I think I messed up and wasted a year!

I agree with the people saying that you haven't wasted a year, you just haven't succeeded YET. Right now you are just trowing shit to the wall hoping something will stick, but that's a strategy that spreads you thin and that makes your success a matter a of luck and you don't want that. What you've achieved so far is that you must be used to working on a regular schedule on your online stuff and work ethics is actually one of the most important factors for success IMHO. Seems like your main problem is that you are not getting enough traffic and there are two ways to go about getting it in the long run and an additional trick you can do in the beginning to get things rolling.

The two main traffic sources for people are usually SEO and social and it seems you are not organized doing either of those. You can choose one, the other or both, but you need to be organized and plan both.

It seems to me that SEO is harder, but can also be more rewarding. You need to start with proper keyword research and then start building some links. You can purchase some for the marketplace, you can start building web 2.0s or you can even build your own PBN. You need to research all of it as thoroughly as you can, form an action plan with milestone goals and ways to measure your success and get cracking. It might include rebranding your blog, making it more niche specific or even stating over with a new one. You just need to do the research and evaluate your options with no emotions and get cracking.

Option two is social and it seems like something that is easier to achieve, requires small investment, but can hardly be left on autopilot. My suggestion here would be choose the most suitable social networks to tackle, to narrow down your niche even if you decide you want a few of them, purchase the proper botting software, proxies and whatever else you need and start building profiles that would get targeted followers that would later start bringing you traffic. Chose your niche(s) wisely and have every account targeted at a NARROW niche, not a broad one and not multiple niches what is the case with what you have right now.

The trick you can do right now is to be active in online communities like forums where you could post daily and have your site in your signature and give your posts the occasional plug. You can register multiple accounts as well and try to create a bit of buzz, just don't be naive or overly promotional when doing this.

I hope this helps and would get you the success you are searching for. I admire people that work hard and I thing they deserve to have a return on their time investment, but to achieve that you also need to work smart.
 
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I will be more than happy to give you access to my own WordAi Turing spinner panel. This way you can see how it works.

I would truly love to have a go on that, thanks for the offer Tunechi.
 
At least you are doing one thing right - taking action.

So many of those people (around 30%) joining BHW want to make money instantly that they can't be bothered to even read the entire thread and keep asking the same question.

Another 45% busy reading and trying every trick but nothing works for them because they got no plan. They see one new method, they try. They have no patience to wait for the fruit of their labour.

The remaining 25% made up from 20% BST seller trying to make money from the above 2 groups and the last 5 % silently making money and doubling their earning every day.


I am not sure which group you belong to but I myself tend to look things positively. I like the fact that you are 56 and still working hard and trying things out. Lots of those 26, 36 years old out there still busy playing their dota, doing nothing substantial.



Thanks Rorro for your encouraging words.. The truth is I am trying so hard for my son, whose even more useless than I am. ~I want to be able to leave him a growing business so he doesn't just sit on the dole for rest of his life. I've already had heart surgery and waiting for my next heart attack so shouldn't be too long I'm a realist and don't kid myself, not looking for pity btw, I'm far too old and grizzled for that nonsense :-)
 
I would not say you wasted a year.. Actually you did not because you took action and now you learned how to do things wrong. I think you are ready to take the next step to do things rigt. It takes some time to learn all of this if you never have been into IM before.

Very true Ruthsam, a good way of looking at it. Even after nearly 18 months there's still a ton of basic stuff I don't understand. All you guys are giving me the confidence to start a new niche and site (I'll still keep my shit old site for laughing and pointing purposes)
 
When you say social media is it just manual work your doing there? Have you tried using something to automate it? Like massplanner, or some other software. That has helped me atleast to reach out to more people in my niche :)

Hi Jerring appreciate your reply.
I'm just asking my "friends" on my personal page to share my stuff, they rarely do as they mostly can't be arsed with it.
This is an area I could def look into as you say.
I've heard about massplanner, looked at it once, will check it again.


cheers
steve
 
You are at the same age like my dad, and he really had problems to use a PC, to scan or print things or even attach documents to an email. Why don't you create a website where you explain seniors how to use a PC?

Hey Buzz, that's not a bad idea, those old people without adblock may even be dumb enough to click on my ad's lol
Seriously though, I've noted that idea down, many thanks.
 
I'll admit upfront, I didn't read your whole post OP. I got the gist of it though, and I see a couple of things wrong with your approach:

1. You're starting too big. It's great to have huge goals, but you need to work your way up to achieving them. There are steps that need to be taken. Start with a small blog and expand from there.

2. You're too hard on yourself. I'm a strong believer in positive thinking. If you're always telling yourself "I'm a moron and I can't do anything", you'll eventually start to believe that crap. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do IM. You just need to be confident in your capacity as a human to learn from your mistakes.

I'd say just learn from your mistakes and move on. We've all wasted money in one way or another, just let it go and try again


Thanks conor, good advice. I'm my own harshest critic. you are right, I need to be more positive.
 
Hi Bleght, awesome reply thank you.
you are right about throwing shit and hoping it sticks, this is no way to carry on a "business" really, I never looked at it like that before.

Yes my main problem is getting genuine traffic to my site .
I have been stitched up many times on this one when I had no idea at all what I was doing same with buying backlinks and PBN's (wow, PBN's that cost me a lot of money and made me give up too complicated for me and I was sold very poor domains)

I wasn't sure about putting my site in a sig here as didn't want to take liberties until I had contributed.

I've totally cocked up my social networks and will have to start from scratch when I start a new project. It's a long story I won't bore you with, it all comes down to bad planning and constantly changing my mind.

As for keyword research I have spent some time learning about that and feel I'm doing OK, but do you think I should up the stakes from going for low comp low volume (example, I like to target 200-500 searches pm low comp) do you think I should aim higher? I think my site is too weak to rank for better, but obviously i'm no expert lol

thanks for your advice Bleght, much appreciated.


I agree with the people saying that you haven't wasted a year, you just haven't succeeded YET. Right now you are just trowing shit to the wall hoping something will stick, but that's a strategy that spreads you thin and that makes your success a matter a of luck and you don't want that. What you've achieved so far is that you must be used to working on a regular schedule on your online stuff and work ethics is actually one of the most important factors for success IMHO. Seems like your main problem is that you are not getting enough traffic and there are two ways to go about getting it in the long run and an additional trick you can do in the beginning to get things rolling.

The two main traffic sources for people are usually SEO and social and it seems you are not organized doing either of those. You can choose one, the other or both, but you need to be organized and plan both.

It seems to me that SEO is harder, but can also be more rewarding. You need to start with proper keyword research and then start building some links. You can purchase some for the marketplace, you can start building web 2.0s or you can even build your own PBN. You need to research all of it as thoroughly as you can, form an action plan with milestone goals and ways to measure your success and get cracking. It might include rebranding your blog, making it more niche specific or even stating over with a new one. You just need to do the research and evaluate your options with no emotions and get cracking.

Option two is social and it seems like something that is easier to achieve, requires small investment, but can hardly be left on autopilot. My suggestion here would be choose the most suitable social networks to tackle, to narrow down your niche even if you decide you want a few of them, purchase the proper botting software, proxies and whatever else you need and start building profiles that would get targeted followers that would later start bringing you traffic. Chose your niche(s) wisely and have every account targeted at a NARROW niche, not a broad one and not multiple niches what is the case with what you have right now.

The trick you can do right now is to be active in online communities like forums where you could post daily and have your site in your signature and give your posts the occasional plug. You can register multiple accounts as well and try to create a bit of buzz, just don't be naive or overly promotional when doing this.

I hope this helps and would get you the success you are searching for. I admire people that work hard and I thing they deserve to have a return on their time investment, but to achieve that you also need to work smart.
 
I can relate to OP. I actually wasted 8 months of my time going for a real broad niche and got me nowhere. I just regroup and started a niche website which is about 10 days old. Did my keyword research and got a domain name that people can relate to.

What I found out is that people actually share your stuff if it is helping them in a good way. Two of my blog posts have more than 120 shares and I only have 8 posts so far. First you need to write articles to help people and then when the trust is build you could sell anything to them. Just my two cents.

Google also love websites that aims to help people as for the few days my website is up and running I got almost 20 organic visits to the site. If you have to than start a smaller site and write about something you love it will be so much easier.
 
You're still young. 1 year is nothing.

I wasted 8 years in college and never even graduated. Think about that.

As long as you're chasing your dreams, nothing is wasted.

Hi Stitches, thanks for advice,I won't give up chasing, but as you get older everything def seems to gets harder.
 
Hey OP, another point to consider is using automation in some fashion. When it comes to social media, I have no time/interest in spending hours to build up accounts manually. You might want to ask around about some of the tools we use (MassPlanner works for me - no affiliation). That's a good way to drive targeted traffic.

Here's what I'd do:
First, I think the answer is right under your nose.

Remember you're in LONDON, mate! Do you know how fortunate you are from a content creation standpoint? You are surrounded by centuries of history. Now, find a niche within that history and make it your own.

Let's say you go with a site about crime, subdivided into topics like 'serial killers', 'white collar crime', 'crimes of passion', etc. Now, hit the history books and find the top 10 crimes that occurred in London under those subheadings. You can go back to Medieval times, if you like. The key here is to GO TO THOSE LOCATIONS and make a video and take photos. That is completely unique content, and would be extremely interesting for people who like the genre.

I think videos would be huge, as would photos, because seeing a crime scene is different than just reading about it.

So get out of your flat/house and explore your city. You're Sherlock Holmes. If you haven't seen the episode, this comes to mind...
Now, you also have to think about what service/product you could offer. One that springs to mind is organising tours for people who like this kind of thing...the Ghost Tour is huge in Edinburgh, as you may know. Is it a bit of work? Yeah, but you can also hire some uni students for 10quid/hr to do it as well.

You could sell merchandise along with the tour...not sure what (aside from shirts), but you'll figure it out.

What I'm talking about is building a sustainable business, not just a website. This is the kind of thing that you could pass along to your son.

This is also an easy way to weave your own narrative into the blog...life of crime, but reformed. Stuff like this, if done well, can end you up on BBC.
 
Hi guys. I've been on BHW for ages trying to learn, but I think I must be a bit thick, I'm 56years old, that may have something to do with it I guess.

Hi Steve:

I'm 58, been lurking around here for a while trying to "learn the trade" and have several sites, most of which are mucked-up but one or three that are starting to move up in the rankings. Not page 1 by a long shot, but slowly and steadily ...

Like you, I have my "old" site (the domain is from 2008) and it's a proper muck-up of personal stories and warped humor. When one of the Google apps like Analytics asks me what category my site is, I tell 'em "Russian Ballet" just to mess with their heads. :D

I've done all my content writing myself since I'm a writer, but it took a while to learn to write for both search engines and human eyes. It's a tough balancing act, that's for sure.

My problem has also been the "Shiny Thing Syndrome" - I see something that seems of pasing interest and I jump on it balls out, not thinking about monetization or competition or ...

The funniest / weirdest thing is - I spent over 45 years practicing / teaching martial arts. You'd think I'd be the perfect guy to write about it, right?

Problem is, now that I'm "retired" I'm just out of gas. I wrote a book and hundreds of articles, worked as a mod on a martial arts site, lived, breathed and ate MA from when I was 12. I want a rest.

So what did I do? Became a writer. Then the 'Net came along and changed everything. Shiny things!!! :eek:

Right now I'm STILL all over the place - my personal blog, a martial arts video blog, a T'ai-Chi blog (my specialty), a work-at-home blog, an urban survival one, an affiliate hosting one, a self-help one, a vitamins and minerals blog (for which I have high hopes), hell, even a blog on speculums! :confused:

I'm still learning from sites like BHW and from jumping head-first to test the waters. It's how I roll and how I'll always roll.

Don't give up the good fight, my man! ;)
 
You just fail to focus.

The focus of one project to succeed, and then move to another business that promises
 
If you have a general niche and work not full time on a blog/website project, you can expect zero income in the first year.

I wouldn't give up. I made about the same amount of money in my first year and never even expected more. Having a broad niche isn't wrong, but your journey will take longer. Ranking the infamous electric braun shaver for asian men website is easier than a broad niche, but the latter has so much more potential for the future. There is only so much you can write about electric braun shavers for asian men ,-)

IMO you really shouldn't be thinking in niches and focus. That's a dead end as far as I am concerned. there are 6 billion ppl and chances are very high there is a large enough group interested in your interests.
Solid keyword research, a solid social media strategy and some link building are mandatory for every strategy.

that being said: if you want to make money fast, a personal website is maybe the worst decision you could make ;-)
 
I can relate to OP. I actually wasted 8 months of my time going for a real broad niche and got me nowhere. I just regroup and started a niche website which is about 10 days old. Did my keyword research and got a domain name that people can relate to.

What I found out is that people actually share your stuff if it is helping them in a good way. Two of my blog posts have more than 120 shares and I only have 8 posts so far. First you need to write articles to help people and then when the trust is build you could sell anything to them. Just my two cents.

Google also love websites that aims to help people as for the few days my website is up and running I got almost 20 organic visits to the site. If you have to than start a smaller site and write about something you love it will be so much easier.

Hi wayne, spot on, this is the way I am now thinking thanks to you guys helping me on here. really wish you even more success with your site, 120 shares is something I could only fantasise about.
 
BTW, when you're replying to multiple people in the same thread, you're supposed to put all the quotations and replies in one comment since what you've done is viewed as post count inflation. In the future use the "+ Quote" link under the posts you want to quote and the "Insert quotes" button down there to put all the quotes in the same post, which in your case here would have been of record-breaking length :P

I have been stitched up many times on this one when I had no idea at all what I was doing same with buying backlinks and PBN's (wow, PBN's that cost me a lot of money and made me give up too complicated for me and I was sold very poor domains)
Start with web2.0s, they are free and after you know what you are doing move on to building your own PBN. But educate yourself first, this is something you don't want to screw up since it leads to penalties.

I wasn't sure about putting my site in a sig here as didn't want to take liberties until I had contributed.
You can't put anything in your signature here even if you tried unless you pay to be Jr.VIP and meet the criteria. But there are a bunch of forums out there that you can use as traffic sources in the beginning.

As for keyword research I have spent some time learning about that and feel I'm doing OK, but do you think I should up the stakes from going for low comp low volume (example, I like to target 200-500 searches pm low comp) do you think I should aim higher? I think my site is too weak to rank for better, but obviously i'm no expert lol
I don't know enough about keyword research actually and I'm actually a beginner as far as SEO goes. I think you should be aiming for higher search volumes though with competition still being low.
 
Wow Christianbed what a brilliant set of ideas. Funnily enough I was recently reading about Victorian trials at the Old Bailey and loved the story about a Houdini type prisoner called Thomas Bowler and was going to write that up at some stage. I also read a book about life in Britain in AD 1000 and put that on my list of article ideas, so I was maybe thinking a little along your lines, the bit where going out with a video camera is simply genius, a thicko like me would never of thought of that for some reason and would be seriously awesome content and probably quite fun to do. I am going to have to do some serious thinking about this one. many thanks for your input. Christian.
----------------------------------------

Hey OP, another point to consider is using automation in some fashion. When it comes to social media, I have no time/interest in spending hours to build up accounts manually. You might want to ask around about some of the tools we use (MassPlanner works for me - no affiliation). That's a good way to drive targeted traffic.

Here's what I'd do:
First, I think the answer is right under your nose.

Remember you're in LONDON, mate! Do you know how fortunate you are from a content creation standpoint? You are surrounded by centuries of history. Now, find a niche within that history and make it your own.

Let's say you go with a site about crime, subdivided into topics like 'serial killers', 'white collar crime', 'crimes of passion', etc. Now, hit the history books and find the top 10 crimes that occurred in London under those subheadings. You can go back to Medieval times, if you like. The key here is to GO TO THOSE LOCATIONS and make a video and take photos. That is completely unique content, and would be extremely interesting for people who like the genre.

I think videos would be huge, as would photos, because seeing a crime scene is different than just reading about it.

So get out of your flat/house and explore your city. You're Sherlock Holmes. If you haven't seen the episode, this comes to mind...
Now, you also have to think about what service/product you could offer. One that springs to mind is organising tours for people who like this kind of thing...the Ghost Tour is huge in Edinburgh, as you may know. Is it a bit of work? Yeah, but you can also hire some uni students for 10quid/hr to do it as well.

You could sell merchandise along with the tour...not sure what (aside from shirts), but you'll figure it out.

What I'm talking about is building a sustainable business, not just a website. This is the kind of thing that you could pass along to your son.

This is also an easy way to weave your own narrative into the blog...life of crime, but reformed. Stuff like this, if done well, can end you up on BBC.
 
Sifphilly we are of the same mould my friend :-)
It looks like we have similar, shiny things, problems too!
Yeah I also have trouble when asked what is my niche "anything" doesn't cut it when trying to get listed in DMOZ or similar. Love the Russian Ballet answer :-) Googs will not like that at all, sometimes I think f*** Google, they don't own the Net I want to write natural, but when you do you know you are wasting your time.

For example on my memoirs blog I was writing posts of 4-6k words each, had 13 posts 45k of words, minimal seo no keyword research. After a year of not getting any visitors I just turned it into a Kindle book and will get zero sales, well 1, my son will be forced to buy it at £2.10 lol smetimes I think it's all set up to take the pi** out of us old guys.

Hope you find some success with your sites Sif, if you want I'll go and comment on some posts and share some for youy if it would help?



Hi Steve:

I'm 58, been lurking around here for a while trying to "learn the trade" and have several sites, most of which are mucked-up but one or three that are starting to move up in the rankings. Not page 1 by a long shot, but slowly and steadily ...

Like you, I have my "old" site (the domain is from 2008) and it's a proper muck-up of personal stories and warped humor. When one of the Google apps like Analytics asks me what category my site is, I tell 'em "Russian Ballet" just to mess with their heads. :D

I've done all my content writing myself since I'm a writer, but it took a while to learn to write for both search engines and human eyes. It's a tough balancing act, that's for sure.

My problem has also been the "Shiny Thing Syndrome" - I see something that seems of pasing interest and I jump on it balls out, not thinking about monetization or competition or ...

The funniest / weirdest thing is - I spent over 45 years practicing / teaching martial arts. You'd think I'd be the perfect guy to write about it, right?

Problem is, now that I'm "retired" I'm just out of gas. I wrote a book and hundreds of articles, worked as a mod on a martial arts site, lived, breathed and ate MA from when I was 12. I want a rest.

So what did I do? Became a writer. Then the 'Net came along and changed everything. Shiny things!!! :eek:

Right now I'm STILL all over the place - my personal blog, a martial arts video blog, a T'ai-Chi blog (my specialty), a work-at-home blog, an urban survival one, an affiliate hosting one, a self-help one, a vitamins and minerals blog (for which I have high hopes), hell, even a blog on speculums! :confused:

I'm still learning from sites like BHW and from jumping head-first to test the waters. It's how I roll and how I'll always roll.

Don't give up the good fight, my man! ;)
 
Thanks for a different perspective Zinga, appreciate it.

Very good point, maybe I am over the hard bit and just need lots more content and keywords and like you say a better social strategy and backlinks, all stuff I am working on. I hope you are right that it may well all end up working as I do enjoy the freedom of writing about anything I suddenly deem to be interesting.

I like money but I'm not worried about a fast buck I would like to make a lasting income so I can pass a sustainable set of websites onto my son when I pop off.


If you have a general niche and work not full time on a blog/website project, you can expect zero income in the first year.

I wouldn't give up. I made about the same amount of money in my first year and never even expected more. Having a broad niche isn't wrong, but your journey will take longer. Ranking the infamous electric braun shaver for asian men website is easier than a broad niche, but the latter has so much more potential for the future. There is only so much you can write about electric braun shavers for asian men ,-)

IMO you really shouldn't be thinking in niches and focus. That's a dead end as far as I am concerned. there are 6 billion ppl and chances are very high there is a large enough group interested in your interests.
Solid keyword research, a solid social media strategy and some link building are mandatory for every strategy.

that being said: if you want to make money fast, a personal website is maybe the worst decision you could make ;-)
 
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