italianbull

I've been working on this site for a couple months now, and I cannot seem to make any revenue whatsoever. I'm very passionate about the niche, but there doesnt seem to be a market for it. Almost every post and page I have is SEO'd, but my traffic is only around 100 a day. Is there anything I might be missing, thanks. I've been thinking about dropping this all together. Cut my losses and move on, but I dont want to, please advise, thanks.

moratraffic

You need to create some buzz about your site first of all. Start writing linkbait articles for Digg, Twitter and all the other social sites. Make extreme claims and stuff and really make the article controversial, say like extreme hard penalties for abuse of pit bulls. Do this at least 2 or 3 times a week and submit like hell to the social sites.

Also, you don't have any ads on your site at all except your eStore. You need to be more credible to sell stuff imo, so go with ads on your site that fit this demographic. Even Adsense is better then nothing. Once you have Adsense on your site for awhile, see what ads are being shown on your site. Then, replace them with affiliate ads for better income. AM 101 really.

Finally, if you love it and it still doesn't make you money in the next 3 months, scale it down a bit. Just work on it every other day for a few minutes and let it slowly build. You will eventually start getting some love from the SE but it may take longer. A few of my bigger info sites took almost a year to start getting a decent amount of traffic, but after that, they just exploded. Patience is a good thing.

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AllBizNiz

From the looks of it there is no strong calls to action. You have an online store on there but who knows how many people are actually visiting it.

You should sell shit on there and be like "I'll give 5% of the proceeds to some Pitbull foundation."

You could also list a product of the month on the sidebar or front page. You really need to stick that shit right in their face. Clean up your text too. Make sure you get the correct paragraph format for your users to easily read.

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abrokenshingle

Your articles and titles aren't targeted enough.

Are pitbulls dangerous?
How to train your pitbull.
ect

Go to google suggest and get some interesting keywords that pop up in searches.

HundredProof

LinkBaits mate. Like mora said, LinkBait.

kimboslice

This is an easy one...

Search google news for pitbull attacks:

pitbull attack - Google Search

If I were you I'd contact the media outlets that come up and present an opinion that pitbulls are not simply mindless killing machines. Explain that the owners mishandled the animals and they are getting a bad rap. If you are really passionate about this as you say, it should be easy for you to do.

You contact enough of them and reference your site and you'll see a surge.

pandaexpress

add an article about vick

ISeemToBeAVerb

Just wanted to add that in the future you should be doing keyword and market research BEFORE spending months building your site out. Picking out good keywords and looking at search volume and related competitors can go a long way in solving some of the issues you're having. That being said, I think if you follow the advice in this thread you should see some positive changes. Good luck!

Pingo

Nice to see a thread with actual advice given to a newbie. @moratraffic wins for best advice so far.

You could look at Frank Kern's story about how he made a killing in dog product info books. So see whats on clickbank for pitbulls & learn from what they are doing to build lists & optimized sites.

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Flash4Ever

2 months on this site? what a waste of time.
The site is on a WP theme built with Artisteer (maybe 5 minutes work).
No keyword research before launch neither keyword optimization on live site.

Do you own a regular license for Artisteer? your footer has a link to them

italianbull

thanks for all the advice, I did do keyword research. I just don't know which ones to use, or to go after. Like whether or not to have the word "buy" in the keyword, but then there are those ads on google, when "buy" is in the word. Would it still be worth it. Or should I try information keywords, to just reel people in, and then try to make the conversions once they're there.

ISeemToBeAVerb

When you're picking out keywords you need to be asking yourself what the intent behind the search phrase is. Try this out, when you look at a keyword ask yourself "Would someone searching with this phrase be interested in the product/service I'm offering?"

For instance, someone performing the search "how to train a pitbull" is looking for information on how to train a pitbull, that is the intent behind the search. If your product is a guide on how to train pitbulls then you have a good match there. If you're selling snuggies for pitbulls, then it wouldn't be that relevant.
When you're starting out you want to look for keywords that get a decent amount of searches, have a low level of competition and are relevant to your site. The best way to start this process is to cast a wide net using something like the Google Keyword tool and then start filtering down based on the criteria you choose for traffic levels and competition. Just hit the list and start asking yourself what keywords are asking questions that your site could answer (it helps to think of search phrases as questions), toss them into Google and have a look at your competition. If it looks doable for your level of ability then use it.

italianbull

another problem I've come across is the actual word pit bull. Many people look up "pitbull" without a space, but the politically correct way to spell it is "Pit Bull". I would have to find words that are Pit Bull separated, or if i used "pitbull" in my meta tags, would my spelling "Pit Bull" on my site still work for each other?

Another thing, on google keyword tools, there is the Global Search Volume and Local Search Volume. Is the total if you add them up, or is global intended to be the total, thanks?

greyhat

Im pretty sure global is total.

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italianbull

I've decided to read the web marketing for dummies book, would anyone advise that being a good idea, thanks. I dont see why it would be a bad idea, but maybe it has bad info in it, thanks.

greyhat

Yes, that is a good idea. I have a copy myself. For dummies books are the best for getting an overview of a subject. I would always reccomend for dummies books.... Try search engine optimisation for dummies aswell... they are really easy to read and understand and cover all the basics. When you are buying or *cough* aquiring technology (or any learning) books/e-books make sure you check the publication date is recent so you get up to date material...

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fatmoocow

here's a start - put "defend pitbulls" into:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

select exact for match type

You get basically zero searches for defend pitbulls. Do the same with all of your article titles. No one is looking for your keywords.

askmeaquestion

Your not close yet? Quit floundering all over trying to figure things out. Get good experienced advice and get it without charge. skypeme: physical2006

hellblazer

Your problem is that your product(ostensibly pitbull apparel) does not match what you're advertising ("defend the pitbulls").

As far as I can determine, your product/what you're selling, i.e. the entire point of your site is pitbull t shirts or sweatshirts, etc..

A 5-second keyword search gets this:

"pit bull t shirts": 1,600 searches a month
"pitbull t shirts": 1,600 searches a month
"pit bull t shirt": 1,000 a month
"pitbull clothes": 720 a month

That's global, local is less, so it's up to you which metrics you wanna use. By any standard, those are fairly small numbers. However, if you were intent on going after it, there's an exact match .net or .org available, most of the competition is zazzle and cafepress pages that have barely any backlinks, and if you had registered http://www.pitbulltshirts.org, thrown an ecommerce store on it and done some basic backlinking, you probably could have been in the top 20, if not 10 in a couple of weeks. I've never competed with zazzle, so I'm not sure how much weight their domain-wide 37 million links carries.

You have to know who you're targeting before you build your site. Simply building a site because you want to "defend the pitbulls" means nothing to people. You're selling pitbull t shirts, so target that keyphrase and get a domain that's actually relevant to that.

italianbull

Trust me, I'm learning the hard way, I started this site over a year ago, before I knew about anything, defend pit bulls seemed like a great idea before I knew anything, now i'm trying to recover, but I need some new advice. I'm worried my pages are gonna start cramming things up. Would it be a better idea to turn all my pages into blog posts, and organize them in categories, or keep it the way it is, please advise, thanks.