Building from broke
- Thread starter sixthcutuan
- Start date
Oooh, does that mean you found the content useful?
I'll probably stick to it for now, 5000 words takes me a while! I can always offer more bonus stuff in the future for the newsletter (I don't particularly need the newsletter signup right now anyway since I only have a few views a day).
LoL I'm a very fit person and already regularly workout: I meant I was taking the persona of a visitor and was able to get everything I "needed" without every submitting my email. Obviously you want to get an email here and there to start building a mailing list, I was going to suggest keep your first half of the content on the guide page, but force them to give up their email for the second half.
Oh hah, no sorry I didn't mean that! I was just wondering if you thought the quality of the information was ok.
And that's a very smart move for the second page! I'll add it to my list
Thanks!
Had a little chat with CCarter and he recommended that I incorporated black and red into my theme more. Black is a luxury colour and red increases the heartbeat.
My theme wasn't working out with the colours, scrapped it and have bought one off themeforest. Currently setting it up on a subdomain to be transferred later. Much cleaner feel.
Overall feeling pretty pleased, got a pretty hot girls number tonight too (erm *cough* I mean guy ... :L ).
My theme wasn't working out with the colours, scrapped it and have bought one off themeforest. Currently setting it up on a subdomain to be transferred later. Much cleaner feel.
Overall feeling pretty pleased, got a pretty hot girls number tonight too (erm *cough* I mean guy ... :L ).
Thanks for clearing that up.
Update:
Almost finished putting on the new theme. Also got back 3 articles from the writer. Going to space them with one article every two days (can't afford anymore). Will improve on that when writing becomes my main task.
Be sure to drop it and immediately follow-up with those socials to direct referrals. Don't be afraid to ask for feedback from the socials also. Every time I drop an article or blog post, I get huge spikes. Form a common bit.ly to track specific hits, too. (unless you've got good analytics, this would be repetitive.)
What do you mean by "Be sure to drop it and immediately follow-up with those socials to direct referrals"? Thanks.
Update:
Friend got a pretty bad head injury and was sitting in A&E all day. As a result I haven't done much.
I've been finishing the new theme off. It's bulkier (about 500kb) which I'm not a big fan of but it does look far nicer. A great idea from aim100's thread led me to copying the font of another competitor in the same wider niche, my logo text now looks much nicer. There are tools out there to find the font from the logos. Just pop the links in here or here. The first one gives the option to show similar free fonts.
I'm not sure whether I want to have the 1k homepage words on the homepage, it feels ... messy. I might just split it in half and make two blog posts. I'll see what the powers that be say.
Javascript calculator still broken, not a clue why. A problem for another day. Also still need to add more pics in (and some videos too).
The moment you publish an article, create a bit.ly with it's URL.
>>>Login: FB, Twitter, (Pinterest with any pics w/ captions), etc
>>>Publish the bit.ly with a catchy phrase, part of the title of the article, part of the first line of content, etc.
>>>Ask for review/comment/etc.
IE
Your Article: How to Teach A Man To Fish | XYZ Blog
bit.ly to the Article: /link/
Tweet this: How to Teach A Man To ... /link/
FB this: New Article In My Blog! How to Teach A Man To Fish | XYZ Blog I'd love to get your feedback! Visit it here: /link/
Pin: Pictures with tags
You get the idea.
Just gets a pump of traffic, indexes the page faster, and builds a little rep if people start commenting (people who visit two days/one week/one month later will see there was some activity the moment you posted and will feel more obligated to participate also because it appears to have a closer following). You also build some links as people share this stuff through media. Not really great links because they aren't what I'd call hard links, but they help temporarily.
PROTIP: Hootsuite is an excellent aid for this stuff as well.
Not just great advice.. but follow the theme of this snippet of advice.
It's all mental. Buyers buy off of emotion. If it looks like a dog and barks like a dog, well everyone will think it's a dog. Act like an Authority, Be the authority. Sell Authority sites for Authority Revenue. CCarter's advice highlights a snippet of that overall messaging.
Ah yes, I understand now. I'm using Hootsuite which automatically shortens your URLs and I believe does similar tracking to bit.ly. I'll start asking for comments though, some engagement would be great.
I've actually had a few real people (or at least I didn't pay for them) liking the page. Nice to see that. I doubt they would have liked it if I hadn't faked a bit of popularity though!
Yep tbh I think the hardest thing for me is trying to get into the mentality of being the Authority. It's quite tough to imagine yourself as THE source. Makes you wonder how many other big sites out there are run by people in their bedrooms sitting in their underwear.
Updates:
- Changed the background from a wood colour to a Carbon Fibre style background on CCarter's recommendations. Fits much better to the target audience now.
- Theme looks great but feels insanely slow on first load. I've done quite a bit to improve this (Took it down from 1.2mb to 250kb) but I believe it's probably down to how it's been coded. Can't really do much more about this but make a request to the designer to re-code the slider and make it less buggy.
- Added a new article, have two articles lined up to be put on.
- Added tags to all the articles
- Currently am moving the home page 1000 word content and turning it into two articles (Most of my articles are 500-800 words).
Finally fixed the calculator. The search forms on the page were screwing up the code so I've removed them just on that page now. Finally.
- Scheduled 3 more articles 500-800 words each.
- Added more things to Hootsuite. I've been doing a pretty useful way to do it. Just use the trendspotter and stumblr addons and search your keyword niche. Then just tweet/ share these. Makes it a million times faster than having to find it yourself.
Finally just getting on to the content writing.
- Added more things to Hootsuite. I've been doing a pretty useful way to do it. Just use the trendspotter and stumblr addons and search your keyword niche. Then just tweet/ share these. Makes it a million times faster than having to find it yourself.
Finally just getting on to the content writing.
Random Thought: how are you tagging your content? When I click around on some of your menu items, some of them have similar content results.
I tag it with general themes of the content. There isn't really that much diversity between the tags yet because (a) The content so far covers fairly broad topics and (b) I still have very little content on the site.
Both should be changing soon.
Loving the "still broke" tag that was added, a nice kick in the backside to keep me going. Might be getting some extra cash from stuff I'm doing IRL right now so we'll see about that.
Good news, Rich snippets are now working for the site and are showing up in the serps.
Good news, Rich snippets are now working for the site and are showing up in the serps.
Spent a while searching odesk and I think I have found someone that can write okay articles to my specifications without too much cost (1.3 cents a word). Ordering five 600 word articles a week for now.
Made sure they used subheadings, bullet point lists, tried to be informal yet seem like an authority and also they pick out two related images from the free image websites.
Made sure they used subheadings, bullet point lists, tried to be informal yet seem like an authority and also they pick out two related images from the free image websites.
Bounce rate has been 45% for the traffic in the last week. Down from like 80% when the original shitty lander was there instead.
Traffic has been about 6 visits a day so it's getting better.
Traffic has been about 6 visits a day so it's getting better.