Website Development/Blog questions...

[downtown]

Hello my CFC friends.

As some of you (or at least fiftychat) may know that I write in a blog on a semi regular basis. I've been working on my writing a little more seriously now, and am looking for ways to improve the website. Right now, even though I spend a lot of time developing the actual content, I rarely get more than 30 hits a day.

I'm working on a pretty shoestring budget...right now, its hosted for free via wordpress. I'm willing to spend 20 bucks a month on it right now, but if I were to spend more than that, i think I would need to be able to attract enough traffic to make a tiny bit of it back, otherwise, it wouldn't be a very smart investment.

Those of you who have created/maintained websites, what are some things you did/didn't do to find success? Besides developing quality content, what else can you do to drive traffic? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Trajan12]

Dunno much about it, but I know tonyf12 here is a web designer. Maybe he knows some stuff.

 

[Turner]

Moderator Action: Thread moved to CompTalk.

 

[emzie]

But... this really isn't a computer talk question. It's a marketing question....

 

[downtown]

I would agree....

 

[Turner]

But you'll probably get a better answer here.....

 

[Grisu]

I'm operating the website of our floorball team with wordpress as well. though I went for a dedicated hoster where I just deployed wordpress on.

atm, I'm paying roughly $10/month for the space/webhosting and about 25$/year for the domain, so I doubt that there's any need to use $20.-- per month. true, my website most likely gets even less hits than yours since it's only for a rather small group of people of any interest but it would be able to handle a lot more hits (although my hoster's having some trouble at the moment...I'm looking for a new one).

as for getting more visitors...I don't really know. It's important to get your site known, so you should register it at some blog-registries (like technocrati)

in wordpress you can also configure it to ping services that let these registries know you have posted a new entry (for example pingomatic

 

[warpus]

Hello my CFC friends.

As some of you (or at least fiftychat) may know that I write in a blog on a semi regular basis. I've been working on my writing a little more seriously now, and am looking for ways to improve the website. Right now, even though I spend a lot of time developing the actual content, I rarely get more than 30 hits a day.

I'm working on a pretty shoestring budget...right now, its hosted for free via wordpress. I'm willing to spend 20 bucks a month on it right now, but if I were to spend more than that, i think I would need to be able to attract enough traffic to make a tiny bit of it back, otherwise, it wouldn't be a very smart investment.

Those of you who have created/maintained websites, what are some things you did/didn't do to find success? Besides developing quality content, what else can you do to drive traffic? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

One thing you could try is search engine optimization, so that more people end up finding your blog on google.

There are various ways to do this:

1. Make sure your website/blog validates against an HTML validator (with wordpress, you cant really control that, i don't think)

2. Make sure that your content is well-formatted and that key phrases (that people might search for on google) repeat. Links from your site to similar sites (in content) might help you (nobody really knows what the google algorithm is, but linking to other related sites can't hurt.. plus it helps the google bots figure out what kind of a site yours is - and that can't be a bad thing. Don't overlink though - and don't link to too many sites that differ in the type of content, or your google ranking might be affected negatively.)

3. Submit your url to google

4. Submit your url to search engines, index sites, directories, etc. with well-picked search terms (there are programs out there that help you do this - some claim to submit to tens of thousands of sites) - Make sure that you submit your site to the right category, or your google ranking might be affected negatively (ie. if you're putting up a religious website, don't submit under "wrestling")

5. Use Google AdWords

6. Banners on other sites are expensive, but if you found a good deal (say, put up a banner on a related site somewhere for a month for $10), it might help bring in some regular readers.

7. I almost forgot.. And this could be important if you end up getting your site hosted somewhere - somewhere where you have access over the actual html. Make sure you have a robots.txt file in your root, and that it contains the following:
User-Agent: *
This tells the various search bots that make their rounds on the tubes that your site is friendly and ready for inspection.

8. Profit

 

[Macha]

Hello my CFC friends.

As some of you (or at least fiftychat) may know that I write in a blog on a semi regular basis. I've been working on my writing a little more seriously now, and am looking for ways to improve the website. Right now, even though I spend a lot of time developing the actual content, I rarely get more than 30 hits a day.

I'm working on a pretty shoestring budget...right now, its hosted for free via wordpress. I'm willing to spend 20 bucks a month on it right now, but if I were to spend more than that, i think I would need to be able to attract enough traffic to make a tiny bit of it back, otherwise, it wouldn't be a very smart investment.

Those of you who have created/maintained websites, what are some things you did/didn't do to find success? Besides developing quality content, what else can you do to drive traffic? Any advice would be appreciated.

For $5 a month you could get hosting from the people who host my website (webhostingbuzz.com) and a free domain from them aswell. You could use Wordpress's downloadable software to run your blog and you can get a good few addons to add features to Wordpress yourself. However you would need to update it frequently yourself to prevent security problems.

If you want to get more traffic to your site, apart from quality content, you will need to get your friends at first to visit the site. If you have 30 friends who have enough internet know-how to know what a blog is and you tell them about your blog. Then in that blog you write a new post each day and 1/3 of your friends visit it each day, that's 300 hits a month, even excluding the fact that most people view more than one page per visit.

I won't bother explaining SEO as the post above me does it well.

The biggest mistake I have made was not adding new content often enough. If there's nothing new on your website (especially if its a blog), people won't come back. I've been ignoring my own advice lately as I've been busy with another project.

As for making money from your website, if you have no time to search for ads yourself, you could try google adsense.

 

[LucyDuke]

Webmaster hat:

I sell stuff on my (company's) website. Some of our customers are professionals, most are hobbyists. There are a dozen or so highly-active forums where these hobbyists discuss their hobby, and they sometimes talk about our products. Those threads tend to drive a lot of traffic to our site. When I see them coming from a forum, I join the forum if I haven't already, and try to talk to people about our stuff. That tends to drive even more traffic to our site, and in a lot of cases, grab some more sales.

I know you're not selling anything, but some of it translates. You've got the link in your sig here. I don't know whether it's prohibited advertising to link to a particular post, but you can probably talk about them when they're relevant to a thread. If you post in other forums, do the same thing. Talk to other blogs. (Comments, with links.) If they talk back, you'll both increase traffic. Monitor your traffic and keep an eye on where it comes from. When it comes from somewhere new, talk to whoever is there at that "somewhere". Interact.

Reader hat:

I pay the most attention to blogs with RSS feeds. I'm not sure whether WordPress generates 'em, but if I can keep an eye on an RSS feed I'm much more likely to come back.

 

[Grisu]

I pay the most attention to blogs with RSS feeds. I'm not sure whether WordPress generates 'em, but if I can keep an eye on an RSS feed I'm much more likely to come back.

yup, wordpress does generate feeds (or at least can be configured to generate them)

 

[warpus]

Webmaster hat:

I sell stuff on my (company's) website. Some of our customers are professionals, most are hobbyists. There are a dozen or so highly-active forums where these hobbyists discuss their hobby, and they sometimes talk about our products. Those threads tend to drive a lot of traffic to our site. When I see them coming from a forum, I join the forum if I haven't already, and try to talk to people about our stuff. That tends to drive even more traffic to our site, and in a lot of cases, grab some more sales.

I know you're not selling anything, but some of it translates. You've got the link in your sig here. I don't know whether it's prohibited advertising to link to a particular post, but you can probably talk about them when they're relevant to a thread. If you post in other forums, do the same thing. Talk to other blogs. (Comments, with links.) If they talk back, you'll both increase traffic. Monitor your traffic and keep an eye on where it comes from. When it comes from somewhere new, talk to whoever is there at that "somewhere". Interact.

That is all very good advice, and the last word there is the most important one.

You don't want to end up forum spamming I know you're a really ethical and awesome person Lucy, and would never forum spam for any reason.. but.. it's easy to fall into that, especially if you're trying to bring in people to your site.. It's tempting! People have lives - who has time to invest in a new forum and new people to talk to? Sure.. some people might.. but if you're just thinking as a businessman (or woman), which is likely the kind of mindset you're in when you're trying to bring people to your site.. you're more likely to forget ethics and not care about being a jackass, and just go for it.

Yes, forum spamming makes you a jackass, and it doesn't even work.

Lucy's advice is good , but I really needed to warrn you all about the temptation that is forum spamming.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I think maybe 40-50% of my blog traffic (which is small traffic) comes from that little link in my signature. So it really can't hurt to try -- just if you're intelligent on forums people may want to see more. so they click the little link in your sig.
in my case, I think it's more "curiousity", as I'm not that smart actually.

 

[LucyDuke]

I really needed to warrn you all about the temptation that is forum spamming.

Well, I don't jump into forums and just start posting links. I join conversations that are already going on. Somebody else posts a link to my site, I see the traffic coming in, and I go reply to comments and offer to answer questions and so forth.

It makes no sense to alienate potential customers/readers. But when someone's already started a conversation, it doesn't hurt to add another voice.

 

[illram]

Link to other blogs on your blog and they might share the link love. A good blog pays attention to who is linking to them so they should notice and reciprocate where appropriate.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Something else I do, which is because I'm very picky about not stealing other peoples traffic, is instead of posting entire articles, I only post a short summary then link. And if the other blog owners see that, they might do the same with yours.

Then again, maybe not.

Also, if you write an article about something thats positive, send them an email -- "Hey, I posted about you/your product/your service/etc and thought you'd like to know." I've done it, and although I haven't gotten any links *yet*, it still can't hurt.

Oh, and make use of the stats available in Wordpress.

 

[downtown]

For $5 a month you could get hosting from the people who host my website (webhostingbuzz.com) and a free domain from them aswell. You could use Wordpress's downloadable software to run your blog and you can get a good few addons to add features to Wordpress yourself. However you would need to update it frequently yourself to prevent security problems.

Only 5 dollars a month? Seriously? Is there a catch? If thats it, I'll buy it yesterday.

If you want to get more traffic to your site, apart from quality content, you will need to get your friends at first to visit the site. If you have 30 friends who have enough internet know-how to know what a blog is and you tell them about your blog. Then in that blog you write a new post each day and 1/3 of your friends visit it each day, that's 300 hits a month, even excluding the fact that most people view more than one page per visit.

Yeah, I think thats where most of my traffic is coming from already. According to my blogstats, I get most of my hits either from here, or from very familar zipcodes (my hometown, Ohio State, etc), where a lot of my friends are. I also post most of my posts as facebook notes, so the rest of my friends can read them.

The biggest mistake I have made was not adding new content often enough. If there's nothing new on your website (especially if its a blog), people won't come back. I've been ignoring my own advice lately as I've been busy with another project.

Yeah, that was my biggest problem too. Now that I've been updating every few days, my traffic has been a lot more consistant. I'm trying to find more people to write, so I don't have to do every article myself. With my other writing commitments, its hard to write 900+ word entries more than once a week.

As for making money from your website, if you have no time to search for ads yourself, you could try google adsense.

Hmm, thats interesting. I'll sign up for that.

Webmaster hat:

I know you're not selling anything, but some of it translates. You've got the link in your sig here. I don't know whether it's prohibited advertising to link to a particular post, but you can probably talk about them when they're relevant to a thread. If you post in other forums, do the same thing. Talk to other blogs. (Comments, with links.) If they talk back, you'll both increase traffic. Monitor your traffic and keep an eye on where it comes from. When it comes from somewhere new, talk to whoever is there at that "somewhere". Interact.

Yeah, thats a good point. I've mentioned the website on all three forums I post, and that drives a lot of traffic. I don't really have the time or energy to seek out other ones, and become a real member. Posting and reading takes up a lot of time that could be spent writing. I posted here for years before people took me seriously...

I pay the most attention to blogs with RSS feeds. I'm not sure whether WordPress generates 'em, but if I can keep an eye on an RSS feed I'm much more likely to come back.

I *think* I have that?

Thanks so much for the help guys!

 

[downtown]

I just bought Ihearditdowntown.com

Hopefully I'll figure out how to move my wordpress there in the next day or two.

 

[warpus]

Well, I don't jump into forums and just start posting links. I join conversations that are already going on. Somebody else posts a link to my site, I see the traffic coming in, and I go reply to comments and offer to answer questions and so forth.

It makes no sense to alienate potential customers/readers. But when someone's already started a conversation, it doesn't hurt to add another voice.

Yeah, I know you would never do anything like that, but a lot of people do

I'll even admit that I did when I co-ran wabshirts.com, in a vain attempt to get more traffic to the site. That was a stupid move...

 

[mdwh]

What sort of thing do you write about?

I must admit, I'm curious as to whether most standalone blogs get much traffic at all. Apart from ones linked to major websites like news sites, all the ones I see hardly ever have any comments. Yet go to somewhere like LiveJournal where people aren't trying to do any promotion of their blogs, and you commonly see 10s or 100s of comments to every entry - the reason is because sites like LiveJournal make it much easier for other members to read large numbers of blogs, which few can be bothered to do with blogs on standalone websites. There's RSS which helps, but not a lot of people seem to use that.

My suggestion would be to tell your friends (even easier if they have blogs themselves), offer to add links to each other, and be proactive in commenting on other people's blogs (with a link back to your own).