Website Is Up! Need Help With Web Traffic Build-up And Income Stream Selections!!

[VetTechJess]

As you all may know, my website Home is FINALLY up and running!!

Only I have run into some problems:

I am trying to build up web traffic and am also trying to build multiple streams of income for my website. I figured what the hell, get it over now (with the affiliate and other cpc, cpm etc..) so I won't have to fool with it later.

The affiliate programs I really havent had much of a problem with. Its the other streams of income that Steve has mentioned: such as text link ads, chitika eminimalls, google adsense (or the yahoo version of it), etc.

I havent heard anything from the yahoo version of google adsense. Ive been having troubles with logging into google adsense because apparently I put in the wrong email.

As far as trying to build web traffic I have tried blog carnivals but i keep getting the error message that my website isnt a recognized website, even though I AM a registered user there!!!!

I have already promoted my website to various search engines using website promoter software I have.

text link ads wont accept me because I dont meet web traffic minimums. Chitika eminimalls has a web traffic requirement so Im not even gonna try them until I meet that web traffic requirement.

The affiliates I get from linkshare mainly. I may try clickbank later on after I finish writing this. I need everyones help in this. By the way as of now there are no advertisements on this site. (I am currently working on that as we speak...with help and positive input from y'all here on the board....)

First, please check out my website Home for more than a few reasons. I will list the following reasons below:

1. I need advice on what affiliate programs to add specifically. Also recommend other income streams besides just affiliate programs. Be sure to provide links to the other income streams so I can add them. Look at my website and suggest some site related income streams. Because right now I am adding anything and everything (except adult related content, etc.) that accepts me, from gardening to chocolates to jewelry. (I figure why not a little diversification!! lol hell diversification is recommended in investing so why not??)

2. constructively critique my website. look thru it again and again. refer people to look at it. It will also increase my web traffic (which couldnt hurt).

3. And anything else I may have missed along the way......


THANX BUNCHES!!!

[ken nubo]

Apply for adsense, it shouldn't be a problem since you have blogger.

Go to clickbank.com and apply. You get a good commision everything you get a sale. Clickbank is usually info products.

[jpfieber]

Monetizing your site should not be on your mind right now. You really need to first create some content so people have some reason to go there. A good second step would be to spend some time on the sites appearance.

I'm not trying to be cruel, but your sites appearance and layout are about as bad as it gets. Even a Front-Page theme would be an improvement. You could have the best content in the world and you would still loose most of viewers if they have a bad first impression when seeing the site.

If people don't have content to look at, they won't come back, and your site will die. If they don't get a good first impression when arriving at the site, they may not even stick around long enough to view what brought them there in the first place. Focus your attention on these things for a month, then perhaps you can start to think about throwing an AdSense block or two into the layout.

Probably not what you wanted to hear, but you did ask for a critique. Making money from your site is LOTS of hard work, and you've got lots of work ahead of you before you'll see your first dollar roll in, and it will likely be many months before you earn enough to even get your first check, so be prepared for the long haul.

[maclinda]

I don't consider myself an expert, even though I have several websites going right now, but I'll give you my suggestions from a visitor's perspective.

I think your home page is too long. I like to see links that make sense (not saying yours don't!) coming from a fairly short home page. Somehow people seem to feel like they're getting lost in the woods when they scroll down past the nav bar.

I would suggest you tighten your focus. It's common to want to be all things to all people in the beginning because you want room for growth. The problem is in growing something that big. If there's not tons of content, it will land up being a shallow site. It sounds like Vet Tech is your interest; I would tighten it up to only that, for now. Delete any statements that say "and whatever else I think of".

Your forum has great topic ideas, but no members. You sort of need a "critical mass" of posters to get a forum going. If you know a group of people who want to post, get them rounded up and going on some provocative topics to get the energy up. There are so many forums out there right now! I'm trying to help someone get her work at home forum going, but it's not looking good. Without enough frequent activity, people will come back less and less giving less posts less excitement...you get the picture, a downward spiral. Study how very active forums "go".

Also, a forum takes a good bit of time to moderate. Spammers and trolls are busy little creatures. Are you sure you have the time to devote to this?

Good luck in your endeavors!

[Peter S C]

Hi Jess,

My suggestion is not to focus on making money at this stage. Change your mindset to one of how can I add value to people who visit my site. If you are focused on making money at the start, you will probably be disappointed at how long it can take.

Good luck! And well done on taking the first step and creating a site.

Peter

[Minsc]

I don't have any experience hosting sites but I'm making one and have read about it a lot. Here's my opinion:

The layout's pretty bad...
Also, you should really write the HTML yourself in a text-based editor(like notepad or something with syntax highlighting) instead of using a visual website-maker. The HTML is sloppy too...

Everything on your site uses absolute positions which makes it not center and have a big blank space on the side.

You should also get rid of your blogspot blog since its layout is different from yours and it's hosted on blogspot. Hosting blogs on blogspot and forums on big forum-hosting sites make it look like you didn't spend any time on them to me.

I'd recommend that you just install Wordpress with some plugins and use it alone to make the rest of your site. (I've never used it, but you should be able to upload all of the files onto your server and load one called something like "install.php" to install it, if your web host supports php and mysql; if they don't, you should get a new host)
You should really just install wordpress and make a normal blog...

Your home page is a long description with a list of links. It should be a short, one to two sentance one with recent artices that you've written.

You use span instead of h1 and h2 for your headers which makes them less significant to search engines. Your page titles should include your site's name, probably at the end, and you should have keywords, that people would use in search engines to find your site, put around your site in headers, paragraphs, ect.

Your pages link to themselves.

I'd drop the forums for now and add them when your site is bigger.

You have too much text with too little headers, changes in font size, ect. It's boring to read. I haven't read any of it because it's a big blob of text.

I'd say your site is too narrow. I prefer sites that have paragraphs that are as wide as they can be without forcing you to move your eyes horizontally as you read them.

Your about page is bigger than any other page in the site, and has a link to your articles, which I assume are the most important part of your site, so you should link to them on every page in the top menu thing.

Put all of your links into your links page. No one comes to your site just to go to another one.

No one's going to care about your site until you write some artices, which you should do often. Make a new article once every three days.

Merge your contact page with your about page.

You should stop asking people to write articles for you...

It's good that you have your own domain name.

link:www.vettechjess.com - Google Search
Nobody linked to your site. You're not going to do well in search engines either since they care mostly about who links to your site and how.
Google's not too accurate when it comes to links though.

There's probably more but I'm done for now...

[bellbird]

VetJess well done on your effort. It's not easy setting things up when you don't know as much as webbuilders 'in the know' is it? For a first try it's pretty good. Sites always need tweaking anyhow. I agree wityh above posters that your Home differs layout wise from your forum and again from your blog. Consistency is important and keeping text clear and pretty concise. Good luck with sticking with it and doing your thing. Get the word out in your family/friends/fellow students/etc and post on a similar interest board. Good luck!

[VetTechJess]

would anyone be able to help me with that? I know nothing of how to write any HTML, and know nothing of making my own template. can anyone help on this as well??

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by VetTechJess

would anyone be able to help me with that? I know nothing of how to write any HTML, and know nothing of making my own template. can anyone help on this as well??

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials is good place to learn web development. (best I've found for html and css, never used it for anything else)

useit.com: Jakob Nielsen on Usability and Web Design is good for learning to make good websites, lots of artices.

But you'll need a bit of experience with computers in general to program or make html, since you're going to have to work with the filesystem a lot.

phpdev from firepages - php , mysql , apache preconfigured for windows has an installer that will install PHP and Apache locally for php development. Has Perl, I think, GD, and GTK.

You should learn CSS to make templates.

For php software with templates, I think the templates are php files, so you'll need to learn to code a little in PHP to make those(which shouldn't be too hard if it's a template).

[radeldudel]

Originally Posted by VetTechJess

I am trying to build up web traffic

The main things about building up web traffic:

- visitors should come back (so give them a very good reason)
- visitors should recommend you to others (word of mouth, blogs)

You need content visitors will come back for. Even better would be content people would recommend to others 'hey, have a look at this site'.

These two should be your biggest goals. When you achieved these, go on about building links (but if you done these two things very good you would not even need to worry about this).

As Steve said, provide value to your visitors.

And another Quote from Steve regarding this:

What created this traffic growth? Word of mouth. Nothing I’ve done directly has had as much impact as basic word of mouth. I do virtually no marketing — my visitors do it for me. Blogging technology certainly facilitates this effect (via feeds, pings, and trackbacks), but ultimately the growth comes from people telling other people about this site. And for that I’m very grateful. A referral is the best form of feedback.

Love You!