.
I suspect that some website feedback might be exactly what you need right now. At the very least, it might be interesting.
The more you write, the more traffic you'll see. Google likes really active sites. 22 posts in 3 months isn't enough to get them to favor your content.
You should set up a routine as if the site is your full-time job. For example, I write a blog post and product review every single day, but you can do a blog post every other day to maintain high activity.
Of course you’re right. I started out slow but I’m increasing my output. One a day is my goal
Your mention of product reviews got me thinking. I haven’t written many. Lengthy thought pieces are more fun to write. However, product reviews are very helpful to the reader, more likely to generate sales and I can write them much faster. Maybe I’ll go on a product review marathon.
Thanks for the kick in the butt.
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I like cheese and I can listen to the whining. Still too early to expect much traffic from the crawlers at Google. Takes a lot of great content for them to find you. Just keep doing it. I'm starting my second year.
Stick to it.
Joe
Thanks that’s encouraging.