Hey guys, I (and a friend) have just started the soccer site Arse View. It is updated every single day with daily happenings of the team, and although there are quite a few well known Arsenal sites we feel that this site has content that should attract viewers. The problem is getting people to visit it first hand; we are pretty sure that if we get enough visitors to the site, they will keep coming back. The problem of course is getting them there- we've had an average of 30-50 visitors a day but of course need a lot more if we're going to take the site to the level we're hoping too. We do not have a high budget; very little in fact after a miscalculated gamble with Adwords and some other ventures. We have used some of the free directory submitters (and are still getting spammed by Jayde ), any other ways we could make the site more popular? Thanks for your time
1. Barter with affiliates of soccer clothes and equipment. You advertise on one another's home pages. Do a search for them. Put in one keyword at a time, and go through, say, 10 pages, before moving on to the next keyword. 2. Pitch the idea for exchanging ads with any site that deals with anything soccer. Put your ads on one another's home pages. Also look into sites kids hang out at, like video and music sites. In addition, don't forget those soccer moms. ... Where do they hang out at? Take out pen and paper and do some brainstorming. Write out a slew of ideas. No matter how crazy it may sound, write it down anyway. This will get you thinking. Later on you can clean the list up. 3. Write some cool articles, facts, news, jokes and humorous stories, and whatnot and submit them to content sites. Put your URL with a picture of a soccer ball next to it at the end of the piece. You're doing this already, right??? I'm sorry, but what I've read was boring. You should consider breaking up your page so it isn't...so...damn...long. Or, at the very least, punch your page up. 4. Look at your competitors. How are they doing it? What kind of stuff are they posting that keeps visitors coming back? Tip: Find a college kid who knows how to download soccer vidoes on your blog. Give your readers something to watch on occassion. Also, do a search on "weird news" "funny stories" or pictures on sports. Can you post it on your blog??? Keep your visitors coming back! Advertise the videos, pics and funny tid bits! Put a form out in front of them where they can send that page to friends. They don't click on a link that takes them to a form. Don't make them click on anything! Put the form right in front of them! 5. Go back to advertising on search engines. If you don't have the money, get a part time job, get a loan from the bank, get a loan from a friend, get a loan against your car, sell your stuff, find seed money..... All you basically need is, maybe, $1,000. If that. Working part time for a couple of months brings you that. 6. Once you get up enough money, search for low-cost, heavy-traffic sites to advertise on where the visitors may like your product. These sites may have 100,000-500,000 monthly visitors, but charge only a couple of hundred bucks, if that a month. Get a long line of these sites, where you make, say, $50 profit a month from each site, that adds up. Do the math. With these last two...sorry, but if you want major, quality, and consitent traffic, that's the only way. You have to advertise if you want those numbers. There's no way around it. Sure, there is creative, free advertising, like blogs, networks, press releases, delisious (or whatever it's called), Digg, and whatnot, but these are overrated, and bring in only a trickle, with sometimes spurts of large traffic. But most are just window shopping. You want REAL, consitent traffic! I'll post back if I can think of anything else.
http://www.newsnow.co.uk they get your feed and post links to your site of the latest news, alot of big football blogs use it. and try and get a banner of some arsenal players in the header or something so people really understand what the site is about at first glimpse.
Add a description to your sig... Perry Rose gave some good advice as well! If you are finding a collage kid to do a few favors...find one that knows how to do those cute videos that can put soccer clips and pix to a popular song in a funny way. Make sure he adds your url to it once or twice. Then pray it goes viral Get a funny page set up like they have for those stoooopid LoLcats but use soccer pix with cute little sayings on them. I did it (LOLcats Q Eddition) and got over 3000 hits through stumble upon... granted, it wasn't much more then wasted bandwidth though...then again, those cats, while they are mine, do not tie into my main site/theme and I did not go about properly interlinking the pages, I just got it up and stumbled it. If you do it, find a free image host to put the pics up on though, as if your version does go viral, hotlinking may be an issue.
Hey Perry, thanks for the tremendously D!) long list. Have done some of those, am looking into others. As for videos, we put up videos when various Arsenal related events happen, ie a match. Perhaps we will do an Arsenal 'Oldie' of the week where we put up a video of a famous past event. As for advertising, we have advertised on three or four big Arsenal forums with anywhere between 2k-14k members, so hopefully that will slowly start to bring in members. Hey brand0n, we've already submitted our site to Newsnow. They take a month or so to check it out though, so we'll wait. We really need a gimmick or two, we've come up with 'Gooner of the Week' where we interview the average Arsenal fan and see his opinions and we're also going to start customized team kits of the week, where a different home and away kit will be designed with the Arse View logo. Hopefully that will be a talking point in the football world. As for a banner of Arsenal players/the logo, we're not sure about copyright issues- another site I know got shut down for a few days after they used the logo and I do not know how to edit the banner in Wordpress to add an image or two. Thanks for the help, rep added to both of you Hey Q, Will look at the customized videos, cheers. I know quite a few college kids with various levels of proficiency so shouldn't be a problem. Rep added to you too
Thanks, but what I meant was put the vidoes on the site. ... And keep them there! I took another look at your site, and excuse me for saying this, but it is boring. I hate to say this, but I'd be willing to bet that over half who do come will log off before going half-way down. Maybe I'm wrong. I would suggest you consider doing the following: 1. http://images.google.com/images?q=pictures+of+soccer&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title then look for a bunch of really cool pictures you can line the top of your page with. Make it as if that is your home, and your friends are looking at all the pictures on your wall. 2. In the upper right corner, under your search box, put in the links titled "Funny & Wild Soccer Videos," "Cool Pictures," "Picture of HOT Soccer Babes," Funny, Sometimes Wierd Soccer News," "Tips on Becoming A Kick-Ass Kicker." Have, maybe, a small picture for each subject, along with a very enticing description thus possibly improving your click-thru rate. Then on each page will have that content. Have it open a smaller, new wondow. When they are done, they simply close it, thus exposing the page they were on before. Keep the same old material and videos up, and just submit the new ones on top. Underneath put two forms side by side. One for "send to a friend," the other for your readers comments and critique of that page. Here is mine, though it is different. http://www.thelist.fm/Quick-Dating-Tip.shtml Put those same links on the bottom of the page, also. Thay way if they do go clear to the bottom, they will see the links again, thus reminding them of what you have. Good luck Perry TheList.FM
I agree with perry the site is just boring (the content is great though) you just need a more visual presentation.