One year from launch my website stats!

It has been a year since I started my website so I thought I would share with you all my results and findings. First off I have not been as active on this site as probably recommended as I struggled, juggling work, home, my eBay shop, and marketing time and could do only what I was able to do.

If you have more time then you will progress much faster so bear that in mind when looking at the unique page views. I have to date posted 23 articles which are all approx 1000 words long. So that makes approx 23,000 words on my site. I have 4 other pages as normally required, about me, contact, privacy policy and a welcome page.

At first I struggled writing and would change and redo posts several times before I was happy. I was told at that time it was better to put up one great post than several mediocre ones so I worked at them to make them as good as was possible.

I worked on for a few months before my website which is an exact domain match before it started to rank. At first it was page four, then three, then two, then one and then it finally hit top spot, hurrah, at that point I thought I had cracked it but really that was just the start of the process.

Unique traffic was the next thing to try to make to start to climb. The guys here had said keep writing and you will start to get traffic from other searches. So I did and sure enough I am now getting traffic from searches I wasn't targeting.

Writing improvements make it easier!

As time went by I could see my writing improve, my grammar may not be correct on all posts but I feel I am getting stuff done a lot quicker and now I can shoot out one thousand words in about 30-40 minutes depending on my flow.

However getting text done is one thing, you then have to break that up into smaller segments, add subtitles, images and then your affiliate links. This takes most of my time as I don't want to have posts out there that chase away my readers when they get to me. That's not productive so I wanted to make my posts at least reasonable before I published.

Image searching is a drag!

I have to say searching for images is a real pain and there are suggestions to buy from payment sites but I would rather do that when the site is making enough to cover it. This may be a case of cart before the horse as great imagery can add to the readers entertainment and provide better click throughs so would it be prudent for me to buy now, hoping the site will pay later?

Not sure will have to see the comments on that one. Anyway the building does get easier the more you do it and each page can be done in smaller increments of time as you progress.

Now for the statistics, well before I do one or two points. I didn't at the beginning try to get click throughs. In fact I had none on the site just one or two links to my eBay shop which got a small number per month but nothing worth talking about. I also didn't start adsense until six months in as again I was still trying to build traffic and it was only about then that I was getting enough to warrant adding it.

I also still don't have a product on my site just amazon affiliate links, eBay and a banner to Fishtec which hasn't produced any thing although I am getting clicks to it. Its a UK based company so not sure if that has put people off. I have made some progress with Amazon after starting to change positions and reviews of products but still it is fairly slow.

Slow and steady wins the race!

As you can see from the table I have made steady progress in traffic from the offset. I know its still not huge but it is going in the right direction and with all those Google updates I haven't seen any declines. Well apart from December when fishing would normally go on the back burner as folks get their Christmas shopping done. From this traffic I have seen some progress in adsense although nothing brilliant yet the site has made just over $14 which if nothing else has paid for the domain name. :)

Also I have started to see Amazon orders go through on both .com and .co.uk sites so this again is encouraging. I have seen from my click throughs the number is also increasing month on month and as I continue to write and grow will hopefully continue.

So some of you newbies might be thinking it took a year of work to get 1750 visits a month for only a few dollars, and I would have to agree with you but if I was to count up the actual hours I worked on the site you could probably do the same thing working full time at it in a month or two tops.

Social platforms give me traffic!

I don't know all the tricks yet and have made a few mistakes but I feel that next year will produce better fruit and hopefully a site I can be proud of. Also during this first year I have created a fairly good Googleplus following and have now passed 14,000, I also have over 2,000 on Twitter and have got quite a good following on Pinterest, Facebook and Gentlemint.

As part of my website growth I have actively shared my posts and interests across these platforms and I feel this has contributed greatly to my traffic as I am getting quite a few referrals as well as searches each month.

Then lastly I am a member of WSS which is a community on Googleplus where we post our articles, comment, critique and share each others work. Some might say that is gaming the system but we have been careful not to blatantly share everything. We only do it with anything that interests us and when writing comments try to make them real and helpful to the site. I have seen posts rank very quickly when other members have shared and commented and I have to also thank the guys there for helping me get my site to where it is today.

Summary and one year plan!

To sum up with the helpful members here at WA, the great training and advice I have been able to take a hobby and make a website that now gets sustainable traffic. From that traffic I am getting a small income and I have now the foundations of something to build from. There are loads of other training and aspects to Internet Marketing here at WA and as I have only scratched the surface when I get adding those to the mix I know things will really take off.

My twelve month plan:

1) Get traffic to 5000p/m

2) Triple posts (72 in total)

3) Adsense revenue ($25pm)

4) Amazon revenue ($100pm)

5) Traffic to eBay shop Triple

See you in July 2014 God willing and we shall see how I did.