My Unprofitable Blogging Journey :P

[Banik_Babe]

HELLO BHW!!

In April 2020 I created my first blog on a self-hosted WordPress platform. I didn't know anything about SEO or blogging. I watched Neil Patel and joined BHW.
The concept of my blog was simple and a very niche product.

Here are the hurdles I faced:

1. In the first month Itself my team quit and I was left alone to write blog posts, keyword research, backend management, competition analysis, and every possible thing.
2. After a month's hard work due to some malware issues, I was hacked. My blog was injected with malicious pages and spammy links. I was devastated but I recovered my site from the backup and disavowed the links and went ahead blogging.
3. Close to about 3-4 months from the start, the number of posts I could write drastically reduced to 1-2 a week and then gradually to 1 to 2 in a month.

I couldn't see much action in my analytics. Just 4-5 organic visitors a day but due to social sharing, I would bring in like 100 visitors a day.

6-7 Months down, I totally forgot I had a blog. I opened up the search console and now I could see a little growth in organic visitors and search rankings.

Today Its almost 13 months and this is what my search console looks like:

Last 12 months data-




Recent data (last day)-



Now the traffic is all organic.

Things to be noted:

I did not build backlinks. I tried but nobody linked to me (cries ;_
My niche is somewhat difficult to rank because it falls within expert content ( Law, politics, government)

I still rank in many featured snippets and #1-5 positions in low competitive keywords.

The website is not monetized.

In total, I have spent around $50-60 and the cost should remain the same until the next domain renewal due 2022.

What do you guys think about the matrix? Should I resume writing for this blog or call it a quit?
Do you have any suggestions for the blog? Thanks!!

See ya!

 

[HunterLife]

HELLO BHW!!

In April 2020 I created my first blog on a self-hosted WordPress platform. I didn't know anything about SEO or blogging. I watched Neil Patel and joined BHW.
The concept of my blog was simple and a very niche product.

Here are the hurdles I faced:

1. In the first month Itself my team quit and I was left alone to write blog posts, keyword research, backend management, competition analysis, and every possible thing.
2. After a month's hard work due to some malware issues, I was hacked. My blog was injected with malicious pages and spammy links. I was devastated but I recovered my site from the backup and disavowed the links and went ahead blogging.
3. Close to about 3-4 months from the start, the number of posts I could write drastically reduced to 1-2 a week and then gradually to 1 to 2 in a month.

I couldn't see much action in my analytics. Just 4-5 organic visitors a day but due to social sharing, I would bring in like 100 visitors a day.

6-7 Months down, I totally forgot I had a blog. I opened up the search console and now I could see a little growth in organic visitors and search rankings.

Today Its almost 13 months and this is what my search console looks like:

Last 12 months data-

View attachment 180135


Recent data (last day)-
View attachment 180136


Now the traffic is all organic.

Things to be noted:

I did not build backlinks. I tried but nobody linked to me (cries ;_
My niche is somewhat difficult to rank because it falls within expert content ( Law, politics, government)

I still rank in many featured snippets and #1-5 positions in low competitive keywords.

The website is not monetized.

In total, I have spent around $50-60 and the cost should remain the same until the next domain renewal due 2022.

What do you guys think about the matrix? Should I resume writing for this blog or call it a quit?
Do you have any suggestions for the blog? Thanks!!

See ya!

SUCESS never came to those who never quit & Dont Demotivate yourself and Please do start again with Best Effort and With these you will see number of Results in Life and in Your Bussiness too

do you agree ?

 

[Aleksandar916]

That looks good for a very minimal investment (besides your hard work) and a neglected blog.

What is the niche (at least some broad explanation)?
If it's targeted traffic and you have time and will to keep it going, do it. It has potential. If not, sell it, but since it's not monetized, it will not sell great.

Also, are you sure that the traffic is going to your blog posts and not the pages that were hacked, because it can easily happen that there was some trace left? Just make sure you're safe on that part.

 

[Grand Next]

good luck on your journey!

 

[necemter]

All the best with your journey

 

[RRunner]

It's aged, has content, is growing and getting traffic.

If you don't feel like working on it you could probably sell it for a profit over what you have put in.

 

[tazarbm]

how many articles do you have?
what's the content length?
how did you do keyword research and what's the difficulty score of your keywords that the software you used for keyword research shows?
did people write the articles, or software?

 

[Naughtyfatkid]

Still looks good overall. Continue to water the seed that you planted. Keep going OP!

 

[Banik_Babe]

how many articles do you have?
what's the content length?
how did you do keyword research and what's the difficulty score of your keywords that the software you used for keyword research shows?
did people write the articles, or software?

I currently have 120 articles each ranging from 1000-1500 words. All are 100% plagiarism-free. A couple of them are copy-pasted from educational books but are checked for plagiarism using 1text.com and are clean.

No spinned or expired content. No automation was used. All written line by line.

I used keyword research using Semrush, moz, ubersuggest all free tools. I haven't checked the difficulty level for which I'm ranking.

That looks good for a very minimal investment (besides your hard work) and a neglected blog.

What is the niche (at least some broad explanation)?
If it's targeted traffic and you have time and will to keep it going, do it. It has potential. If not, sell it, but since it's not monetized, it will not sell great.

Also, are you sure that the traffic is going to your blog posts and not the pages that were hacked, because it can easily happen that there was some trace left? Just make sure you're safe on that part.

It's a legal blog content specific to my country as laws differ from nation to nation. The traffic is not going to injected pages. All going towards ranked content.

SUCESS never came to those who never quit & Dont Demotivate yourself and Please do start again with Best Effort and With these you will see number of Results in Life and in Your Bussiness too

do you agree ?

I agree. But I get demotivated because I don't have any backlinks. What do you think of the organic traffic? Is it low for a 1-year-old blog?

 

[Aleksandar916]

I agree. But I get demotivated because I don't have any backlinks. What do you think of the organic traffic? Is it low for a 1-year-old blog?

Is it in English or other language?

Organic is great, 150 hits a day with no backlinks is fine and can grow further.

Not sure if on-page optimization is needed, but you can do a lot for off page and boost pages that are close to page 1 or top 3 positions.

 

[xReminisce]

I agree. But I get demotivated because I don't have any backlinks. What do you think of the organic traffic? Is it low for a 1-year-old blog?

You don't necessary need backlinks.
Look at your stats already, that's without backlinks, you are ranking, you have people coming in.
Yes, it's not in the 100 ks, but so what, everyone starts somewhere.

Ask yourself the following now.
What can you do to monetize it.
From my understanding, due to the niche falling in Law, politics, government, start finding a way to monetize it.
Google AdSense does allow it, but they are quite strict with it. There are other alternative as well.

Now, for backlinks, look into HARO outreach, you have built up a organic site already, I am sure you can at least get a few links from there.

 

[Banik_Babe]

Is it in English or other language?

Organic is great, 150 hits a day with no backlinks is fine and can grow further.

Not sure if on-page optimization is needed, but you can do a lot for off page and boost pages that are close to page 1 or top 3 positions.

It is in English. I'm trying to optimize as far as I can. From speed score to user experiences. I was thinking I should rewrite the existing articles to push the rankings instead of creating new content for sometime.

 

[tazarbm]

I currently have 120 articles each ranging from 1000-1500 words. All are 100% plagiarism-free. A couple of them are copy-pasted from educational books but are checked for plagiarism using 1text.com and are clean.

No spinned or expired content. No automation was used. All written line by line.

I used keyword research using Semrush, moz, ubersuggest all free tools. I haven't checked the difficulty level for which I'm ranking.

thanks for the clarifications

The traffic is pretty good for a website that you didn't care much about, and which has no backlinks. You should keep working on it and monetize it somehow cause it's pity for so much quality traffic going to waste

 

[popbradley]

If you look at your articles in analytics. When did they start bringing in good traffic? when was the last article published before you even stopped? Looks like randomly at 12 months you just started getting 100 clicks a day. If it was several Months ago you had published your last article then it really does take a long time for an article to rank. Crazy.

 

[Banik_Babe]

If you look at your articles in analytics. When did they start bringing in good traffic? when was the last article published before you even stopped? Looks like randomly at 12 months you just started getting 100 clicks a day. If it was several Months ago you had published your last article then it really does take a long time for an article to rank. Crazy.

It actually is increasing gradually. I will have to check how fast a post ranks. But I'm guessing it a month or a little longer.

It usually indexes within 24-48 hrs.

 

[deedee1whoa]

I giggled when I read you forgot about owning a blog. So, thanks for that.

You should do what you feel like. If you believe in it, keep workin' on it. And if you're interested in it, go for it.

 

[popbradley]

It actually is increasing gradually. I will have to check how fast a post ranks. But I'm guessing it a month or a little longer.

It usually indexes within 24-48 hrs.

I’ve just seen a lot of people saying it takes months for articles to properly rank and hit the “peak” of where they will go, once indexed. It looked like your site followed that pattern with the traffic increase overtime unless you kept adding articles the whole time.

 

[nYXem]

From where I look at it, your website is GROWING. The graph has an upwards trend and it would have been even better if you didn't forget you have a blog
Don't stop.

 

[Stitches and Burns]

Your progress is actually amazing despite the setbacks. The question is, are you passionate enough about the blog and the niche to continue blogging?

I have a blog I started in December 2017 and I even had a journey thread here. I started with a simple goal of earning $1,000 a month and it took me 18 months to achieve that goal. Now more than 3 years later, I'm almost close to achieving my second goal of $5,000.

Blogging is a long journey full of obstacles so don't give up and you will eventually see success.

 

[popbradley]

From where I look at it, your website is GROWING. The graph has an upwards trend and it would have been even better if you didn't forget you have a blog
Don't stop.

I second this. If you have hardly posted on the site at all over the last few months (if at all) and are seeing growth I’d keep going. 150 a day isn’t bad. Apply to ezoic (they don’t have a limit anymore) If you 3 times that over time you can make a good side income.