I'm just here because I got invited hahaha!
Let me see, I rolled into the online world on WA since 2019 (djees time flies)
Well, I was already doing some online 'jobs' here and there since 15 years ago, simply because I literally can't get out of bed in the morning to 'go to work' to a 9 to 5 job.
There's that and other health reasons (you don't want to know the list haha), leading me to the online world.
I joined WA back then, recommended by a former (online) friend.
I have to say: for beginners WA is a fantastic platform, I knew literally nothing about affiliate marketing, ads, how to build a simple website, how to write content, nothing, nada.
So I think the first 6-8 months it was all about learning and learning for me, and I worked my ass off (especially because I am not native English, but Dutch), to get good content out there, well I thought it was good content lol.
I was growing with my first niche site on dollhouses and miniatures, but then I first got "hit" (was it back in 2022? not sure), when I started to monetize my site with ads from Ezoïc, disaster!!!
Ok, got rid of Ezoic, move on and on and on...
Then, last year 2023, March update, got hit again. Not so helpful content, I guess hahaha. Removed roundup reviews of things that I didn't own, updated one by one older article, yeaaah growing again! (thanks to Partha and Vitaly on WA on how to update articles)
And then, as lots of us have noticed: (semi) final punch in the gut: Google update in september-october 2023 and the current March 2024 gave the final touch down and even de-indexed a lot of blog posts from my second site on Africa travel. (even my own personal long stories of specific areas I have travelled to last year) This last one has basically flatlined now, and not sure what to do with it.
BUT, not giving up! For my first website on dollhouses and miniatures, I now am focussing on social media traffic from Pinterest, Facebook (groups), Youtube and our Prince Partha here is having a go on Reddit for me (thank you, thank you, thank you!)
AND, just created a travel website for Africa travel in Dutch. This will be an experiment I am looking forward to, because I am just going to place the same content as my English site, but in Dutch! Why?
Well, I am not competing in Dutch with sites like Reddit, Quora, big newssites, etc. When I do the research, I am only competing with a few sites like booking.com (sometimes not even) and other personal small blogs, so I think that there is potential for me!
(yeah yeah, not literally translating them, of course, I will write correctly in Dutch and adapt the text accordingly lol, I do have some background education in translating and transcription). It is actually weird, now writing in my own language, not used to it anymore haha!
Before I go on with my life story, thanks for the invite guys and a big hug for Partha, Diane and Andy for all the help so far!
Lizzy