Over the past 12 months I have done lots and lots of testing and working on my website.
As I look back over the past year I can see many things that worked but also many that didn’t.
You know me…. I like to share everything with you guys to hopefully help you make an educated decision if you should try the same tactics on your websites.
Or… Stay well clear and save yourself time and money .
Let us take a look at 9 Things that DIDN’T work on my websites in 2021 ( Plus a few that did work )
Some of these will be relevant to your business and website and some maybe just relevant to my own personal business and brand.
Not everyone will share the same experience or opinion.
I can only report on mine and hope it helps you.
Here we go:
Oh, Ps…. I have a video on this topic if you’d rather watch it than read it. Link Below
1) Web stories – I thought Google web stories would be the next BIG thing for my website and I took advice and inspiration from a lady who was killing it with them.
Well, it didn’t really work for me. I invested over $800+ and saw less than 100 visits from each website.
Maybe my niche wasn’t a good fit for them, maybe Google stopped using them or maybe i just implemented them wrong?
Who knows. But it didn’t work for me in 2021
2) Pinterest – Pinterest has gone through some turbulent times this past year and not in a good way. Increasing ads on their platform, selling shares to Paypal, and algorithm changes have seen the effectiveness of this platform for organic traffic decrease.
What will happen in 2022? I hope they see the error of their ways and change things back to how they were.
I still get 25k – 30k visitors a year from it.
But new campaigns on Pinterest just don’t work like they used to.
3) YouTube 2nd Channel – I wanted to test out other videos within the affiliate marketing space and online business on this new channel. My current channel is stuck in a certain niche and my audience loves a certain type of content.
So, I thought I would jump on the #shorts bandwagon and create a more diverse online affiliate marketing channel.
What went wrong..?
Time. I simply don’t have enough time to run two channels.
You can subscribe to the channel here.
4) Social Media for Websites– Creating social media channels and profiles will always be a good thing for creating authority and awareness to your audience and Google.
However, spending hours each day trying to post and keep them updated was time wasted for my websites. For carlbroadbent.com it’s perfect and part of the business plan. But posting about the best dog food just simply doesn’t have a good ROI for your time and sometimes your money.
By all means creating links to social media channels and add a post a month or something.
But unless you’re prepared to spend 2-3 hours a day constantly running on the social media treadmill ( Which you can’t get off ) then don’t start them.
Just focus on hitting publish on great content
5) Giveaway website – The thought was there and still is. Creating a successful website that makes money and giving it away still appeals to me. However, The niche we selected as a group of viewers was not the best one to be honest.
Can it still work in the ‘ Lifestyle hacks niche ‘ Yes, absolutely and I do have some page 1 ranking articles
But is it a niche I love and can’t wait to spend time writing articles about? NO
You have to have some passion or interest in what you write about.
Otherwise, you’ll get blogger burnout and just give up.
I still plan to add more articles to the website before the BIG GIVEAWAY in Jan 2022 But I do wish I had chosen the niche myself and built a better, more successful website to giveaway 😢
But someone will still get a website that is aged a little now, has some authority, gets traffic and is ready to monetize with ads and Amazon.
Go check out how Helpful Monk is doing here
6) YouTube Niche – I seem to have trapped myself in a certain niche on my YouTube channel. My videos do really well for income reports and keyword research but I can’t seem to break out of that sector.
If I want to make other videos within the online marketing space ( Let’s say… email marketing ) YouTube and my audience just don’t like it.
I go from getting 2000 videos on a video to 200.
I’m not sure how I can change the way my channel is viewed and searched?
After all, I love to test new things and would love to show you guys. But if YouTube won’t share my content.
Is it worth the time and effort?
I’ll always have and always will focus on my main channel as the primary source if video content.
But it would be nice to be able to test new videos.
7) Lost Focus – 2021 was very successful for me as an online marketer. But not as successful as an online publisher.
My portfolio wasn’t as big as I would have liked. This is due to me focusing on YouTube and Email marketing.
Which is not a bad thing.
I now have a SIX figure income which is 5 times bigger than my supermarket managerial job from 2020.
Which is amazing.
But I do think that I lost focus on building 1 or 2 very successful websites.
Something I hope to change with Gardeniaorganic.com and Hutchandcage.com
8) Working from home – How the hell can this be a bad thing, I hear you say?
For two reasons. Firstly, I get distracted very easily and my wife thinks that because I’m at home I can clean the house, do the washing, mow the lawn, wash the car all the time.
Because, I’m at home doing nothing, Right? Lol
That’s fine, I get that I have more time to do these things, but it’s hard to balance home and work.
Plus, I feel it can be less productive and even dare I say it less rewarding.
What do I mean by that?
When I left for work in the morning and came back 8-9 hours later. I always felt like I had done a good days work and reset, relaxed, and interacted with my family better.
There was a break or a gap in my day. If that makes sense.
Now my days seem to blend into one long day.
Secondly, I feel that I do miss the interaction with work colleagues and friends.
I am considering looking for a shared office or community workspace next year.
Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of benefits from working from home but it has to be said there are some drawbacks also.
9) Mega Website – Well, you know the story. $20000 spent so far and little to show for it. Although this last Google update was promising, it still only gets about 100 visitors a day from 350+ Articles.
Shockingly bad.
But i haven’t given up just yet.
But I do think I would rather have the $20k in my bank or invested in another project like the gardening aged domain.
Oh well…. We live and learn
So, what worked?
Why don’t you pop over to the video and take a look.
I have listed 5 things and tips that really did work for me in 2021 and hopefully, they will work for you.
Enjoy the video.
