Popular Blog, Well Optimised, Visitors, Low Sign-ups, Am I Missing Something?

[lifesshort]

I know that this sounds like “how long is a piece of string”, but… How long would you expect from starting a new blog would you expect to receive what you would consider a growing opt-in rate along with making a few affiliate sales?

To date, which is around only 5-weeks I have only received around 10 sign-ups for my newsletter and none for my RSS feed. I can’t help thinking that I’m missing something here or am I expecting too much in such a short length of time but I occasionally read the odd post on this forum that some receive hundreds of sign-ups within days and make many sales again within days.

• I have a blog that involves a popular sporting theme and my blog, I think, is very well SEO optimised. It features a few videos within and there is the odd advertisement for an affiliate product or two that are not too in your face.

• I researched my keywords and attacked just a couple of phrases.

• I post 4 or 5 articles per week that I have written which are very good and my bio box only uses two links to my site, one is using anchor text for the keyword and the other is my blog address. In fact I have received a few comments to my blog from what appears to be eminent experts in the field that the articles are very good and a pleasure to read. Not only that, I have received a request to feature some of my writings from an author of an up and coming new book.

• I use pingoat to publicise my blog postings.

• I also post articles to a few article directories that receive a good number of views with click throughs to my blog. And I have submitted my blog to many directories.

• I can do a Google search for just one keyword phrase and for instance my rankings on the first 2-pages, you can see 6/7 listings for that phrase from my articles, normal SEO and what other blog users have posted on their sites, that they have taken from article directories, which feature my bio. Not only that, when I check my stats people are finding and coming to my blog from several other different keywords and according to Google’s analytics, my bounce rate is less than 2%, so it appears people are staying and reading what I have to say.

• I have an opt-in box that shows on every page on the right-hand side of my blog that offers an Ebook and a 7-day Ecourse for signing up to my newsletter and I also place the opt-in at the end of every post. Also on the home page only, the opt-in box appears on a pop-up.

• In the short weeks my blog has been active, if I place my web address in to Google search there are nearly 1000 results shown for my site. And within a few weeks my Alexa traffic rank ratings have jumped from over 24 million down to just over 8 million.

I would appreciate any opinions or suggestions to my very frustrating dilemma (that’s if you think I have one?) and I apologise for the long post. But as my username suggests, lifesshort!!!

[Tyrus Antas]

Originally Posted by lifesshort

To date, which is around only 5-weeks I have only received around 10 sign-ups for my newsletter and none for my RSS feed.

Most people don't know what RSS is so they won't use it unless you offer a way for them to get "automatic updates" which for most people will mean email.

Without knowing what your site is and how it looks I would change your newsletter opt-in from the right of your website to bellow your header/title.

What kind of traffic are you getting? You didn't say.

You say you blog about a "popular sporting theme". That might be a problem. If it's popular it attracts alot of people. But is it the people you really want? If you wrote about how to manage a soccer team you'd probably get alot of visitors just from organic traffic but they'd probably not be interested in knowing how to manage teams. They just want soccer info.

Your offer for a newsletter signup might not be very enticing. What's in it for me? Why should I sign? How will it change my life, make me rich, convince beautiful long-black hair girls to mate with me?

As a last note, blogs aren't particulary good at converting visitors to newsletter signups. There's too much to look at, too much to choose. That's why I always prefer to first create a small number of landing pages, optimize them for important market keywords and then make people sign-up for a newsletter. Only after I have a high number of readers do I start a blog.

Tyrus

[JamesMSpacey]

Originally Posted by lifesshort

I can’t help thinking that I’m missing something here or am I expecting too much in such a short length of time but I occasionally read the odd post on this forum that some receive hundreds of sign-ups within days and make many sales again within days.

I think you're right, you are missing something - the instant riches hype is really just that - hype. You are expecting too much. My honest advice is this - keep going for 6 months - reviewing your analytics to see what keywords you're getting long-tail traffic for and then writing new posts for those keywords and getting targeted anchor text backlinks until you are ranking #1 for a few long-tails and on the first page for your main keyword. The first couple of pages of Google is great, particularly if there is high competition, but the money spot is #1 pure and simple. And don't worry about the money part of your work for a while. It just gets frustrating. You're getting sign-ups with a little traffic so you'll keep getting them with more traffic - only you'll get more. You need to take a longer-term view.

[lifesshort]

Thank you for that comment and yes may be I'm being a little impatient and expecting far too much early on.
I'll keep monitoring, writing and posting.