Well, in July I was working on art for a post I was writing on the at-sea identification of California's dark-rumped storm-petrels.
Then I watched a YouTube video on writing the perfect blog post in an hour. That led down a rabbit hole (I didn't realize until just now this idiom was in reference to Alice In Wonderland... oh, oh, distracted again) to writing blog posts for niche websites and earning income. Wait! I could write blog post and earn income? I've been writing blogs for over a dozen years and not getting that many readers. This niche website idea was talking about each web post being read by 1000 people every month! Most of my articles rarely reach 100 views, total in 5 or more years!
Oh, you're supposed to write long-content blog posts based on questions people ask Google? Not on what I think people should know about? Thousands of people monthly aren't searching Google for dark-rumped storm-petrel identification off California? Well, that might explain why most of my posts have very few pageviews!
My most popular posts? They're all on backyard birds. My best San Diego site guide posts get 20 to 30 readers per month. My backyard birds of San Diego post gets 350-500 visitors per month.
So I created a new website on backyard birds in the United States following the method developed by the Income School. I am now 6 months in and have written 90 blog posts. I'm on schedule. If all goes according to the typical website using this method, Google should start increasing the ranking of my pages in the next 3 months or so. Yes, it takes at least 9 months for a new website to start being trusted by Google so that it sends organic search traffic to well-written articles.
The good news is that many of my new posts immediately ranked very high on Bing and Yahoo. But very, very few people use Bing and Yahoo compared to Google. Google takes longer, but should be 90% of the total organic search traffic eventually. Once I get significant traffic (30,000 pageviews a month) then it will be worthwhile to monetize with ads. At least, that's the plan.
I've been writing articles on common backyard birds of every state, articles on bird feeders, bird foods, binoculars, and hummingbirds--popular topics.
If you want to see my latest project website it is here.
I expect that my posts to this San Diego blog will continue at a much slower pace, concentrating on adding birding site guides to areas I haven't written about yet.
Good birding!
Greg
Very interesting! I wish you a grand success and can't wait to hear how it goes! ~Eve
ReplyDeleteThanks, Eve! I should know in 3 or 4 months if it starts taking off or not. In the mean time I keep adding content trusting that it will. Patience.
DeleteHello! I have baby birds in my olivenhain yard. The nest is on the ground, tucked in an outside corner of a porch, under some fern fronds. They have yellow lines beaks and red coloring. The presumed mama has reddish side coloring, tan breast, longer tail feather. Is this enough info to identify? It can't be Lewis woodpecker. Can it be towhee? There's chaparral in the canyon we are on. Thank you in advance! Paula Renkin 5/9/20
ReplyDeletePaula,
DeleteThat's wonderful! Chicks in the nest are sooooo hard to identify. Most have bright yellow or orange mouth linings that act like a target for the parents to poke food into! The problem is that the bills of chicks are all short at first. The bill shape is such an important clue to identification.
I think you are right. California Towhee is a fairly large ground-dwelling sparrow. The bill is thick and conical for cracking seeds. The bird is brown throughout with an ample tail. It has some "warm cinnamon" on the feathers under the tail. It can look more reddish, not quite chestnut sometimes.
Spotted Towhee has reddish sides, but black upperparts and white belly. California Thrasher also is brown with rusty under the tail. But it is a bigger bird with big long tail and a very long thin curved bill. House Finches are brown striped on white, the males have red forehead, chest, and rump. Those are about it for ground nesting around your home or chaparral that seem to match the general coloring of brown with some reddish underneath.
I just happened upon your site this morning for the backyard birds, and I just wanted to thank you for such a comprehensive list! It was so fun letting my bed bound mom know what was going on outside her window! Thanks again and I wish you much success on the larger blogposts.
ReplyDeleteDear Pattonboysmom,
DeleteThank you for your kind words. I'm so glad that I was able to bring some joy to your mother.
The What Birds in the Backyard website has been growing in readership, doubling every 10 days since late March. 6000 views last Sunday, compared to 300 daily views for this blog. I am excited about it.