Today is the last day of 2010 and I can’t stop myself from thinking about new goals, new targets, etc. Of course, each year end will be the best time to sketch out both short and long term goals and improve our weaknesses to lead a better life. Before sketching out new goals, plans or strategies for 2011, let us go back to January 2010. What we have achieved in this year? Let’s don’t take on negative side on things that we don’t achieve in 2010. Let’s list down things that we have achieved in 2010. This will give a strong motivation and clear path for our goal setting. I’m going to share a brief story about Atniz.com growth in 2010.
At first, I have planned to write at least one post a day on Atniz.com blog, but I manage to write 300+ new posts in 2010. Even though, never reached my target of posting 365 articles, I managed to double the number of posts compared to 2009. This year, I will try to hit that 365 target by submitting at least one article a day on Atniz.com blog. Overall, this is a successful year for Atniz.com because I managed to cross four figure incomes monthly from blogging using one blog which is Atniz.com. Thanks to all my supporters and sponsors. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to be here to keep blogging.
Although I have started several programs like link building service, dofollow blog commenting service and guaranteed first page Google ranking service, things are moving relatively slow because most of my package depending on page rank. Since, Google have stopped updating network wide page rank to the public, most of the new sites and pages left with PR N/A and PR 0. Some are very high quality pages with tons of organic back links but it is not worth for my link building service. That’s a drawback for those who depend on page rank. I might change my packages to give emphasis on other factors than page rank. After all, there are over 200 factors that I can concentrate to give better value for the client.
My next target was to reach five figure income from which was set from April 2010. So far, I don’t even cross the quarter line. It is not as easy as we think to get good income from blogs. We need to have tons of high quality pages that rank well in a lot of keywords. Concentrating one keyword or page at a time is a bad idea. Instead, delivering high quality content and idea to the readers will give a better value towards our goals. My Entrecard traffic have highest bounce rate where it was crossing 95%. Come to think of it, I don’t see a high conversion and value investing time and money in Entrecard anymore. Since, I’m already with Entrecard for years and they helped me to get initial hike for Atniz.com, I have no intention to remove the widget.
Number of traffic referred from Google has tripled since frequent blog post updates done. Earlier, it was 10% search engine traffic, 60% Entrecard and the balance from Direct and Twitter. Now, with similar traffic count, 70% is referred from Google search engine, 10% from Entrecard and the rest from direct and other referral sites. The conversion rate is much better now with a lot of happy clients and advertisers sticking with us for more than 6 months now. I have not moved much in number of traffic, but the quality have increased tremendously now compared to 2009. Posting 400+ words article each day will certainly help bloggers to make more money.
I have changed the theme of Atniz.com and was not comfortable earlier. After a few months, I’m getting used to this new theme. It is also SEO friendly with zero W3C errors and gives a lot of space and opportunities to monetize and socialize our blog. I feel regret for not changing my theme for last 2 years since I was comfortable with those red, blue and green color theme. Another big setback was getting blacklisted from Hostgator shared hosting server environment. It makes me learn how to run a hosting friendly blog. Our wordpress blog size keeps growing and will use huge resource if we don’t manage it well. By just hosting images and videos used on our blog externally or using free Amazon AWS service, we can even hold heavy traffic blog on shared hosting environment. Installing W3 Total Cache plugin is also helps. After several suspensions without any notification from Hostgator, finally they banned me.
I have no experience in moving wordpress and struggled nearly 5 days to get my site up. I even tried to negotiate with Hostgator to take up to VPS hosting level 1 due to not knowing how to move wordpress blog. Finally, I came across one good helping Youtube video that helped me to move the site within 15 minutes. I used to pay $10 monthly for a baby croc package monthly for more than 3 years with Hostgator. Now, I’m with Webhostingpad by just paying less than $120 for 5 years of hosting with free domain. If I minus $50 to pay domain fees for 5 years, that gives less than $70 for 5 years unlimited domain hosting package. That is more than 90% discount from Hostgator for much better service and less interruption. Now, I don’t have to worry about hosting fees or domain expiry anymore for at least 5 years. In many webhosting review sites, Webhostingpad received much better review compared to Hostgator too. So, I guess this will be another big step for Atniz.com. I strongly suggest this service for all serious bloggers.
I still haven’t fully experience the benefit of posting daily contents to our blog in 2010 because of so many interruptions from hosting, personal, lack of posts and more. I’m going to give this a try once more in 2011 to post at least one blog post a day. Hope this will help to get me close to five figure income target. Plus, I’m going to dedicate this blog more to SEO and Blogging. There will be less “work at home” topics since I’m going to devote myself to learn more about SEO in 2011. Obsession towards page rank might reduce in 2011 too because lack of PR update from Google and I will concentrate more on search engine traffics where the real money lies. I suggest all bloggers to go for ranking instead page rank too. If we manage to get targeted traffic, the money will keep flowing in our account.
My principle goal is not to depend on one stream income. So, I have ventured in several online opportunities but most of it failed. The only stable income that I get from online business is Atniz.com blog. There are no other services that actually provide stable income. Even a lazy guy who hates to move from the bed can make money from blogging. Blogging is growing strongly, thanks to Google and WordPress who gives greater exposure compared to static websites. 2011 is going to be tough year for many. Start a blog today to secure a better future for your family in years to come.
Written by Atniz
Topics: Blogging