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TL;DR: I've made a site that hasn't been growing for past 3 years without any prior planning and after reading the crash course figured out most of the things I did wrong. Looking for advice on how to properly apply my newly learned teachings from the crash course to my current site: tear it down and start fresh or find existing problems and make the fixes where possible?
I've read through the crash course and skimmed some of the information. The things are amazingly useful and the overall course is pretty actionable. However, I'm having some issues on how to approach it with my current website.
The crash course, from what I can tell, is aimed at (almost) total beginners who just have this dream of running a successful business but don't know how to achieve it. It provides them with this blueprint of how to make that dream come true; guiding you from point A to point B in the internet marketing world.
I, however, already have a website in place but if you were to ask me what my plan or strategy is with the website - I have nothing.
I just wake up some day and think "hmm I guess I'll write a post on my blog today" write one, optimize it for SEO, make it pretty with pictures, etc. and post it. Some rank, some don't, some get traffic and make a few dollars, others don't - that's been my strategy up till now.
Some Personal Background
Problem is, I kinda nosedived into internet marketing without much prior planning. I was initially a content writer, writing for clients but had the idea of starting my own blog. I started the blog in a niche which I had hands-on experience and have a bit of knowledge on the subject (although I'd still consider it to be intermediate level knowledge). So, since all I thought of was to just start a blog without overthinking it, I went all in without any planning.
It's been about 3 years since I started that blog, I've written all the posts myself (about 90 of them) and in the first year I didn't see any growth (which I had mentally prepared myself for as SEO takes time on a new site) After a year or so I saw some growth and learned how to monetize the site with ads and affiliate marketing. The most visitors I've gotten in a month was like 10k and the most money I've made in a single month is about $150 (Ezoic + Amazon) This was last year btw on the 4th Quarter
Thing is, it's been like that for 3 years, I didn't experience any growth, rather visitors had stagnant at about 5k users per month with about 8k pageviews - which is where they stand currently as I'm writing this...
On my second year, I did actually quit working on the site for about 3 months. I told myself I'm doing it just to give myself time to prepare for my exams, but tbh I didn't want to return to the site. I thought it was a lost cause cuz the niche is very competitve (although I've been able to exploit some sub-niches for traffic in the initial stages) and just left it as a passive side income until it inevitably dies. It rolled in about $50-80 per month (which it still does nowadays) in passive income and since I live outside the U.S. in a third-world country, the exchange rate works in my favour. To just give you an idea, I was able to pay off my gas and internet bill as well as for domain + hosting just on $80-$100 - which seemed kinda nice and also gave me a sense of responsibilty
Why I Want to Take This Seriously
Living expenses are on the rise and if there's ever a problem discussed in my family - it's about money. Currently, I'm in my early twenties and balancing university and content writing. I'm currently working with just 1 long-term client (out of the 3 I used to have) and since it's a local client, I'm probably not earning to my potential as I know I can make about 3x the amount if I start applying on the international market.
Thing is, I don't want to be a content writer working for clients all my life. I want to start my own thing. My dad, although supportive of whatever career I take on, constantly pushes me to extend my content writing efforts and apply for international clients and outsource the content to other writers - basically create a content writing agency of sorts. He also discredits the idea of running my own online business as he thinks there's more future in content writing and because that's the thing that's currently brining in some significant income and because clients are quick money whereas a blog will take a lot of time to rank and give a positive ROI.
But, although I believe it's a good idea, one that I could play on as my strength is high-quality content writing, I want to run my own website and have writers for my own business and profit off of that. So, I'm a bit conflicted rn. My dad thinks I'm making a big mistake by relying on one client for my income rather than sending dozens of proposals on UpWork and landing international level clients. Whereas I look at it from the perspective that I'm just working as a writer until my own website kicks off so I don't rely on any clients and could rather diversify my income from there (similar to how people talk about building their side business to the point where they can leave their current job and work on it full-time).
I also think this is the only time I could actually risk losing a client and thus the additional side income I'm getting from him for the sake of running my own online business as currently my elder brother and my dad are also contributing to the finances. So, even if I'm not earning something, I have something to fall back on - and I don't think I'll have that opportunity in the future in 1-2 years time.
I Found Out About BuSo and Am Trying to Give It Another Shot
I found out about BuSo from watching an interview of Kyle Roof on Matt Diggity's channel where he talked about @CCarter SEO Avalanche technique after that I was amazed by the value provided here and thought if there was a mentor out here in this world to guide me to achieving internet success - it's coming from this forum
So, I found the crash course and read all about it. However, here's my main question after skimming it through:
Since I've started my website, which has aged at about 3 years and has topics all over the place - some ranking great and others not so good - how do I implement the techniques discussed in the crash course? For example, I didn't make any customer personas nor did I know who my target audience is, now after reading the crash course I realize that's something you do BEFORE you start the site, not after.
So, part of me thinks I should revamp the site (I'll keep the posts, etc. but like I'll totally change the site layout, probably get it offline for a couple of days or weeks until I create a proper architecture, get the technical stuff fixed, and design a site that appeals to my ideal audience) following the guidance teached in the crash course and stick to it through thick and thin.
But, at the same time, part of me thinks it's a waste of time and I should just push up my publishing routine and pray the traffic picks up (smartly obv. I'm currently posting some SEO avalanche content and I'm able to rank those posts on the first page of Google fairly quickly - but since I just started and they're low vol. I haven't seen any positive results yet)
What's better in your experience, what do you think would make more sense in my situation?
So, I guess if I were to summarize my situation with an example it'll be like this:
"I dreamed of building a huge, beuatiful hotel that accomadates people from all over the world. I didn't have a blueprint at hand nor any building experience, but I had passion, so I made that building - all by myself. After a few years, I realized people aren't coming to my newly built place and those that come leave to never return. Then some generous people from BuSo came by and told be everything that's wrong with my building and gave me a blueprint that teaches you how to build a reliable building from scratch. Now, how do I apply that to my already built builiding? Do I just tear down the current structure and start again this time with a concreate plan in place or do I just find optimization opportunities which I could fix given my current resources without taking things apart?