Today, 12th June 2014, marked my first year anniversary for ReginaldChan.net.
And I’m pumped. It has been a long road; probably a very tough one but I’m glad I made it through.
Phew!
Of course, I met with many friends down the road in blogging and thank you all for being there.
In this article, I’ll expose all my secrets that I had experienced with for the past 12 months:
- Traffic
- Success and failures
- Events
How did ReginaldChan.net score in building blog traffic?
My traffic isn’t huge and I am a strong believer that quality over quantity. This means that I focus on a very simple blogging strategy; more targeted traffic.
As seen from the image above, I managed to gain 111,648 visits which equals to 306 visits per day. Personally, not much of an achievement compared to blogs who makes thousands of traffic a day.
Google is still my main powerhouse for traffic followed by social media and email marketing. Contrary to what others claimed about social media being the main generator of traffic, if search engine (Google in particular) isn’t your main drive in traffic, you’re definitely doing something wrong!
Want to build more blog traffic? Follow these steps:
- Do aggressive keyword research (my personal favorite tool ~ Long Tail Pro | Read my Long Tail Pro review here)
- Write articles over 1,500 words and highly optimized (I uses Scribe SEO for the matter)
- Perform on-page and off-page SEO strategy (very important)
- Share it on blogging network such as DoSplash, Klinkk, BlogEngage and Blokube
- Publishing on social media using social media automation (my personal favorite tool ~ HootSuite)
- Build a newsletter and even a small list is better than none. I highly suggest GetResponse since it is an extremely versatile email marketing services (and easy on your wallet too). I also have a GetResponse tutorial which will guide you to setup your first campaign.
ReginaldChan.net successes within the first 12 months
I believe the biggest success is still my blog earnings. Here are my current (average) earnings:
Affiliate sales ~ $500 +/- per month
Ad banners ~ $150 +/- per month
Business consultations services ~ $1,500 +/- per month
Featured posts ~ $50 +/- per month
Total estimated earnings per month ~ $2,200 per month
On a bad month, I earn a mere $1,500 which is pretty A-okay to cover my spending especially with premium plugins, tools etc.
And if you think I’m making big bucks out of this, think again. There are many ‘gurus’ out there who earns at least 10 digits per month compared to my little blog here.
Honorable mentions is my second biggest success. I was mentioned many times in various blogs which I’m truly thankful of. Some of the biggest names that I can remember are:
- Harvard University’s Blog
- Yahoo Small Businesses
- SEMrush
- Shareaholic
- UpCity
- Traffic Generation Cafe
- Referral Candy
Not to forget, I was extremely lucky to be included in The Top 100 Bloggers on Triberr by Dashburst. It was a honor and thank you!
In the past 12 months, I was also able to meet up with several top guys in the market. Of course, I kick started my first experts share on SEO 2014 and it was one hell of a challenge!
On top of that, I was lucky to be able to connect with the decision makers in WP Engine, SEMrush and even landed myself some opportunities for beta testing apps.
And recently, I have just secured a place with a publisher to publish my first book!
ReginaldChan.net failures
Yup, we all have them and I will be lying if I tell you that I didn’t.
For starters, I wasn’t focusing on my blog enough to convert it into a business.
I wasn’t offering my services when I started my blog. I only did it down the road; after 3 months. Until date, providing consultation services easily land me at least $1,500 per month which is huge.
My failure? I didn’t start much earlier and didn’t capitalize my knowledge in blogging.
Moral of the story: Use your skills and knowledge to monetize your blog!
My second failure is that I was focusing too much on social media traffic. Don’t get me wrong, social media traffic (some call it referral traffic) is good but you are required to be active all the time just to get some quality traffic back.
Seeing my situation, I know I wasn’t able to cope up with all the work and I changed my plan to focus slightly more on search traffic.
The third mistake was a little odd (to be honest). I was focusing so much on specific traffic (for better ROI) but I left out the opportunity to make more money out of it.
Take it an instant where I have only 300 traffic per day. Advertisers aren’t interested with these low traffic figures. They want huge 4 or 5 digits traffic a day … even if you have a 90% bounce rate!
Specific traffic is good for affiliate sales but when it comes to Google Adsense or advertising, you’re on a huge losing side.
Celebrating ReginaldChan.net first year anniversary
Yes, I’m not letting you go empty handed. I’m giving away 6 months FREE hosting for you!
I have several reseller hosting accounts and I believe it is time to give back.
So, how do you claim your free hosting?
- Signup for my newsletter (skip this if you have already subscribed) | Sign up right here!
- Email me at reginald[at]reginaldchan[dot]net with the title “6 months FREE hosting”
- Sit back and relax (while checking out my cheap web hosting plans)
Important note:
- Free hosting is only applicable for yearly hosting
- The cost of hosting per month is $4.99
- You will entitle for 50% discount for the first year (you only pay $29.94 upfront)
- All hostings come with a full 60 days money back guarantee
- Free website migration if you need
- Free website speed optimization and recommendation if you need
I hope you enjoy this (small) celebration of mine. Again, my success isn’t huge and I am looking forward to grow even biggers.
Thank you guys for all the support and I really appreciate it!
