When evaluating a company's financial performance, investors and analysts often use profitability ratios to assess how efficiently a company is generating returns from its resources. Three widely used metrics are Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), and Return on Investment (ROI). Each of these ratios offers insight into different aspects of a company’s profitability, helping investors understand how effectively a company is using its equity, assets, and investments.
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One Year of Akcier.com: Reflecting on Progress and Looking Ahead
March 29 marks a significant milestone for Akcier.com, as it's been a year since the website was launched. As the founder, I'd like to take this opportunity to recap the achievements, the evolution of the website over the past year, and outline the goals for the coming year. This reflection also serves to document the journey of Akcier.com.
Embarking on a New Journey
A Leap Into the Unknown
First and foremost, I am not a programmer or a designer. Building a website was a completely new experience for me. The funding for Akcier.com comes from other projects, employment, and investments. Likely, no one who visited the website in its early days would recognize it now – and I think that's a good thing. Initially, the website was nearly unusable, with almost nothing working properly. Over the past year, we've fixed hundreds of issues to get the site to where it is today. However, there are still many bugs to address, and continuously finding new flaws can be somewhat discouraging. Despite this, my long-term vision and enthusiasm for the project propel me forward.
Analyzing the Growth
Challenges and Adjustments
Visitor numbers for the last month were in the tens, according to GA4, and our visibility in Google searches has been very low, as per the Google Search Console. The website likely suffered because I published links to articles from competing websites without creating original content. Last month, I decided to delete all those articles and started publishing original content, which is more time-consuming. There hasn't been a significant improvement in search rankings yet, but I believe that change will come, as SEO takes time.
To promote Akcier.com, I chose to use Twitter, a platform I personally use frequently and where a large number of investors, who might be interested in this type of website, are present. However, building a community on Twitter has been challenging for me, as I've always been more of a content consumer than a creator. Additionally, I experimented with Google Ads but found the advertising costs prohibitive, especially for targeting more developed countries. Thus, I decided to focus on organic growth and social media traffic instead of paid advertising.
The Website's Timeline
From Concept to Reality
The idea for Akcier.com began to take shape in 2022, and the website gradually came into existence. In 2023, it was officially launched, and we began fixing numerous issues. For 2024, my goal is to further refine the website, identify and fix bugs, add new functionalities, and improve site traffic. Outsourcing programming and design work is challenging, and I envy those who can build their projects on their own in the evenings. If I could program, I believe the project would be much further along.
Despite attempting to connect the website to Google AdSense with the hope of earning at least a dollar within a year, Google rejected it due to non-original content and low traffic. I hope this year will bring improvements that allow us to implement Google AdSense successfully.
The current annual costs for the website are approximately $2,000 for data usage, $100 for the domain, web hosting, and server, and I've spent roughly $15,000 on programming and design work.
Looking Forward
Goals for 2024
- Achieve a monthly unique visitor count of 3,000.
- Successfully implement Google AdSense.
- Improve SEO.
- Fix existing bugs and add new functionalities.
- Gain at least 500+ followers on our Twitter account.
I hope all goes well, and I wish luck to everyone who is building their own project or plans to do so. As you can see, breaking through is not easy, but determination and passion drive me forward.
Parting Thoughts
A Guiding Principle
As I look toward writing next year's recap, I hope the website will be in a better place, as the results so far have been modest.
In closing, I'd like to share a quote that has guided me through life: "You can't control the results, but you can control your decisions."
The article was written by Michal.
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