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If you're looking for specific advice, here's some quick links to help:
nichepursuits.com extramoneyblog.com smartpassiveincome.com entrepreneurs-journey.com problogger.net moz.com/blog entrepreneurboost.com paidtoexist.com chrisguillebeau.com On to the beginner's guide... Everybody and their grandmother's cat has a blog, why should I bother? Despite the explosive popularity of blogging, most people are not making a living from it (or anything at all). This is because most people don't know the first thing about keyword research, search engine optimization, or even how to monetize a blog. With a little education, effort, and focus, you (yes you!) can still make money from blogging (or "niche websites"). The key is to find a profitable niche and dominate it. More on that later. There are many reasons I love blogging; here's just a few:
How to Make  Blogging:
So how do I pick the right keywords?  Picking your blog keyword(s) is probably the most important step of the process. Pick something with too much competition (like "video games") or too few searches and you're pretty much doomed from the start. First, think of something you might be interested in writing about. Then research related keywords to see if other people are actually searching and advertising for them. You'll want to pick a main keyword to target in all of your posts. You don't have to write like a spambot, but you need to get those key phrases in. Just write like you normally do, make it engaging for real readers, then come back and insert those keywords where they are needed for SEO.There are many different tools for keyword research, but most of them leverage Google Keyword Planner. The general advice is that you want keywords with at least 1,000 local monthly searches and an approximate CPC above $1. For more information on using Google's tool, check out this post by Kenny Rogers. There are several other popular keyword research tools: If you need more help picking a topic, here are a couple guides:
So how do you make money, anyway?  Advertising! That's really it in a nutshell. There are a number of different revenue channels, but they are just different forms of advertising. For the most part, blogging comes down to getting traffic that converts to ad clicks or product buys. Your content needs to be written for real people, but optimized for search engines (Google). Do your research before you write a single word or spend a single dollar, choose the right topic, and in time it will be easy to turn your blog into a money-maker. Revenue Channels  Pay Per Click (PPC) AdvertisingFrom the previous thread: Faceless Clock posted:The pay-per-click advertising is, basically, Google Adsense. There are some competitors to Adsense out there, but I haven’t found any that seemed to provide much of a reason not to use Adsense. Most companies are pretty annoying, in fact, and will spam your blog with ads by default. I use nothing but Adsense on one of my blogs, which happens to be dominating a set of keywords and so gets roughly 500 visits per day. If I'm lucky, 1% of that traffic actually clicks on an ad, giving me about 50 cents to a dollar per click. Now I can improve my results by getting more traffic, or getting higher paying ads, or finding another revenue stream with a higher conversion rate. But no matter which topic you pick, don't expect much higher than 1% of your traffic to convert to PPC income. Affiliate MarketingFrom the previous thread: Faceless Clock posted:This is the other major form of income generation and it comes in a million flavors. Some affiliate marketing opportunities are going to make you dedicate large parts of your blog to whatever you’re pimping. Others just let you place ads on your site and pay you’re a percentage of any revenue generated from them. Let’s say, for example, that you post about a video game and put in a link to Amazon.com where people can buy it. You’ll be given a cut of each sale. Sponsored Posts / Pay Per PostFrom the previous thread: Faceless Clock posted:Making money through pay-per-post requires that you sign up for an appropriate pay-per-post site. That site will then try to match you up with advertisers who want you to blog about a specific subject. You’ll have to link to a certain website in your post and say nice things about a product or service. Cost Per Mile/thousand impressions (CPM) AdvertisingI'm not very familiar with CPM, so if anyone would like to write a quick guide I will add it. In addition to using the above services, it can also be quite profitable to work out sponsored posts with individual advertisers. Look for sites selling products within your niche, either through your existing PPC or affiliate advertisers or by doing some research, and approach them directly to see if they're interested in sponsoring an editorial post about their product/service. The exact price you quote is a bit of guesswork, but try to base it what an average page on your blog earns over a month or two. How much will I actually make?There is no guaranty that you will make anything. But, if you do your research, pick a profitable, low competition niche, and put enough time in, you can make anywhere from $5 to $500+ a month per blog. I currently make $100/month from a blog that gets 50,000 page views. At this point, I only post one article per week. It took 3 months before it earned a single penny, but now that I have the ball rolling I find it easier to control my work/profit. Some other "testimonials": Omits-Bagels posted:I make like $50/month on my site. But, I also haven't updated my site since about March. I plan on starting to add more content and work on link building fairly soon. I also only get about 180-220 unique visitors a day so hopefully I can boost profits by increasing traffic. Supersonic posted:I make about $200-500 per month on one of my blogs via affiliate programs and banner ad sales. When I first started the blog, I put in about 40 hours before it started to pay off (writing unique content, configuring wordpress, etc). Since then, I add a new product review every month or so, and get a steady amount of traffic (100-160 uniques per day). Advertisers generally tend to contact me regarding purchasing monthly banner ads, and they started to do so about three months after I began running the blog. Rage Nage posted:Been monetizing exclusively through online sportsbook affiliate programs, probably made £300-£400 so far. Blogging is just a hobby for me  Time to get started!Okay, hopefully now you have a set of keywords to target, have picked the best revenue channels to monetize your blog, maybe even written a couple articles. All that's missing is an actual website. There are dozens of platforms you could build your blog on: Wordpress.com, Blogger, Drupal, Joomla, ExpressionEngine, etc. Ultimately the best and most recommended solution is a self-hosted Wordpress site. The benefits of Wordpress are many: 5 minute install, easy to use control panel, thousands of themes, plugins and tutorials. Trust me, unless you're an expert web developer, and even if you are, you'll be stepping into the wild if you build your blog on anything BUT Wordpress. If you try to take the easy route and setup a blog on a hosted service like Wordpress.com or Blogger.com, you will be limited in which plugins you can install and how much advertising you can have. Skip the regrets by learning how to setup your own domain and hosting. Okay, so, Wordpress. What now? 1. Get a domain, through something like Namecheap and get some hosting. There are lots of goon approved hosts with dirt cheap prices in the SA Mart. I personally like Lithium, but I've also used apis networks and they were fine. Whichever you pick, start with the lowest price and work your way up as you need more bandwidth. 2. Install Wordpress, theme, plugins, and setup your pages and initial posts. As far as plugins go, I wouldn't start a blog without Wordpress SEO by Yoast. There are tons of other useful plugins out there: here's a list to get you started. If you need more advice on Wordpress specifics, there's a great thread for that. 3. Setup Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, register your sitemap with Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Camo Guitar posted:Google Analytics is brilliant at seeing what's working and what's not, especially in how people are reaching your blog and which words their using - refer to it often as you might be suprised at what's your most popular post or update and then you can use that to create more relevant content. What's the best theme? There is no best theme. There are literally thousands of very good choices and as long as you are in control of your sitemaps, your heading tags, and your URLs, it will be hard to go wrong. I would always suggest you pay for a theme from a reputable site like ThemeForest, Mojo Themes, or Woothemes and not by Googling "free Wordpress theme". Why? Because half the time (or more) those "free" themes have hidden backlinks or other malicious code. Not to mention the quality of the design will almost always be lower and your blog will look like a cookie cutter, spammy blog. A professional, well designed theme typically runs $35. I always count this cost as part of the required blog investment along with domain name and hosting. Don't skimp. Paying for Content Another good way to reinvest any money you make is to pay other writers to generate content for you. I've gotten quality articles for as low as $15/600 words that have easily made a return on that investment and will continue to generate income for a long time. Places to hire writers:
Strategies (aka I need me more traffic!!): Search Engine Optimization Moniker posted:You can do SEO stuff by yourself. It's just tedious. If you set up a schedule and stick to it, it makes it a whole lot easier to do by yourself. From the old thread (emphasis mine): Faceless Clock posted:Perhaps the most common way to generate track is through the creation of articles that are attractive to search engines. There is a lot of hocus-pocus about how to generate traffic through search engines, but here are my tips. This article is also a good starting point. Start an Email List Now I could go on and on about why having an email list is a gold mine, but I'll just link to this post. Social Media These are the big players: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and StumbleUpon. Beyond that, there are hundreds of other social media networks that you can draw upon to generate traffic. Go with what you're used to, but also what makes the most sense for the demographic of your visitors. For example, Reddit might be perfect for something more nerdy, whereas Facebook might be better for an older audience. Whether you try to create a following through these sites is up to you, but at the very least you should use AddThis or ShareThis bars to all of your posts. nous_ posted:For self-promotion, I'd definitely consider starting up free accounts on Reddit and Digg - if something you write resonates particularly well with the popular sentiment of the userbase, you'll get tons of free promotion and a ripple effect as the link gets spammed around the internet. I personally have found that building a Twitter and Facebook following is a cheap way to get an extra 100 hits or so per post. Twitter has also become an excellent source of article ideas for me. This segues nicely into networking... Networking and Guest Posts Connecting with the other blogs in your niche, or a related niche, can be a great way to build traffic. By commenting on other articles and promoting them through your own posts, or tweets, or whichever method you choose, creates good karma which will eventually lead to them linking back. If you're particularly aggressive, you can contact them directly about doing guest posts. This basically means you write a post about a topic that fits their blog and hopefully at the end you can promote your own site in a sentence or two. The Great Goon Blog Network Similar to what Faceless Clock did in the previous thread, I'll try to keep a list of active goon blogs going so that we can see some working examples and hopefully keep networking. If you'd like to add your link, post the name, link, and subject. Automotive Fiat 500 Abarth Blog Poster: sim Entertainment http://www.bestcartoonsever.com Poster: cartooncart http://www.aunonline.com Poster: FizzyJuffoWup http://britpopnews.com/ Poster: Mastercontrol Food http://ckitchenette.blogspot.com Poster: Agent 99 Snack Overload! Poster: The Scarlet Hot Dog http://www.browniebites.net Poster: Crunch Bucket General Interest Almigo's Adventures Poster: Camo Guitar Costing a Green Future Poster: Rocinate Awesome Robot! Poster: The Scarlet Hot Dog Investing/Money Management Fructivore Investments Poster: Hobologist Money Mythos Poster: Strict 9 3 Dollar Bicycle Poster: dreesemonkey Products http://www.snowplowr.com/snowblog Poster: EvilTwig http://panasonicpencilsharpeners.com/ Post: Dog Blogs Man Sports MexiFut: Mexican National Football Team Poster: Tortilla Maker Coupon Busters Poster: Rage Nage Travel Lithuania Information Poster: Dogs Blogs Man The Savvy Backpacker Poster: Omits-Bagels Ten Pound Backpack Poster: The Stu http://www.konnichiwhoa.com Poster: snagger (space travel, sort of) http://www.astronomyaggregator.com Poster: Zero Gravitas Other Detroit Weddings Poster: Moniker Roof Snow Removal Poster: Moniker sim fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2011 15:24
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Starting a blog is a great way to generate traffic for another business. Also, if you're going to be highlighting other local businesses like restaurants, you may want to consider approaching them directly about advertising and sponsored posts, once you've got some traffic at least. List type articles like you mentioned are an easy way to target keywords and get eyeballs on your page, so a site that focuses on those has a lot of potential.
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Nov 3, 2011 15:56
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Updated the link list and added some of the above advice to the OP. Keep it coming! Also please let me know if you have any suggestions for the OP, I want to keep it relevant and useful.
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Nov 4, 2011 03:57
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Added your site to the list Stu. I think people definitely will be buying camping presents over the holidays, but I don't know if that will make up for the lack of campers buying their own gear. One of the things that was an epiphany to me recently, was hearing about a guy who has 200 blogs that make $50/month each. It would be very hard to build a site that made $10k or even $1k per month on its own, but it seems very easy to make a bunch of sites that average $50. Once you figure out how to work a particular niche, it seems easy to transition that system to any other niche. That's what I'm working on right now. My goal is to have 5 blogs going by next July. I've got 1 up now, 1 about the launch, and so I just need 3 more ideas.
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Nov 4, 2011 13:43
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As I mentioned in the OP, I highly recommend NOT getting a Wordpress.com account if you want to make money with your blog. Here's why:Wordpress.com posted:Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds and other ads are not allowed on free WordPress.com blogs... In addition to AdSense-type ads, please do not use the following services on your blog: sponsored / paid posts including PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and Smorty; affiliate / referral links to the following domains: usercash, clickbank, clickhop, cashrocks, payingcash; clicktrackers (and any similar) and any promotion of the “I made a million on the internet and so can you” type of advertising (i.e. MLM, network marketing, cash gifting, etc.). Paid or sponsored post content is also prohibited. They do offer an option to enable Adsense if your blog gets over 25k page views a month, but they also take 50% of the revenue. If you're just blogging for fun and don't plan to monetize, then a free Wordpress.com account is great. However if you're serious about making money, you'll need a self hosted version.
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Nov 5, 2011 13:13
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(not provided} is already 5th in my keyword rankings!
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Nov 7, 2011 14:16
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I totally forgot to add CPM and I don't have any experience with it. If you'd be willing to write up a short guide I will definitely add it to the OP. To answer your questions...Bobx66 posted:whats to stop google from changing how they rank content light websites tomorrow and killing all of your blogs in an instant? Bobx66 posted:Does anyone who makes a living off of affiliate marketing have a legitimate readership base, why would you click on the same amazon link the second time you visited the site? Bobx66 posted:I guess my question to you is, are either of our models sustainable? Yours seems easily rocked by Google, mine Stumbleupon.
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Nov 8, 2011 14:40
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My car blog was chugging along at about 500 hits a day, but with the the official announcement of the car yesterday, traffic has spiked by more than 300%! No new links coming in, no new keywords, just suddenly there were thousands of people searching for the same thing instead of just hundreds. Pretty amazing how owning a certain set of keywords basically gives you a net to catch any huge groups of fish that suddenly come along. Also updated the OP with more blog links and advice from this thread.
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Nov 16, 2011 18:51
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I don't think there's an exact answer for how many ads is too many, as it depends on how much content you have, how your design is laid out, what kind of ads they are, and what kind of users you have. AdSense limits you to 3 ad units (and 3 link unites) and I would say that is a pretty good limit per page. 1 header, 1 sidebar/in-page, 1 footer. If you're just trying to gain a readership, I would say 2 large ads per page is the most, but if you're already got a large following then you can push that number higher. The best way to find out your limit it to just experiment. Check your numbers, put one more ad on there and see if your bounce rate goes up or if you get any negative responses.
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Dec 5, 2011 14:37
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"[chavez posted:"] It depends what your goals are. The low CPC will probably prevent this from making money from AdSense right now, but that doesn't mean it won't become trendy in the next 6 months, or that you can't find a better source of profit. Just keep your goals and investment reasonable.
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Jan 17, 2012 15:41
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I think that's totally acceptable, assuming you don't use their logo or repost their podcast. Think about the thousands of sports team blogs, car model blogs, etc. I don't think there's any penalty for that and "original content" just means don't copy+paste articles or steal images.
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Jan 20, 2012 14:59
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The traffic for my blog about a car skyrocketed after they showed a commercial during the superbowl: So I would imagine a super bowl commercials site would do well.
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Feb 22, 2012 20:07
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I've been thinking about doing some sports betting, so this is perfect timing. Be sure to add an RSS icon/link to your site. I only found it because I know the default Wordpress URL. Also be sure to add AdSense to your feed once you get approved (or only post excerpts to your feed).
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Mar 8, 2012 06:54
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I find it strange that you value search engine optimization, but wouldn't consider optimizing your development time with a CMS like Wordpress. There's nothing WP does that you can't do yourself with a hand-coded site and vice versa, so your SERP results aren't surprising. The key is that using Wordpress as a starting point gives you so much more in just a few minutes of work. It is still up to you keep it from being identical. I use Sublime Text for my editing.
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Apr 4, 2012 16:22
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1) Correct. AdSense is just a block of JavaScript, so you can technically add it to any theme by editing the code. As long as you can add a widget via the sidebar, then you can add AdSense through the admin. In addition to just dropping the code on the page, you can also get a banner ad manager plugin that will give you more options. 2) Correct again. The Wordpress codex covers the basics and most themes will have an admin screen for tweaking the homepage, or at least instructions for setting it up.
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Jul 4, 2012 22:28
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I think that looks alright, design wise. But you're killing your homepage's SEO by not having any post excerpts on the page. Are you planning to have so much content that each "topic" page will serve as a sub-homepage?
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Jul 10, 2012 13:15
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Some ideas:
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Jul 31, 2012 13:52
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Kung Fu Jesus posted:I'm doing some keyword research and when checking the top ten in google serps, I notice they use my location in the results, especially for service and career related keywords. Its hard to test the strength of the competition for carpet cleaning when 2/3 of the first page are local companies. Is there a way around this? Use Chrome's incognito mode (or the similar Firefox mode). But be aware, everyone else will be seeing local results. Google has already moved towards incorporating both location and Google+ recommendations into their results, so you can't just depend on SEO to be in the top results.
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Sep 11, 2012 13:44
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Hootsuite is a fantastic tool for managing your social media accounts. With it you can control multiple Twitter accounts, post to Facebook and Twitter at once, schedule your posts, and watch streams of tweets for certain keywords. I'm sure you can do some/all of that with just Twitter.com or other Twitter software, but I haven't found anything better than Hootsuite. In addition to automatically tweeting my new posts, I like to spend a couple hours each week scheduling 1-2 tweets per day for the next 7 days. That way I don't have to worry about finding something to talk about every single day. I usually aim for a 3 to 1 ratio of promoting other people's content vs my own. Even if you're not putting out content every day, don't be shy about promoting your old content, since few people are reading every single one of your tweets. Be sure to mention authors/publishers via their Twitter username, which should hopefully put your tweet on their radar and increase the chance of them retweeting you. One trick I've learned is to find the username of the actual author (as opposed to the major publisher) and include that in the tweet. Then the author is usually more likely to retweet you. An easy way to find content to tweet is by setting up a Google alert for your keywords. The OP definitely needs an update in the social media section. Maybe I can work on that this weekend.
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Oct 23, 2012 16:21
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invision posted:Double post: I posted on fb/twitter about needing some help with the site over the next few months due to me not having the time to take care of it like i would. I have about 10 people that want to write regularly for the site contact me in the past 10 minutes. Did I just turn this into a no-maintenance site? No, you've just moved from a writer to an editor. From my experience most writers, even paid ones, will require a lot of editing for your own site. You still have to come up with the article ideas, or at least review and approve them, you still have to edit the articles for SEO and readability, add pics, fix links, add tags, categorize it, schedule it, etc. Having writers underneath you definitely allows you to create more content in a shorter time, which usually translates to better rankings and more money.
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Dec 27, 2012 15:29
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This is the internet. There is a "decent" market for everything. It sounds like you haven't done a single second of research, because "modern and classic literature" is a HUGE market. Google returns over 20 million results for "classic literature blog" and over 40 million for "modern literature blog".
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Feb 7, 2013 14:44
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a bad enough dude posted:Hey, I've been working on a multiplayer online game... and in about a week I have a good 400 active players (nearly a thousand have signed up) and have had almost 100,000 page views without any real attempts at publicity or the game even being near completion yet. They're mostly from return players and each player is going through a lot of pages (average is 16)... If I put up a couple of google cpm ads would I even be able to make some extra beer money? It's costing me 10 bucks a month to host, hopefully I can at least cover that. Short answer: yes, you can probably make up the cost of hosting and maybe even some extra beer money. Let's say you convert at a pretty standard rate of 1%. Based on your 400 visitors, you'd make $4/month. Place your ads correctly, without overwhelming/offending your regular users, and then as you build traffic that amount should continue to scale. If you were serious about increasing exposure to your game and thus your ads, you should start looking into generating article content (e.g. a blog for your game). However with your primary audience being gamers, and from what I can tell by your homepage, they aren't "casual" gamers, you're probably going to convert at a lost less than the standard rate. You should consider asking for donations or charging money for advanced features (freemium). My suggestion: be honest and direct with your users; tell them you need monetary support and ask them if they'd rather donate/pay for features/see ads. Use a survey widget in your app or send a SurveyMonkey link via email.
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Apr 23, 2013 14:36
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The OP was written over a year ago and since then Google has had two major search engine changes, so a lot of the advice in there is slightly outdated. Revol posted:I'm struggling to understand why so much importance seems to be placed on building a niche blog around one exact keyword phrase Like Long John Power already said, Google has definitely de-emphasized exact keyword domain names, so those are not necessary at all. However I still think it's important to focus on a single, or at least a very small set of related keywords. It just makes it easier to start ranking if you focus on one thing. Revol posted:Another thing I'm seeing here is that, if you want to do a focus on something like Amazon affiliate, you want to pick a product that has a higher cost. Yes and no. How often are people going to buy a PC after reading your review? Not very often, a it's a large purchase. How often are people going to buy a comic after reading your review? A comic can be an impulse purchase. The cheaper products do have smaller margins, but they also tend to have a higher amount of purchases. Bottom line is, you should pick what you're more passionate about. No matter what the margins are, it's always easier to sustain a blog about something you really enjoy. If the comic thing isn't working, you can always go back and review PCs later.
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Jun 27, 2013 13:49
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Is this your first site? If so, I wouldn't worry too much about optimizing. Generating lots of good content is more important than optimizing each article. They don't have to each focus on a separate keyword. On Wordpress, I use the "WordPress SEO" plugin to optimize posts for specific keywords.
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Jul 8, 2013 14:17
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FAN OF NICKELBACK posted:Basically, can someone who knows something look at https://www.interviewscience.com and just tell me if there are bad things that could become good things? Are there any recent entry level articles that I should read since the OP is almost half-a-year old? I just want this dumb thing to pay for its own hosting by years end at this point. Tell me things like I am a dummy.
BTW I think your OP in SA is fantastic and this is a great idea for a blog. But I have no idea how competitive the niche is. You may find it hard to break in SEO wise, but if you focus on great content you can start a following and with a big email list, you'll have even higher potential earnings. sim fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Aug 30, 2013 |
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Aug 30, 2013 14:43
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Take a look at startupfrontier.com. He's doing a similar thing, but focused on startups. The easiest way to get people's emails is to just ask for it. Once you start getting some traffic, you'll be amazed how many people will sign up. Basically the idea is you public great content for free, you promise exclusive content via email, then with a decent list you can mix in affiliates offers or whatever else you can sell to that target audience at a much higher conversion rate. The new header/homepage looks good. You already have the "must be signed in to comment" setting turned on.
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Aug 31, 2013 14:25
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I'm also working on an update to the OP, so if anyone has some suggestions, let me know. Kenny Rogers, I'd be happy to include a link to your guide once it's finished. In addition to the tools mcsuede mentioned, there's also Market Samurai. Check out the eCommerce thread, as there's a lot of discussion about keyword research that relates to blogging.
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Sep 7, 2013 20:25
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I updated the OP: removed old advice, added some links to good posts in this thread, added links to keyword tools and some of the blogs I follow that have good advice.
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Sep 22, 2013 16:11
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Where are you getting this information? I can't find anything official from Google, but everything I've read says they DO NOT penalize for non traditional TLDs... and I've ranked with a .us domain for a long time. They do give priority to country specific domains, so searching Google.fr will result in mostly French sites, but that's it. If you're targeting Australia, absolutely consider .au. That being said, KetTarma is right in terms of perceived value. A lot of users will be more wary of anything besides a dot com. I would only get a dot com if I was running an eCommerce site. For just a blog though, especially one where you're depending on organic traffic, I wouldn't worry about it so much. Also the type of people that click on ads, don't really pay attention to the URL they're visiting. They're too distracted by headlines, descriptions, etc.
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Feb 12, 2014 15:37
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There's no way to know what "too technical" is for your niche without actually doing some research. The best way to find out would be to write a bunch of content, get some traffic, and see if your bounce rates are higher than expected. But, even that is affected by lots of different variables so there's no single concrete answer. Generally, it's probably true that more educated readers are less likely to click on ads, but as far as I'm aware, that's based on anecdotal evidence at best. Again, you would need to do your own research here to see if your conversion rates are lower than expected. However, there are usually better ways to monetize high quality content than PPC ads. For example, if your readers see you as an authority in that niche, then you're likely to have good conversions on affiliate products if you market them honestly. DO ADD AN EMAIL SIGN-UP RIGHT NOW!! I think I overemphasized SEO in the OP, because it really only applies to niche websites with just a few pages of content. For long term blogging, I think it's much less important. Certainly there's tweaks you can incorporate, but just writing a ton of good content is way more important. You want to build readership and no amount of SEO is going to accomplish that. sim fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 20:40
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Good stuff Moniker, added a quote and link to your post to the OP.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:37
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Trying out a new design for single post templates, for a handful of new articles: old layout new layout It's a drastic change. I literally started from scratch and built it up. There's no header, top navigation, sidebar, social sharing widgets, related post widgets, or any plugins at all. I was sick of all the crap Wordpress and the various plugins I've installed have added. I wanted to get rid of all the bloat, both in the code and the user interface. My goal is to give the reader complete focus on the content. Eventually I might put the ads back in, if it's possible to do without ruining the aesthetic. This template only applies to 4 articles, so there's still ads and everything else on all the old stuff. One of my goals is to finally create a mailing list, so I might use these pages to funnel the users towards that. So maybe they never will have ads, except ads for a newsletter sign-up. What do you guys think?
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Aug 21, 2014 19:00
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Nope, the only navigation are links in the content, tag links at the bottom of the post, and the footer as you mentioned. I'm still toying with the idea of having no header navigation at all. It's pretty radical, but it's absolutely distraction free right now. I will probably add navigation back, along with the AdSense.
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Aug 21, 2014 19:33
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So I bought a blog off Flippa, for 33x current monthly revenue. Obviously I overpaid... let this be a lesson that auction sites should only be browsed while 100% sober. But, the reason I bid so high in the first place is the revenue had a major uptick for the last ~20 days before the auction. I put in a bid of 10x monthly revenue based on that short term average. I probably could have gotten the site for a couple hundred less, but that's in the past now. Since I've updated to my analytics/adsense, it's averaging 3 clicks and $3/ per day. Incredible small sample size, but that lines up with what the previous owner was showing. The site has over 400 articles, all of which are obviously written by someone with English as their 2nd language. It's the kind of site that I imagine will do worse with every Google search update, but I'm planning to ride the wave for at least 3 months and consider flipping it then. Part of the allure is that by just putting in a modicum of effort, or even paying for super cheap content, will be a huge boost to the quality of the site. Between that, social media promotion, and some design tweaks, I'm hoping to polish it up quite a bit. If anyone is interested, I'll keep you updated on how it goes.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:40
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Yeah I feel ya about being in the red. I actually bought two other sites off Flippa a couple years ago for about $100 each and never made a dollar from either of them. Part of the my problem is that I spend too much time worrying about design and quality of content. Which is good if you're trying to make a strong authority site and actually connect with people. But if you're just trying to get ad clicks, it's mostly wasted effort. I'm hoping the $1,000 hanging over my head will keep me focused. Sounds like you have a good thing going at $20/month. Reddit is a great source of promotion, you just have to keep at it.
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Sep 25, 2014 01:38
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Now. The power of an email list is that you are communicating with people through one of their most intimate channels: their personal email. So you want to continue to build trust and comfort. Set a regular schedule, let people know how often you will be sending emails, and stick to it. You don't want those first leads to go cold, forget about you, and unsubscribe in a month when they get an email out of nowhere. Whatever you send now can be sent to all new subscribers with a drip campaign.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:27
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 07:11 |
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If anyone is interested in buying a "turnkey" website, I've listed my Fiat 500 Abarth blog on Flippa. Reserve is $216, buy it now for $500.
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Oct 10, 2014 00:39
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