My site isn't generating $ :(

25 replies
This is my site Cooking with Tricia Cooking RecipesCooking with Tricia and even though I have a store, people don't buy suggestions?
#generating #site
  • Profile picture of the author blackli0n
    No traffic, inefficient design, no clarity about what you do or what you sell. It took me 15 seconds to figure out what site offers. I know the what site is about, but it took me a while to figure out what it offers.
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    • Profile picture of the author Anomalous
      The layout could use some work. Its just a bit haphazard, and it isn't clear what action to take without looking all over. I just needs to be more focused.
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  • Profile picture of the author LadyCEO
    Thank you, so should I change the banner?
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  • Profile picture of the author ecoverartist
    It also took me several minutes to figure out what the site was about. I see a lot of ads for non-cooking related things, and then Amazon store stuff overlapping other graphics. It really looks as if ads and code was sort of plopped into the design rather than planned out in a way that makes sense and is appealing to visitors.

    Also, there's no *you* in the site. I see it's cooking with Tricia, but who's Tricia and why should I cook with her? What does she... bring to the table... so to speak? Add more of your voice and your style in there!

    Source: I do website critiques and improvement for a living
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  • Profile picture of the author CindyPink
    generate traffic. more visitors would mean a bigger chance of having buyers. or maybe you have to change the name of the site, its quite dull.
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    • Profile picture of the author aduttonater
      Provide special offers and discounts for the products that you are selling. Get people excited to buy your products. Valentines day is coming up, and is a perfect time for people to buy each other products, why not yours?
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  • Profile picture of the author Webdesign353
    Your site looks like it is set up well. In the past i have owned a few recipe sites and generated a ton of traffic. All i can say is it is very hard to convert traffic from recipe sites. I had adsense on my sites and they trickled in some cash but no where near what i was looking for. I then tried to sell an ebook full of recipes and had no success whatsoever. You need to gain huge amounts of traffic to make a recipe site worth it from my point of view. I suggest for you to place adsense on your site and at least you will be pulling in some cash. This is just based off of my experience
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  • Profile picture of the author blackli0n
    I would get a complete redesign. Get a professional designer and then change everything!
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    Passive income since 2007. Trying to consistently crack 5-figures/month. find what you love - dream big - work hard
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  • Profile picture of the author YasirYar
    I would recommend you get a new theme to work well with your niche market. You can also generate more sales if you build your list first and work more on traffic generation. Your product can be promising if you tapped your real market potential. Just work hard on your site redesign and off-site SEO, then you'd surely make more $$$ in no time at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author Karry
    I love to cook. I'm one of those people who takes photos of their food. I love cooking sites. I even buy stuff on cooking sites.

    I didn't feel engaged when I visited your site. I wanted to meet Tricia. I just don't want to be told what a website is going to offer me, I want to see it for myself. I definitely want to see photos of the food on a cooking site too.
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  • Profile picture of the author nicholasb
    your design is killing you, and this is pretty much just a lame looking amazon affiliate site.

    Your site is called cooking with Tricia, but wheres Tricia? what does she look like? Is she even real.

    There's no personal touch, turn on the food network and watch any cooking show. You need to add a personal touch, create a personality, and make it entertaining.

    It's a cooking site, and your talking about targeting, when the site was launched, nobody cares. They want recipes. If they saw you actually using the things you were trying to sell then you might actually sell something.

    In this case I would say take it down and start over. Do some videos of you cooking doing demonstrations and using the stuff your trying to sell.
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  • Profile picture of the author JasonBennet
    You might consider putting an opt in form on your website and give away a free report to grow your own list of subscribers. This will be the long term approach to having your online business as you can promote other relevant product.

    I will also personally make my landing page much simpler and provide the content in a blog format.

    Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author sweetdreamfactory
    Banned
    To a cooking site or recipe site like this. I am very impressed when I see photos of the dishes you have cooked. The actual photo, you can put that. Or you can make a video demonstration on how you do your dishes. Improve the blog design as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author AlexCN
      Tricia-

      You have a big fancy posh header, a nice looking navigation menu and a 1000 x 300 pixel space right under that for social share buttons and a block of adsense.

      Remember, people are NOT going to want to visit your site for the 3 things outlined above which completely dominate your home page above the fold! In fact, the only thing that I really see above the fold, as far as content, is a big title that says "WELCOME!"....

      Very very dull. If I was interested enough to scroll down to see what else the site had to offer (which it is unlikely that many visitors would do) they are greeted by an equally boring block of text or some kind of article or something. Why would anyone stop to read that?? It looks boring!

      Remember, you are in an ultra competitive Niche here - Food - and even MORE competitive due to the fact you arent really targeting any specific cusine or anything.... just 'Trish's Cusines'

      Get RID of the dominating header. If you insist on having a header, limit it to 100 px. Get rid of the cheesy social share buttons that are taking up 25% of the above the fold view on the home page. If you insist on having an adsense block above the fold, stick it in the header on the right side so it doesnt take up more room than it needs to.

      NEXT, you need to tell visitors what to do!! You need to LEAD them! What do you want a visitor who lands on your site to do?? Is it to simply read your recipes and share them on facebook? Is it to click on an adsense block? Is it to sign up to your recipe list? A visitor landing right now would have no clue what to do at all as you are not clearly telling them what to do, either verbally or with your site design.

      Step 1 is to decide what your MAIN goal for visitors to your site is. Step 2 is to design your site (and your visitors eyes) around that end goal. Throwing up a bunch of random posts and hoping people click on your store and buy something is not going to generate sales.

      Alex
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  • Profile picture of the author Gengis
    I would look at some successful cooking sites that generate lots of traffic and model them..

    Meaning i would start doing what they're doing. Your site unfortunately looks cheap , you need a more professional look in my opinion..
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  • Profile picture of the author CatK
    Tricia, I'd also like to suggest you get more content on your site.

    Ads above the fold is a turn off, for people and Google.

    You appear to be only targeting the keyword "healthy recipe" which would be a very competative keyword. Get more keywords into your title tag and description. Use the Google keyword tool for research.
    Good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author auseek
    Place an Optin Form..& give away something for free.
    Begin List Building..
    then you'll have an audience to market to forever !

    -Theo-
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  • Profile picture of the author mialove
    Bad design, no person touch, no focus.
    I believe that if you will improve those, you will start to see sells.
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  • Profile picture of the author simonj007
    Hi,

    Yes, for me it was unclear what the site was about...

    Solve a problem for people and you'll never be short of money - keep it simple.

    Simon
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    • Profile picture of the author danits
      Hi,
      You got a lot of great tips here...

      The 2 most important things for me are:
      1. Site's design
      2. Who's behind the site

      About the design - I think that you should consult a professional web designer and think how you can make it simpler to your targeted audience.

      About who's behind the site - I think you must reveal yourself and let your audience get to know you. You can add a welcoming video, picture, "About" page, contact email...

      People buy from people the trust... you must get people to connect with you in order to make sales.

      And the most important thing is to never give-up!

      Take baby steps, make small changes and see how it effects your sales. It can take time, but if you know your business contributes value, then you will eventually make it

      I wish you the best of luck!

      Regards,
      Danit
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  • Profile picture of the author khooster1
    Look like those auto blogs .. No character at all. There is no clear monetizing method in place.

    Who is Tricia? Need to convert that to your viewers.

    Did You promote your website? Social Media? PPC? Etc?

    Get a designer to work on the site. It will improve your bounce rate results.
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  • Profile picture of the author playtone
    I would hire a professional to do your website. You want people to spend money on the site yet you dont want to spend any money on the website. There are 100's of people in here that can do the job for you at a great price
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  • Profile picture of the author EPoltrack77
    your on the right track, you built a site and put yourself ahead of most. You need to set up some analytics to start tracking your traffic. After you start sending some visitors and hopefully they are targeted visitors you need to measure what they are doing on your site and them make improvments on your site. You need to optimize it. It could take a couple of days, weeks or even months depending on your level of expertise. What you want to do is keep an eye out on your numbers. your CTR and conversion rates and work on getting those as high as possible. You should set up a system to capture names and email as well and leverage your work.
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  • Profile picture of the author rajeevsh
    The layout is all over the place. That's not a big deal though... you can take care of it. But that's the first thing I'd do, before getting traffic and before doing anything else.

    You need to have a good website in place, and proper funnels set up so that you can (a) build trust when people come to your website, and (b) get a few sales. Right now, it's all over the place, as I said.

    I would start with defining a purpose for the website. It's separate from the store, and if you plan to post content over a period of time in order to build trust and authority, that's a good way to go about it. If not, you need to have a plan in mind. I would definitely follow what Alex said.

    Keep in mind though that a good design won't be enough to get sales -- it will, however, be a good start. You will need to get traffic from other sources (search engines, other blogs, forums, etc. for a start) and over time, as your traffic builds up, your sales should too.

    So, take small steps. Try and put a better website together, and once that's done, put together a plan for getting traffic and implement it.
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    • Profile picture of the author andrewkar
      Yeah...

      Your site need some proper design. Right now it's just ugly

      But it's easy to fix. Get someone from odesk or even fiver and they will fix it for you for change. Then get some tutorial about designing wp and firefox plugin called firebug and play with it.

      Learn about CSS, HTML and some basic PHP. Then play with firebug and you will learn all you need to know to make good looking wp site.
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      Do what you want to do!
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