Newbie: A tale of two sites

4 replies
Built my first two sites at the start of this year (nothing fancy just static html/css) one I monetised with adsense the other with Amazon affilliate. I attempted to market them both by means of a couple of articles. I got distracted (and despondent) and left them to their own devices for a couple of months. The Amazon site has steadily risen through the google ranks with a page on page 1 and the home page on page 2. Traffic has steadily increased month on month (still very low volume) and there have been 3 sales recently. It's fair to say I don't really know what I'm doing but so far this seems logical - better position in google, more people look at the site.

However the second site, the adsense one has slipped into oblivion, on page 9 of search results initially, last time I looked it was on page 17. The interesting thing is the traffic is behaving in the same way, steadily building month on month ?

Initially I was puzzled by this but having considered it I guess that the traffic for this site is not coming via google but is as a result of the couple of articles I wrote.

I've looked at the stats from the hosting which go into some detail but I still can't see any way of determining the source of the traffic ?
#newbie #sites #tale
  • Profile picture of the author KateW
    Do you have google anayltics set up on the sites? That would be an easier way to track where you traffic is coming from.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3936889].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Neil M
      Originally Posted by KateW View Post

      Do you have google anayltics set up on the sites? That would be an easier way to track where you traffic is coming from.
      Kate is right, you need to be using Google Analytics.
      Signature
      To find out more about what I'm up to...

      >>>>Visit Rising Ideas Labs <<<



      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3937095].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author JoeMack
    Hi...

    My question is: if traffic is steadily rising from those initial articles, why aren't you writing and submitting more articles?

    JoeMack
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3937258].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author spigven
      Thanks.

      I Will investigate google analytics.

      As the sites have diverged in google search results terms I'm only speculating that the site that has bombed is getting traffic from a couple of articles I wrote. What is so perplexing is that the sites have performed so differently in terms of seach engine results yet they are built and (minimally) promoted by the same means ?

      I have not written more articles because I became despondent, I think I may be unusual in that I don't actually wan't to do this, what I actually wan't is a regular job (not sure I'm actually allowed to say that, apologies if it offends) so I redoubled my efforts on that front, sadly to no avail.

      For me playing at I.M. was simply a distraction, a means to keep my brain from turning completely to mush and to keep my mind of my problems. I guess it didn't work that well.

      Having had no luck on the regular job front but making the first sales recently have motivated me to continue although more out of curiosity than the hope of real financial gain. So I want to understand how doing the same thing twice can produce so different results.

      I've seen it said that I should keep producing stuff, keep putting stuff out there, work hard and long, it's a numbers game. Okay I'm a newbie but that makes no sense to me unless it is qualified by knowing what has a reasonable chance of working.

      Anyway apologies for the ramble.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3938815].message }}

Trending Topics