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KetTarma posted:Its a hobby electronics blog with a bunch of articles on science-related stuff. Based on that, I'd strongly suggest having plenty of on-site links to your other articles - IN the article wherever practical, since that's how I traversed (for example) Phantom Loads and the related content.
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Feb 13, 2014 20:01
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The You Might Like and Related Links things arent enough? I generally try to refer to other articles if they build off of each other but 90% of them are one-off.
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Feb 13, 2014 22:13
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KetTarma posted:The You Might Like and Related Links things arent enough? I generally try to refer to other articles if they build off of each other but 90% of them are one-off.
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Feb 14, 2014 02:10
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Jesus H. Christ... why is my bounce rate so drat high? It's sitting at like 65%. Backstory: On my previous wordpress theme my bounce rate was like 5%. Then I switched themes and it shot up to 65%. None of the content has changed and I think my new site looks a ton better then the old.
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Feb 14, 2014 03:21
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Omits-Bagels posted:Jesus H. Christ... why is my bounce rate so drat high? It's sitting at like 65%. Backstory: On my previous wordpress theme my bounce rate was like 5%. Then I switched themes and it shot up to 65%. None of the content has changed and I think my new site looks a ton better then the old. Post you site, please.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:03
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jabro posted:Post you site, please. oops. http://thesavvybackpacker.com
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Feb 14, 2014 05:37
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I thought the massive scrolling image was an ad. It also scrolls way too fast.
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Feb 14, 2014 05:42
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I didn't really explore your old site thoroughly but I liked the old layout. If I remember, it was basically no scrolling, with each section as a little box, right? Yeah, I liked that. I also thought the color palette was better before, more cohesive. The blue text of the new site is really distracting to me. And that box really scrolls fast.
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Feb 14, 2014 06:28
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Kung Fu Jesus posted:I didn't really explore your old site thoroughly but I liked the old layout. If I remember, it was basically no scrolling, with each section as a little box, right? Yeah, I liked that. I also thought the color palette was better before, more cohesive. The blue text of the new site is really distracting to me. And that box really scrolls fast. Cool. Thanks. I'm trying to get this drat thing to slow down but it ain't working. Here is the old site for reference: http://web.archive.org/web/20110331072420/http://thesavvybackpacker.com/
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Feb 14, 2014 06:40
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My thoughts: The old site is TONS better, and your bounce rate (looked at from a split-testing perspective) reflects that. To me, the new site is bright, busy, and flashing. It's like going to Vegas - which backpacking is definitely not like...at all. The GF's reaction: She likes the new design better, she says it looks less 'cluttered', but she says it doesn't look like a BLOG. It looks like a STORE. If she arrived at that site, she'd be expecting to buy something. She says that might be why the bounce rate went up so much - people land on the front page and go "Oh, poo poo! I didn't want to buy something, I wanted to learn something! Peace out, yo!" (her exact words  )
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Feb 14, 2014 08:27
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KetTarma posted:The You Might Like and Related Links things arent enough? I generally try to refer to other articles if they build off of each other but 90% of them are one-off. I think he means work in links to things that segue in without being too weird. quote:Blah blah blah kinda like phantom loads which I talk about here. Blah blah blah... Like that. Your site is going to be hard to monetise, ads are a hard way to make money even on an add friendly targeted site the click through rates are low. I also wonder if there's much cross over between your audience and the venn circle of "educated internet users" who either never click on ads or run ad-blocker. If you have no idea, (logically I think there's a fair amount) check out your analytics stats on browser greater than average firefox (also maybe chrome) compared to the net at large probably means greater than average ad blocker. In your shoes I'd probably look to Amazon associates to make some money. Don't push it too hard and use your perceived authority to flog stuff. Every few months review something related or do a "5 Best Telescopes" or something in your topic and throw in Amazon affiliate links. Where relevant I'd have a couple for books as well, "Interested in Phantom Loads? Check out this amazing book by Dave Ghost at Amazon its a really good overview of the topic". Might bring in a few extra 
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Feb 14, 2014 09:26
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:I think he means work in links to things that segue in without being too weird. Yeah, I've tried to do that a few times. I'll definitely do it more though. Cast_No_Shadow posted:Your site is going to be hard to monetise, ads are a hard way to make money even on an add friendly targeted site the click through rates are low. I also wonder if there's much cross over between your audience and the venn circle of "educated internet users" who either never click on ads or run ad-blocker. Cast_No_Shadow posted:In your shoes I'd probably look to Amazon associates to make some money. Don't push it too hard and use your perceived authority to flog stuff. Every few months review something related or do a "5 Best Telescopes" or something in your topic and throw in Amazon affiliate links. Where relevant I'd have a couple for books as well, "Interested in Phantom Loads? Check out this amazing book by Dave Ghost at Amazon its a really good overview of the topic". Might bring in a few extra I originally launched the site with the idea of doing electronics tutorials for building various things with Amazon affiliate links as the parts list. Unfortunately, doing just one of those takes a ton of time. I actually have to do the project on my own while taking pictures then organize everything to make it coherent to the average reader. I also am not actually that good at electronics compared to the average electrical engineer since I spent my life more focused on power generation. Kind of makes it difficult. I'm going to try to focus a lot more on affiliate-related stuff though. Sounds like you're confirming something I've been afraid of for a while.
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Feb 14, 2014 13:44
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KetTarma posted:I'm going to try to focus a lot more on affiliate-related stuff though. Sounds like you're confirming something I've been afraid of for a while. Its a hard way to make an easy living. A detailed run through of something would add real value to your readers would always win out over other methods but from a pure making money perspective you just want people to click that amazon link. Amazon are loving awesome at making people buy poo poo, I'm pretty sure they have the best (or at least one of) conversion rates on the net, they own that process. If you get someone to click through to amazon from an affiliate link if they buy anything on Amazon in the next 24 hours you get a cut. Thats the real goal when it comes to money making. You don't care if they buy the thing you suggested, you just want them to look at amazon and let amazon work their magic, if they buy that space doohicky great, if not theres a good chance amazon already has their preferences and stuff down and will shove those Game of Thrones action figures or whatever else they are interested in on their screen as well and if they buy those you still get that cut. With an internet aware audience you tend to find that if your offering valuable content they wont mind affiliate links, especially if you're open and honest about it, they tend to react badly to attempts to trick or hide your affiliate status however. Still you'd be surprised how much stuff you can segue an amazon link into.
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Feb 15, 2014 11:40
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Are there any better alternatives to googles keyword tool when looking for possible new terms for a new website? I'm on the edge of just getting a new site domain for a year to start another site but I cant believe that there would be so few searches for what is a massive, massive industry.
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Feb 17, 2014 00:32
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Will switching my site from .net to .com a few months down the road hurt my SEO at all? The .com is $350 so I want to make sure I am into blogging and making a small profit before I throw down that much money for a .com TLD.
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Feb 18, 2014 01:25
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Just set up a redirect from one to the other.
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Feb 18, 2014 01:32
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I've been reading through this thread so apologies if it's been discussed somewhere, but within a specific niche how technical can your writing really get before you basically screw yourself out of ever making money? I'm at kind of a crossroads because the field I'm interested in writing about (literature) basically demands some degree of specialization simply because there's no way to cover it in a general sense with even an entire team of people, let alone just one person. I like the idea of writing some literary criticism articles, since it sounds like in-depth, detailed, "expert-level" content is the way to go right now, but I'm worried about making it marketable. Obviously people interested in literary criticism will be willing to read articles that a little denser than normal, but I want to strike a balance so that I don't alienate more casual readers either. I also want to include stuff like book reviews, casual musings, possibly interviews if possible, etc., but I also don't want to risk spreading content in too many directions and making the blog look schizophrenic. I also never even considered things like the fact that more educated readers will be more likely to run ad blockers and less likely to click ads. I'm not expecting to make a living with a blog or anything, but it would be amazing to have a bit of extra income each month from something I genuinely enjoy doing; I'm just not sure how to deal with the catch-22 of a saturated field where more complex writing is one of the few ways to stand out amidst the crowd, and having that content be too technical for layman readers who are presumably the market I should be targeting.
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Feb 18, 2014 19:46
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There's no way to know what "too technical" is for your niche without actually doing some research. The best way to find out would be to write a bunch of content, get some traffic, and see if your bounce rates are higher than expected. But, even that is affected by lots of different variables so there's no single concrete answer. Generally, it's probably true that more educated readers are less likely to click on ads, but as far as I'm aware, that's based on anecdotal evidence at best. Again, you would need to do your own research here to see if your conversion rates are lower than expected. However, there are usually better ways to monetize high quality content than PPC ads. For example, if your readers see you as an authority in that niche, then you're likely to have good conversions on affiliate products if you market them honestly. DO ADD AN EMAIL SIGN-UP RIGHT NOW!! I think I overemphasized SEO in the OP, because it really only applies to niche websites with just a few pages of content. For long term blogging, I think it's much less important. Certainly there's tweaks you can incorporate, but just writing a ton of good content is way more important. You want to build readership and no amount of SEO is going to accomplish that. sim fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 20:40
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In 2 months and 2k hits, I have had 0 people sign up for an email list. I've heard of writing a free ebook and sending it to anyone that signs up. That seems like a poor use of time when right now I barely get 1 click out of the 120 (real people) likes that my Facebook page has. I imagine that an email campaign would be even less successful. or am I totally wrong here? Not even my regular readers want to sign up for emails. With regards to being too technical: I kind of have the same problem. At least 50% of my visitors are running adblocking software.
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Feb 18, 2014 23:11
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KetTarma posted:In 2 months and 2k hits, I have had 0 people sign up for an email list. Have someone write an e-book on Fiverr. It's like $5 per 500 words. Spend like $30 and you can get something book-worthy.
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Feb 20, 2014 02:15
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What do you guys put in your sidebar? I'm thinking Mini bio, popular posts widget, social icons but can't think of what else to put in. I read somewhere that the sidebar is poo poo for ads. Any truth to that?
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Feb 21, 2014 22:18
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Mine is usually 250x250 ad, search (if not elsewhere), top blog posts widget, top comments widget or twitter feed, then some other junk depending on how long i expect the blog posts to be The ad at top is usually the best performing ad on the site.
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Feb 21, 2014 22:35
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I'm doing some overdue tweaking of my sites since implementing the new theme. Unfortunately I cant seem to tweak the number of posts displayed on the frontpage and I'm having a hard time figuring out what to cram into the side bar and what to leave out. Does anyone have an opinion? http://astronomyaggregator.com/ EDIT: FCKGW posted:Mine is usually 250x250 ad, search (if not elsewhere), top blog posts widget, top comments widget or twitter feed, then some other junk depending on how long i expect the blog posts to be YMMV, my best performing ads have been in the sidebar. Plasmafountain fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 22:57
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On my site, I have an email subscription widget, sidebar ad that gets some use, top posts widget, recent comments, and another categories link that Ill probably delete.
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Feb 22, 2014 23:16
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Great I think I'll add the email subscription tomorrow and ads when I start getting more traffic. Do you use mailchimp? Are there better services out there for email subscription? My site is https://www.fruitfanatic.net. I launched it about two weeks ago and have been slowly working on it. I only have five blog posts so far and am sitting on page 20 for google search results on the keyword I chose. Any tips or criticisms are welcome.
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Feb 23, 2014 00:26
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I use the Jetpack built in widget. That being said, I've had my blog open for a little over 2 months and never had anyone sign up for email updates.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:07
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People putting top posts \ related posts in the side bar, do you also put similar at the bottom of your posts? Anyone else find at the end of the posts far out performs the side bar for clicks? I'm starting to think the internet has trained people to start ignoring everything outside the middle of a page.
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Feb 23, 2014 10:10
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I use Outbrain set up for internal recommendations only. I see a good number of clicks on this.
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Feb 23, 2014 15:20
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Has anyone got any thoughts on social media management? As in tools to handle schedualing and posting across the usuals (facebook, twitter, google+)? Analytics would be nice but not essential. Ive tried buffer but it seems unable to format links in facebook the way facebook does when used nativly and thats killer for me. Kinda defeats the point of schedualing when you have to post links manually to get them to look right!
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Feb 23, 2014 20:01
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Has anyone got any thoughts on social media management? As in tools to handle schedualing and posting across the usuals (facebook, twitter, google+)? Analytics would be nice but not essential. Ive tried buffer but it seems unable to format links in facebook the way facebook does when used nativly and thats killer for me. Kinda defeats the point of schedualing when you have to post links manually to get them to look right! This is something I need to pay attention to. I did use Tweetdeck for timing twitter and facebook posts (crudely by linking FB to repost whatever I put on Twitter) but there has to be a better option out there that encompasses at least FB, Twitter and G+. G+ also seems to be on the rise - has anyone else noticed this? I think it might be a side effect of everyone getting absolutely loving fed up of FB.
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Feb 23, 2014 21:02
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Zero Gravitas posted:This is something I need to pay attention to. I did use Tweetdeck for timing twitter and facebook posts (crudely by linking FB to repost whatever I put on Twitter) but there has to be a better option out there that encompasses at least FB, Twitter and G+. I curate a Denver Circle, and go in on my phone once or twice a week adding people with public posts on the "nearby" page in the mobile app to the Denver Circle, then I share that circle out to the Denver Circle - usually on Tuesdays. I've found that really jumpstarts some people's usage - they may have 3-4 posts over the last 6 months, and only 0-5 people circled. Then they get the shared circle from me. Those who bother to add it start getting posts from 350-400 active people in their stream, and that gives them the influx of content to get them over the hump to start giving things a +1, or a comment. Then they start seeing interesting things reshared by other Denver users - and they add *those* people and pages to their circles, etc. BOOM! Another Satisfied Customer. Long term - Google Plus is Google. Everything they've done with the platform in the last 2.5 years points toward Plus being the heart and soul that will tie everything..EVERYTHING Google together.
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Feb 24, 2014 07:24
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Something of a trip report/ review of those post scheduler things. Buffer (Free)allows you to connect one profile on each social network supported - Facebook, Twitter, G+, App.net (which I have never heard of) and LinkedIN. They aggressively push their subscription model which allows you a maximum of 12 social profiles across the five networks for for $10/£6 a month or $8.50 a month if you pay for a year at once. Hootsuite (Free) allows you to connect five profiles (not restricted to one per network) on FB, Twitter, G+, Li, Foursquare, Mixi (what?) and Wordpress. There is an option for a subscription at £7.19 (sorry yankees  no pricing given to me in dollars there) for 50-100 different profiles.In short, if you have only the one site then you can choose between Buffer or Hootsuite. If you have more sites then you probably want Hootsuite. Because of the way my sites are set up, I'm pretty much obligated to take the Hootsuite option using one profile for my 3 sites G+ pages and one profile for the twitter and facebook pages. Plasmafountain fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Feb 24, 2014 |
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Feb 24, 2014 18:48
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New to the thread, but hey, it's how I make my living: Lawyerist.com, a blog about law practice.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:55
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samglover posted:New to the thread, but hey, it's how I make my living: Lawyerist.com, a blog about law practice. Nice site, have you tried a/b testing left vs right sidebar on posts? Love the plain language footer. I'm a bit curious why you're running Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator Plugin for WordPress when you're already running WordPress SEO by Yoast, which includes a very robust sitemap function.
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Feb 28, 2014 00:51
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I think we played around with the sidebar location in the past, but we settled on the left side. Most of our ads are direct sales, so our advertisers expect it to stay put (and prefer the prominent left-hand placement). We aren't running two XML plugins that I know of (I just checked). We're just using Yoast. It's possible we have some residual code lying around, though. Where are you seeing that? Edit: Just cleaned up the old sitemap.xml files that were lying around. Maybe that's what you were seeing, somehow? Robot Arms fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 00:57
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What is a good recommended posts widget? I have the popular posts widget but I would like to be able to point my first time readers to my best and most important articles.
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Feb 28, 2014 03:21
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I just use an "our picks" category (a tag would work just as well). You can also use the popular posts plugin to order them by popularity, if you like.
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Feb 28, 2014 03:31
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Great, thanks!
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Feb 28, 2014 03:36
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I have 45 articles so I have a decent amount of content.. not sure if it's time to go "full in" or not. Has anyone tried advertising on SA before? I was thinking about doing it but I'm worried I'll drop 30$ for no real gain.
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Mar 1, 2014 16:10
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KetTarma posted:I have 45 articles so I have a decent amount of content.. not sure if it's time to go "full in" or not. Full in? What do you mean by that?
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Mar 1, 2014 16:37
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