Comments on my blog please

[Bev Clement]

I am still working on it, but would love some early feedback as to what you would like to see in it or removed.

No promises but will consider all suggestions.

Chocolate and it is about chocolate

[rapidscc]

hi bev,

Congratz on your blog :-) Is this your first time?

ohh and by the way, two things.

The fonts looked too compressed. As if the text cant breath.

Also. the weekly chocolate recipe box jumped on the lowest part of the page and was not aligned.

Though the blog is cool. I kinda saw how a professional would write one.

Regards,

rapidscc

[Scott Ames]

That blog just made me hungry. I love chocolate. Now if you could get it to send out the aroma .... wow...

The words spoken are soft and true
Your tone is that like the whispering of the wind on a cool summer breeze
The smell of the sweet chocolate does'nt make one blue
You are fullfilling everyone of my desires and needs

Oh crap this aint the poetry forum..

Looks like a good start though Bev

James

[valerieSONORA]

Blog about chocolate? I thought you were going to blog about danny wall and start a fan club.

[Erum Munir]

Bev, Ooh now I want to go have some LOL.

How about making the title backgrounds a slightly lighter chocolate brown? It looks almost black on my screen.

Now that's a niche I hadn't thought of making a minisite template pack for

[Kat Bartone]

Hi Bev,

A few initial impressions (from a chocolate lover).

1. While your 'Chocolate' title is straight and to the point, it didn't grab me. Wonder if it can be snazzed up a bit? Keep the keyword front and center, but make it a more interesting phrase.

2. The text on the page is too dominant - should be better balanced with white space. Makes it a bit too busy to try to read. Also, when you have a fairly long web article, it helps to break it up with a few other subheadlines, and if appropriate, bulleted sections.

3. The Amazon ads are completely unrelated, so they don't target your market well.

4. I think the headline for the ad on the right needs a little tweaking. It looks like this:

Do You Deserve Anything
Less?

This would be better:

Do You Deserve
Anything Less?

Also, I'd suggest making that font a bit smaller, then you can embolden it. Try centering it also to compare that look with the left-justified look.

Now I'm going to go back there and find me a good recipe!

Hope this helps,

- Kat Bartone

[enrich]

Nice blog.

Id write an article around the keyword phrase "buy chocolate online" as it has 720 Google searches per month on average.

[VinceNouvel]

Its look yummy Bev.. I will put a border before the background if I were you.. Don't know if you like it like that.. lol
just like choclate, design is all about ur own taste..

[bgmacaw]

1. Dump the Admin section in the sidebar.

2. Make your email list subscription section really stand out. If you're wanting to use this to build a recipe/food list, I'd recommend dumping the Amazon and affiliate ads and push the list more.

3. The in-post link ads are annoying and distracting. The Amazon ads are showing generic ads that don't match the theme of the site at times.

4. The articles and how they're displayed works well for a niche marketing blog. If your ads and/or email subscription are more compelling it will draw them away from the dull blocks of text. I'd go for something more reader friendly if you want social interaction.

5. You have comments disabled/removed. That's OK but if you call it a blog that raises the expectation of being able to comment. I leave comments enabled on my niche marketing blogs with the intent of gaining additional content/keywords over time but I moderate all comments to control this.

6. You're using pages for some of the content. This limits what you can do so far as rotating posts, RSS feeds and a number of other neat WordPress tricks.

[Monetize]

It's very nice, however I believe that you could have put
together a far superior blog without using RNW. IMO.

[Arindam Chakraborty]

Originally Posted by Bev Clement

I am still working on it, but would love some early feedback as to what you would like to see in it or removed.

No promises but will consider all suggestions.

Chocolate and it is about chocolate

I will post positive feedback only if you promise me a bar of Cadbury's 5 Star

Just kidding. I liked your writing style, as always

Arindam

[Heather Bestel]

Bev
Gorgeous site.
I love chocolate, especially the expensive kind.

What I loved about your blog:

• The colours are fab
• The expensive looking chocs
• The weekly recipes

What I would like to see more of:

• Pictures in amongst the text. Each page looked very similar.
• Some little funny quotes about chocolates, like these two I found...

"Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get."
Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)

"There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles."
Anonymous


Will keep watching your progress
Best wishes
Heather x

[MommyEnterprises]

I love chocolate! The blog looks great. My fellow WAHM friend has a chocolate blog I wish she would update on a regular basis.

[Kim Standerline]

Originally Posted by Bev Clement

I am still working on it, but would love some early feedback as to what you would like to see in it or removed.

No promises but will consider all suggestions.

Chocolate and it is about chocolate

yummy I like chocolate

[Louis Raven]

Hey Bev,

Tha's one SWEET blog

IMHO the navigation looks a bit crowded, I'd go for having each block of navigation in a verticle line on the right:

Pages-
xxxxx
xxxxx

Categories-
xxxxx
xxxxx

etc. Apart from that it's a really nice theme that's easy on the eyes.

Hope all's well,
Louis

[Bev Clement]

Thanks Guys, I will be be working on it a lot more in the coming days.

I will be looking at every comment made, and making the different changes.

Someone else mentioned the alignment, it looks OK on my screen, must look at the code for that today.

I have comments allowed so need to check that they work in both pages and posts.

There is a border, but it isn't showing so a change of colour is needed.

Fonts will be changed.

White space will be done.

Amazon ads are supposed to be related to the text, not good if they are not. They will get binned.

There are lots of pictures to come.

Lots of recipes to be added.

Lots of one liners as well.

Now for my confession, I bought the domain name in a moment of madness. I was looking for a recipe domain name (unrelated to chocolate) and this one was shown. I bought it, as I had a cookbook on chocolate, but I am not a chocolate lover. In the UK I would buy chocolate, put it in the fridge, and then bin it when it reached it sell by date. Friends would come and check there was no chocolate about to be binned

[kevinw1]

Hi Bev, I love the theme (mmm, yum, chocolate!) but there are a lot of little glitches in the text - it needs a good proofreading. eg "small bits which are called as nibs", "are rich in flavanols which is" etc.

Kevin

[Erum Munir]

Originally Posted by Bev Clement

Now for my confession, I bought the domain name in a moment of madness. I was looking for a recipe domain name (unrelated to chocolate) and this one was shown. I bought it, as I had a cookbook on chocolate, but I am not a chocolate lover. In the UK I would buy chocolate, put it in the fridge, and then bin it when it reached it sell by date.

You are welcome to store it in my fridge

[jjpmarketing]

Not a chocalate lover? WHAAAT? Life would completely suck without chocolate. Best chocolate I ever had was from Belgium. The only way I can describe it is... Chocolate Perfection.

By the way... I don't care too much for your theme. Just because the blog is about chocolate doesn't mean it has to be brown. It is kinda depressing. I would use more of a neutral color for the background color...

You could possibly go with something similar to your header... a tiled image with a single piece of chocloate on it. Make the background of the tile silver. Then leave the text as brown... but I would add some more white space. It is kind of bunched up. Do this by making more paragraphs... and possibly double spacing the text.

Everything else is ok. The header is a good choice.

[Monetize]

Bev - Chocolate lasts almost forever if you freeze it

[jhongren]

Hi Bev,

I would love to give some tips of mine:

1. Have pictures of chocolate in your blog post. (it is all words)

2. I think your header can be better. Go to sxc.hu to get clearer and sharper chocolate picture

3. Remove the word "My Chocolate Blog"'s shadow in the header image. One is enough.

4. Write some benefits based statements for subscribing to your newsletters.

5. Have a "Anti-spam policy" statement below your optin box.

6. I think the permalink through the keyword "chocolate" above the post os redundant.

7. Your admin panel in the center column is redundant.

8. have an "about me" page about yourself.

Cheers,
John

[Dave777]

Hi Bev,

Excellent niche choice with loads of untapped keyword possibilities...

Your chocolate blog reads well but I'd also recommend lightning up on the compressed areas...

In case you need an interesting chocolate tag line etc. etc...

The word "chocolate" comes from the Swiss German word meaning "orgasm in the mouth". ...

Not sure if you know about Clotilde Dusoulier's chocolate and zucchini blog success story...

Might give you some chocolate food for thought and who knows maybe a chocolate business connection of some sort...

Chocolate & Zucchini: About Chocolate & Zucchini

A couple other suggestions for ideas...

Chocolate Search Engine
Chocolate Directory - Find all of your chocolate needs here.

One more quick idea for you...

Chocolate Fountains... related to weddings is a Hot keyword category and trend to research and blog about...

Dave

[Thomas Wilkinson]

Bev, I don't care for credit cards but I have a couple
of sites that do pretty well. It doesn't always follow
that we have to be a fan of everything we write about.

T.W.

[Bev Clement]

Thanks for all the comments and advice. I have made quite a few changes today to the site.

I have removed a lot of pages, and will be making them posts. Lots of recipes to be posted, as well as product recommendation.

Lots more to be done with it, but it will be an ongoing project.

Bev

[VegasVince]

Good job, Miss Future Vice President of The United States.....

Truth is....the only way to get a chick in bed faster then a bag of Columbian Disco Powder....is a box of good choc's.

So it's always gonna be a hot niche, capiche!

Truth is...the damn candy costs almost as much as the "blow" did... back in the big 80's.


xxx Vegas Vince

p.s. Bev Clement is Sarah Palin. And yet I still love her.

[imstar]

the font-size for the menu and sidebar should be larger, it look tiny on my 20' lcd.

[kittyluver]

Nice design. Try to view the blog in Internet explorer also. Otherwise your blog is a wonderful asset for the chocolate lovers...

[Nathan Denton]

nice looking chocolate blog Bev. What sort of content to plan to post on the blog? Are you just a big chocolate fan or is this new niche you're testing out?

[Bev Clement]

Nathan, did you read my confession, that I'm not a chocolate lover.

I have over 300 chocolate recipes and many unique articles on the subject.

There will also be a number of products being promoted there, and I might create a book on the subject as well.

I can't believe how many people have visited the site in the last 5 days, and even though it isn't completed yet, as I have some more plug-ins to add, we are already No 2 in Google for some keywords. I only found that out because we had visitors for those keywords.

519 unique visitors in 5 days
943 visitors

[rocker123]

nice! congratz! makes me hungry now keep it up!

[A Chandler SEO]

The text over text in the header is a bit much for my taste. I think it takes away from the header.

[jhongren]

Originally Posted by Bev Clement

Nathan, did you read my confession, that I'm not a chocolate lover.

I have over 300 chocolate recipes and many unique articles on the subject.

There will also be a number of products being promoted there, and I might create a book on the subject as well.

I can't believe how many people have visited the site in the last 5 days, and even though it isn't completed yet, as I have some more plug-ins to add, we are already No 2 in Google for some keywords. I only found that out because we had visitors for those keywords.

519 unique visitors in 5 days
943 visitors

Hi Bev,

Maybe you can interview chocolate lovers, makers and so on. =)

I love to read email interviews. It can be done through mp3 or even video.

Cheers,
John

[GarrieWilson]

Hey Bev,

Some quick suggestions.

1. The text are it way to wide. Makes it harder to read.
2. The opt-in, doesnt grab my attention or tell me quickly what I'm getting. Offer a free recipe for trouffles(sp) and you will get lots of opt-ins.
3. The sidebar tittles, dont do it for me but i dont know why...

Garrie

[George Wright]

Thanks a lot Bev.

I ate two dark chocolate bars yesterday and one today. The power of suggestion at it's best. Yesterday I only read your post and not your blog. Your post, I forgot all about, but then went on a chocolate binge.

Now today I go ahead and visit your Blog. I won't be able to sleep. LOL

Nice Blog Bev.

George Wright, P.S. Thanks for the recipes. I like the fact that they are made in the microwave. And they sound delicious. P.P.S While I won't argue with any of the constructive criticism given in this thread, I think your blog is very nice and your target market will probably not be as worried about the "format look" as they will be about the great content and the contend is right on so far.