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4 Month Website evaluation.

by compleks
9 replies
This could turn into an epic rant, so I'll try and keep this to the point.
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Launched my first blog/website at the beginning of the year.

It's a simple concept really. An art blog. I draw portraits of people and share a story from or about the subject ( Drawing Strangers | A global portfolio of people and their stories ).
(Just recently started featuring other artists work, because I can't keep up with demand)

It has been a busy 4 months and I've worked hard trying to produce work and maintain / market the website. Not an easy task!

4 months in and progress has been made in some areas, but others I'm struggling to see results. Now I just need to refocus and would love some input on what I should be concentrating my efforts on. What I should ignore and anything else I should be doing to build my audience.
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What have I done.?

My main advertising platforms are with social media accounts.
I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, DevientArt, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Pinterest. Plus a few forums related to drawing and arts.

Instagram
- My main account. I've been on here for years building my audience and this is where I have the most followers and engagement.
- I've paid for followers, shoutouts, run competitions, given away free art and generally been very active here. Not all of these worked in my favour, but I'm finally building some momentum and getting a steady flow of new legitimate followers, likes and comments.

FaceBook
- I thought I was doing really well here, until I realised that all my likes and followers were from India and the Philippines. I now focus all my advertising within Australia, UK, USA and Canada and the results are not great.

My other social media accounts are doing very little for me at all.
I update them every time I release a new blog post on the website, but other than that I don't invest much time into any of them, and it shows. I don't have the time to invest into all of these accounts so I focus on Instagram and Facebook.
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What should I be doing.?

- At this stage I'm not even thinking about monetising this site. It's all about building my audience and presence.
- I would obviously love more traffic to my website (currently averaging 1,000 visits a month).
- My main priority though is building my social media audience. In particular Instagram (12.5k) and Facebook (12k). But building them with real, invested, active and legitimate followers.

Please give me any advice on anything I am doing, or not doing.
What would you do.?

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Inspiration

Humans Of New York is a prime example of the power of social media.
What started as a simple tumblr blog is now an absolute powerhouse.
HONY managed to raise over $1m in a matter of days for a Brooklyn School.

I know it's a stretch to try and compare my tiny little site with something like Humans of New York. But it goes to show what is possible.

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Thanks for stopping by.
Any advice is genuinely appreciated, as I'm feeling a little bit lost at the moment without any real game plan.

Many thanks to you all.
#evaluation #month #website
  • Profile picture of the author xembergg
    Traffic generation is your problem i think. You just need to find a game plan for how you are going to build traffic to your website and if you find that you can get back on track easily.

    My few opinions (try social media traffic initially because it will give you instant traffic and earnings) which will push your motivation quickly back.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marked09
    Why are you not focusing on monetizing your website? When you have a way to monetize your website you should not have any problem in traffic since you can afford to pay for it.

    Just think about it, if you can make $500 dollars for ever 1,000 visitors and you have a paid method to drive 1k visitors worth $450?

    Every time you spend $450 you'll get $50 in return + 1,000 visitors to your site. How many times would you do that? These is the reason why big marketers are able to pay for traffic. Because they have a way to monetize their traffic.

    If it was me, I will even pay $500 for that traffic even if it's break even since I was acquiring more visitors/leads.

    You should also do this on your 1st day so you'll know whether you can make money from your site/niche even before you spend countless of hours working on a project and only to find out that you're working on a niche that can't be monetized.

    I would also suggest you start collecting email leads so you can email them whenever you got a new entry/article. This will help in generating big amount of traffic to your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author compleks
    Thankyou Apra.
    My instagram following are pretty loyal and engaged, but it's hard to translate to facebook or website views.
    Even my facebook ads are not performing all that well.

    Marked. If it were that simple, then I would have to consider it. But I'm not sure how to go about this, or if it would be successful. This site is mostly a labour of love I guess, but the bigger my audience the better.

    Xembergg - Thanks. Social Media has been my main focus for promoting the site. I guess I just need to stick to it and try a few different strategies.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    I love that you have a good-sized, engaged following on those networks. I'd just add blogging, to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Sure social rocks but you don't own social sites and will run into blocks when it comes to branding, as far as your options. Running a self hosted Wordpress blog can help put you over the top because once you create posts, and share on your social sites, you'll gain credibility and trust, and with that your traffic will improve, as will your email list size.

    Keep at it!

    Ryan
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    You need goals to energize yourself. So think about monetization goals.

    Looking at the site, it screams "social media" and I would be focusing on facebook and Pinterest.
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  • Profile picture of the author neodarth
    Social media is a good option, Instagram and Pinterest are the natural choice.

    But You can also use forums which are very powerful traffic driving plataforms. You can go to

    THE DRAWING FORUM
    Drawing Forum and Art Community • Index page
    Artist Forum - Discuss painting, drawing, photography, graphic design and more

    and my two favorites

    Forum - DeviantArt
    Concept Art - ConceptArt.org

    Videos: speed painting videos are still hot, and how to videos as well... you can do a How to Video Series and pack them into one product to sell to your visitors.

    Actually you can setup a nice funnel offering a basic "How to Draw Like Me" video series (or ebook) and add one or two Upsells with some advanced drawing and painting Technics.

    on Commission Junction there is an art supply store that has his affiliate program.

    Or you can get all the hassle out of your system and simple go lazy and put some adsense or CPA offers on your site.

    Now to increase traffic to your blog, don't forget to add a link to your site every time you post on Instagram or Facebook. People needs to be reminded that you have a nice site for them to visit.
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  • Profile picture of the author Slade556
    I think neodarth came up with some good suggestions, you should be more active in communities related to your niche, this way you'll gain more traffic for sure. And why don't you want to monetize your website? You can easily combine your passion for your niche with earning some money from it!
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  • Profile picture of the author compleks
    Thanks for the replies everyone. I've read them all and will re read them again later.
    Definitely gives me a few things to think about.

    I actually signed up to a lot of related forums when I launched the site. Most of them just don't have enough visitors to warrant spending time there.
    Reddit /drawing/ and /art have actually been good resources for driving some traffic, and there are one or two other forums that have been worth posting in. I have a deviant account, but never checked out their forum. So I will look into that.

    Lots of other stuff to consider as well.
    Thanks for the input and advice everyone.
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