Niche Website Update - June 2015

This is a new series of posts that I'm going to be doing tracking how my niche websites are doing.  Up until this point I have just been referring to one website (Banker's Pitch) however when time permits and once Banker's Pitch has settled down I plan on creating several more niche websites.

I don't know whether this is a strategy that will work for me but I'm keen to find out!

Monthly performance for May 2015

This month was all about getting my website up to speed.  I also spent some time optimising the site to get better search results.  These efforts were not in vain as you can see from the traffic results below:

As you can see the number of sessions in May was more than double that in April.  Some of that was a bump I received from people on this blog but a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was starting to get ranked much better in Google for some of my keywords.

I'm still not getting any meaningful revenue from the blog however monetisation is not one of my top priorities at the moment...I'm still trying to generate traffic and get my blog name out there.

Below I have outlined a breakdown of some of the activities I have been undertaking to try and get the website up to date.

Getting the website up to speed

I had really let Banker's Pitch go until the middle of last month.  I hadn't touched it in almost 5 months and I had almost given up on it.  However as I noted in last months post my traffic continued to grow as people were searching for the information that I was providing.

I decided to get the website back on track however it was far more work than I imagined.   When I last wrote this post I set down a plan.  My plan was to:

1. Write at least one post a week
2. Market the blog better
3. Set up an email that would go out once a month
4. Create useful interview guides (within 6 months) and market them on the blog
5. Use other media forms to provide useful content

I have put some serious effort into the blog in the last month however as I did so I realised that this list wasn't nearly comprehensive enough.  I realised that I also needed to

1. Optimise the site better for search engines
2. Optimise the advertising on the site
3. Build my email list
4. Create both a free and a paid ebook - the free one would be to show the value that the paid one would give (and I believe it does offer some significant value)

There is obviously a ton of work in there.  If you have been wondering why the posting frequency on this blog has decreased to once a week it has been (among other things) because I have been dedicating so much effort to Banker's Pitch.

So where is the blog at so far?

Let's assess it according to my list of goals above

1. Schedule at least one post a week: DONE.  
• I have actually written and scheduled enough posts to last me into mid August.  This is because I am getting very close to my wedding and honeymoon and I don't want the blog to fall by the wayside again
2. Market the blog better: STARTING
• I'm just starting to market the blog.  Many thanks to the readers who emailed me some great suggestions on how to do this
• I still need to get better at this and need a better marketing plan
3. Set up an email to go out once a month: DONE
• I probably need a better format for my email but I'm still playing with this and seeing what gets me results
4. Create useful interview guides: IN PROGRESS
• I have finished the first 10,000 word draft of the free ebook that I was planning to write.  I now need to edit and format this blog
• I have started the paid ebook.  This is still going to be a while away.
5. Use other forms of media to promote the blog: NOT STARTED
• Honestly I just haven't had enough time to do this yet.  It's still my plan however there is so much other stuff to do first
6. Optimise the site better for search engines: STARTED
• The theme I'm using on my site is very search engine friendly however there is a lot of basic stuff that I hadn't done
• As I started to improve this over the month I could see the traffic results almost straight away
7. Optimise the advertising on the site: NOT STARTED
• I've actually started getting more traffic on Banker's Pitch than I do on this site however I don't even get close to the same amount of revenue
• I haven't had a chance to play around with the formats however what I have at the moment just isn't working for me
8. Build my email list: NOT STARTED
• I'm going to build my email list with the free ebook that I'm going to offer.  I can't do this well until I've finished that ebook.

What is the plan for this month?

This month I have a few things that I want to get done:

1. Schedule enough posts to take me through my honeymoon.  Getting stuff done over my wedding and honeymoon period is going to be a nightmare so I want to get enough published so that there is new content to cover that period
2. Finish the Free Ebook and have it ready to go.  Use this ebook to start building my mailing list
3. Market the blog on external websites.  A reader recently suggested several ways I could go about this and I really liked some of his suggestions.  I'm going to put these into practice and let you know how it goes
4. Improve the search engine ranking of the posts.  I can't believe I left this so long.  It's the reason I was barely getting any traffic.  I could have improved the search engine rankings so much earlier if I had paid attention to this.

If you have any suggestions about how I can improve my performance or what more I can add to the blog I'd love to hear from you.

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