1. Facebook advertising
My most recent venture was to attempt at driving some traffic to my site using Facebook ads. My theory was that if I could drive traffic to posts at a lower cost than I was making on my Ezoic campaign, then I could make some margin.
It really was all down to the margins.
We’ve all seen the ads on Facebook. You know the ones, the one with the large-chested bridesmaid and some inane headline like “You’ll never guess why the crowd was cheering”.
Yes, I have clicked them, I’m the first to admit it. I then get sucked into a quagmire of ads and never-ending ‘click next’ buttons. It must work for these guys or they wouldn’t do it, but it’s an art that must be refined of course. I can’t seriously expect to get this thing motoring at my first attempt or everyone would be doing it.
I’ve only dipped my toe in the water so far, but it’s definitely one for the future. I have at the moment, more pressing matters that can increase my blog traffic. Stuff I really know works. So I have that to concentrate on for now. But this is definitely one for the back burner.
2. Email signups
Another area where I have fallen down is email signups. Maybe not fallen down as such, but really not put enough effort in to get this moving. I have previously installed email signup popups using a service called Privy.
And whilst Privy does everything it’s supposed to do, it really doesn’t work on a site such as mine with no incentive which doesn’t have visitor numbers in the thousands every day.
The benefits of gaming a minuscule number of signups is outweighed by the diminished user experience and increased loading times that come into play when the popup is in place.
What I have to do is put out a great offering – a downloadable cheatsheet or similar which will entice the user to sign up. I’m still not fully sold on the popup either – and may go for a ‘Hello’ bar. Are they still called this?
3. Constantly looking at my google analytics
I can’t help it – sorry. It’s an addiction. I can’t stop looking at my Google Analytics.
Even though I know it’s doing my blog traffic or bank balance no good whatsoever, I just can’t stop.
I look at today’s stats, then I look at the real-time stats. I look at the last 30 days then compare it against the previous 30 day period. I look a the long-view – my traffic count since I started the blog.
It’s all endlessly fascinating but ultimately useless. But I can’t stop.
At least now I have another stat page to look at with my new Ezoic account which displays my daily earrings and EPMV ( earnings per thousand visitors).
So it’s not all bad – I have finally reduced my time gazing at Google Analytics for hours on end.
4. Not hitting the ground running / Not writing enough at the start
I started my blog about 2 years ago and launched in a blaze of enthusiasm. I was full of ideas and churned out about ten blog articles pretty sharpish. The ideas were coming thick and fast and I was typing away. Then I stopped.
And looked at my Google Analytics. Once the initial enthusiasm waned, the rate of new articles I was publishing became, shall we say, sporadic.
I had one article that was doing reasonably well in terms of organic traffic and I started obsessing over its performance rather than writing new material.
Fortunately in the past few months, I’ve got my writing hat on and have really seen the benefits of regularly posting to my blog.
Long may it continue.