Subscribe to RSS FeedWeek In Review - September 21-27
Ok so this Week In Review is a day late, normally I do them late Saturday night but I didn’t get home last night until 11pm and didn’t feel like writing up a post.
Niche Sites
Things have been cruising along at a nice pace with all the sites. I recently joined an article writing challenge over at thewahmblog.com. It is to write 20 articles in 20 days which shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve always wanted to get some article marketing done for my niche sites but never really had the drive. But now that I have accepted the challenge I must win, plus I am competing against 3 women…..I can’t lose!
A niche site that I created 2 weeks ago is already starting to see search engine traffic. I’ve only done a little bit of marketing for it and all of it’s terms so far are ranking on the first page of Google. Graned it is only a few hits a day but with the challenge I already have 2 articles going for the site and plan to add a few more along with it. The back links will help greatly and possibly put me in 1st or 2nd position for the main keyword. Because of the low traffic I have only seen 1 AdSense click netting me a whole $.21!! It’s ok though, slowly as I get more backlnks I will start to see more traffic, I am just finding a difficult time to find some sites to exchange links with as the niche I am in seems to be filled with a lot of old sites that nobody keeps up anymore. When I first got the site live and running I contacted 3 different sites about link exchanges and since then have never heard back. No worries, I will continue to slowly build up the site while working on others.
New Theme
As you probably have noticed I introduced a new theme this week. Yes it isn’t as exciting as the old one, yes there is less color but I wanted to make it simple and to the point. It is also setup a little bit better for search engines as well as user navigation. I may introduce a few minor changes and tweaks over the next few weeks but nothing major I don’t think. I like the theme, I have not heard any input on it so far from any readers but my traffic has remained the same so I assume that it is doing it’s job. I actually had the RSS icon and categories over in the sidebar before I set it live but switched them up under the main navigation bar as it looked more clean. Plus it allows for better expansion of the categories should I decide to add more.
With the new theme and the layout I had to go through and re-categorize and re-tag all my posts. Why? Because the structure I had before was all jumbled, I had categories and tags with the same names which makes no sense. I may or may not reintroduce the MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog widgets in the sidebar. I joined up with BlogCatalog because I heard it was a little bit more serious than MyBlogLog but ever since joining all I get are people messaging me to come check out their site and to please subscribe to their feed. Uhhhhh no? Maybe you could ask me to check out your site and then I will decide if I want to subscribe. People on BlogCatalog are way too hellbent on seeing their subscriber numbers higher.
Honestly I could care less how many subscribers I have. Not to say that I don’t want them, but people will subscribe if they find my content interesting. Sure I don’t have a lot of subscribers, it was at 7 yesterday (highest so far) but this morning it was at 4. So either FeedBurner is doing it’s thing again or I lost 4 people. No biggie.
2 Ebooks Planned
With my mini series that I wrote last week on finding a profitable niche I had to leave a lot out. I almost thought of even turning it into a few more posts and explaining it fully, but I decided that I should just turn it into an ebook, slap a small price tag on it and sell it. Now, this isn’t going to be your ordinary ebook that gives you a few tips and tricks on how to build a niche. Without giving away any details this is going to be big, bigger than any other ebook that I have come across and I think it will do extremely well once I get it finished. It is going to take me probably around a week or two of working on it but it will be worth the work in the end.
The other ebook is somewhat of a secret. I was talking with Garry Conn a few nights ago and he suggested an idea for an ebook that I could produce and charge some money for. So I have been slowly working on it, I was actually supposed to have it finished yesterday……but……well, I didn’t. So I am going to work on it today and hopefully have it finished by tonight!
Traffic Growth
There hasn’t been much growth actually, it seems to hang around the same number of visitors day in and day out. Which is ok, I haven’t been commenting as much as I used to because I have been focusing more time on working on sites. As I said earlier, I had a few extra FeedBurner subs yesterday but this morning I lost 3, nothing to cry over.
Posts Worth Reading
Who’s Audience Are You Marketing To? - WordVixen wrote up a great article about how you need to use the right images when you are trying to sell to a specific demographic. She came across a site that was targeting females but was geared more towards males.
My Web 2.0 Keynote in NYC - This was linked to me by a friend and it is a video of Gary Vaynerchuk talking at a conference. This is a MUST watch video, I have heard about Gary before but honestly have never watched his videos. After watching this video I scouted around on his blog and YouTube finding a few more to watch, Gary is a great motivational speaker.
That is it for this Week In Review, I may move these over to Sunday morning as it is a little bit more appropriate. Plus if I’m tired I won’t have to wait up late Saturday night just to write a post ;)
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September 28th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Good deal man, I’m sure you’ll have some great content in that ebook! Keep us updated on the progress of your niche sites. The theme looks a little bit the same, but more clean, it reminds me of a Garry Conn style theme actually.
Keep up the good work dude and keep dropping the goodness on us.
Normal Joes last blog post..Do You Hate Your Boss?
September 28th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Yeah, good stuff, Jarrett! You officially have one more subscriber! LOL! I signed up today. My fault for taking so long, thought I was already a subscriber.
Anyway, I just developed a niche site as well with the hopes of building some adsense revenue. Like Joe said, let us know how it goes in the future. I will tapping you in the Hood to pick your brain on some ideas and details. I have a niche with some great longtail key phrases, 56 to be exact, that I am going to attack and see what happens!
I like your Theme it is simple, plain, in your face, but really promotes the content. The RSS sign up in the bar is jumbled in Google’s Chrome, that’s what I am using at the moment. Just a heads up on that.
The ebook should be awesome. Looking forward to it and the information. As for traffic growth, just keep doing what you doing with the quality material….they will come!
Not all of us can be Rockstar traffic generators like Joe! LOL!
Freddies last blog post..Quote of the Week: Wisdom
September 28th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
@Joe - Thanks for stopping by. I will surely keep you all updated on the niche sites, one of them has already received 7 hits from Google today so I would say it isn’t doing too bad already.
@Freddie - Thanks for subscribing :)
Sounds like you found a nice niche with all those longtail keywords. All I can say is don’t give up on it, even if you don’t start seeing traffic right away. Give it some time and let Google get it indexed and you will start seeing traffic ;)
Thanks for the heads up with Chrome. I only tested this theme out in FF and IE7 because those are the 2 top browsers according to my stats. I recently re-installed Vista and while I was using Chrome when it first came out it was lacking in the Web Developer Toolbar which I just can’t work without. I will have to download Chrome again and check it out.Ok, got it all sorted out, was just one simple little HTML tag that was messing it up…..gotta love coding to suit all browsers
September 28th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I like the new theme layout and have always like black and greys together.
You are getting traffic from the engines on the new site is great! You must be working hard over there. You know the site we are working on for the flip, is not doing well at all in the engines yet and it has been online for almost 3 weeks.
Sounds like you have your hands full with 2 ebooks in production! I think your idea of doing an ebook on the niche topic is very smart! Your tips were right on target and well laid out. Let me know when you get em done, and I will help you promote them on my blog!
WAHM Taras last blog post..3 Motivational Tips
September 28th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Hi Tara, thanks for coming by. Yeah, the one niche site is doing ok so far. I’m eager to see what this and the upcoming weeks will bring since I will be submitting a few articles for the niche sites and hopefully gain some more back links to them.
Yes, the ebooks will keep me busy along with keeping up with my other blogs and all. The niche ebook is going to take awhile though, I want it to be really in depth and want to provide something that ANYBODY can follow. There are so many ebooks out there and sites saying how to do this and how to do that but they never really explain it in a term that everybody can understand. Or they don’t give out enough details that to make it easy and that is what I want to provide in the ebook.
September 28th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Hey- Thanks for the link love!
And bless you, Jarret. Easy to follow steps with easy to understand content? No one else seems to get that concept (which, incidentally, is also why I started my Squidtorials and my tutorials on installing WordPress through CPanel- all of which seem to be popular for that very reason).
I hope you’ll post your results from the article marketing? I’d love to see if the results are worth the effort.
WordVixens last blog post..Who’s Audience Are You Marketing To?
September 28th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Yes I will be posting up my results from the articles :) I hope they are worth the effort, the challenge is to provide 20 articles in 20 days. Though I do understand that I will not see results instantly, I hope to see at least one or 2 publications each month.
September 28th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
I’m really looking forward to your ebooks man - it’s something that I am planning to do as well for our blog.
You already know where I stand with article marketing, and I’m stoked to see that your going ahead with Tara’s challenge as it will prove valuable in many ways.
Article marketing rocks!
Elijahs last blog post..Building Your Team Of Criminal Masterminds
September 28th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Hey Elijah, yeah hopefully I see a good return from the articles. I have already done a few so far but nothing really came from them. Then again they haven’t been out that long so we will see what happens with everything.
Yeah, I have to keep up with Tara’s challenge now! I am up against 3 women, I can’t afford to lose!!
September 29th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Good stuff, Jarret!
You got the subscription bar worked out in Chrome. Cool!
Freddies last blog post..Quote of the Week: Wisdom
September 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Hi Freddie, yeah finally got it figured out. It took longer than expected though to get it working.
It was working completely fine in FF and IE but was messed up in Safari/Opera/Chrome. When I got it working in Safari/Opera/Chrome it would be messed up in FF and IE. I think it took a little bit longer due to the fact that I am using the Transitional DOCTYPE instead of the Strict DOCTYPE that I normally use when developing a site. Transitional lets things slide a little bit so that validation is easier.
In fact I am not even sure if WordPress could pass a Strict validation unless it was heavily tweaked.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Hey Jarret,
One more subscriber here.
I agree, the them you are using here is clean and simple - allowing for focus on the content…which is first class.
Looks like you have lots of good stuff coming and I cannot wait for the ebooks!!!
Cheers
Neals last blog post..PR Update - September 2008