How Long Did....

yea it looks like you're in a good niche but you have your blog on an .info domain. I'm almost certain Google doesn't even rank those domains because I've never seen one in the results.

You should look into getting someone to switch your site over to a .com

...that's if you want free organic traffic.

It's a really good subject because it's REAL. It touches on human emotion. I get the feeling if you would have had a .com, you profits would have been much more than a thousand or so bucks...

To answer your question, 12 months on average.

Depends on the niche; how much competition. Some sites took off in only a week. Other sites took months to attract visitors. I'd say, my normal sites, takes 2-3 weeks to start bringing in decent traffic. Although we might be a bit quicker as we have a very large network of people that we send out Emails to, and we are able to garner a lot of attention for new websites.

I remember my first successful niche site, took about a year, but after that my successes came faster and faster.

No matter what though, you gotta fail quickly to succeed!

too me, it took me a few years too...

i love doing low competition review sites now... i learned the WRONG way at the beginning but now i think i have dominate the process

Greetings,

I'm not sure about bones vs. look but this is my opinion - and take that for what it's worth - an opinion. You must test for yourself in your niche.

You need pages that rank in the SERPs for keywords that you can compete for. That means finding long-tail keyword phrases that get a decent amount of traffic (total # for all pages over 2000) that you can compete for the 1st page of Google.

Do you have a social network presence? This is great content for social sites like Twitter and FB.

Backlink your pages to get them ranked so people find your site. Use your posts to support your pages.

Add an optin box right to the site so people can click there and not have to click the image of the book to find the optin area.

Take out the Meta links - but that might be what you're playing with now.

There are banner ads on the site for women related products but not related to infertility - I'm sure you could find some banners to other products or services?

This would really lend itself to press releases also - for strong backlinks.

You could find good news stories on which you can comment or medical research on infertility - being sure that you are also targeting the keywords that are bringing you readers.

Google Analytics will help with determining how people are already finding your site and you can build on that traffic as well.

Hope that helps!

About 5 months? But unlike you, bringing up a family and so on, I was working about 20-25 hours per week at it!

Ooh, that's asking quite a lot! But I do see what you mean, and agree that it's possible. I still have some niche sites of which that isn't true, though.

I think you already know from earlier conversations that I like your site, and am vicariously disappointed that you don't at the moment do better with it than you do. Anyway, I can't "compete constructively" with Gail's useful observations and suggestions above, and can't really say more than that I hope and trust her post will be helpful to you, and wish you well. And many congratulations of the addition to your family, and nice to see you posting.

It took me a few months. I had a variety of differnet sites and just decided to focus on one, and that really did well for my numbers. I'm always creating new content, so many people in my niche (and on my list) know who i am.

I feel like I am an expert in the field....went through it for 5 years! And yes I do try to sincerely help the people, not just sell to them, but it would be nice to make some money out of it also .

Hello

The "Bones" of your site look good. But, you really need to look at the background and whatnot. I would get a good theme, Post at least once a week, reduce amount of flashy banners and advertising, Write a free report to be a give-away for your email subscribtion. as well as a bit of social media marketing.

Your background makes me want to leave almost immediately.

al

Hi! I would love to help you. I sent a PM.

All I can say is that it took me about 4-5 years to fully understand how to earn money on the internet with affiliate programs. Struggled for all those first few years. Here is some great advice.

I am sure that you will fall many times and will not see real or any results. What ever you do, just never quit.

Find a good mentor who has been doing really well online and learn from them.

Those are some very good arguments Alexa. Well supported!

I took me two weeks of 7 days a week at 10 hours a day to make a membership site.

Tools I used
WordPress
Optimize Press
S2member
Simple Press
And a few other plugins.

Did it all myself with no outsourcing.

You just have to set a goal, sit down and do it.

I think it depends in each individual, on the niche you choose, on motivation and maybe on good luck.

Can't really pinpoint how long it took me because I started with building a website for my offline business at the time. That site took 6 to 8 months to generate new business. That's when I stumbled onto IM. Even after experience building a local business site that was successful, it took me about 2 years to go entirely online. I worked about 3 hours a day and weekends in the beginning on my online biz.

I started making good money when I focused on 2 sites only and striving to make them really good.

You're in a great niche. You should no doubt be able to earn far more money than you are. Learning how to monetize is part of the process and it took me a long time, despite having consistent traffic. For example, my first affiliate marketing site was a passion project that took me 18 months to figure out how to monetize despite plenty of targeted traffic. I didn't want to alienate my audience so I had to tread carefully. I'm glad I did. Now it does very well.

Suggestions for you (what I would do):

Branch out from only success stories to informative articles about IVF. There's probably tons of research you could use to help people. This will likely result in more traffic. I love the success story angle and use them on 1 of my sites, but I believe people want to read other information.

See if you can enter into a private referral arrangement with any private IVF clinics that you believe are very good. This takes some effort, but I believe given the high cost of IVF there are potentially some very good commission potential. I suspect people are more interested in concrete referral to a clinic than a digital product ... I would be.

I'd communicate your free IVF guide differently. You'll have to test variations, but try saying something like "Discover the 5 Most Important Steps I Took that Made IVF Work for Me (or Us)" or "IVF Didn't Work for Me Until I Did These 5 Things" or phrase it in the negative "Discover 3 things You Should Avoid for Successful IVF" or if you have suggestions for inexpensive IVF options that work, offer that as a freebie (this would be good given IVF is frightfully expensive).

Once you have plenty of new subscribers, you could easily start a baby/parenting blog and get your IVF subscribers to move to that email subscription ... be sure to wait a while and this is tricky if IVF doesn't work for all subscribers. The parenting industry offers all kinds of affiliate opportunities. I know because my wife and I had a baby a year ago and we've spent thousands of dollars and hours researching many purchases. If your IVF readers like and trust you, you can do well in the parenting space because of your existing audience.

Good luck.