What would you do to take this from $50/month to $1,000/month

[Johnathan]

Ok,

If you could help here, it would be greatly appreciated, because it relative's site, and I am trying to help make her self sufficient and not sure what the next steps would be... She has put a lot of time and effort into writing the actual articles (several hundred actually) over several months, but is very discouraged because she is not making that much money at all. (About $50/month in adsense).

What would I need to do to take this site Between Close Friends to the next level? I 'kind' of understand the basics from reading on this site, but am not sure of the exact specifics. I am willing to do the work (since I have the technical expertise), but just need a little bit of direction. I.e., I know an opt-in list, article marketing, good theme, etc, etc are important -- but what 'specific' software, 'specific' steps, 'specific' products to promote, 'specific' theme, etc, etc would you take to get to that point? I believe I can do that within a month (take it to the point where it makes $1k/month), but just need to know exactly what to do.

If you want to PM me instead, that is ok too (i.e., if you have a specific step but don't necessarily want public knowledge)...

Thanks,

Johnathan

[Sheila]

It's great that you're helping your relative with the tech side of her business, I'm sure she appreciates your help.

Here are a few of my observations;

My first impression of the site is that your relative needs an attractive theme for her blog to look professional. And she needs to show the connection between her site name, and her information. There's a disconnect there. The information on her site is good, but how it's relevant to "between friends" isn't.

You're right about the follow-up. I know there's a WP plugin for an optin box, I'm sure someone else can help you with where to find it online. I don't know the name of it, but you could probably google for it if you needed to.

Since your relative likes to write, it should be easy for her to write autoresponder messages - she can even take bits and pieces from what she's already written, and you can show her how to put it in aweber, or another autoresponder to automate the process. Then she can promote affiliate products in the follow-up emails - she'll be building a list and making bigger sales and commissions than she's doing now with her adsense earnings.

Your knowing how to do the technical stuff will be a great help - but she's going to need to step up her marketing to increase her earnings. Writing articles (or re-writing the ones she's already written) and submitting them to directories will help her drive traffic to her site, then she can capture their email addresses, and continue to provide information and sell products to them through her autoresponder.

Your relative can even include adsense ads in her messages if she likes, until she decides which affiliate products she'd like to promote.

[Jay Moreno]

hi johnathan i took a quick look over the site

i actually found the site to be misaligned... ie the right hand column was pushed down to the bottom of the screen... i would first fix that...

to monetize are you signed up with any network affiliates ie commission junction, you could always tie in your articles with assoicated products, this may help raise some extra $$$

I would also give the site abit of a facelife too

also i noticed you had a google PR4 ranking, you could always add some micro ads, basically its a small grid thats not to in your face, the ads are about 16x16 pixels you can sell these spots for $25/pm for no follow links, $50/pm for do follow, perhaps even more...

you could also create informative ebooks? or paid access videos...

hth

[Scott Burton]

:Edit -- I spent some time typing up this response, and apparently a couple folks were a tiny bit faster than me at the submit button -- :Edit

The first thing that comes to my mind is that there is something wrong with the layout of... I guess it's column 3. Nothing appears in that column for me until after I scroll down below the entire post/article. For everyone it appears like this for probably won't see the clickbank product links, or second adsense block at least half the time.

Finding and fixing cause of this could produce some improvements.

Google is listing 91 sites linking to this one, so building additional backlinks probably would help in driving more traffic.

There does not appear to be any form of list building going on, which means an opportunity for back end sales is being lost.

If your friend put a collection of say 10 of her good related articles together into something to give away for signing up to her 'tips sheet' or other newsletter, she could build a list. Then when she's posting new information, she might include the new article + an old article that's related, to her tip sheep/newsletter. Every few issues, she adds in a recommended product related to one or both of those articles.

I just used browsershots.org to get a multiple browser view of the site, and so far all the browsers that have loaded show the same problem with column 3.

:Edit -- That's 12 different browsers so far... Anything 'below the fold' is far less likely to be viewed, and obviously if it isn't viewed, it won't be clicked.

There are a number of autoresponders available, probably the simplest would be to use on of the higher reputation outside companies to avoid a lot of the hassle of keeping the mailings whitelisted. Adding an opt in window can be as simple as inserting a text widget into one of the columns, and pasting the code given by the autoresponder company you signed them up with.
-- :Edit

[Loren Woirhaye]

It's merely my opinion that Adsense is a weak revenue model. Each
article should recommend a product for "quick relief" of the health
problem as well as the "home made" cure.

I find the placement of Adsense block really detracts from perceived
value of the information here. I would instead focus on getting
people involved in reading the articles on the site and subscribing
to a daily/ocassional natural remedies ezine.