Author WThomas

Week 3 Conclusion

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My only goal this week was to write one article each day this week. I came up just one article short, which I am not too mad at. (work is busy today and I won’t be able to get one more out). I didn’t publish any of them, because I have to read through them again and add pictures. I think me proofreading everything I write before I publish it is a good habit to get into. It is also nice to have a few articles in the bank so that I can stagger my posts a bit more. I’ve seen that it is better for engagement to release posts one by one rather than all at once.

Once I get everything that I wrote this week published, I am definitely going to start social media and trying to market my website more. (for real this time) I will have enough content on the page as well as posting it regularily enough to wear I am comfortable having people see it. I predict that my pattern going forward is to spend one week focusing on writing, and then the week after focusing on marketing those posts to people. We will see if that holds true or not. Regardless, we will check back in on Monday.

Week 3 (Week 2 conclusion)

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I didn’t check in at the end of the week last week. However, we had a decent week productivity wise. What I wanted to accomplish was

  • Write 2-3 more articles
  • Start social media
  • Clean up the website visually

We ran into a snag starting the social media. I wanted to get an email set up for the website but I am just not sure on the best way to do that. I want it to be able to grow into a potential email list but it seems too early to start a google business account. My plan for this week is to sign up for just an average gmail account for the website and to start the social media with that. We will worry about business accounts and email lists down the line.

Articles were written, and we got even better with using WordPress design tool. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t believe me based on how this website looks so again, I implore you to visit onlinecaddie.blog. So as for my progress last week, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

Now, onto this week. I have one main goal for this week:

  • Write one article every day Monday through Friday

By the end of the week I want 5 articles that are written and SEO optimized and published on Online Caddie. A bit of a lofty goal given my work ethic, but I now feel comfortable enough with how the website looks that I want to post as much (good) content as possible. In addition, today I want to at least start a Twitter account and a Pinterest account, and post these articles on there. I will eventually start an instagram account as well, I am just deciding if I should turn my personal account into the online caddie account so that I won’t have to start from 0 followers.

I feel as though I am officially in the “writing” stage of this journey. All I am worried about for the near future is writing as much content that is quality and SEO friendly as possible. This week I will try to remember to check in at the end to see what progress I made.

Week 2

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Well, I did not get any work done over the weekend. In my defense work was busy on Saturday and Sundays are for football. Much of my productivity comes from working on weekdays anyways. One thing that I am going to have to learn to get used to as I do this is accepting that while I always COULD be writing, and don’t always HAVE to be writing. It is important to take time for yourself no matter what you’re doing. That being said, I have to come up with my plan for this week.

I’ve been putting off making social media accounts for either website mainly because I just don’t want to and don’t like it. I know they’re important for gaining followers/engagement, and the earlier I make them the more time they will have to grow. That being said, ideally I would like just a little more content on my Online Caddie page before I really start to try and push it out to people. With all of this in mind, my goal for this week is as follows:

  • Write 2-3 more articles for Online Caddie
  • Once those are published, start an Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest page for the site. Post links to them on the home page of the website.
  • Figure out how to clean up the website a little bit more visually.

After not doing this for two days the anxiety about whether or not i’ll ever be able to do this as a full time job was and is definitely starting to creep in. The idea of making my own work schedule gets me very excited, but the idea of getting there seems extremely daunting. I know that I have to keep pushing through (I paid for these domains I may as well try to use them). All I can do is put the content out, make it as good as I can, and market the crap out of it for the next 5 – 12 months. If nothing comes of it, then it will be time to move on. But for now, this is the best I got. Let have a good week, we’ll see how we did on Friday.

End of the Week Update: Week One Remix

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I’ve made a lot of good progress this week. I did not complete everything on the to-do list I made for myself at the beginning of the week, but that is because I was so focused on my golf blog onlinecaddie.blog. It is still very much a work in progress obviously, but I feel really good about my first post, 8 Etiquette Tips that are Important to Know for Every Beginner Golfer. I worked really hard on it and used SEO tactics. Again, still a lot to clean up. I definitely struggle the most with the actual website design and making it look “professional”, I plan to work on this more in the next few days. What I am excited about is putting out more content and growing the credibility of the page, because I have a lot of ideas for blog posts that I can write next.

Looking at what I planned to accomplish this week vs. what I did accomplish this week, it doesn’t look great. However, with the progress that I made, I still feel good about the direction I am going in.

What I planned to accomplish this week:

  • Start Social Media for Daily Content Writer
  • Start “Online Caddie”
  • Come up with a list of content and start my first post
  • Figure out how to share resources while giving proper credit

What I did accomplish this week

  • Started “Online Caddie”
  • Worked on making the website more presentable, still more work to do on that front
  • Write, finish, and publish my first post

I essentially completely ignored this blog this week, which I think was good for me. Not only are there still 0 readers on this site, but it allowed me to focus on the actual product that I want to put out. And there are already far more visitors on that page than this one which is encouraging.

I still plan to do social media for this website and continue to work on it to make it more marketable, but this blog is far more personal and not exactly a top priority of mine right now. One thing this week made me realize is that it is a lot of work to blog, much more than I thought. I can’t believe I even considered the thought of starting more than two at a time. Once I feel more comfortable about where Online Caddie is and how it looks to the potential reader, then I will invest a little more time into this blog. By then, I should have a bit more content and have a better idea of how to organize it.

I plan to work more on the site this weekend, but my next check in here will most likely take place on Monday. Where I will again, make my to do list for the week. Over and Out.

A New Direction – Week One: Remix!

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I’ve done some soul searching over the weekend and have tried to figure out the best way to pivot this website. I’ve decided that it is going to remain a personal blog, it just has to be more intentional in its’ purpose.

Like I said, the main goal of the blog is to not make money, it is to hold myself accountable in my progress. However, I would like for the blog to have at least have some interactions from readers. To do this, I would like for this blog to eventually blossom into a resource for other potential bloggers to use when curious about other people’s experiences when first starting out. I have found that the one thing that would be very helpful in doing this is hearing from someone who has gone through this process and hearing what they have to say from beginner to expert.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of experts to hear about from the internet. This blog is going to be an approach coming more so from a personal lens, showcasing my process, what I am doing, and how that works out for me. Rather than posting daily, my posts will come once at the beginning of the week, and once at the end of the week. The beginning of the week post will outline what I plan to do, my goals, and what I want to accomplish. The end of the week post will include what I did, if I reached my goals or not, and the resources that I used to get there.

These changes will force me to reformat my homepage, but I am not too worried about that at the moment. Once I start producing more quality posts, I suspect that the organizational aspect of my website will begin to fall into place (I’m hoping at least). I believe that the stress I am taking away from forcing myself to post daily will allow me to focus on more important things that will be more productive in reaching my long term goals.

All that being said, here is what I plan to do and accomplish this week:

  • Start social media for this blog (Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest? (i’ve heard it is very helpful))
  • Start my official blog: Online Caddie – A website for people just learning the game of golf to get information that they need when first starting out
  • Come up with a list of possible content to write on that blog. Start writing a post
  • Figure out a way to share resources on a blog while giving proper credit (I plan to utilize this a lot on Daily Content Writer)

Online Caddie is my blog that I will be going “all in” on. This is the blog that I will be actively using SEO tactics on, attempting to gain followers and traffic, and ultimately be the website that I would like to and expect to make money on first. Much of what I write about on Daily Content Writer will be directly related to whatever is happening on Online Caddie. The ultimate goal is to do well enough with one or either of these sites so that I can eventually start another one in a different niche and have even quicker success.

As expected, the start of my blogging journey is a bit bumpy with some audibles to my original plan. I feel good about the plan I have, and feel motivated enough to attack it with overwhelming positivity, because that is the best way to do anything. Thank you for following along, I will check back in at the end of the week.

What is this Website? – Day Eight

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I didn’t post yesterday, it was halloween sue me. I thought I was going to be more productive today, but based on how much i’ve accomplished so far, i’m afraid this day will essentially be a wash. I realized I need to identify what I want this page to be and execute that better. I want it to be a personal blog, that has my thoughts, feelings, and reactions to everything I learn and go through as I become a content writer. The unfortunate reality is, I don’t think that will make this website conducive to earning money.

I know, monetizing this blog was never the original goal of it. But if i’m paying for the domain and am learning about SEO anyways, it seems like a bit of a waste not to. I tried to look around for information on how personal blogs are able to gain a following through SEO, but there is not much there. Much of what I found out was social media posting. I do plan on starting a linkedin account for this website, and possibly a twitter page. However, I don’t feel as if an Instagram account or facebook account would be a good fit for the vibe I am trying to go for here. Also I hate those apps with a passion.

While I am going through this predicament about this website, I have plans to start another one. As stated in about the author, my current job is a pro shop manager at a golf course. I plan to start a website tailored to beginners in the game of golf, as the game has only been growing ever since the pandemic. I am excited to start a website that is actually more in my area of expertise. I believe that this website will be easier to use SEO tactics on, as well as gain traffic and monetize because I have a clear vision as to how this will fill a need for people.

While not much did get done or learned today, I am still trying to be optimistic about my progress. There are still many places to go from here, I just have to keep my motivation up for it.

3 Things I Learned About SEO Optimization (Easy to Apply) – Day Seven

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As you can tell by the different title in this daily post, I have done a bit more research on SEO Friendly websites today. Again, the goal of this blog is not to gain followers, but instead to give me a medium to practice how to do that.

  • First of which, the obvious one, is using numbers and brackets in your titles. Numbers are attention grabbing and will make more people more inclined to click on your link. It is very simple to rework your title into having numbers and parentheses to make it more appealing.
  • A great way to find key words is to search your content topic, and scroll to the bottom of Google to see what other words or phrases are related to that search.
  • Meta descriptions (the blurbs under each google result when your search something) can influence a reader to click on your site. There is nothing to gain from including key words in those descriptions, however, those that are written well and satisfy what the user is searching for make them more likely to get clicked on.

I’ve also learned that using an SEO plugin may be an advantage as well, given that there are a few effective free options. I am going to hold off on installing one for this website however. I have almost a fully conceptualized idea of the website that I want to make that I would like to go “all-in” on. Once that website is built and launched, then I will use a plug in to see the true difference that something like that can make.

Just using these few simple tactics that I was reading up on today, my posts are already looking more internet friendly. Still a long way to go, but already seeing improvements from my day one post is a positive sign. (using internal links such as that one is another thing I learned today)

Day Six

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Organizing the content and switching the theme (again) today. I’ve decided in order to keep my homepage from being too cluttered, I will move my daily posts to pages and organize them by the week. Maybe will switch to by the month if we get that far. The homepage will have that current week’s updates on it, but thats it. My website is officially live now but I haven’t started learning SEO Optimization so there are no visitors. Still typing into the void. What I did to was look at other people’s personal blogs and got a lot of inspiration. Now that I am finding a bit more of a routine I think will try looking into popular searches on google start to think about what my other blogs content will be.

Day Five

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I’ve taken a few days off from working directly on the website, but I definitely have not stopped thinking about it. What being away from the computer has made me realize is how important the content is as well as how it is presented (this was me realizing that it is going to take me an embarrassingly long time to settle on a theme). I am very close to launching this site and starting to work with SEO strategies as well as figuring out how to market and monetize my website. What I also know is that there is not much that a “reader” would gain from this blog as of right now other than some entertainment. I know that won’t be enough to gain any interest. That is not going to stop me from posting however. Like I said, the main goal of this website is to help teach me as well as hold me accountable in my progress. I have a few other ideas for blogs that I would enjoy writing more that I plan to pursue once I feel more comfortable. Today is my half birthday. I am using that as a milestone marker so that when my birthday rolls around this year, I will be able to look back to day 5, and recognize progress that I have made. Onward and Upward.