"Bridge Sites"

Im just wondering if anyone has experience in this sort of website.

Sounds kind of like an online mall, those did not work out so well for most people. Maybe it might work if you picked a few products in a category and wrote some presell pages for them.

Just stocking the digital shelves sounds good in theory and might work if you had a captive list of people to send to your site. But just getting random traffic is probably not going to work out so well.

The home page? Let's break it down!

Menu bar - you don't need the exclamation points (Baking Desserts!)

The headline - Weak. No real benefit for the reader, unless you hit the odd duck that gets their jollies reading reviews by unknown reviewers with no real qualifications.

Two blank ad spots - Makes the site look unfinished. Even if you can't sell ads yet, you'd be better served to fill the space with ads from food-related charities than leaving them blank.

The disclaimer - While I appreciate your honesty here, the phrasing pretty much screams 'I'm doing this for the money, hit the back button now'.

The "related tags" - One mouse-over shows that these are not really 'related tags', they're ads. And they aren't really all that closely related. Not only that, the plain blue links against the darker blue background makes them washed out at best, and seem hidden at worst.

On to the reviews...

On the plus side, your writing style isn't bad for this kind of site. Very personable. You don't need all the exclamation points here, either.

On the minus side, I don't know why you think people looking for cookbooks want an analysis of the sales pages. When you open the review with talk about squeeze pages, it's another red flag. You might as well put a big banner at the top of the page saying "I'm not a foodie, I'm a marketer who wants to sell you stuff".

The review of the book itself (I looked at the BBQ review) is a little sketchy, but not a bad start.

You do have a technical issue with the Facebook comments app - seems you don't have it configured right, because there's an error message saying your App ID is not valid.

Again, marking the infolinks ads as related tags is deceptive, and the ads themselves are not even closely related.

Adwords considers it a bridge site because it is a bridge site. It's pretty obvious that the sole reason it exists is to funnel people to Clickbank via your affiliate link.

At some point, you must have run across a cookbook that wasn't a strong buy recommendation. Review sites with only glowing reviews raise suspicion, something you can't afford to do.

There's potential here, but still a lot wrong...

Instead of looking at this site like an "Internet Marketer", look at it like a member of the target market. Even better, spend enough time around various foodie sites and blogs to craft a profile of the ideal visitor, then write the home page and reviews for that ideal visitor.

I think you're on the right track, but you haven't reached the core benefit yet.

What does the buyer get out of becoming a better cook and preparing better meals at home?

I'm a better cook and preparing better meals - so what?

Maybe it's "my family will know how much I love them." Or "being a better cook will make me a better parent, which will mean my kids will have a better life."

Even with something as simple as cookbooks, your core benefit should be something BIG.

Great start on the exercise...

Hey Danny,

You're talking about a 'feature' here, not a benefit which is what John is talking about.

What does being a better cook do for the cook? How would making better meals benefit him? That's your benefit.

Another example:
Wikipedia has tons of information. But if you were selling it, that information isn't a 'benefit'. It's a feature.

The fact that you can spend 5 minutes reading on Wikipedia and become an expert on anything (not literally) and FLAUNT it in front of your friends - that's a benefit.

Hope this helps

I was also considering doing it direct checkout through clickbank using my referral username still. Maybe once my editor gives me the first review completion i will see how much information is provided and if it would be enough to use direct checkout without leaving my website.

Thanks for the input!

-Danny