Tweaking and Evolving

Words matter. Tweaking not Twerking. I have been documenting my journey for six months now and while I am happy with the content I’ve published, I felt this Blog needed updating. I read a great article by Meredith Moore on enhancing her blog. Meredith is part of the blogging family in our Certified Partner Saturday Share. You can read her post here: A Journey of Tweaks and Transformation.

First thing I updated was the overall look. When I first built my Blog site with Affiliate System, I used WordPress to create my website and chose the Astra theme. Astra allows you to customize every aspect of your site. It was hard to understand at first so I did an Internet search and found an Astra Theme Full Tutorial Masterclass from 2023. It’s a 2-1/2 hour long video on YouTube broken down into segments so you can scroll at the bottom to the section you wish to learn or review. I bookmarked it so I can refer back to it as often as I needed. You can access that video here if you wish: Tutorial. However, even with the tutorial it was still frustrating to get everything exactly like I wanted. Lots of trial and error in using the customization tools. At times it felt like I was an engineer on a submarine trying to figure this out and synchronize everything together for functionality and aesthetics.

I started with my header. I wanted something that stood out better. I went to Canva and created a banner. Canva is graphic design platform that provides tools for creating social media graphics, presentations, promotional merchandise and websites. You can create a free account on Canva but I upgraded to Pro so I had access to all the tools. I started with a blank banner and customized it. Then I uploaded it into the header of my Blog site and customized the border spacing. I like that look much better.

Next I wanted a clear and concise website menu. I added a separate section below the header for the following links: My Story, Contact, Home, Social. I chose a lighter background for this menu bar, which separated the header from the body.

• My Story will send you to a separate page that gives a short summary of my bio.
• Contact will send you to a separate page where you can contact me. This took a while to create. I had an idea of what I wanted but needed a second opinion so I looked at the contact pages of a few of my fellow Beginners Advantage Blog sites. When you start designing your own website, leverage the creativity of other bloggers and content creators and see what they created. Use that to get ideas for own website to make it your own. I was trying to make something complex, which would take up more time, but I chose to go simpler. Most often simple is best.
• Home will send you back to my Blog homepage, which is static. For some reason I was never able to figure out how to center it on my header and make it hyperlinked so that any blog page you were on, it would automatically send it back to my main blog page. I tried the help chat feature in Affiliate System but to no avail. Thus I had to ask for help. Even now that is something I am reluctant to do because I feel I should be able to figure it out myself. Wrong! This is new to me and by trying to figure it out myself I wasted a week of my time. The lesson here? Do not be hesitant to ask for help. That is a key benefit of Affiliate System – the support you receive because they want you to succeed.
• Social will display all the social media sites I am on. Right now I just have my Facebook home page link. Soon I will have my YouTube channel link, then TikTok and then WhatsApp. I have some ideas for TikTok and WhatsApp as more collaborative, but that is in the future.

Next step was rearranging the Sidebars on the right hand side of the page. At the top I created an introductory section with a picture and short summary of why I started my Blog. As Glenn suggested, this personal touch will help visitors connect with you. Below that I placed my lead magnet for my Newsletter. Having it near the top will make it easier for visitors to opt-in to my Voyager Newsletter email list. As I mentioned before, my email list is key to my business. Under my lead magnet I placed a picture link to The Iceberg Effect, which was the book that helped me start my business and I feel is essential for anyone wanting to succeed in affiliate marketing. Those are my three primary Sidebars.

Lastly, below those primary Sidebars I placed sections for Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Archives and Categories. The Posts, Comments and Archives are self explanatory. The Categories list the different categories I’ve used to describe the theme or focus of my Blog posts so people can quickly go to my Blog posts regarding a topic they are interested in. Of course, this requires deciding on a category for each post so those topics can be easily referenced from my Home page.

Updating my Blog main page took a lot more work than I thought. My stubbornness didn’t help. Through trial and error, though, I learned a lot more about Astra and how to customize my site. I am sure I will be tweaking my Blog again in the future as I continue my Voyage and keep learning. A key concept to remember is that most of us will not be very good in the beginning as this is all new to us. That’s ok. As long as we keep learning and making progress, we will get better at it. We all start somewhere. How many successful business people have you seen that were embarrassed with their first Blog posts or videos or advertisements? It’s not how we start that matters, but whether we have the determination and patience to keep learning and building our business. I know the life I want and am willing to do what it takes to achieve that. Are you?