April 2015 Monthly Report – The Mistake that Costed Me My Traffic

April 2015 was the 11^th month for My Internet Quest.

Yaay! I made it to the 11^th month! It was a roller coaster ride and I’ve learned a lot each month as I endure the hardship of finding time to blog as life gets too hectic when you’re on the right track.

Last month was the month when I wrote the least amount of blog posts because due to my commitment in my other business ventures, my time for this blog is spread thin.

Sometimes I had to stay up till 3am JUST to finish writing an article!

But despite that, I still managed to write one blog post a week which was a bit lower compared to my usual 3-4 posts a week.

It was a way lower number of content than usual so does this affect my website in any way? Let’s take a look at…

 

My April 2015 Website Stats

As you can see, my graph went from an around 100 visitors to less than 30!

This is really disheartening to see, especially when everything was going up so smoothly, I just lost more than half of my usually traffic. The reason is not how I wrote my articles or how beautiful my website is, but rather how often do I publish.

Usually, I would write around 3-4 posts a week but this month, I only had time to write one per week (2 on some weeks) and as much as I hate to believe those stories of the curse of being a blogger, I can’t escape the truth.

As you may have known, being a blogger is indeed fun. You can write reviews about almost anything at all, and people will believe you more than corporate sites because they can relate to you better as a fellow person rather than a company who only wants ways to drain more money out of their pockets.

If there is something about a company you don’t like, maybe a restaurant that serves terrible food, you can simply write about it and gain more readers and publicity from your blog because you help people by sharing your experiences.

In a nutshell, as a blogger you need only to write and there you go, that’s your business. Your money? Through ads, through your own products, or through Affiliate Marketing which is what I’m doing now.

But if you suddenly decided to stop blogging for even a week, your readers will not have a reason to come to your site which is what I just experienced on my site.

However despite the very low traffic, my social media accounts are increasing slowly along the way despite the low traffic…

• Facebook – 252 likes
• Twitter – 73 followers
• Google+ – 24 followers, 5404 views
• Pinterest – 106 followers

The Online business niche is a dull niche compared to gaming or fashion so I guess I should be lucky to have even 10 followers or likes!

Now let’s move on to my income report…

As you can see, I only made $30.50 which actually surprises me because I put less effort than I did all these while! And here’s a look at how my graph looks like according to Wealthy Affiliate’s affiliate statistics…

Oh man! If I have blogged a bit more, I could have increased my traffic and at least made a bit more sales!

Although my blog posts are less frequent, I increased the quality with more images and content so that there will at least be 3,000 words for each article and this just proves that a quality blog post always tops quantity.

Of course quantity can be good in a way but in Internet Marketing, they are practically useless if they don’t rank on the first page of Google and the only way to achieve that, is by adding more impactful content.

If you’re wondering as to what program I’m currently promoting, it is actually Wealthy Affiliate which is an Online Business course that helps everyone from any background at all build a successful website and monetize it according to any niche at all.

Since I started my Online Business journey, I have been jumping program to program and the longest time I’ve stayed with one is only up to 4 months – the last one being Dot Com Secrets X.

However I have been with Wealthy Affiliate for almost a year now and April 2015 marks my 11^th month here.

This is because I find that the features which WA provides are really good – The ever-updating classroom lessons, the high performance webhosting service (which is also complimentary), the website builder, the keyword research tool and of course, the awesome community.

There are members there who are still here from the very first year Wealthy Affiliate was launched back in 2005!

Everyone is so friendly and fun to be around with, I’m confident that I’ll still be a member there for many years to come so if you’re interested in giving WA a go, let me know and I’ll be your personal guide 😀

 

5 Mistakes I Did [And What I Learned] Throughout This Month…

I’m not an expert in the world of Online Business because even after being in the industry for quite a while, there are always things I could learn and of course… things that I regret not doing and those are…

Mistake #1 – Not Posting More Frequently

I’ve always dreaded the rumors everyone said about bloggers – Tis easy to start, but difficult to maintain.

All these while, I was blogging quite frequently for at least 3-4 posts a week and I was adamant on keeping it that way for a very long time, all the way until my 11^th month which was last April.

However this has been a very busy month for me and as much time as I tried to spare, an hour a day would not suffice to write a blog because unlike many pro bloggers, I take my own sweet time to write mine, usually around 7 hours for one article.

Pretty long, right?

I was thinking of the same thing but if you look at blogs such as MOZ and Neil Patel, you would notice that huge successful blogs which can rank on the first page of Google write at least 2,450 words.

Take a look at this…

According to Serp IQ, contents which has at least 2,000 words are the ones that rank on the first page of Google, whereas those with around 400 words in average appear in page 10.

This further motivates me to write as long as I want because all these while I’ve been thinking that shorter articles are better, like in the case of newspaper sites but those are exceptional because those sites are really established corporate ones with lots of ads, lots of posts and lots of local marketing presence physically too.

For a short period of time (Several months), I was gullible enough to believe that so I went on ahead and write around 500 words’ worth of content for my post.

It was a failure and out of 50 articles that I publish, only one went up.

However after finding out that the more content you have the better, I became more comfortable writing because I no longer need to check for word limits.

Whenever I start touching the keyboard, I barely notice the time because it feels like whatever things that goes through my mind at that moment of time, are typed by my fingers straightaway without me even thinking.

However writing quality content which is also lengthy takes up a lot of my time and sometimes if I don’t put aside some time for me to blog about, I will never finish it in time for publishing which is why my blog post timings are messed up.

In a nutshell, you do need to post more frequently in order to get a boost of traffic but if your content is lengthy and great, reaching a number of around 2-3 articles a week should be enough to grow your blog at a steady pace.

Speaking of frequent posting…

Mistake #2 – Not Setting Up a Posting Schedule

So we know now that publishing around 2-3 quality contents a week does great in driving you regular traffic but to increase that potential even more, setting up a regular schedule where you maintain a steady pace to publish your content at a specific time and day can really maximize your website even further in terms of SEO.

This is something many Internet Marketers know about but sometimes when we are really busy, we tend to forget about scheduling our publishing times as we are already struggling to even write one in the first place!

However scheduling a time to publish your posts can actually have a positive effect your SEO because when you make it a habit to post at that specific time and day for a few times in a row, Google will start to notice that and will index you much faster and your website will have a much steady growth.

Take a look at my stats here…

As I was struggling to maintain my blog posts, I publish according to whichever time I want and although publishing is already a good way to drive traffic, Google doesn’t seem to agree with that.

As a result, my blog went down really fast. Whenever I publish my article, the traffic will rise up by a bit but after that, the graph will continue going down.

Scary isn’t it? My traffic this month went down even more than the previous month. So how do we solve this?

By setting a schedule of which day you want to publish your content, and what time. Simple as that!

It may sound simple but trying to bring yourself to follow that schedule can be one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do in life besides doing exams.

But rest assured your traffic will really benefit just by doing so because if you time your posts regularly, your readers will become loyal followers because they can expect when your next article is going to be released.

Mistake #3 – Not Making an Email Autoresponder Early.

“I want to get an autoresponder but I think I’ll wait a few months till my traffic goes up first”

Sounds familiar? I was doing the exact same thing.

Everyone knows how powerful email marketing is. In fact, if you read blogs on how to boost up SEO for your website, almost all of them will tell you to start as early as possible, possibly when you first launched your site and that is because…

• You get to build trust with your subscribers.
• Those subscribers can add up to your total number of website visitors as they will regularly check up on your website which indirectly affect Google’s ranking too.
• If your website sell a variety of products, you can make repeat sales.
• An autoresponder allows you to email all of your subscribers with ease.
• You get to convert random website visitors who aren’t buying anything into a subscriber, which you can also convince by emailing him.

If you start having an email autoresponder early, you get to collect all visitors who are wanting to subscribe to your newsletter since the beginning of your website and if you delay this step, you’ll miss out on a ton of traffic which may just give you conversions more than other visitors!

It took me 11 months to decide on getting on autoresponder for my website and boy was that a fatal mistake!

I can’t get over the thought of a few hundred subscribers who would have become loyal readers and potential customers so if you’re planning to build a website of your own, don’t do the same mistake as I did and start getting one ASAP!

Many people asked me on whether or not they should go for MailChimp or Aweber.

I have tried them both myself as I didn’t know which one to choose but if you want ease of use, fast deliverability and no spam at all, I would highly recommend Aweber as that is what I am also using now.

I find Aweber’s custom sign up page creation pretty cool because you can simply choose which one you want, drag around the size and voilà! Finish in less than 5 minutes!

MailChimp is good too, but it is more to corporate use because you have to go through a few steps in order to craft even one email which I find time-consuming and tedious.

Not only that, it is very hard to get started as everything is so complicated, it took me a few days just to learn how to craft my email and go through all those tutorial!

I stayed with MailChimp for 2 weeks before deciding to have a go at Aweber mainly because I wanted to save money as Mailchimp gives you a free account for your first 2,000 subscribers.

I thought that it was a bargain but in the end, I was fed up with the hidden ads that come along with the free account so I decided to give Aweber a try and create a free account instead.

A week after that, I received this…

I was literally blown away!

2 weeks after joining MailChimp and they never even did something like this but Aweber actually sent me a letter all the way from Chalfont Pennsylvania (Their office) to Malaysia which is around 16-18 hours flight!

The letter was just a thank you message from the Founder himself, Tom Kulzer but that was the ultimate trust-builder which made me decide to stay with Aweber instead.

So if you haven’t already, start getting an autoresponder for you website now!

Mistake #4 – Not Guest Blogging Early… Too.

Guest blogging is simply put, the practice of becoming a guest contributor at another blog to build rapport and bring back followers to your own blog.

Famous blogs which have thousands of guest blogging articles are Lifehack.org, Tiny Buddha and The Huffington post and all these sites have millions of monthly visitors which is why they are highly sought after.

Similar to the autoresponder case, the reason why I held back at guest blogging was because if my website were to gain massive amounts of traffic while it was still incomplete, I was scared that my conversions won’t be as high.

However what I didn’t know is that the process of become a guest blogger itself, is really lengthy!

I totally did not expect this because in my mind, I thought that the process is a quick one because all the editor need to do is read the topic, read the content and publish which would take less than half an hour!

However after applying to become a guest blogger myself, I realized that the process is actually time-consuming because you need to wait for at least 3-4 weeks in order to get a response! Jeepers!

Out of all the major blogs I have applied to, only Work Awesome replied me…

Hopefully I will get my first guest post published within Work Awesome by this week! Stay tuned guys!

If I were to start applying earlier, I would have gotten my post published by the time my blog is ready so moral of the story is to start applying as early as possible to as many blogs as you can because you’ll never know which one of those will accept you!

Mistake #5 – Not Being Transparent All the Way.

Transparency is important in helping you build trust with your readers because who wants to believe someone who’s hiding behind a computer screen?

I actually covered this on my previous monthly report just last month but I was only talking about being transparent on websites because I was still trying to get a hang of social media.

But after creating my website accounts for social media, I only shared my newly-published articles using that account only.

I never thought of using my own personal account to share as well!

But after seeing many famous bloggers like Neil Patel doing the same (Sharing their content on both their business account and personal account), I decided to try that out too and I noticed that my traffic spiked from social media which is pretty cool.

Of course when you share the same link on both accounts, it’s best not to duplicate exactly what you’re posting on both personal and business accounts because you want to make it original instead of making it look like a lazy man’s work.

For example, if you’re saying something like “Wondering on how to build traffic? Here’s 10 ways on how” on your business social media account, your personal account should be more… personal like “2 years back I had no idea what traffic is, but now…”

Get what I mean?

I started my account with very little followers for a few days because I wasn’t a very social person when it comes to social media but after deciding to just connect my instagram account to Facebook and twitter as well, everything feels so much easier to share so I did exactly that.

I was surprised that I got followers with just one blog post that I share! From that moment on, I share my newly-published articles on both my blog’s social media accounts and my personal one as well which gives me double the traffic.

 

My Plans for May 2015

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Last month I mentioned about my food festival that I’m planning to host this August and that I managed to get the attention of an investor.

I finally finished my proposal for that event and it was 50 pages! I was still surprised as to how I managed to find the time to blog while writing a 50 page proposal and some letters too not to mention the countless meetings.

However I have not had agreement yet because I actually just sent the proposal last week so hopefully my big meeting will be next week.

Still, there isn’t much to update on the event yet because I’ll start my marketing only when my capital started coming in to minimize risks. Hey if you are really reading this, would you mind liking my Makan Fest facebook page here, please? I would really appreciate that!

Just a way for me to know if you’re really reading this lengthy article though ;).

Apart from Makan Fest, I am also planning a small Dota tournament at a local university here and how this is connected to Myinternetquest.com is that for all my events, I am planning to build blogs on them to test out how many people would purchase an Affiliate Marketing offer if it’s on an event website.

That’s it! I’ll update you on my progress on May’s monthly report 😉 .

 

My Final Word

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Many bloggers or Online Entrepreneurs will try to hide moments such as this when their business is going down but personally, I’d rather show because I believe I can help more people if I do as they can avoid doing the same mistakes that I did.

It is much better to be transparent and share your journey, even the bad ones because people will tend to trust you more as you’re showing that you’re human and you’re not perfect. I used to focus on Online Business more over value because when you first start your journey in the industry, it is common for anyone to want to aim for the most amount of income.

I mean, just look at the questions that I usually get – Most are like “Hey Riaz, how much do you think I can a month if I start a blog?” or even “Can I make money in the first month?”

It’s normal for anyone to want money but it not wise to chase after it so much so that you don’t focus on bringing quality work anymore because when that happens, your followers leave you.

Which shows that the best way to keep ahead is to do your work because of passion. Don’t care about what other people expect of you, just follow your heart and in the world of blogging, we share by writing our feelings away.

This may be the least productive month for my blog but next month will mark the one year anniversary of Myinternetquest.com so I’ll be sure to put in my best effort yet!

Not only that, according to Google, websites that are more than a year have more authority due to its ‘mature’ age. Whether or not this is true, let’s just see how it works in another 4 weeks’ time where I’ll write yet another one my income reports.

Finally! Glad to have finished writing, I actually wrote over 3,000 words! Not as much as my previous monthly report (It was 6,000 words!) but just as good and I was just as excited when writing it too.

Thank you all for reading and following me, you guys are awesome and I hope you do get a bit of an idea to reach your online success with these real live obstacles I’m going through. I’m rooting for you!