WF Winter 2007 Case Study

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Looks good, im really dragging ass on Lendsense.com , im hoping to have some template issues worked out and be focusing on content tomorrow, maybe tonight, but I doubt it. Im anxious to see how that site does, I was going to go with something similar "quit smoking", thanks for sharing, seems allot of the people here are worried about disclosing their niches and sites for some reason, I dont see how this thread is going to benefit anyone unless peeps start grabbing their balls and sharing a bit.
 


jerxs said:
I was going to go with something similar "quit smoking", thanks for sharing, seems allot of the people here are worried about disclosing their niches and sites for some reason, I dont see how this thread is going to benefit anyone unless peeps start grabbing their balls and sharing a bit.
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SOOOO TRUE. everyone says "IM IN" but noone will say "HERES WHAT IM DOING". FUCK EM. IM IN AND THATS MY SITE. Thanks for the comments though on it.
 
Nice theme adaptation, [R]DeVore. That's MistyLook, right? There's a good lesson for WordPress newbies here: there's no need to spend days creating your own theme when just swapping in a custom header image can do a perfectly good job of making your blog stand out.

You mentioned you were thinking of changing the header image, but imo, the cigarette butt is really effective at drawing the eye directly toward the Adsense banner.
 
yea, thats mistylook. at first, editing the sidebar was a pain, until i realized there was a different file to edit the sidebar stuff besides sidebar. im going to be doing some more editing the next day or two. I'm also linking to the site from my blog and a couple other places.

My site will be done with ZERO ppc traffic. I am spending nothing on it, just to see what can be done in a niche spending nothing but TIME on it. so, when i update and say I made 10.00 opposed to someone elses 50-60, im doing ZERO spending on it. but im aiming for the 50-60 like the people paying for traffic :)
 
jerxs said:
Looks good, im really dragging ass on Lendsense.com , im hoping to have some template issues worked out and be focusing on content tomorrow, maybe tonight, but I doubt it. Im anxious to see how that site does, I was going to go with something similar "quit smoking", thanks for sharing, seems allot of the people here are worried about disclosing their niches and sites for some reason, I dont see how this thread is going to benefit anyone unless peeps start grabbing their balls and sharing a bit.
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IM waiting for the next stage of this contest or whatever. I almost have my site up and i'll post it soon.
Unfortuneltey I doubt anyone will make much money though through this. Getting serp traffic will be impossible for those kind of niches. Paying for traffic will also be too expensive. A rude awakening.
 
Webelancer said:
IM waiting for the next stage of this contest or whatever. I almost have my site up and i'll post it soon.
Unfortuneltey I doubt anyone will make much money though through this. Getting serp traffic will be impossible for those kind of niches. Paying for traffic will also be too expensive. A rude awakening.
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You mean the stop smoking niche? I aim to prove you wrong if thats what you ment, but yea, a lot of the Mortgage and Tax sites will not do as well as people think im afraid.
 
WordPress Plugins for Blog Management

Since many of you have already worked on design and content for this project, I figured it might be a good time to start talking about how to configure WordPress to make your life easier, leaving more time for content development and blog promotion. Here are my favorite plugins that fall into the "blog management" category:

Feed Management

Grab the FeedBurner Feed Replacement plugin, activate it, and burn your feed at FeedBurner.

Benefits:

  • Feed and site metrics
  • Feed formatting
  • Free blog promo solutions (like the email subscription service)
  • Instant compatibility with multiple feed formats
  • Opportunity for feed monetization
  • FeedFlares to add functionality to your feeds and on-site posts

XML Sitemap Management

The Google Sitemap Generator creates and manages your Google, Yahoo, and MSN compliant sitemap.

Benefits:

  • Easily configurable sitemap in minutes
  • Automatically pings Google when changes are made
  • May help your site get crawled faster

Ad Management

Ad Rotator allows you to rotate ads in the same location.

Benefits:

  • Helps reduce ad blindness
  • Good for testing ad performance
  • Works with most types of ad code
  • Can be used to randomly rotate other content like images, quotes, etc.

Adsense Deluxe is a plugin for easy insertion and managment of ads in WordPress templates and individual posts.

Benefits:

  • Allows ad styles and formatting to be changed globally
  • Allows easy disabling/enabling of ads
  • Good for testing ad placement
  • Works with any html/javascript code

Spam Management

You might not be getting comment spam yet, but it'll show up eventually. Install Akismet (bundled with WP, requires a free API key), Spam Karma 2, or both to save yourself trouble down the road.

Benefit:

You can spend time on content and marketing instead of deleting comments about "hot shemale action."


Cache Management

WP-Cache is a plugin that comes bundled with WP. It's essential for surviving the "digg effect" or any other onslaught of traffic that taxes your server.

Benefit:

Reduces server strain and speeds response time.


Backup Management

The wp-db-backup plugin lets you schedule automated database backups. Also take a minute and make sure you have a separate backup of your customized theme and any images you've added.

Benefit:

Duh.


So that's my list of essential WordPress management plugins that I activate on every new WordPress installation. If you're interested in SEO plugins, there's already an excellent thread on WordPress SEO. There are a ton of other great plugins - if you're looking for specific functionality that you haven't found, let me know and I'll point you in the right direction.
 
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Webelancer said:
IM waiting for the next stage of this contest or whatever. I almost have my site up and i'll post it soon.
Unfortuneltey I doubt anyone will make much money though through this. Getting serp traffic will be impossible for those kind of niches. Paying for traffic will also be too expensive. A rude awakening.
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LOL, you must be high, regardless of what Jon puts on the table, I will garuntee you I make money from the site I am building!!!!!!

I think its funny you here, this niche is dead, that niche is dead, the other is over saturated and so on, that means shit! just because a niche has been worked hard doesnt mean it isnt going to provide a return.

And another thing, I really hope everyone makes money via this thread, but if not, I know one thing im sure I will continue making money the same way I have been, and im sure if this doeant work for others, if they are determined they will work some sort of system out that works for them.

<edit> BTW where did you see anything mentioned about a contest, from what I understand this is just going to be a little workshop</edit>
 
Jenn said:
Since many of you have already worked on design and content for this project, I figured it might be a good time to start talking about how to configure WordPress to make your life easier, leaving more time for content development and blog promotion. Here are my favorite plugins that fall into the "blog management" category:

Feed Management

Grab the FeedBurner Feed Replacement plugin, activate it, and burn your feed at FeedBurner.

Benefits:
  • Feed and site metrics
  • Feed formatting
  • Free blog promo solutions (like the email subscription service)
  • Instant compatibility with multiple feed formats
  • Opportunity for feed monetization
  • FeedFlares to add functionality to your feeds and on-site posts
XML Sitemap Management

The Google Sitemap Generator creates and manages your Google, Yahoo, and MSN compliant sitemap.

Benefits:
  • Easily configurable sitemap in minutes
  • Automatically pings Google when changes are made
  • May help your site get crawled faster
Ad Management

Ad Rotator allows you to rotate ads in the same location.

Benefits:
  • Helps reduce ad blindness
  • Good for testing ad performance
  • Works with most types of ad code
  • Can be used to randomly rotate other content like images, quotes, etc.
Adsense Deluxe is a plugin for easy insertion and managment of ads in WordPress templates and individual posts.

Benefits:
  • Allows ad styles and formatting to be changed globally
  • Allows easy disabling/enabling of ads
  • Good for testing ad placement
  • Works with any html/javascript code
Spam Management

You might not be getting comment spam yet, but it'll show up eventually. Install Akismet (bundled with WP, requires a free API key), Spam Karma 2, or both to save yourself trouble down the road.

Benefit:

You can spend time on content and marketing instead of deleting comments about "hot shemale action."


Cache Management

WP-Cache is a plugin that comes bundled with WP. It's essential for surviving the "digg effect" or any other onslaught of traffic that taxes your server.

Benefit:

Reduces server strain and speeds response time.


Backup Management

The wp-db-backup plugin lets you schedule automated database backups. Also take a minute and make sure you have a separate backup of your customized theme and any images you've added.

Benefit:

Duh.


So that's my list of essential WordPress management plugins that I activate on every new WordPress installation. If you're interested in SEO plugins, there's already an excellent thread on WordPress SEO. There are a ton of other great plugins - if you're looking for specific functionality that you haven't found, let me know and I'll point you in the right direction.
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The only thing I would realy ad is that the Google sitemap generator is really worthless. I would go with a site map generator that generates HTML, and one that allows you to place it anywhere youd like within your WP site, I use on and will post a link to it, soon, If I forget, emind me, or maybe someone else will post it here in the meantime.
 
jerxs said:
The only thing I would realy ad is that the Google sitemap generator is really worthless.
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I know the worth of having an XML sitemap is somewhat controversial. The only semi-convincing argument I've seen against sitemaps is that you have no way of knowing whether engines found your site via your HTML files or your XML file and that could make SEO more difficult.

I've been taking my chances with sitemaps (yes, I'm quite the daredevil ;) ) and while I don't have scientific data on this, I feel that my sites get onto the search engines' radar a little faster which helps get my content out there and brings me organic backlinks. It takes just a minute to install the sitemap generator and my feeling on the matter is that it doesn't hurt anything.

As for an HTML sitemap, the Dagon sitemap plugin works well.
 
Damn, Jenn.. nice summary and +rep for sure.

As for the sitemaps, those buggers have gained acceptance by all of the big 3 and all the smaller SEs are gonna follow for sure.

my $0.02

::emp::
 
WHo cares about the sitemap. The most important part is getting traffic to the site and making money. Sitemaps are a trivial issue.
 
I have in the last couple of days launched a new site (in my sig) and I am already kicking myself for not doing it as a blog as the layout and the way I am adding content lends itself quite readily to blogging.

As the site is literally only a few days old, I will change it over to use WP, I plan on trying to keep the layout etc very similar though and so I would be grateful for any comments on this and what you think my chances of success are.

By the way, I have no budget for buying traffic so will also have to rely on organic traffic
 
Ferraristi said:
I have in the last couple of days launched a new site (in my sig) and I am already kicking myself for not doing it as a blog as the layout and the way I am adding content lends itself quite readily to blogging.

As the site is literally only a few days old, I will change it over to use WP, I plan on trying to keep the layout etc very similar though and so I would be grateful for any comments on this and what you think my chances of success are.

By the way, I have no budget for buying traffic so will also have to rely on organic traffic
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Changing your site over to wp should be fairly simple. The pictures next to the post titles might be an issue, but other than that, should be very easy. I'd say, find another very simple wordpress theme that looks like yours in terms of layout and then just change the css / images on that theme to look more like yours.
 
Great post, Jenn!

this motivated me, to throw in some of my favourite (and imho essential) wp-plugins myself (when it somes to wp, i can finally contribute something :)):

Social Bookmarks Plug-In
Marketing Your Site » Blog Archive » WordPress Socializer Plugin

This is essential when you a) like to get some free traffic from social bookmarking services and b) like your visitors to bring in some free traffic to you by bookmarking your individual posts.

When I bookmark a post across all services, it usually brings in about 80-100 visitors shortly thereafter.

Secure Contact Form
Beast-Blog.com - WordPress-Ready Contact Form v.2.0WP

Spam-Free forever with this great contact form. Put it on a page so that visitors can give feedback to you without you having to reveal your email address.

EMail Button, Print Button, PostViews, Stats, UserOnline
// GaMerZ.HomePage.Version.2.0; It Is Not Just About Design;

All very usefull stuff from Lester Chan, for me a must-have:
EMail Button: Allows your visitors to email your post to a friend
Print Button: What it says, it allows to print the post :)
Don't forget, most people love to email AND print their posts to read them later elsewhere. Don't think about the adept user but the verage joe when adding funtionality!Stats: Some stats displayed about your blog in the admin area.
PostViews, UserOnline: Very usefull imho. You can see immediately, if a digg was successful and when visitors are swarming to your blog :)
 
Alright boys and girls, let's see if we can get a head count here of who is participating in this group case study, but has a site done. I've given you about a week so 95% of you guys should have something done. I'll give you all another week at most but after that we need to begin.

We are also going to conduct it in private in the Education thread, so if you're participating, let me know here, and list your site. I'll put your username in the private group area.
 
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