A quick blog update on the blog situation since I feel like I owe you one…
Since the pandemic, I’ve lost almost two thirds of my traffic in February to May.
Compared to last year’s average earnings from blog advertising, my ad revenue earnings have reduced to a fifth! I can’t reveal the exact numbers but imagine if I was earning $1000 in ad revenue, then my ad revenue is now reduced to $200 in the last few months.
That translated to my monthly earnings being a quarter of my monthly average from last year. IF I was drawing $4000 a month, I’m drawing only $1000 from the blog now.
There isn’t much anyone can do about it when all the search traffic is now diverted towards the virus. The only thing I could do was strengthen my own walls and armour.
With the unexpected extra time at home, in April, I spent a lot of time studying my traffic data and analytics, hired a bunch of VAs and I was in full throttle optimising my posts and working on guest posting selectively to build up my blog’s authority so that it will bounce back stronger post-pandemic when travel resumes.
Did it help? I’ll break it down under Insights later below.
This unprecedented event has got many people opening their eyes to the realities of their situations, myself included. With unemployment at an all-time high, I wrote a post about why now is the best time to start blogging and take control over your life instead of being subject to your employers’ “profits.”
I shed some hope with a study on other bloggers – both new and old – who are still earning significantly well from their blogs despite the pandemic.
Have I been blogging about the wrong industry?
I live and breathe travel. Even on hindsight, I would still do it all over again, except not put all my eggs in one basket.
I resumed modelling since the lockdown lifted.
I went back to freelancing and working for clients on a project basis for social media management and email marketing. That made me realise it’s still not my eventual end goal. I don’t want to end up working for clients and not owning my own time for the rest of my life. Your time and sanity are far too precious!
According to the 80/20 principle I use to stress less while working, pick your battles carefully.
Nurture relationships with the 20% of work that gives you the greatest fulfilment. Pay less attention to the 80% who pay poorly and impose too much stress on you.
Know your worth. Take pride in yourself.
I found my old blog the other day, and realised I’ve been blogging since 2006, which makes it 15 years in the blogging world! That’s almost half my life lived. :O
My first post on this travel blog was in 2015, which makes Bel Around The World 6 years old now!
Then came the revelation that this might be a good time to finally begin imparting everything I’ve learned from over a decade of blogging and writing for the Internet.
I’ve always thought that I’m not yet in the position where I’m able to teach about blogging because my traffic isn’t as high, my blog earning isn’t as much, I haven’t accumulated enough knowledge to be an expert in the matter, etc.
The wise old me will tell me that I may not know everything, but I still know a good chunk of things that others may not, and THAT is where I can use my knowledge to provide value to others.
With that, in May and June, I threw myself into a completely new project outside my realm of travel and content writing – creating an online course!
I’ve been feeding myself day in and day out with lots of course creation materials and have been focused on launching my SEO course. It’s been quite a journey, learning completely new skills such as public speaking and email marketing.
With my beta test out of the way, the SEO course is OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
Some days I feel accomplished, other days I feel like I could have accomplished so much more after having been blogging for such a long time. I could be having more traffic, more followers, more subscribers… If I put in 100% instead of 75%, I might be prouder of who I am, be treated more seriously, be more recognised…
I’ve been the harshest to myself this July.
I have to remind myself that:
Everyone works at their own pace, that there are always people better than me, but I am in a good enough place.
There’ll always be people who disagree with you; you can never please everyone.
The haters don’t know your story and probably never will, so don’t waste your energy on them.
Trust and camaraderie takes time.
It’s okay to give your 75% because some work done is better than no work done.
It’s okay to have 10 followers and not 10,000.
It’s okay to suck at video editing or graphic design.
It’s okay to admit to suffering from the pandemic.
We are our own worst critics. It’s okay to be enough.
Moving on to more optimistic news reporting…
June blogging achievements
Things have been more optimistic since June.
My ad revenue, sponsored content and freelance gigs all went up. My monthly revenue is finally at an acceptable level.
Acceptable is subjective; I define “acceptable” according to my general standard of living, relative earnings of peers in a similar education level, the national average and the average earnings of bloggers with similar traffic as mine.
My standard of “acceptable” is anywhere above USD2700.
Here are some hopeful news:
- Organic Search results have increased.
- Clicks and impressions are seeing upward trends.
- Ahrefs Rank has improved.
- Ahrefs’ Domain Ranking has improved.
- Ahrefs’ URL Rating saw a slight dip but improved overall.
- Spikes in traffic are mostly attributed to social sharing by prominent platforms and round up posts.
Blog Insights & Takeaways
In order to ride on these “spikes”, it’s important to nurture relationships or partnerships with well-known platforms. Pick out relevant articles for sharing on their platforms which have bigger and overlapping audiences as yours e.g. Money Digest.
Blogger round ups such as this one is beneficial for social sharing, though it might be short-lived, depending on the vitality of the article.
Sharing personal struggles and stories pique people’s interest greatly. I shared about my horror sex stories from travelling and the combination of my personal story and the sensitivity of the topic made it well-received.
Guest posting selectively in high DA sites including securing interviews with high DA sites have contributed in my domain ranking and authority. I cover how to guest post selectively in your own niche in detail in my SEO course.
Going through my Search Console, I’ve noticed a few anomalies that can be further improved on.
A high impression article should be directly proportionate to high CTR. High CTR signifies that articles are meeting user intent, users are showing interest in those topics, keyword phrases used in search engines are highly converting.
Some reasons for articles getting high impressions but low CTR are:
- Title/ meta description not descriptive enough
- Title/ meta description not answering user intent
- Poor ranking on SERP i.e. at the bottom of the first page or not ranking in the first page at all
How to ride on articles with high CTR/ improve CTR:
- Improve impressions/ position on SERP through better optimisation
- Use more of the exact keyword phrases throughout the article
- Relook at my titles and meta descriptions
These are just some of the insights I gleaned from taking a quick look at my recent analytics so far. I’m not used to sharing my blog insights usually and haven’t been doing that publicly.
Would you like to see more of these posts?
Plans for August
If I tell you that I’m not afraid of going into the unknown, I’d be lying. I’ve been pondering over creating a course for the longest time, while battling thoughts of self-doubt.
The real impediment to failure is the fear of failing.
Now, I’m planning to start a new website from scratch. The inertia for new is real, and I’ve been putting off launching this site for all of July already.
It’s going to be a totally different blogging category from travel and with a totally different purpose. It’ll be used to test out my strategies in my SEO course and to show that you can monetise from your blog despite: a) a lower traffic; b) in a different field.
Of course, I’ve always emphasised that SEO is a marathon, not a race.
Now who’s ready to come onboard with me to grow your site traffic together?
P.S. I’ve recently published my latest video on the fears that I experience on becoming a full-time travel blogger. Don’t miss it!
