Spinning my wheels?

Gonzo -

Keep at it - sometimes it's simply a matter of perseverance, although I know how frustrating it can be to spend time and money and feel like it's not moving the traffic or income gauge.

Just a few suggestions / questions:

1. You mention having a lot of competition - is there a very narrow niche of that trucker market that you might be able to tackle and become the #1 source in that small niche? Often times you may think a narrow corner of the market is too small to support even an individual owner, but in my experience most people make the opposite mistake of going too wide. Being #1 in even the most narrowest of niches within a niche can be very profitable.

2. On your email form, I'd take away every field and radio button on there except for one - the email field. I know only that one is mandatory, but just the site of other fields in the form can reduce your conversion.

In my humble opinion, most people will never have enough traffic to make significant money with advertising. For 99.9% of individual website owners out there, the money is made on their email list. Even a small list can make good money if you have a good audience.

And finally, don't wait until you have the traffic to sell an e-book - write it and do it now! You won't sell thousands of copies, but the amount you do sell is money in the bank and once you do the work, you can sell it over and over with no additional work.

Best of luck - you can do this.

Tim

How long have you been working on the site ? It should be a profitable niche but without seeing the site no can really help you. Do you have any adsense, amazon or affilatle links on your site currently ? Are you building a list ? Is the writing unique content or spun ?

Its not clear what your page is about.
The articles look like the news kind of thing.
I see no reason to stay on your page right now as a trucker. It seems too random with no life in it.

Reading gonzotrucker as domain name sounds bad ass but the site is rather boring.

Get a concept.
Some powerfull push. More fire. More bad ass. More provocative.

Sure has potential but just keep posting random articles wont get you anything I think.

My vote is yes and yes.

First thing I'd have to say is kudos on the social media, especially Twitter...

... that's a hell of a job, and I'd like to get a few tips from you in that arena!

But first, about your site.

Is your niche trucking news? That's a huge market to break into, and I'd have to agree w/ membercon; if you can break that niche down into a smaller one, you'll start seeing faster growth.

Then as you grow, you can take on more within that niche until you've dominated the entire market, God willing.

When I visited your site, I found myself desperately searching for the usual navigation to find out more, but it wasn't there.

So my only option is to scroll through articles until I find a good one.

A navigation bar will help a TON - "Home" "About" "Sub-niche" "Sub-niche" "Etc."

When I saw your sign up form, the word "free" caught my eye. Because I like free stuff...

...but I also like knowing what free stuff I can get.

I could be getting a free kick in the junk for all I know.

So there's that - better copy for your opt in will build your email list faster, and that's one of the best things you can do if you want to start making money with the site.

Lastly, the categories and stuff you have on the bottom would be far more effective on the top. I never look there, and just happened to see it as I scrolled down.

Hope that helps you a little...

...I'm kind of curious about how much time you spend on social media - your work there is pretty impressive. This is something I need to work on badly.

I don't like how the header doesn't line up with the content. That is a 5 minute fix from a qualified developer. That traffic is pretty good. Sometimes things take time, and you might want to slow down your spending a little but find ways to monetize in a smaller way for a while like advertising. Start making a profit from that even if small.

You said you were hiring writers. I think you may need to be more involved in the writing, and reaching out to real people that can participate on your site as well.

Thanks everyone you are a big help. I will implement some changes right away.

I'm on Twitter daily every minute i'm awake. I reply to every single tweet i get. I try and connect with people on a personal level. Even if they only have 5 followers. I put myself in there shoes. I remember little things like who is their favorite sports team.

So i can use that when i chat with them. It takes a lot of work but when i tweet a link to one of my articles if it's a good one i will get up to 200 sometimes hits from Twitter alone.

I do think that this could be very successful. This is something that people look into often.

Absolutely!

Find ways to stand out with your content. Video is usually the best way to do this. Shoot videos on bits of value from your ebook, or telling stories about your experience in the industry(or whatever)

Build a list and connect with the people on it through your videos. Its crazy, but people that like to watch your videos will think and feel like they know you....and will be more inclined to buy from you.

Keep at it. Chances are you are just inches from gold

I think it's a good niche and worth continuing with.

There are many ways to niche down. Do keyword research, but also think about your target audience. Some ideas to get started are:

Truck driver training focus
Truck driving industry insider news
Dump truck drivers
Long haulers
Owner/Operators (potential for great business-oriented ebooks here I think)
Truck driving safety
Truck driver personal injury/Work injury

Some of these could be combined such as safety issues could be covered on an owner/operator focused site. Same with workplace injury issues.

There's potentially plenty of complementary products to promote as an affiliate (or create) - fitness for truckers, dating for truckers, weight loss for truckers, healthy eating for truckers ... all of which could be info you provide/promote in an email newsletter.