In 1 month I'll be a year older

....Yet I feel so unfulfilled.

I hate to worry about what tomorrow brings but I shouldn't expect much from a future I don't plan for.

What's an excuse today added to another tomorrow?

"I'm tired of making excuses....." Only if those words alone will sort my bills.

You know what they say, talk is cheap! Action speaks louder than words.

For the next couple of months.... I'll be taking a part to greatness. Not just blogging alone but personal development.

I want to be better at taking responsibility and keeping to commitments.

As such, I'll be creating a blogging journey, that will keep me accountable and also fetch me passive income.

******
I little bit about myself...

I'm an undergraduate student at the Federal University of technology Akure. Studying Computer Science.

I'll leave other details out for now



Right now I'm on holiday. So I'd be taking advantage of it and by God's grace, I'll achieve my goal.

So, what's the goal?

In 4 months I want to build a niche blog that earns at least $50 monthly

To achieve this, I'm pushing towards

- publishing 60 articles
- hitting 30k monthly page views (1k daily)

This blogging model is based on SEO

.....

In order to push myself and stay ahead of my journey incase of any unforseen event, I've drawn a schedule to publish 20 articles in a month.

5 articles per week

If I keep this constant for the 16 week of my journey, that would sum up to 80 articles.

If I were to judge myself, I'd say it's impossible. But since I'm not giving excuses today. It's possible.

60 articles will be my bench mark �

So I was on Black Hat World today

I stumbled on a couple of blogging journeys that got me charged up.

This particular thread from April inspired me

Taking a step into my journey

The blog I'll be building has actually been up for a year.

Here's the gist

During the COVID-19 lockdown. I discovered a micro niche in the automobile niche.

I loved the topic. And for some reason, the market happens to be underserved.

Decided to do a couple of research....

I found a good expired domain name that not only targets my niche but is brand able

Here's a highlight of what I've done so far

- Acquired an expired domain
- hosted the blog on namecheap
- Installed Bimber WordPress theme
- Installed Rank Math SEO plugin
- Published 5 articles
- Set up google analytics
- Set up Google webmaster console
- Got Adsense approved lol...

Nice one, I'm following you all the way.

I did all these in the first year and abandoned the blog for school (another excuse)

Adsense didn't come through until May this year.

3 previous applications were rejected.

So I was thinking today....

I was thinking about my goal, I wanted to be sure I knew what I wanted

I wanted to be sure that my "why" is good enough

What would keep me going even when my head and hands hurt and I don't feel like continuing

Yeah...This niche is promising and monetizable. It's possible to hit over 200 dollars.

Amazon affiliate would also convert very well.

I looked up some other affiliate programs that pay for leads. Found some ... I'll talk more about them later

For now, i'm not bothered about the earning

I just have to be consistent.

Publish 60 articles and hitting 1k daily page views.

Speaking about page views....

This blog has been up for a year now. In this time it has somehow found favour in the eyes of Google

4 of my 5 published articles are on Google first result page. One sitting on number 2, just below Wikipedia . Bringing in 80% of the current traffic

Current daily page views is about 50 page views on an average

And just over 1k monthly page views. 80% organic

That's an over view of the traffic from September 2020 till 7th September 2021

Notice the spike in May 2021. That was the month, I got adsense approval.

... I created my social profiles in May as well.

Also, Google was rolling out core web vital update... Graciously, they sent me some traffic in favor

So, I had reasons to laugh at myself today.

Can you imagine. In a whole year. I only published 5 articles on this blog??

Don't crucify me just yet.... I probably don't have an explanation.

Just another excuse

Never say never.

I'm about to break that yolk

Nice up bro... You are doing well. I know you can do exceedingly more than you can imagine. Go bro, go!

Bring it on!

DollarBuddy:
Nice up bro... You are doing well. I know you can do exceedingly more than you can imagine but uu magine. Go bro, go!

Bring it on!

In broda shaggi's voice "nah who cut maze for me I go amaze". Lol

Thanks for the encouragement. Sometimes I tend to doubt my abilities.

But I'm going to keep my eyes on the prize.

ChewingStick:




But I'm going to keep my eyes on the prize.

That's the spirit bro

This will just be a quick update


- I've started writing contents
- Shared my previous articles on my Facebook page

The goal is to publish 60 articles by the end of this year. So publishing 5 a week will be great to stay ahead.

Well, I did feel tired and lazy during the weekend but I had to still work. Still writing some informative articles, I needed to research on them extensively to better understand some fancy words in the niche.

I think I'm loving the process

For the first 8 weeks of this journey, I'll probably be dishing out a lot of informative content.

Since I'm a believer of quality over quantity. I'll create the best resource and become an authority in this niche.

Week 1 Update

I tought it would be better if I give an update at the end of every week.

So, it's one week into my journey already. I still have 17 more weeks to go.

This week I did a lot of reading and writing. Sequel to my last update, I was only able to publish 4 articles in total.

Well, I started the week with hopes of writing 5 articles, but I think I didn't plan my week very well. I'll work on managing my time better in the upcoming week

All articles were over 1,000 words. One was about 1,500 words and the longest was 1,900.

I'm trying my best to enjoy the process. It's fun getting to know more about this niche. I think there will be a need to write a 5,000-word article.

It probably won't be any time sooner, but definitely when I start writing some pillar posts and some affiliate keywords.

For now, I'm targeting low-hanging fruits. Still, I had to make these articles long because there was a lot of necessary information to give on the topic. I couldn't help it.

I'll give these articles 2 months, hopefully, they'll start getting some impression on search engines.

Also, I received a guest post request which I accepted. It's probably too early for this blog but I just felt like being generious.

The guest post was lovely, The writer must be a pro. While the article was about 1,200 words, it had an SEO score of close to 85/100 on RankMath SEO plugin.

I love the writing style of the guest post, I think I'm going to learn and adopt it. It makes sense since I'm targeting tier 1 countries.

Week 2 Update

Wow, time really flies.

This second week didn't go as planned but I'm still on course.

There was no light back at home during the week. It was unhealthy to my journey. But still, I needed to work, spent my time in the church writing. Also, I had reasons to travel back to Akure, while school is yet to resume, So, I'll be continuing my journey here.

The first 3 days in school have been total back out of power. When I'm not writing, I'm reading a book or learning Yoruba language.

What was done in the week?
- Publish 3 articles
- Changed my theme

So, I was only able to publish 3 articles for the week. Though all articles were around 1500 - 1900 words, I still didn't meet my weekly 5 articles target.

Also, I discovered that many people using this blogging model have had success with the Generatepress theme. So, I thought I should stick to what has worked. That's why I change my theme from Bimber to Generatepress.

There's no excuse to give this week, but I think I may have injured myself. I probably practiced some bad sitting postures while writing. Now my back hurts.

Plans for the 3rd week

- Aim for 5 articles (for now, it's hard staying organized due to unreliable power - if nothing changes, I think I'll have to consider investing more aside from my time and data)

Week 3 and 4 Update
The goal in mind is to publish 60 articles on my niche site in 4 months.

So, I'm now 1 month into my journey. You'd probably notice the few weeks of silence. My apologies, these last two weeks were overwhelming - Nigeria celebrating her Independence and I got a year older, so I decided to give an update at the end of week 4 instead.

There are so many things I'm grateful to God for. Among many things, I became more organized.

Although I didn't hit the 5 articles weekly threshold for week 3, I was determined to make it happen in week 4 - which I did. Publishing those 9 1.000+ words articles sums it to 16 articles in the first month of my journey.

So far, I have a total of 25 articles live.

While it may not seem like much as I didn't hit my 20 articles per month target. I believe I did learn a couple of lessons.

- Motivation is overrated
- Discipline works miracle

That feeling called motivation doesn't stand the test of time. I believe discipline does. When I started this journey, I was motivated by a lot of things; similar journeys by others, my brother's blog (just hit $250/month on AdSense) using the same blogging model.

Since electricity still happens to be a challenge, I've resorted to sleeping in lecture classes in school where there is light and internet.

This is the price I have to pay.

I wasn't delivering the articles as fast as I should, rather, I worked at my own pace and there were days when my back started to hurt.

Motivation failed me!
I was left in the hands of discipline to write some more.

Plans for week 5

For the next 4 weeks, I don't think I'll be doing anything else apart from writing. If it happens that I am only able to publish 16 articles on a monthly basis, I'll still be able to reach my goal of 60 articles by the end of my journey.

In the meantime, I'll keep publishing informative content - low-hanging fruits.

For the month of September, Google analytics recorded the follow
Session: 482
Unique Users: 429
Pageviews: 1,602

While analyzing the blog yesterday, I noticed someone had linked to one of my top-ranking articles. I've also just added my blog to Bing Webmaster.

For Adsense: Just a couple of cents here and there. I'll give these new articles 2 months before I start seeing results (in earning and pageviews).

Here are screenshots of my blog's performance on Google Analytics and Web Console in the month of September 2021

Week 5 and 6 Update

I'm currently in the 7th week of my journey. Hopefully, when I drop the next update, I'll be halfway into my journey.

Sequel to the last update, what has happened?

Some of the articles I published in the first and second week have started getting some impressions on SERP. One, in particular, has won the Google snippet.

I got goosebumps seeing that. Overall, there has been an upward spike in my search console.

I tried getting on Ezoic but was rejected 2 times, the funny thing is that they said I have scrapped content. Lol... After my second attempt, they've restricted me for 6 months. Well, we move!

Haven't started dishing out my money post for Amazon affiliates. I Will jump right into that very soon

With my current stats, Adsense is still far from my $50 target. I'm currently doing $2 monthly.

I wasn't so productive in weeks 5 and 6, publishing only 3 and 4 articles respectively. I'll do everything possible not to fall past the 16 articles record for the previous 4 weeks

Week 7 and 8 Update

Although It feels like yesterday, I just realized that I'm halfway (time-wise) into my journey. In another 8 weeks, I should have achieved my goal of 60 articles on this blog.

Here are the updates for the week
In Week 7 I did 5 articles
In week 8, I did just 4 articles

Total articles written in the little 8 weeks duration is 32. This should have been more if I was consistent with 5 new articles every week. But nevertheless, if my work rate remains the same, I'll produce another 32 articles in the next 8 weeks. That would make a total of 64 articles.

With that, I'll cross this goal as achieved and I'll sit down to take write down some lessons I've learned. There are chances that I'll set up another journey to reach another milestone with this blog.

I planned on making this a short update.

Google Webmaster Console
I'm not sure where my new contents are ranked at the moment (I shouldn't bother about them though) but data from Webmaster Conssole shows Impressions are graduating increasing. Since October 30th Daily impression has hit over 1k.

Earnings
October Adsense Earnings-$2.66
Today being the 8th day of November, Adsense has already recorded $2.10

It seems the CPC in this niche is as good as I suspected. Did I mention that I was rejected from Ezoic? Those guys said I have scraped content. Funny but, we move.

Pageviews
Users - 1,011
Sessions - 1,088
Pageviews - 2,710

Week 9 and 10 Update.

Sequel to my last update, things are becoming more interesting.

In week 9, I did only 3 articles, that's 2 articles short of my weekly target.
In week 10, I did 4 articles, that's another 1 article short!
This makes it another 3 articles fall,

Well, both weeks were just sad stories altogether. First; my school has resumed and we're back to academic work, and last week (week 10) I lost a respected friend. May his soul rest in peace.

However, total article published now; 32 + 7 = 39

So, 21 Articles more, and I have just 6 weeks to end this journey. Looking at this semester's wicked curriculum, I will try setting up a mini goal in order to get these 21 articles out earlier so my grades don't suffer.

Earnings
From the last update, in October this blog made $2.66 on Adsense.

Today being 23rd November is pizza day!
Pizza day, according to Income School is the day a new blog earns its first $5 in the month.

So, I've hit my first $5 a month. Even though it isn't much I'm glad it happened soon. Every milestone hit is a stepping stone for another. Next will be to hit $10.

Pageviews so far (Nov 1st to 23rd)
Users - 702
Sessions - 790
Pageviews - 1,407

On hitting 60 articles, I decided to take a long break from work. (This is the first update this year)

There's good news and bad news! I'll drop them shortly

Would love to see how far you have gone boss.

ChewingStick:
Earnings
From the last update, in October this blog made $2.66 on Adsense.

Today being 23rd November is pizza day!
Pizza day, according to Income School is the day a new blog earns its first $5 in the month.

So, I've hit my first $5 a month. Even though it isn't much I'm glad it happened soon. Every milestone hit is a stepping stone for another. Next will be to hit $10.

Pageviews so far (Nov 1st to 23rd)
Users - 702
Sessions - 790
Pageviews - 1,407

After kdp, blogging would be my next move inshallah...

What's the update, bro?