General Fall Update - Marketing Failures & Looking to the Future
Posted 23rd September 2010 at 12:32 PM by jamiedolan
Hello;
Early 2010, I dove into several internet marketing projects. My initial main project was the creation and marketing of a Forum. The plan was not only to create and market the forum, but to use it as a tool to create a mailing list that we could market to. The Forum (Willys Jeep) has been up and running for about 9 months now.
While we got a nice start and did attract some attention from my initial marketing efforts, the site did not grow as expected.
We had planed to take over a very large established site (1000+ visitors per day), after several months of back and forth with the site owner, they decided not to sell the site as they had previously agreed to. So we never had the influx of members we were counting on. Despite the disappointment of not have this site take over happen, we have kept the jeep forum running. My dad has still been updating information on the site and responding to questions that people ask.
We hope that over time the site will grow, and perhaps once again in the future we will have the opportunity to take over a larger more established site as we have planned.
A difficult and expensive lesson was learned relating to the marketing for the Jeep forum. I have researched the statistics in terms of how many people searched for our primary keywords through a number of key word tools, including Google. Which I have now realized is that many of those estimates were grossly inaccurate to say the least. On some of our primary keywords, Google quoted 60,000 exact matches. Now on one of those keywords that Google quoted 60,000 exact matches, we have held the number one or two position in Google for the better part of the last 6 months now. We are lucky to get 3,000 to 5,000 visitors from the keyword that was suppose to generate 60,000.
After not having using Adsence for a number of years, I experimented with it again this year and got a bit of a better feeling for how it all works. I didn't have a large budget dedicated to Adsence for the Jeep site, but did invest enough to get some more experience under my belt.
I'm doing well, it has been a very nice summer here in Neenah, WI. I just started to write in my personal blog (Jamie Dolan) again after not getting around to writing anything for almost 4 months. While it is a bit sad that the summer is quickly rolling to a halt, I do look forward to the extra time it will afford for me to write again.
Moving forward, I really want to get into mailing lists. I've been working on writing in some specialty niches and I am looking to put to use what I learned on this forum to create and grow multiple lists.
Though not a complete failure with the Jeep Forum, I am going to more or less chalk that up to a learning experience. I am looking forward to improved success this fall and winter.
I hope everyone here is doing well. I look forward to seeing you all on the forum as I have more time to spend here once the seasons change.
Take Care,
Jamie Dolan
Early 2010, I dove into several internet marketing projects. My initial main project was the creation and marketing of a Forum. The plan was not only to create and market the forum, but to use it as a tool to create a mailing list that we could market to. The Forum (Willys Jeep) has been up and running for about 9 months now.
While we got a nice start and did attract some attention from my initial marketing efforts, the site did not grow as expected.
We had planed to take over a very large established site (1000+ visitors per day), after several months of back and forth with the site owner, they decided not to sell the site as they had previously agreed to. So we never had the influx of members we were counting on. Despite the disappointment of not have this site take over happen, we have kept the jeep forum running. My dad has still been updating information on the site and responding to questions that people ask.
We hope that over time the site will grow, and perhaps once again in the future we will have the opportunity to take over a larger more established site as we have planned.
A difficult and expensive lesson was learned relating to the marketing for the Jeep forum. I have researched the statistics in terms of how many people searched for our primary keywords through a number of key word tools, including Google. Which I have now realized is that many of those estimates were grossly inaccurate to say the least. On some of our primary keywords, Google quoted 60,000 exact matches. Now on one of those keywords that Google quoted 60,000 exact matches, we have held the number one or two position in Google for the better part of the last 6 months now. We are lucky to get 3,000 to 5,000 visitors from the keyword that was suppose to generate 60,000.
After not having using Adsence for a number of years, I experimented with it again this year and got a bit of a better feeling for how it all works. I didn't have a large budget dedicated to Adsence for the Jeep site, but did invest enough to get some more experience under my belt.
I'm doing well, it has been a very nice summer here in Neenah, WI. I just started to write in my personal blog (Jamie Dolan) again after not getting around to writing anything for almost 4 months. While it is a bit sad that the summer is quickly rolling to a halt, I do look forward to the extra time it will afford for me to write again.
Moving forward, I really want to get into mailing lists. I've been working on writing in some specialty niches and I am looking to put to use what I learned on this forum to create and grow multiple lists.
Though not a complete failure with the Jeep Forum, I am going to more or less chalk that up to a learning experience. I am looking forward to improved success this fall and winter.
I hope everyone here is doing well. I look forward to seeing you all on the forum as I have more time to spend here once the seasons change.
Take Care,
Jamie Dolan
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