The Point Where Most People Stop..

Sounds like you're considering downgrading to a "boy/girl".. haha

The old saying "Build it, and they will come" is not as accurate on the internet as you might hope. However, giving up just means you've wasted the time and energy you put into the project in the first place.

Are you seeing no real results because it's impossible to get them, or because you're not exploring alternative solutions?

Is your content something people talk about? Perhaps a facebook page is in order.

Is your content picture-based in nature? Perhaps starting a dedicated pinterest account is in order.

Are you creating great written content? Sometimes the best content is hidden behind terrible headlines. Try learning more about what makes people click.

Is the website poorly optimized from a visual standpoint? I can tell you from experience that "small" things like colours and page layout can have a huge impact on the conversion rates of my landing pages - your site will be no different.

Have you really looked hard at how people land on your site? The source of your traffic is a huge deciding factor when it comes to what "works" and what doesn't. Often webmasters present visitors with information that is incorrect for them based on where they are in the buying process.

Have you considered renting out banner ad space to specific (targeted) vendors instead of using adsense? Linked to the traffic source issue I mentioned, a well optimized banner ad for your particular website may well outperform adsense type advertisements.


Anyway.. just a few ideas.

Push through and prove you've got the "Woman/Man" in you. We all have to grow up eventually anyway.

Cheers,
-Adrian

Right now you are at the point that you realize this actually takes A LOT of hard work.

Only 40 articles over an entire year might not be close to enough for a competitive niche.

Use social media, don't just submit your articles and call it a day. Write for other blogs that are more popular than yours to get backlinks and traffic. For competitive niches, search traffic is 10000000x harder to get than social traffic.

Social traffic, forum traffic, guest post traffic are what you should be focusing on if SEO is not something you are good at or really doing any of. You might not get 1000s of hits but you can certainly turn that 20 a day into 300 a day very easily.

Adsense doesn't work very will for tech sites. Lots of those people ignore ads or have them blocked.

Yep. Perseverance is crucial in this game.

I think this pic pretty much sums it all up:

Thanks guys. No I'm not considering stopping yet, but as you say I am realizing that 40 articles over a year just isn't enough.

I'm not actually building a tech site, that was just an example. It is more food+drink related.

Good idea on creating social traffic. I guess I had blinders on in a sense - thinking google or bust.

In terms of "renting out ad space", I am using linkshare and throwing links down to related products. I am just doing that as we speak though so I wont see the results for a while. I originally had ads linking to the major seller's site but the clicks weren't converting.

Visually, I think this is where I have spend too much time. I have been a bit OCD in making sure everything looks slick, and not to toot my own horn, but compared to the majority of the crap out there I think my site looks really good. I would say my low bounce rate and high-ish time on site points to the fact that it looks nice and has good content. I just want google to agree now

Anyway thanks for the responses guys. I just have to put myself out there a bit more I think.

This is why you need more then one income stream. You've spent way too long on one that isn't even producing for you. You need to throw a wider net and see which kind of fish you're catching first, then focus on that species.

I say don't give up just yet. It seems to me that you need to increase the content on your blog by at least fifty times its current amount. I've written and published 800,000 words on one niche topic across 21 separate blogs during the last fifteen months. There were days at a stretch that I though I would go crazy if I had to write another word about my niche topic, but I stayed with it.

That effort is paying off for me now. These blogs cost me $1.86 per day to operate. In the first quarter of 2012 I have earned $16.66 per day from those 21 blogs, and I have stopped publishing on them every day. At this point I am actually earning passive income from them. I'm not getting rich, but the ROI on $1.86 per day will look pretty nice at the end of this year.

The point I am trying to make is that it is possible to earn money just by being determined to be the last person standing after the smoke clears.

Most people who are struggling are about 90% there to success. The rest of the 10% just lies in keep doing what you're doing now to see the good results that you are getting.

Why not expand your traffic sources?

Get more articles on EZA- some traffic is better than nothing
Document sharing sites like Scribd and Docstoc
Press releases about the latest tablets and news
Join linked in groups about technology and share posts/articles with the group
Do the same with Facebook as you did with LinkedIn
etc.

SEO is great- but don't let it be everything.

Hi TGA,

I completely understand your position and many of us have been there before and are all too familiar with your situation.

However, let me shed some light on a few things if I may...

40 articles is hardly enough to make anyone rich, or even a decent living...

Let's say the 40 articles got you 100 unique clicks EACH to your product offer.

That's 4,000 unique click-throughs to your offer.

Even with a 2% conversion rate (average)... That would amount to 80 sales.

If you're selling a product that pays a $20 commission... That would have only
added up to $1,600 worth of earnings... And your "stats" would be relatively GOOD.
(2% conversion rate is pretty average).

So, even if you made the $1,600 in 10 months that STILL wouldn't be enough to support a family, pay bills, etc. as that averages out to $160/month.

What you must realize (and many newbies must realize this) is that 40 articles over a 10 month period (4 articles per month) is nowhere near enough to make a serious online income. You need serious, targeted traffic to your offers in order to make a decent amount of money on a monthly basis.

This would include a campaign consisting of articles on a regular basis, on-site and off-site SEO, link building, and other marketing outlets such as forum marketing, video marketing on YouTube, email marketing, list building, landing JV's, etc, etc.

I surely hope you don't give up after just submitting 4 articles per month for 10 months!

I know you mentioned that you did a few other things, but...

You admit right there that it's partially your own fault for choosing a not-so-great keyword... So why not go back to him and rank for a much more profitable keyword?

Yet another thing that you "know" you should be doing, but aren't. ArticlesBase.com is a great article directory and they only require 350 words... Why not submit them there?

They might not bring you tons of direct traffic, but the links are very valuable as EzineArticles is still a very High PR directory.

That's exactly right. That's precisely what happens all too often. If you opened up a restaurant and only showed up for 40 days out of the year and never promoted your business... How much money would you expect to earn?

Just because it's "online" and "from home" doesn't mean it won't take work. The dreaded "W" word.

I think you've done a great job taking action and this wasn't meant to be hard on you or bash you in ANY way, so please don't take it that way. Just don't give up before you've even scratched the surface!

I am a teacher/coach at heart which is why I am so passionate about this stuff because I've seen too many people give up before they start. If there's anything I can do, let me know!

Best of luck and success to you.

Best,
Shane

There are many other ways to market your website other than SEO. Having said that, it kind of sounds to me that you need to really study keyword research and what you need to do to get your website ranked higher within a better time frame. All the information you need can be found right here on this forum.

Remember, it's always about quality over quantity.