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One Year Old Site: What Is My Best Strategy?

by megansays
9 replies
I built this site, Easy Low Carb Snacks, a year ago. I have done essentially zero promotion and am getting a little over 100 visitors per day. The bounce rate is too high, so recently I've been playing with related posts, a popular posts link and am going to start interlinking. It's making $20-$30/month right now and is gradually increasing. I'm nervous to ask for a critique, but if you have time and can see where improvements could be made, I'd appreciate it.

Now, I have very little time (and to be honest, ambition) to spend toward promotion/backlinks/etc. I plan to hire a virtual assistant to help with those tasks, so I guess what I'm asking is:

Should I be focusing on blog commenting, forum posting and article syndication? I have recently started getting articles from TCA/TB where previously I wrote all content, and I can continue buying articles with the intent of syndicating. I'm starting to get that panicky feeling about our financial picture and want to get moving on *something* here.

Thanks in advance!
#site #strategy #year
  • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
    The problem to me, is one thing, your copy. I wouldn't bother promoting or writing more articles because the articles on it now lack "flavor" (no pun intended).

    For instance, you are begining a lot of your articles with long sentences. Not only that, some of the sentences are absolutely atrocious.

    Like this one for example:

    Dieting As A Diabetic Dealing with maintaining a healthy diet after a diabetes diagnosis can be stressful and frustrating.

    WTF?!

    Or this one:

    Snacking Healthily When you received a diagnosis of diabetes and learned that your eating habits would have to change, chances are good that you thought your snacking days were over.

    Look, I can't afford to go through your entire blog. Let me just tell you this, the copy is dispicable. I hate to sound so blunt/direct, but lets be real. No wonder your bounce rate is so high. I got a headache by being on it for less than 15 seconds.

    If I were you, I would stop everything you are doing.

    I would take a few months to study and learn copywriting.
    I would take a few more months to study and learn NLP.

    Then I wouldn't even think about outsourcing articles unless you were willing to dump some serious money into a great copywriter.

    You can argue with me all day long, but I'm 99% confident thats your problem.
    The articles are bland, the headlines, the focus and design, there is literally NOTHING on the site that has managed to attracy my attention. In fact its nearly offended me (on an emotional level). And I'm IN the nutrition niche which is even more ironic.

    If you don't understand the magnitude of this problem, post your site in the copywriting forum and let people tear it apart.

    Then don't leave the forum. Hang out there for a very long time. Untill you understand how to influence/persuade people with words and write great copy yourself. Or find someone who can do it for you. But you can't hire anyone untill you have an eye for quality writing first. So its a catch 22. You have to learn it no matter how to look at it.

    Thats my advice & good luck.

    -Red

    ps. Writing is a lot like fishing. Always develop the habit of attracting people with a short, direct sentence, then reeling them in with a longer one. Like I just did here. And never "write" to people. Its more important that you "talk" to them. Words should flow in a simple and easy way. There are subtle ways you can build immense value, w/out people even noticing. Its all in the structure of your writing. Its all about the flow and pacing. How you organize things. How you create tension, provoke fear, then release that tension.

    Imagine writing like heroin. Thats really the best way I can explain it.

    People use heroin because it makes them feel great, THEN it makes them feel like hell. This cycle repeats over and over, and its inescapable for a lot of people. You need to creep your way into peoples emotions, then pry at them. Pick at them with words. Scare them. Offer the solution... then pull it away. Its honestly a lot more of a science than an art. You just need to learn it.
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  • Profile picture of the author wuser12
    Did you try social media marketing? I mean, creating fan pages, social bookmarking...
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  • Profile picture of the author megansays
    Thank you. Those are the outsourced articles, which is why I mentioned I would prefer to hire writers for syndication instead, if that works. I felt like I should put them up because I paid for them, but they aren't what *I* would write, which you can see if you go further down.

    I appreciate the input - I think I'm going to just remove those ones completely.

    My struggle is that I don't have the time to write anymore, so I'm not sure where to take it. But you're right about those articles. I am probably better off doing nothing with the site until time issues improve and I can do it myself.
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  • Profile picture of the author megansays
    @wuser12, I haven't, because I really have no idea where to start there. I'll put that on the list to research.

    As for the outsourced articles, I've pulled them all, so that might improve things.
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    • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
      Originally Posted by megansays View Post

      @wuser12, I haven't, because I really have no idea where to start there. I'll put that on the list to research.

      As for the outsourced articles, I've pulled them all, so that might improve things.
      Look, I can only be direct with you.

      But if your articles were directly converting to $$$, you'd find that you have a lot more time to write.

      Please do not overcomplicate this process.

      To help you understand how I'm profiting off my writing, I'll explain one of the things I did. Just to show you how easy it is.

      First, I wrote a long article, about how a lack of empathy can lead to increased profits in life (thats a vague representation of the actual headline). Whether you're a marketer, investor, writer... salesman, it doesn't matter.

      I used a ton of research and science to back this article up. And I didn't write it in a way like "you need to be an asshole to people to make money off them". It was a very innovative and controversial article.

      So controversial I decided to write an ebook on it.

      It took me 3 hours to write the article, and about 14 hours to write the ebook. Thats 17 hours.

      From 1 facebook post, 1 forum post, and 1 CL post, I have already made 1 weeks income from that work over the span of 2 weeks.

      This also served as a "microtest" to see whether or not the market would be interested in more material, and they are. So I am already revising the ebook, adding a lot more research/science/links, and THEN I will begin heavily promoting this ebook.

      You want to know WHY I did this?

      I'm not as stupid as I sound. One day I saw a video on youtube, by Alessio Rastanti, and noticed how quickly it went viral:


      So I thought "damn, there is a lot of money that can be made just by being honest to people!!! who would have ever thought!"

      Notice how FOCUSED I'm trying to be. I'm not focusing on writing 10 billion articles, I'm focusing on **1** article and **1** topic that will get a lot of attention. I will test, retest, rewrite, and relaunch this process untill its working exactly how I want it to.

      I just want you to see how simple this process really is. This can be done in so many different niches, for so many different things, its a matter of taking the time and just doing it!

      Watch youtube videos. Study videos in certain niches that go viral. Watch the media, watch what people do, watch trends. Watch highly controversial people like Alex Jones or Max Keiser. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt, but be smart enough to realize that "the herd" rarely does that. They usually buy up stuff they are told, especially if you do the proper research and back up what you say.

      Inject this same type of "spirit" into your writing. Like you're in nutrition... do you realize HOW MUCH CONTROVERSY there is surrounding "aspartame"?

      You can write an article about how aspartame has been shown to make people fat. Then write an entire article just about aspartame, using lots of science and research. The direction you choose to go in is completely up to you. Remember, you can have a controversial headline like:

      "Aspartame: The 0 Calorie Sweetner Thats In Everything You Eat... But Is It Really Making You Fat?"

      Depending on what the research says, you can conclude that it doesn't make people fat.
      Or you can write an article about the hormones they put in chicken. The point is to make yourself sound like an expert, do your research, gain a following, then monetize.

      Controversial topics are always a win imo. Because all the hard work has already been done. The media has twisted peoples heads into so many different directions, that they have NO IDEA what to believe anymore. You're just capitalizing on that fact. You can write an entire ebook, and use it to promote amazon/clickbank products, you can sell an ebook yourself, get the book on Kindle... so many options.

      -Red
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  • Profile picture of the author jbsmith
    Great advice on how to mprove the content around your site, but I would like to challenge you on another front - monetization!

    It appears the only way you are turning visitors into dollars on this site is Adsense and perhaps the odd Amazon sale?

    At 100 unique visitors a day you should definitely have a sales funnel operating from this site.

    That means...

    1. At least one offer that pulls people into a list
    2. An autoresponder sequence that gives them the partial solution to the challenge you target with your opt-in offer and then...
    3. Products that you offer them to help address their desires/challenges. These could be affiliate products or your own products (ideally a mix of both in the future)

    If you really are getting 100 visitors a day your site should be earning far more than $20$30/month, you could easily be pulling at least 10X that and more if you get beyond converting 1% and promote some products with either recurring or higher-end commissions

    Jeff
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    Turn Your Knowledge Into High-Paying Digital Products To Sell Online
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  • Profile picture of the author Anton543
    "At 100 unique visitors a day you should definitely have a sales funnel operating from this site.

    That means...

    1. At least one offer that pulls people into a list"

    At least one offer of what? What can he offer that will entice people to sign up? Where should this offer be - sitewide, specific pages of the site?
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    I would stop buying articles, create them yourself. Use that money to invest into some form of advertising.
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    ==>> Free book reveals make money with affiliate marketing
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  • Profile picture of the author megansays
    Thanks for the responses, everyone! You've given me some ideas to work on. I think as far as outsourcing goes, I will keep the writing for myself. I just kept telling myself that you can't expect what someone else writes to be as good as yours, but that really was terrible.

    I'm going to look at some CB products and possibly start including some reviews to see how that goes.

    Thanks!
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