It's So Discouraging, But It's Early In The Race...

Posted by Juliet Meiling on December 6th, 2020

When I first started my blog, julietmeiling.com, in July 2020 I had no idea where it would take me 3, 4, or even 5+ months later.

But here I am, 5 months later getting all teary eyed at my Google Analytics after having a upward swing in blog traffic the past few days. But before we get into that let's talk a little "behind the scenes."

I started creating websites when I was in elementary school. My father, for whatever reason, taught us how to do HTML and CSS instead of teaching us how to play soccer. And it was actually, the best thing ever.

Being able to put something together, from scratch, with just a few lines of code empowered me and opened a whole new world of creativity.

Remember neopets.com? My twin sister and I used to edit our Neopet's pages and our user profiles with HTML, CSS, and even DIY photoshop graphics. I think if I had the opportunity to look back at those pages, I would be mortified, but I am proud of where I am now over 10 years later.

Flashforward to 2015, freshman year of college... it was the best of times and it was the worst of times! Because I had literally no idea what I was doing in college or what my purpose was passed high school. But, while browsing on Pinterest I came across "how to make money online through blogging." And I was sold on the idea that I, too, could create a blog and somehow make millions from it.

And I was unfortunately shocked about how challenging it truly was to create a blog from scratch and monetize it.

My first blog, was a trainwreck. I had it on SquareSpace, and while there is nothing wrong with SquareSpace, I didn't undestand the power of WordPress.

I also didn't understand, with my first blog, how to write content for others and not myself. And that's one of the biggest and first lessons most new bloggers learn after having weeks of minimal blog traffic.

Even after tweaking my blog writing to "write content for others" I was in a trance, like most new bloggers are, to start making money online immediately rather than build my base up of content.

So what did my foolish new blogger self do? I invested in email marketing and LeadPages, which is something new bloggers should wait at least a year to do! And that was a lot of money... especially for LeadPages.

However, as my college life became busier with school I dropped this failure of a blog and didn't return to blogging until 2018.

In 2018 I started blogging until my curent URL, julietmeiling.com, and I set it up the way I shoud have done it from the start: self-hosted on Wordpress.

And I started writing articles for college students and I was happily finding traction on Pinterest. However, soon Pinteret suspended my account and I was devestated. And like a irrational teenager, I shut down that blog too! I was foolish let me tell you.

Alright... we are almost to present day!

So in July 2020 I "revived" the URL, julietmeiling.com, and started blogging again. But this time I had a new tactic under my sleeve, search engine optimization (SEO).

I didn't really realize how incredible it would feel to get continuous traffic from Google until I started seeing my numbers climbing starting in September 2020.

But the end of November 2020, Google traffic account for over 50% of my traffic and Pinterest was just a measly percentage of that traffic.

However, December 3, 2020 came along and A LOT of my search engine traffic was slashed due to the Google Core Update. I mean literally overnight, my traffic tanked and continued to tank the following day.

I started seeing a slight uptick on December 5, 2020, but I'm not sure if it's a true upturn or just luck.

But I sure feel like I took my Google traffic, when I had it, for granted because now my traffic is about a 50/50 split between Google and Pinterest. And that really hurts....

But anyways, I am trying to remind myself to be patient and I am faithfully turning out more content for my blog. 

I'm about to be on Winter Break soon from Graduate School and plan on creating as much content as I possibly can. Maybe in hopes of reaching 80 published blog posts before the end of 2020.

After this whole ramble of my journey to finding search engine optimization and reaping a small taste of it, here are some lessons I have learned:

• Write for others, not yourself.
• Search engine optimization > social media
• Even though SEO > social media, you still need social media
• Social media can help your traffic stay afloat if done right
• Pinterest > all other forms of social media
• Investing in your blog is a good thing
• Content is king
• Blog content > blog design

All in all, I truly hope December 2020 picks up again. I was really hopefully this was going to be my best month yet, but with the December Core Update, I'm unsure if I'll see a increase in my blog stats this month or if they'll be the same as August 2020 or October 2020.

But regardless, I'm sticking with this whole blogging thing. I'm not giving up this time.

Best,

Juliet Meiling

Founder of JulietMeiling.com