I made it through 2023 with a brand new website!!
Looking back to where it all started… I was feeling a little lost. I knew I wanted to start a side hobby that earned some income and I knew my crafting skills were lacking.
I pondered on this for a while. What could I do? I had given a go at renting out a home, but sold it during the spike in the real estate market. I plan to give this another try one day, but I had been burned with some renters and wasn’t ready to try this again just yet.
I started thinking about my strengths. What were they? I’m a leader. I’ve got fantastic communication skills and I adore helping the younger generations. I love to write. I love editing.
I kept thinking. I loved visiting money/blog/career websites. I started reading articles that I knew I could write better than what I was reading. It got to a point where there weren’t many articles that would tell me something I didn’t already know.
So in April 2023, I decided to start my own website. I started with a ridiculous name and changed it about a week later to Finances for Females. Nothing against men reading the site – I hope they do! I thought it would be easier if I targeted my messages to women.
What Has Been Difficult?
WordPress made everything pretty easy when it came to getting started.
I spent hours and hours trying to figure out what theme I wanted to use. I read other blog posts from multiple websites and settled on the Divi theme. I purchased a lifetime subscription with high hopes for the future. I’m so glad I found it – as it’s been extremely helpful.
I struggled so much.
I still struggle. There are aspects of the website that you would think I could easily fix, but I can’t figure out. Google says my Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for mobile users is horrible and I don’t know how to fix it.
I tried to use Fiverr to find someone to help specifically with this issue and two users never returned my message after saying they would look into it.
But this is all present day. In the beginning, I didn’t know what SEO was or Alt Image attributes or usage of transition words or so much more.
I struggled with the heading menu forever.
I’ve spent countless hours on the website over the past 8 months. I’ve spent a couple thousand dollars. Some of that money was spent on educating myself. Some of it was on things like Divi, a better WordPress plan, an email address, advertising in hopes to get more traffic, the list goes on and on.
I purchased a course on something that was somewhat helpful, but I almost immediately regretted it after as I really like doing everything myself, research included.
I know there are easy ways out – which include paying others to create a website for you, having others write an article for you, etc… I’ve done all of this myself and I probably could have cut some corners if I hadn’t, but I’m “stubborn” like that.
I come across pins on Pinterest all the time that say “ways to make your blog go viral in xx days”. Yeah none of that ever worked for me.
I feel like magic does happen for some people, but for the huge majority, this is a long game. A game that you may never win if you don’t keep up with continually educating yourself.
For the past nine months, not a single one of my 100+ posts went viral.
I made a lot of mistakes. I learned from all of them.
So Where Am I Now?
You can really tell that my Google impressions have been slowly ticking upward. Here’s the last year’s total view:
This is Google impressions only, not what I’ve received from social media or other links.
The goal was to get over 100 impressions by the end of the year. See that spike right before Christmas? I had 149 impressions that day. 🥳
My average position has also GREATLY improved. Sometimes I am in the top 5, which I consider amazing. I don’t have that many clicks, but the fact that impressions have improved so greatly is amazing. Also, full disclosure, many of those early clicks prior to September were actually me clicking my own pages to make sure everything worked right. 😅
2023 Goals – How did I do?
Goals by end of December 2023:
- Earn $100 in 2023 from Affiliate marketing. – Complete. More info below.
- If not Google Adsense, find another ad placement company to use. – I never did this. I researched quite a bit and I just need more volume coming to the site. So I am putting this off indefinitely. It doesn’t make any sense to focus so much energy on it while my traffic is low.
- Create an eBook that I sell on the website. – Done.
- 100 Google Search Impressions per day – Done!
- All articles obtain a SEO score of at least 95 – Done! Except for my blog posts, which I don’t care about SEO score on.
- Launch new website by the end of 2023 – cleverher.com – Eh, I need more time. I’ve actually been debating if this is the best decision for me.
- Move all career related articles to the new site and figure out how to do redirects so I don’t lose any old links – Same as above.
- I’ve researched how to become a Pinterest Mastermind – Done. Now I just need to take the time to do it.
How Much Did I Earn?
I’ve earned $21.75 from Sellfy.
From Amazon, I’ve earned $96.92
That’s it, guys. I have some other affiliate links on my site, but none have generated any income.
So in all of 2023, I earned a grand total of $118.67.
2024 Goals!
So excited to jump into 2024 with some fresh goals!
I have no idea where the website will be a year from now. That being said, I’m going to start the year off with quarterly goals. I may feel confident enough to set some full year goals next year, but with the website still being less than a year old, I feel like I’m still getting my feet wet.
So by the end of March 2024…
- Start pinning more on Pinterest. Create at least 7 new pins a week.
- Start a better email subscriber list utilizing a service that I need to research.
- 250 Google Impressions per day by the end of March.
- Find a way to get my CLS within a better range so Google doesn’t get mad at me.
- Post six articles a month. Over the summer of 2023, I posted sometimes six articles a week. I’m lowering this because I really want to spend more time pinning, promoting, and working on what I have already done instead of just generating more content that I feel needs to be improved on later. Let’s do this for three months and see how I feel.
- Create some budgeting sheets that can be downloaded from the website. Only start this after I get a new email subscription up and going.
- Think about the CleverHer website. I’ve paused on this and had some doubts and I feel good about taking a step back, but I should at least make a decision on where I want this to go by the end of March. If not, let me say this to myself: ”You’re not a procrastinator, Jen. Suck it up and move it forward or come up with a new idea.”
Goodbye 2023! You were pretty good to me.
Hello 2024! Excited to see what’s to come! Happy New Year to everyone and thank you SO much for reading. 💗
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