8K Weekly Revenue But Still at Risk? Is Organic Traffic Really That Good? Solo Seller Weekly Report W51

Key Metrics This Week

• Since I went out to play last week, ads were paused from Wednesday. Final weekly revenue: 9K+, which means ROAS took off at around 8!
• However, looking at Monday and Tuesday's performance, I could already clearly feel orders dropping rapidly week-over-week.
• New business must be launched quickly, otherwise I might not survive the first quarter of next year. Before New Year's, I'll publish a 2023 annual review + 2024 roadmap. Stay tuned.
• Group 3 is now full! Group 4 is open, everyone's losing money!

---

Is Organic Traffic Really That Good?

As you can see, starting Wednesday, I almost completely stopped ads (set a $1 budget). I had prepared myself for zero orders in the second half of the week. But fortunately, I still managed to get some orders through organic traffic. Let me share a few thoughts:

1. SEO Progress Results

As I mentioned before, I can genuinely feel this "progress" in SEO. If it's hard to judge from the exposure and click data in the GSC panel alone, then this data comparison will make it clear:

It took me over three months after building my site to get my first order, which came from organic search. Before that, I hadn't spent a dime on ads. So if we calculate extremely, from February to May, organic traffic brought roughly 1 order per 3 months on average, right?

Now in December (10 months later), I've reached an average of 1-3 orders per day from organic traffic.

To put it dramatically, from an average of 1 order per 3 months in February, to an average of 1 order per day in December. This is the result of 10 months of SEO growth.

I know this can't compare to those big shots on social media who easily explode with orders in 1 month from free organic traffic, but for me, I already feel deeply fortunate.

2. Understanding Real SEO Progress Efficiency

I don't know if you can let go of the ignorant fantasy of "1 month SEO free traffic takes off, 3 months explosive orders" from my long-term real sharing.

I'm just one real case among many ordinary solo sellers, and the SEO efficiency for a real solo seller's independent site might just be like this. This is a real reference.

But I need to explain that first, I don't think I put in 100% effort. I've said many times before that I often go more than half a month without updating my site because I'm updating my self-media. This effort includes learning investment and resource investment. So I believe my progress efficiency is definitely at or below average. If you can work harder and invest more resources, you'll definitely be faster than me.

3. A Milestone Key Point in Learning SEO

For many beginners, the difficulty with SEO is that they don't actually know if they've mastered SEO.

I personally believe that when you reach a moment where you can suddenly let go of the anxiety and obsession about SEO/organic traffic growth, that's when you've grasped the basics of SEO.

Your letting go comes from knowing the essence of SEO. You're no longer trapped searching for various secrets and super techniques across the internet: when you see "big shots" sharing tutorials on how to get on the first page in 7 days, you just smile and don't even click.

4. Thoughts on SEO vs SEM

I've always emphasized to beginners: if you always want to gain benefits through "free riding," I think 99% of the time you won't build a sustainable and long-term business.

Business itself is about investing 1, striving for a return of 2, and you earn 1; then you keep learning, optimizing, working hard, striving to invest 5 for a return of 10, and you earn another 5. Then continue, continuously expanding investment within your affordable range, thereby expanding returns.

SEO appears to have 0 investment (let's not mention the time investment), but its returns are definitely unstable. I was lucky to get a few orders last week, but what about next week? Can I still be this lucky? If you go viral on TikTok with one video, can your next 5 or 10 videos also go viral? What happens when they don't?

But SEM is different. When you run ads and they stabilize, for a long time, ad投放 becomes a simple arithmetic problem that's sustainable, relatively stable, and controllable.

Anyone who has worked in internet companies and been involved in user growth/media buying understands this principle. It's just that in the domestic internet environment, investment is exchanged for user traffic; while in global e-commerce independent sites, investment is exchanged for revenue.

So again, I advise beginners: instead of searching for various SEO "secrets" every day, you'd better honestly run some ads to see if your site is actually accepted by consumers. Besides, SEO doesn't have so-called secrets.

---