So, I Think I've Made a Mistake

Well, to turn lemons into lemonade, you'll need some damage control and creativity here.

Consider putting adsense on the site.

Consider using other means of traffic generation to get to the site based on it's 'general idea' and not 'keywords' for SEO or ppc traffic.

One thing you can do, use PLR/MRR and self developed 'reports' that you distribute to those with an interest in the 'general topic' and use the reports to refer people back to your site.

There's more than one way to skin a cat my friend, and not all that glitters is SEO.

-Dani

I am glad you said that , that is the most important part of your first site. Now, without being my specific kind of hard to give you an opinion if you should drop it or not. Most times when you drop a site will have different reasons, some may be, not making money, not enough traffic, no market there and so on, if you be more specific it would help.

Find long tail keywords related to your niche and start writing articles using the competitive keyword you're trying to rank for as the anchor text/link.

You will be doing 2 things...

1) Getting easy traffic from the search engines. Most long tail keywords are easy to rank for by simply leveraging the power of a high PR article directory such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, Articlesbase, etc.. People reading the article will visit your site.

2) Increases the amount of backlinks to your site so you can (in theory) rank higher for the competitive keyword you're really going after.

Think "outside the box" when creating these articles using forums, facebook, twitter, Yahoo answers etc.. to give you ideas of what people are searching for in your niche and the questions they have and problems that they need solved.

NEVER cut and run... this is exactly how people don't make money, they freaking give up on everything half way through and they have 90 unfinished projects and none of them are making money because they don't see anything through.

Congrats on all you've accomplished!

Gotta agree with Alexa... There really is not enough of a fundamental base for analysis here. We do not know what your site is about, what keywords you have used for SEO, or even which, IF ANY, marketing methods you have used in order for any of us to help you and tell you when to cut and run.

We were all beginners at some point, and every single one of us arrived at that crossroads where we had to place everything in perspective and analyze what we have done and where we are really trying to go. We all make newbie mistakes and we must learn from them. And as my mom always told me NO one learns from someone else's mistakes. Sure you can use what we tell you as guidance and inspiration but never take everything you read here or anywhere else literally. Every business, person and experience is individualized and subject to interpretation.

Challenge yourself, put everything in perspective and soon enough you will figure out which way to go all on your own.

The funny thing is that those people could go back and finish 10 of those unfinished projects in about the same amount of time that it takes to start another ultimately unfinished project.

Imagine that one! ;-)

-Jack

you're not giving away much information about your site. But here's my immediate reaction:

Your URL doesn't have to match your keywords.

Let your inner pages match your keywords. Do the keyword research to find the best keywords. If you're in a popular niche then go for the long-tail keywords. Then create articles inside your webpages to reflect the keywords. The search Engines are not just looking at your index page: they are looking at the pages within- the titles of those pages (keywords) and the content (more keywords).

Don't give up.

Just keep asking questions here on the forum and people will help you.
Best Wishes
Joe

Thanks for bringing this up I feel the same way , like I`m getting nowhere , but I have faith that in the end it`ll all come together ,

if it was easy everone would be doing it ,

what i`ve learned that success does not come easy for anyone it takes time

, anyone who says just push a button and the money comes out ( which I fell for so many times lol) is lying.

we`ll look back at this and laugh someday

^^ I love it.

If you are already doubting it, I would pull the plug. I'm sure you can start over and make something bigger and better than what is there currently. But if that's not what you chose to do, best of luck.

Keep in mind that virtually no one makes a living online from just one website. So the odds are pretty good that you will need to round out your portfolio of sites in any event. Learn from your mistakes on this one and move on, or keep it for experimentation. But don't focus all of your attention on it.

Riding a dead horse (or a wounded website) is similar to hanging on to a dying stock only because you "hope" it will recover its value.

If you have learned something from the experience, you haven't lost anything. That knowledge will serve you well with your next project. But if you are certain that you made a mistake with this project, dump it and start over, if there's nothing salvageable. I'm dumped many projects that I felt were heading in the wrong direction, but I learned something from each of them.

Don't abandon, just reduce.

Start giving less love to this project, and start focusing on a new one which you feel more confident about.

If you are getting any traffic, throw adsense on it, and try to make a few dollars off the site. You can still throw a occasional article on it, and keep it fresh with a weekly update, and maybe an hour or so of other work per week.

As you start working further into your business development you will discover you might have just as many, or more, losers than winners. Make decisions quickly, and move on. Let the losers make you a few dollars where they can, or unload them.

When you strike pay dirt on a niche, then expand it out, and give it lots of love.