FROM NEWBIE: I've set up a website and need some feedback and guidance

[Valentine]

Hello Fellow Warriors.

Since I've joined the forum I've made a little research, bought a manual, picked up a niche and started to create a landpage.

Well to be honest, the whole landpage ended up as a whole article based website (maybe this is because of my background .. I used to be a webmaster/web-designer).

Anyway, I am here to show it off for you, so you can give me some support or critisize. Well basically I'm looking for some guidance of what can I do with my website to make it better and therefore make me some money.

Right now I've made a homepage only nothing else works, so don't try to press any links, but soon I will add all the articles I have and some reviews that I wrote.

Untitled Document

Thanx.


EDIT::

Ok, I have some more questions for you.

Let's put the layout aside and actually talk about the content.

The goal of the website is to drive traffic to the product-selling websites through affiliate links I will post on the review section.
The thing is that I need my website to convince the buyer to actually buy something, and not just press the banner or a link.

So the queations are these:
- As you can see I have a review block at the bottom of the page, where user will pick a website and read a review about it and only THEN will click on a link if he makes a desicion to buy anything, this way I'm not really pushing a person to buy anything, but just presenting the product in a good light and providing a value in giving a honest review I made, so the client can take his time and think on his decision before he actually buys anything.
Is this a right thing to do in terms of increasing sales?

But I also have a banner section, and the idea was to have 4 banners rotating there with products I am promoting, and with my affiliate links ofcourse. BUT, I actually doubt about the banner, because I'm not sure if it will convert to a sale. What is your take on that? Should I leave the banner? Or? Should I maybe insert a "Google-Ads" there, instead?

The next thing is a e-book. I have an idea of making a subscription list with a news letter, and to motivate visitors I'm planing to give away a free e-book. So do you have any tips on writing short e-books to help my promotions?

Is there anything else I can add to my website or modify the content to increase the conversion level?

And do you see any additional ways to make money with my future website?

Thanx again. Valentine.

[Droopy Dawg]

Thats pretty damm good... don't change a thing... EXCEPT!!!!! Name your page in the "title tag" with a keyword phrase that you're trying to target.



OUTSTANDING work... best of luck.

DeShon

[Gaurav Duggal]

First of all, Fantastic design!
Besides adding the keyword phrase to the title tag as Droopy Dawg suggested, i`d suggest featuring the Blog as the default page and also adding a forum. Other than that i think its golden

[Valentine]

Thanx I'm glad you like my design, and I surely can make a good website, but note guys:

I don't know a THING about Tattoo and Internet Marketing, maybe that's why I still have some doubts along my way .. but I'll keep going, that's for sure.

He-he I feel like I just came here so that someone would tell me: "You'll be fine"

Byt the way, adding a forum is a cool idea and the blog also, I've been thinking about making this site on a WORDPRESS engine.. but I need to earn some $$$ before I can actually do it, because I don't know anything about wordpress and I better spend some money rather then studying how to set up a template on wordpress myself .. so I'll leave the website as is right now and will try to bring some traffic there .. that's my idea, and then use the money to further updates to the website .. such as a forum and wordpress engine.

I think I'm on a right track .. but still kinda anxious

[Tina Clark]

Hi,

That is a cool looking site.

Google wants a privacy policy and a contact link.

Best of luck.

[Valentine]

Originally Posted by Tina Clark

Hi,

That is a cool looking site.

Google wants a privacy policy and a contact link.

Best of luck.

WOW, I would never think of that .. THANK YOU!

[Tyler Jonsson]

I would definitely recommend that you do indeed convert it to a wordpress site if you want it to be a lasting site and not just a flash in the pan.

Wordpress makes it soooo much easier to continually update content, and not have to worry about adding in Analytics code to every new page, etc, etc, etc...

Very nice design!

[Valentine]

Originally Posted by TMJonsson

I would definitely recommend that you do indeed convert it to a wordpress site if you want it to be a lasting site and not just a flash in the pan.

Wordpress makes it soooo much easier to continually update content, and not have to worry about adding in Analytics code to every new page, etc, etc, etc...

Very nice design!

I will convert it to wordpress as soon as I get my first 200$ earning.

My plain is to get stable income from this site, put it on automation and continue with the next project.

[Tyler Jonsson]

Originally Posted by Valentine

I will convert it to wordpress as soon as I get my first 200$ earning.

My plain is to get stable income from this site, put it on automation and continue with the next project.

You speak with wisdom!

Be careful however of just assuming it will run on autopilot if you do not convert it right away.

I am running into this issue with a site of mine.

It successfully used the BANS (Build a Niche Store) software for a year or so, now I am converting it to a Wordpress/PHPBay site.

I have to be careful that I do not simply erase the contents of the site and start over, because then I would have dozens if not hundreds of dead links sitting in Google/Yahoo/MSN...

I can't imagine that being a good thing

Plan out your site first is my point.

You are on the right track my friend!

[Alex Taylor]

Nice site!

If it were mine, I'd switch out the "Hello, and welcome..." for a benefit-driven headline. But that's it!

[Pat Spence]

That is gorgeous! Thanks for showing it.

[spires]

Hay Man, Great design.

A few things:
- Make it SEO friendly, (Adding page titles and such)
- Add a opt-in box.

Apart from that, great job

[Nitro]

Looks great! I would definitely change the your title from "untitled document" to something keyword related.

The one thing i'm not too fond of is the font of your logo, other than that it looks awesome.

[dwt]

Check your grammar and spelling. You have some minor typos in the last couple of sentences. Otherwise, VERY SEXY layout.

[Craig Fenton]

Hi Valentine:

Hope you are well tonight. Hope the site works out well.

Can you try a test to see what people think looks more intense before your site is ready for the world to see? When you arrive at the link on the top left side there isn't a photo but on the center/right there are 3. Would you consider a photo or some text on the left side?

If so, can you take a screen shot of the page with the photo or text on the top left and one without. This way people can judge before you have anything to lose.

Best of luck!

[cashcow]

That's a beauty - if you don't make money with the affiliate sales, perhaps you should consider making mini site templates!

Lee

[Valentine]

Thank you warriors. I'm really glad you like my layout. I'll make sure to keep you up to date of how my work is going on.

Thanx a lot for advice.

[Valentine]

Ok, I have some more questions for you.

Let's put the layout aside and actually talk about the content.

The goal of the website is to drive traffic to the product-selling websites through affiliate links I will post on the review section.
The thing is that I need my website to convince the buyer to actually buy something, and not just press the banner or a link.

So the queations are these:
- As you can see I have a review block at the bottom of the page, where user will pick a website and read a review about it and only THEN will click on a link if he makes a desicion to buy anything, this way I'm not really pushing a person to buy anything, but just presenting the product in a good light and providing a value by a honest review, so the client can take his time and think on his decision before he actually buys anything.
Is this a right thing to do in terms of increasing sales?

But I also have a banner section, and the idea was to has 4 banners rotating there with products I am promoting, and with my affiliate links ofcourse. BUT, I actually doubt about the banner, because I'm not sure if it will convert. What is your take on that? Should I leave the banner? Or? Should I maybe insert a "Google-Ads" there, instead?

The next thing is a e-book. I have an idea of making a subscription list with a news letter, and to motivate visitors I'm planing to give away a free e-book. So do you have any tips on writing short e-books to help my promotions?

Is there anything else I can add to my website or modify the content to increase the conversion level?

[spyxx]

Title Tag
Description Tag
Keyword Tag

Separate the javascript in some other files sample.js this will make your website looks better in se eyes. (SEO purpose)

Never ever forget this Contact, Privacy, Disclaimer, and Terms Of Use.

Put up some social media component such as Digg, Stumble, etc.

I will prefer to have this part on the top "Top Internet Tattoo Galleries' Review"

If I were you, I will use wordpress to build the page, as I want to be able to rss em. (Since I don't know how to set up rss in this kind of page)

Set up an optin box on the side just like what Get Google Ads for free does. Great way to get opt in.

Use h1 and h2 tag properly. "Hello and Welcome" + "Related Article" with h1 tag is lame. You want to put your keyword in there.

Use Img Alt on your image.

[Flyingpig7]

Wow that's really nice I like it.

Keren

[R. Hershel Wright]

Great site. A good place to get a privacy policy is freeprivacypolicydotcom. I don't have enough posts to make this a link yet. I will get there.

R. Hershel Wright

[Albert Steven]

leave the banner. You don't want to competitor advertise on your site rite?

[Roger Mayne]

I have to agree with everyone else about the site design. It's awesome!!!

However, I do worry about how you're going to monetise it? I know nothing about tattoos. Is there a decent sized market of currently selling products available online that you can point to and earn good commissions from?

[Valentine]

Originally Posted by swiftdeal

I have to agree with everyone else about the site design. It's awesome!!!

However, I do worry about how you're going to monetise it? I know nothing about tattoos. Is there a decent sized market of currently selling products available online that you can point to and earn good commissions from?

Ultimately I don't know why I picked the tattoo niche.. It's one of the first thing that popped up, and keyword research gave me some nice results where I had around 20 key phrases with low competition.

BTW, yes, there are a lot of websites which are looking for affiliate marketers, some specific, some are just the same old tattoo designs but with a different brands (I consider those scams).

Overall I am promoting 4 different Tattoo Design databases (from all the websites I've seen, those are the best for real), each of those offer different value (visitors will see that in my reviews) as well as 2 specific websites which are dedicated to Chinese and Japanese symbol tattoos and their meanings, as well as custom translations.. ofcourse I get affiliate commision (75%) from each of those websites I promote. This is the way I'm trying to monetise the website.

A tattoo niche is pretty crouded BTW so it surely converts and people make sales, and I surely have competitors .. that's why I took some time to make a cool layout and spent some time on usability .. you know .. to stand out from my competitors (and a sexy layout is my strong side for sure, but unfortinatelly the only one).

As I read comments I uderstood that I would have to learn SEO, PPC, Article Marketing, Blogging at Wordpress and such .. pretty long way, but I think long term.

note: I came to this forum with nothing except knowing how to make a sexy layout .. sure I can make money doing layout design, but it's just a job, and I'm here to rase my passive income and to live a "mobility" lifestyle, where I can travel the world and live in various places, rather then having a 8 hour job .. I want my income on autopilot .. that is the goal, and I think that having IM skills will help me to reach it.

But I went a bit offtopic here

[bgmacaw]

1. Fix the internal SEO problems with the meta-tags and broken links.

2. You will need to build incoming links to your site to have any hope of making money with it. Remember a plain looking tattoo blog on Blogger that has a few thousand links, including authority links, will beat your site in search results if you don't have links no matter how attractive your pages are and how stellar your content is.

3. "The thing is that I need my website to convince the buyer to actually buy something" - No, it's not your job unless you yourself are selling the product. Your objective is to get the click through to the site that will be doing the selling. You can pre-sell some but most people overdo this. Now, you certainly could buy your own PLR tattoo product or create one yourself to sell and that might be a better thing for you to do if this is your goal.

4. As for your banner, I would recommend not using a straight up banner. You've got some 'interesting' pictures on your site. Make those your banners. Use a HTML image map to make them clickable to the sales pages of the tattoo sites you want to promote. I suspect the girl on the left would get a lot of clicks.

5. Put the "Top Internet Tattoo Galleries' Review" at the top rather than the bottom. A lot of your casual surfers and targeted buyers will click away on them quickly, which you want when you're selling affiliate products. You only want them to stick around when you're doing the actual selling.

6. Don't even consider Google Adsense for this site. Payouts for tattoo keywords is very low and you'll average about 10 cents a click.

[Valentine]

Hey bgmacaw! Pretty solid advice! THANX!!