9 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
9 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Could a pro look at my site?

by earlgray
8 replies
This is my first foray into IM. I still have a full time job and have had to find time to work on this before work, at lunch, and after work for the past week. I'm not finished yet, but I'd say I'm 50% there at least. I have a few more articles to write, the pictures are placeholders until I can get some legal ones. Also looking to put together a cookbook. Give 3 recipes free, put the rest in an ebook.

Anyway, if someone could just have a look at it and let me know what I might need to work on, I'd appreciate it. I haven't backlinked it at all yet, but have already gotten over a 100 views! (I know, baby stuff to you, but I was thrilled.) I think I may just try to get this directly in front of my potential audience by riding the coattails of the king in this niche, dogster.com

Also, do you think there's a chance someone might want to buy my site? I know most people here are to build residual income, but having a nice little lump sum to get that set up would be good too.

Anyway, thanks guys. I appreciate all your thoughts and input. I'm determined to quit my job in a few years and start enjoying my life instead of slaving away 9-5!

badfoodfordogs.com <--- that's me!
#pro #site
  • Profile picture of the author theebookcavern
    Haha. I love the dog with the sunglasses in the bottom right.

    I really like the look of the site in general. There's 3 small changes I would make...
    1) Remove the links to your social profiles until you have them set up. At the moment your just giving visitors the potential to click away from your site.
    2) Change your Adsense unit in the right hand sidebar to 300 * 250. At the moment it's not quite filling the sidebar and is leaving some white space.
    3) Once you have more posts, apply some kind of delay to the posts that appear at the bottom. Something like, the 4 most recent at the top and 4 older posts at the bottom. At the moment the same 4 posts appear twice.

    Hope this helps,

    Tom
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5936186].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author earlgray
    Thanks for the tips 3book.

    I forgot to add that a logo is coming. I found a pretty good deal on elance. So far, I'm in about $100, for domain, hosting, theme, and logo. I might be willing to spend a little more to flesh out some more articles. Oh yeah, and still need buy legit pictures. I'm drawing the line at $250. Seems like enough to make it a decent investment.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5936228].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author theebookcavern
      Originally Posted by earlgray View Post

      Thanks for the tips 3book.

      I forgot to add that a logo is coming. I found a pretty good deal on elance. So far, I'm in about $100, for domain, hosting, theme, and logo. I might be willing to spend a little more to flesh out some more articles. Oh yeah, and still need buy legit pictures. I'm drawing the line at $250. Seems like enough to make it a decent investment.
      Istock photo are pretty good for photos. Sounds like a plan with the other stuff.

      How are you going to be driving traffic to it?

      Is it going to be a regularly updated thing or are you going to have it as a static site once the content is in place?

      Tom
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5936487].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author earlgray
        Originally Posted by theebookcavern View Post

        Istock photo are pretty good for photos. Sounds like a plan with the other stuff.

        How are you going to be driving traffic to it?

        Is it going to be a regularly updated thing or are you going to have it as a static site once the content is in place?

        Tom
        Yeah I'll probably go with istock. Just need to bang that out this weekend.

        As for traffic, frankly I don't think my little netbook could handle a UAW or something like it. Plus, that's more than I'm willing to spend at the moment. So for now I guess I'm going the old fashioned route. I'll manually write articles on the major article site and link back. Then I'll start spreading information around facebook and the major social bookmarking sites and relevant discussion forums. I don't want to come across as a spammer, so I'm really going to have to tailor my lead and links there. But I think I could have everything completed and ready by next weekend, minus the ebook.

        Since this is my first venture, I'm not expecting thousands of dollars from it. If I could just spend a few hours a week maintaining it and it earns me a couple hundred bucks a month, I could do that. Then again, sell it or set it and forget it wouldn't be so bad either. Guess I'll just have to wait and see where it goes. The dog owner niche is pretty big so I could see a small community building around it if it started to grow.

        I mean, I started this with the intention of paying off my student loans. Whatever path leads me to that end the fastest is the way I'm going to go
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5937732].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author piermichel
    It is a pretty clean website, i like it. Not to sure about the calender if it is a right fit? Put some dog related affiliate on it.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5937784].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Birdi
    Originally Posted by earlgray View Post

    This is my first foray into IM. I still have a full time job and have had to find time to work on this before work, at lunch, and after work for the past week. I'm not finished yet, but I'd say I'm 50% there at least. I have a few more articles to write, the pictures are placeholders until I can get some legal ones. Also looking to put together a cookbook. Give 3 recipes free, put the rest in an ebook.

    Anyway, if someone could just have a look at it and let me know what I might need to work on, I'd appreciate it. I haven't backlinked it at all yet, but have already gotten over a 100 views! (I know, baby stuff to you, but I was thrilled.) I think I may just try to get this directly in front of my potential audience by riding the coattails of the king in this niche, dogster.com

    Also, do you think there's a chance someone might want to buy my site? I know most people here are to build residual income, but having a nice little lump sum to get that set up would be good too.

    Anyway, thanks guys. I appreciate all your thoughts and input. I'm determined to quit my job in a few years and start enjoying my life instead of slaving away 9-5!

    badfoodfordogs.com <--- that's me!

    hey checked out your site

    pretty good, is it an authority site your trying to build? or are you just reviewing products on them?

    on the side bar set up an optin list, give something for free to capture the customers email address, this way your building a list of customers who could be interested in other products you promote in the niche.

    place in your terms and condition page, privacy policy page, etc it's important to do that.

    birdi
    Signature
    Click Here To Learn How To Generate Your First PayCheck Online!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5938039].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author piermichel
    I forget also to mention that you have not customised your setting for the page and post url. it is still showing the number at the end of the url which is not to good for seo purposes. just change it to %postname% in the setting area
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5938090].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Mbullard
    1. Yeah, you need to optimize your title tags. Right now they're very generic.
    2. Once you do get some royalty free photos (i suggest clipart.com, yes for photos) make sure to optimize them with keywords.
    3. Some of your posts tags don't make much sense to me: 'headline', 'featured', etc.
    4. You have an optin in the upper right but no idea what it's an optin for. Put something there to explain what people will get if they give up their email.
    Signature

    YouTube Marketing Mastery - Discover what you can do with YouTube.
    YouTube Marketing Mastery

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5940086].message }}

Trending Topics