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Warrior Needing Advice - What Path Should I Take?

by Jake Howard
2 replies
G'day Warriors

I am in need of some guidance from fellow Warriors, as to which direction I should take, so I am hoping that a few of you might be able to point me in the right direction.

I have been mucking around with IM for a few years now in order to gain some experience, starting websites, blogs, trying and failing at affiliate marketing, adsense, critquing websites etc and I feel that I am just wandering aimlessly, and I have decided that I need to stop trying everything and anything, and start focusing more on what I am good at.

So I said, ok I am going to focus on my strengths, however now I am not even sure if my strengths are profitable. So I am left wondering, should I stick at it, try something new again, or just cut my losses and give up.

Over the last few years experience, I believe that my strengths lie with critiquing websites. I can look at people's website's for hours, highlighting things that are wrong with them, offering realistics suggestions on how they could be improved, and coming up with new ideas to improve their site and drive traffic. I focus on things such as Usability, Functionality, Appearance, SEO etc.

I started out critiquing websites for free on forums, where people were asking for reviews. After building up some experience and confidence, I then decided to start my own website, where I could post my reviews and offer a service, however I found that I was wasting so much time administering the site, that I had hardly anytime left to perform reviews, and virtually no time left to promote my site & source clients.

With the website going no where and costing money, I decided to turn back to the forums, starting a thread of my own, that would cost nothing, and pretty much manage and promote itself with all the passing traffic, however I am finding it difficult to monetize my service.

Anyway, I am hoping that Warriors might be able to provide me with some guidance. Is there a way for me to monetize my service, or am I just simply dreaming and being unrealsitic.

Any guidance that you can provide on how I can focus on monetizing my strength would be appreciated. I will post below an example of one of my reviews.

Cheers

Jake
#advice #needing #path #warrior
  • Profile picture of the author Jake Howard
    Review:www.linkdirectory.com


    At first glance, the URL of this site stands out. I feel it is a top URL as far as your target market is concerned and it is SEO friendly. The site would benefit from a better colour scheme, as the current colour scheme appears a bit dull and glary. The site is also appears to be clustered in some areas and bare in other areas. A full review of the site is included below.

    URL: First of all, your URL. I feel that you have an extremely strong URL, it relates exactly to the purpose of your site, and I would imagine that such a URL would be in high demand. This is great, so you need to make the most of it. You are ranked first in Google for the words "Link Directory", so you may want to play on that a bit. To be first on Google for anything is fantastic, but to be first under such a high demand phrase is even better. You could possibly use this as a bit of a selling point. If people are aware that you are the leader of the pack in Google, they will respect you and your website more. You may want to put more emphasis on your title in the top left hand corner, to reinforce your website name. At the moment it is a bit small and intimidated. You need to bring it out with authority, so people know that you are the "Link Directory" and remember your site.

    Colour Scheme: Colour Schemes are very important, you seem to have some sort of a Colour Scheme, just not a very good one. Take a look at some of the more popular sites around, they all have a very distinct colour scheme. They also chose colours that work well together and that are easy on the eye. Warrior Forum is a good example of a good colour scheme. They keep it simple with Red, Black, White and Grey. These colours all work well with one another Red/White, Red/Black, Red/Grey, Black/White, Grey/Black etc. White, Grey and Black are there neutral colours, while red is the feature colour. The don't need to use a lot of red, they just need to use it well and they do use it well. They don't overuse it, and they don't use it for their text.

    Your colour scheme on the other hand seems to be a combination of Red, Black, White and 2 shades of blue, followed by a range of colours used in the many advertisements. I think that the 2 shades of blue, plus the overuse of red seems to the main problem. The 2 shades of blue are quite light in colour, so they clash with one another, and they clash with the white. When i say clash, it just means that it is hard to distinguish when one colour starts and when the other colour finishes. This can make it hard to differentiate different sections, and it can be distracting when someone is trying to read. The 2 shades of blue, also don't tend to work well against red, the mix just doesn't seem to work well. First of all, I would focus on trying to sort out your colour scheme. Why don't you drop the blue, and just try and run with Red as your feature colour. Red is a very strong colour on its own, so you don't even need a another strong colour if you don't want it.

    Red Text: Red is fantastic for grabbing peoples attention, however it is extremely hard on the eye when used on text. It can be good if you just want to highlight a heading, amongst a lot of boring black text, and it can also be good for emphasising words, however I feel that you overuse the colour red with your text, so much in a way, that it becomes hard to read all the red text, and when there is so much red text, it looses its attention capturing ability. I would not use red text to list each category. You want to make that as simple as possible. Maybe just resort back to black, or like a standard blue, that is easier on the eye.

    At the moment your "Link Directory" heading is red, your "Categories" are red, your "Submit Your Site" is red, your "Google Ads" are red, Links at the bottom of the page are red, and you have red header bars on the RHS of the page. I look at the page, and i struggle to work out what I should be looking at, with so much red, i cant tell what is important and what isn't important. Use red text, for the things you want to draw the most attention to.

    Red Header Backgrounds: The standard red background headers that you use on the RHS are actually quite effective. They are simple, look great and do the job. On the other hand, the blue background headers used towards the top of the page, don't look as good. They are hard to distinguish, don't stand out and simply just don't seem to work. They also seem to clash with the red headers on the RHS.

    Why don't you scrap the Blue background headers, and make them red, the same as the ones on the LHS. It would bring the site together, and make it look more professional and cleaner.

    Top Menu Bar: I cant work out why you have your top menu bar where it is. It seems a bit out of reach, and it is taking up room, that it probably doesn't need to. I would scrap that entire Top Menu Bar, and simply bring the menu items down to the near empty bar underneath the title and banner advertisement. It will look more in place, and it will save you some room, so that you can fit more of your home page on the users screen.

    Site Partners Advertisement: On the RHS, the upwards moving advertisement is moving to fast. I cant keep up with the different headings as they scroll up. You need to slow this down, to give people a chance of reading the heading and brief description.

    Purpose Of Site: To me your site seems to be lacking a bit in direction. What is the main purpose of your site? Is it to encourage people to submit their link, is it to hopefully get people using your site as a directory (Probably not, because it is easier to simply just use Google). Is it to make money off advertisements like Google Adwords, or is it to promote your products on the RHS. All of the above may be the purpose of the site, but you need to place them in order of importance. The most important one, has to be customer focused. What does your website do for the user/customer? Advertising may be your goal, however it comes second fiddle to the needs of the customer, because it doesn't matter how many advertisements you have when you have no traffic. Focus on giving users what they want. Once you give them what they want, then mould the advertisements around that.

    News Section: News sections are good, because they constantly provide updated content, however your news items seem to be cluttered and i cant seem to tell what sort of news you are focusing on. There is plenty of news out there in the world, and the major sites will beat you every time when it comes to news, so why don't you just pick a select market. Focus on Web news, something that relates to your site. Also, try and display it in a way, that is more orderly and easy to read. All you need is the heading as a link, the source and some intro text, they don't really need much more then that. Make the Heading stand out from the intro text and you are laughing. At the moment you are trying to cover too much news, and it just isn't working because you cant possibly keep up, and it is only a secondary feature of your site.

    CONCLUSION

    In summing up, I think that you need to decide on a colour scheme, that does not involve that light shade of blue. Make your title a bit bigger. Get rid of all the red text, Run with red for all your header bars, relocate the top menu bar, slow down the advertisement on the RHS and focus more on your customers then your advertisements.

    Advertisements don't attract traffic, it is content that attracts traffic. So advertisements have to be a secondary factor. Focus on giving your customers/users what they want. This will inturn drive more traffic, and your advertisements will be receiving more exposure.


    Overall, with a very good URL and listing on Google, I think your site has a lot of potential. Focus on giving people what they want, and making it as easy as possible for them and the results will follow.
    Signature
    www.inksigns.com.au
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  • Profile picture of the author Tsnyder
    I think you need to reposition your service...

    I don't think many people want to hear a laundry list of
    all the things they've done wrong (that they were sure they'd
    done right in the beginning).

    They know if their site isn't producing the results they want so
    I'd approach it from the perspective of tweaking it up to improve
    results. Save the critique list for yourself and just provide the
    services necessary to correct the problems.

    Tsnyder
    Signature
    If you knew what I know you'd be doing what I do...
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