Do You Know What Day It Is?

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Hey there!

With my last proper “day job” ending in early 2009, I’ve spent most of the last 15 years wondering “What day is it?” since I had nowhere to be.

Running a local newsletter that goes out 5 days a week has changed that. And I’m not sure I like it.

But, at the same time, I’m excited about this project and really proud of what we’re putting out into the world (not something I could say about a lot of the niche sites I’ve made in the past!).

It’s an interesting adjustment though. Just something to think about if you’re considering a local newsletter play.

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Mindset and Mental Health

Though I intended to talk about KDP and Amazon book publishing as a revenue stream for your sites and just in general, I got an email from a subscriber that I feel like I need to publicly address.

The email was from someone wanting guidance on what to do next. You see, this person spent several thousand dollars on a niche site sometime last year and it never took off. Maybe you did the same?

Now feelings of desperation have set in.

• How to make back that lost money?

• What to do now?

• Will anything work now?

• It’s got to be something that will work!

• Please tell me what I can do to make money fast!!

For many people, several thousand dollars is a LOT of money to gamble - and really, gambling is what we’ve all been doing in recent years when investing in sites without knowing what Google might do.

Especially if those sites didn’t have diversification in traffic and revenue streams.

I’ve had sites that I’ve invested time and money into that were wiped out by Google, too.

You’re not alone in this.

I know there aren’t really any thought leaders (other than Alex at WP Eagle) saying to you, “Hey, they got me, too. My sites and finances took a hit, just like yours.”

Instead you’re being told that niche sites are dead and you should have seen the writing on the wall. Or that you need to jump through all these hoops and THEN, finally THEN, Google will rank your site like it used to.

I don’t have all the answers. I may not have any answers. I’m just someone trying things and seeing what happens.

I can’t tell you that you’re going to turn things around.

When Amazon closed my affiliate account in 2015, two days before Black Friday, I spent Thanksgiving at one of my lowest points mentally.

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What a shitty time for them to have done such a thing. I was six months off a round-the-world trip where I’d spent almost six figures doing amazing things. Almost all of my income was from the Amazon Associates program and now they were telling me they were keeping that almost $20K that they owed me.

And, I wasn’t going to earn anything from Black Friday like I’d been working towards for months. Plus, no more payouts….before Christmas.

I had some savings but I was feeling a lot like the person who emailed me.

I didn’t know how I was going to bring in money and I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I didn’t know if things were going to be okay.

I’d been so focused on making and growing Amazon affiliate sites that my brain just couldn’t see a way out of this mess I’d ended up in.

Then, I got mad. Real mad. Cause I knew I wasn’t in violation of their operating agreement.

And that’s always a good motivator for getting shit done. Cause it’s hard to be productive when you’re overwhelmed with despair and the depressing feeling of uncertainty.

The first thing, for me, was to take those bastards to small claims court to claw back what I could of the money they owed me (a limit of $10,000 + court costs in the state of Nevada). Six months later, that’s exactly what I got.

But the fury fueled me into the most successful part of my online career, so far.

(I should take a moment to point out that anger isn’t exactly healthy for your mental health - but that’s what it took to get me back on track.)

The real thing about this whole event happening to me is that it forced me to change my way of thinking and my entire mindset about being an online entrepreneur.

I had to accept that I have little, if any, control over what happens in terms of Google or any other platform that I am using to grow an online business. And it took me a while to get to this point.

Mostly because I was spending all my time scrambling to pick up the pieces and see what I could do with them.

I took a moment take stock of what I had to work with. At the time, that was lots of sites that were ranking and bringing in good traffic. I just needed to find new ways to monetize them until I could get another Amazon account.

For right now, we may not have that traffic or rankings in Google - but what else do we have?

• Content that seemed to resonate with people?

• The skills to build a site?

• Basic SEO knowledge that could be applied to a different type of project? (local SEO, anyone?)

• Good copywriting skills?

• Other stuff?

Much like me on Thanksgiving Day in 2015, we have more in our bag of tricks than we realize.

Sure, you can’t make another niche site focusing on long tail keywords that brings in loads of Mediavine monies or affiliate commissions.

But you can move on to building something different. Maybe even something bigger, better, and more successful than you’ve ever built in the past.

Or, take those skills and get yourself a kickass salaried job somewhere for now, if you want more stability…though, let’s be honest, day jobs are only as stable as they get you to believe they are.

All that to say - I know what you’re going through and it sucks. I wish I could give you some answers. All we can do is keep forging our own path and focus on growing our own thing.

For me, I’m pivoting to the whole inbox-first media company thing, starting with a local newsletter, while also continuing to grow sites with multiple traffic streams and ecommerce-focused revenue streams. And I was already growing my agency, Growth Cupid, which I’m still doing.

What’s it look like for you?

Next Time…

We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming on Thursday.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

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