Everybody has got to start somewhere. And when you have just started your own website or blog, you really are on the bottom rung of the ladder. The climb up the ladder is going to be long and hard and it will require a lot of time, dedication and thought.
I would say that, after about three months or so, people will sit down and evaluate where they are. The thrill of the new adventure has gone, the money isn’t rolling in and neither is the traffic. In fact, all that seems to happen is you are writing more and more, adding content the way you have been advised and not getting any feedback from the miniscule amount of people who do visit your website.
This is where most newbies to the world of independent websites fall flat on there face. They will give it up as a bad job and move onto something else. I can fully understand why people give up after several months, but in reality, this is far too early to do so.
It takes a long time to establish a new website or blog and people suggest you should not really expect to see any kind of real return on your efforts until six months to one year has passed. This depends upon how you market your blog and how much people like what you have to say. No doubt there are blogs and websites that have taken off in a much quicker time than this, but, on average, I would say this timescale is probably about right.
So, what do you do in the meantime?
Network, write, experiment, gain links, research, plan and keep up to date with the happenings in your field of interest. All of this takes time and if you are serious about having a future online, you will have to get used to it, as this will be your daily routine.
It is very easy for me to say this as I am in a situation where I have got past the first six months or so on most of my websites, but not this one. This is still very new and hasn’t really taken off the way I would have liked it to. There are many reasons for this which include a lack of time and spreading myself to thinly across my other websites. But, I am not going to give because I know the site will be work in the end. It is just a matter of time.
I appreciate your experienced comments. When I started my website with 2 pages of content in December, 2010, my thinking was that I would give it 1 year. Six months later, I have 37 pages and 32 of those are indexed with a dozen of those ranked in the first 2 pages over 4 different search engines. What’s very frustrating is that I have 2 legitimate unsolicited links back to my site (not counting articles that I’ve written) but I have many, many sites linking back to my site that evidently are not considered valid by Google. Some of them are just thieves (foreign) that steal content from my site or my articles and then get a high ranking!
My traffic is very low but I am seeing more and more return visits. In the six months, I’ve made commisions from 2 sales so I ask myself a lot if I shouldn’t just hang it up but I think I’ll stick with my original plan of a 1 year trial and then evaluate it.