I wanted to do an experiment this year. In the past, I had done 4th of July fireworks posts here on Active Rain, and they did very well. But, they were a bit pointless for me...they didn't generate any business or income for me. They were just a distraction.
I was going to give up on it this year, but then one of my friends encouraged me to try something out. Now that I make money from advertising on my site (just from people clicking on my site...they don't need to even clicks on the ads for me to make money). So, she suggested that I give it a try and see if it would work.
Afterall, the traffic on my site dips right around July 4th...so if I didn't do anything, my add income would decline. And, in fact, this happens during almost every holiday (e.g. Labor Day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, Thanksgiving to Christmas). So, I thought this experiment is a good one, because there are many times of the year where my traffic declines. So I figured that if I was successful in doing this, it would mean that I could do something similar during other holidays.
And, obviously these holidays happen year after year. So, once I create an article, it can have a yearly spike in performance. So, I figured I would give it a shot.
I set a goal of getting 10,000 clicks. And, I succeed. I got 10,014 clicks. Sweet.
The majority of the traffic was organic/google searches. The next biggest generator was facebook - the local moms' facebook groups (2 in particular are very active in my area).
I was very excited about the results. Not only did I earn some extra money (a bit over $100), but it showed me that I have a new model that I can use for several holidays throughout the year. So, perhaps, I'll earn an extra $500+ ...each year. and, I can build on these to earn more via affiliate marketing. So, I'm excited about this.
Also, I have a big opportunity. On the one hand, I ranked well (and even above some local news places). But I didn't rank first. I think I only ranked #3. So what does that mean? Next year, I'm striving the #2 position...and hopefully the year after I'll be in 1st position. And, that will mean more traffic (and more income).
Also, as a side note, I wrote a 4th of July fireworks post for one of my clients. I wasn't trying to get it to rank well. I wa building it more for a backlink. But, oh well, by accident, it generated 3,000 clicks. I did that one here on Active Rain.
I'm going to learn from this one to see what I can do better for next year. One simple fix is simply to post earlier (like around June 1st). I will also try to build a few more backlinks, too and maybe a few other things including shortening the URL. I will also look at google search console as I may need some other key word variations. I have time to think about it.
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