Advice on Blog.
 

Hi all, my blog has had zero traffic over the past few days. I haven't been promoting it yet, waiting to get some more content up first.

Would anyone mind giving me some feedback? Is the content interesting? Any comments are appreciated, even negative, let me have it.

Also, when I do start marketing it, what's a good way to go? Could adwords actually pay off for a blog? Any suggestions here? Thanks guys, all help is appreciated, and I'll return the favor any way I can.

http://www.broketoballin.com

Thanks,

Scott

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

Well... I'm not a blog expert. But as a reader of friend's blogs, sports blogs and yes, even the everpresent 'money making blog' I can tell you that what you're really missing is content.

To me, it feels like you've seen what other sites like stevepavlina.com and problogger.net are doing and how they make money off of ads and the like, and have just jumped on the bandwagon. It kind of has a "Dear Diary, I tried to make money today, yada yada Ebay, yada yada, give me feedback" It's a little sad (I don't mean that in a cutthroat way, I really wanted to read something interesting! More stuff like the Piano Roll story- although I did have to Google what the hell they were). You can't make a website hoping to find content, you have to make a website around content, and I think your ideas need some brainstorming.

Design wise, it's a bit a basic and normal. Lots of ads, which on your smaller posts, made it hard to pick out your content. But mostly, work on your stories and opportunities, not just filling space with daily updates. Quality, not quantity will keep people returning to see new posts.

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

It takes time scotty. See this as a good time to do more research on your niche. If you still feel the need to draw traffic, I would recommend link exchanges. Get involved in other forums that have massive traffic such as the warrior forum.

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

Thanks for the input guys. Yeah, it needs more content obviously. I'm thinking about writing poker articles, talking about games, posting funny stories, basically try to make it more entertaining than "Making Money."

I'd also agree that some of my posts aren't the greatest in the world. I feel like I need to be adding content at least a couple of posts a day, with limited time, so it makes it tough to write interesting articles.

I'm glad you enjoyed the piano roll story, that's one of my personal favorite posts.

Also, I agree the blog looks generic. I suck with PHP, but I'm going to be working on changing the look soon.

Would posting my link in comments on popular blogs drive much traffic? As long as I have something relative to the comment to comment on?

Thanks again,

Scott

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

I like the overall look and layout of it but there is very little content..and some of it seems like it's rambling a bit.

Also when first looking at it I couldnt really tell what the blog was about, it said money making and buisness but the first couple articles (what I think most viewers would look at first) It seems like a personal blog.... I think you need to focus your articles a little more into sections. I saw on Johnchow's blog that he segregates the articles into subsections in a table off to the right. Maybe this is something you should think about for organization?

Either way good start. Im new to all this myself so if anyone else disagrees please fill me in.

I'll be posting this exact same post in a week or two when I finish my site. I'd love some criticism.

GL
Richard

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

Thanks again for the replies. I am kind of a rambler, I'll try to work on that. Probably should shoot for shorter posts.

In a sense it is a personal blog. I'm basically experimenting with business ideas and posting the results.

I'll admit, some of the content is uninspired. I may go through and weed out some of the weaker posts once I get some more content up and running.

I don't want it to be strictly money making. That's the primary focus. But if someone searches for articles on web design, or PS3, or Making money off of ebay, or any other topics I touch on, I'd like them to hit my site and possibly read through it.

Anywho, the site is getting a major overhaul ASAP.

I'd be more than happy to trade links and review other peoples blogs.

Thanks again,

Scott

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

Have you tinkered with the idea about making seperate blogs about each niche? Also...wouldn't it take a lot more time to weed out ads that you dont want shown with numerous niches being advertised?

I dont even have an adsense account yet so these are more questions than suggestions...

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

Hi Scott,

Have been on the blog learning curve myself over the last couple of weeks, by no means an expert yet but do have some tips to pass on which I gained from an IM mentor;

- Keywords; Think about which keywords people will be searching for that you eventually want to get listed under, make sure these are in your blog title + description and make sure your content is keyword rich.
- Content, you already figured this is key - feedback I got was that paragrahs should be short and snappy (else people tend to scan only) and you should make sure there is a dialouge that people can relate to in a... what happens next? format (some part #1's etc etc), see the Piano thing does this to an extent.
- You need to get listed in as many blog directories as possible as google uses these for part of its ranking algorithm... there is a list on the right hand side at http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm
you will often have the opportunity to put a short description of your blog and need to make sure this is snappy and value-oriented.

- Spend some time defining your target audience and tailoring the site / links to them, just get the feeling that you are trying to please all of the people all of the time at the mo.

Thats that, just learning about this stuff myself - using a poker blog as an experiment and hope to put what I learn to good use for some more lucrative projects early next year!

http://plan3tgongpoker.blogspot.com

Cheers, Mark

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

Thanks for the help guys. For what it's worth, it might seem like I'm writing stuff to please everyone, instead of a specific niche.

The idea I have is basically to appeal to people who have similar interests as me. There is sort of a niche market for people interested in poker, business, video games, ebay, ect. People who are interested in internet marketing tend to have similar interests.

I changed the theme, and will continue to work on getting the layout looking good.

Also, just broke my first $1.00 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

Thanks for the blog submission info Holland, and thanks for all of the other responses as well.

Re: Advice on Blog.
 

I have the same problem. Have 40 readers every day but I want 1000.

www.poker100k.com

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