Project: Alchemist Crystal (online crystal bracelet store) My Role: Project owner, SEO lead, content strategist, operations Duration: August 2023 to August 2025 (paused December 2023 to May 2024)
Alchemist Crystal was an online store selling crystal bracelets. The plan was simple. Drive organic traffic through content and SEO, then convert that traffic into sales. I managed this project end to end, from content strategy to vendor sourcing to running ads.
August to November 2023: Early Traction I started with keyword research and published around 25 content pieces. Traffic grew from 20 clicks a day to 250 clicks a day by November. That is a 1,150% jump in about 3 months.
It looked exciting. But almost all of that traffic came from informational pages. None of it was built to convert.
December 2023 to May 2024: Project on Hold I paused the project for personal reasons.
May 2024: The Revamp I restarted with a fresh setup. I bought Shoptimizer, a paid theme from CommerceGurus. It gave me most of what a modern e-commerce site needs, at a fraction of what Shopify would have cost. Good value for the budget I had.
June 27, 2024: First Order Almost a year after starting, I got my first order.
September 2024: Traffic Peaks, Sales Don't Organic traffic touched 400 clicks a day. Sales still did not respond.
Mid 2024 to Early 2025: Chasing Every New Idea
I read DotCom Secrets and decided to build an email list. I created a free downloadable asset, tracked with UTM links, designed in Canva, and distributed through MailPoet. It generated 43 leads. Not one of those leads clicked through to the product page linked inside the asset.
In November and December 2024, I got desperate for sales. I added products that were not in stock and marked them out of stock. I also created 12 zodiac based categories, many with barely any products in them. Looking back, this was one of my biggest mistakes.
Early 2025 brought a second mistake. I wrote five listicle articles like "best gifts for relationships." They linked out to higher number Amazon affiliate products instead of my own. Worse, "gift" as a topic is a different search intent than "crystal bracelet." I believe this diluted my site's relevance in Google's eyes.
January and February 2025: Heavy Spend for My Pocket, Low Return I spent close to Rs 70,000 in total, hoping it would finally move the needle. It did not. Against that spend, the site generated only Rs 5,593. After this, I stopped putting more money into content.
Post June 2025 Core Update: The Traffic Crash
A Google core update hit the site hard. Traffic dropped from 210 to 87 clicks a day and kept falling. In response, I moved to Instagram, spent savings on influencer outreach, and ran ads myself.
