hey guys, i have been getting alltopics.com built for the past 6 months and so far have spent over 50 thousand usd for coding, editing, servers etc etc its a website that lets you discover the latest popular news, videos etc on pretty much on all the topics you can think of. it has some serious coding/programming/research done and i am using 2 x 24gb ram servers just to proccess, rank, and organize the content on the site. I am not a coder or designer, nor have any previous experience in the website worldç just love websites. so i would love to hear your honest opinions and feedback about the site. before you make suggestions let me tell you little more about the upcoming features that will be ready in couple of of weeks. 1- user will be able to interact more with the teasers by being able to easly comment, reshare on social sites and collect the teasers they like. 2- they will be able to upload their own original articles, videos, images or easly submit links. 3- default homepage of each topic will have RECENTLY popular teasers rather than top of today. so please check out alltopics.com and tell me what you think? do you like the idea? do you like the topics and content? what could be improved? do i have any chance to make this a huge site etc etc etc? any feedback will realy help me as im about to go crazy!!! thanks
First of, did you really spend 50 grand on it? For a news aggregation website you spent a bit too much in my opinion, unless of course it was the money you wanted to spend on it anyway. It's a pretty competitive area and it would be more reasonable to try it simple and cheap first and then keep building on it. There are some pros of course in your endeavor too. The domain name is pretty darn good. Maybe as the time goes by Google will give it a prominent place on its pages. The website, overall, looks professional and is easy to navigate. I wouldn't recommend Adwords or AdCenter in your case. You can easily spend another 50 grand and see no traffic after you stop the paid advertising. Do not buy traffic services on Fiverr or anywhere else - usually it's a waste of money. Try to push it on backpage and craigslist. Use forum posts and blog comments as well. See if you gain any following doing it free. If you do, it means you can spend some cash advertising it.
thanks for your reply. yes realy spent 50k. to break it down- domain name alone is worth over 5k, cost of servers is over 1000usd per month, it has some serios coding/algorthym behind it. millions of content are checked for their facebook/twitter rank everyday - sorted into categories and much more. back end has some serious work done. also cost of organising rss feeds into topics - keyword research (requires lots of human hours to buid up topics)- its not simply rss feeds under topics - lots of ways of posting content under a topic. i like to agree as i have tested adwords and facebook ads and too costly. i dont have a limited budget but dont want to spend 100k advertising the site to only get few hundred loyal users either. do you like the site? would you use it? if yes or no why? any idea how these big overly priced websites promote their sites. for example pinterest got 40mil usd funding. how can you even spend that money if not using it for advertising?
Very nice website. All I recommend now is setting up a standard budget on facebook of not a lot but maybe $50/day which isn't a lot when you've already spent that much. Start building yourself a source of income and encourage your users to submit nice articles. Then promote it, ping our articles ect. That is all. Enjoy this advice and other people's
The site looks good! Its actually set up like Pinterest, which I thought was cool to begin with... IDk about spending $50,000 for a site like that, NO MATTER HOW MUCH PROGRAMMING OR CODING went into it.... Especially if its not making a single dime. How are you going to monetize it, if you are? I could also help you in the marketing of the site as well... Let me know!
for me monitizing at an early stage is is not important. i want loyal user and i want lots of them. how could you help me with marketing? what do you think about the idea of the website?
I'm unfortunately not a marketing expert so I hope you don't mind that I give more general feedback of the site as I think that might help you out. Overall the site has a great foundation but here is my feedback: -Freshen up the design, navigation and interface. You could likely get some really nice onces for $1000 at crowdspring.com or 99designs.com -Load times were really high where I'm at in Europe. Good luck with the site!
The idea is decent of hot topics and videos across the web , but i don't care for the aesthetic of the site. It seems too clustered with so much on one page scrolling down and causes user to become lost. Also if the categories had drop down list in alphabetical order of links to other pages instead of all those tabs opening up , its harder to read across rather than just down a list. One thing you might have missed on promotion of your site that would do most of your marketing for you for free is, an application that allows your members/users to <embed> the application to their own web site and shows the hot topics on all of their sites, so they can see it and don't have to come back to your site all the time, and also all of their users can see it. With a link-back function that has your link in the embed that allows you to get a PR score from all the web sites that embed your application of hot topics and videos across the web. That's where your real market is going to be in my opinion, not just at your web site. With your embedded application you have something YouTube doesn't have , as they don't allow an embedded feature that lists hot topics. The user should be able to apply what category, example, entertainment, sports etc at their site, but people vitising their site should see the header "Hot Topics & Videos Across the Web right Now!" or in that fashion. They should then be able to scroll through the categories and change it for themselves, and it should also most importantly have a notice that they can embed the exact same application at their own site. It should send them to your site to register and a copy/paste code for the embedded application. That's how you become the next YouTube or Facebook equivalent. Only spending money to advertise your own site, I don't see it becoming as popular as you'd like without the ability to embed your application. Your idea is good = hot topics and videos happening now! ... your delivery was a little off , you need embedded application , and then you're the next big website. You could easily replace the popularity of RSS News Feeds with this idea, and YouTube embedded aps. But now the idea is posted on a world wide forum, so hopefully you're ready to move on that, as now your domain name isn't as important, as that application to embed and send the files into it. Make the application available in multple sizes, with the default being about 400 width x 350 height. Once you have the embed application, advertise THAT instead of your site. Then allow sponsors at the bottom end, and connect it with Google Ads, once you've reached popular status, and begin taking in profits from hundreds of millions of websites that have your app embedded
thats one of the ideas i have but again i have too many ideas but drives me crazy to think of promoting an idea. for example if someone has a blog about fashion, they can come grab an embed code from alltopics. they choose the size and shape of the box - than they choose the topic (fashion in this case) - so he can embed a box that shows the hottest news-videos-images on fashion. but than again how do i make that idea and make it go viral? why would someone embed that box on their site? how do you suggest i promote the embed feature?
Once you have the application designed, the reason people would use it is that at a glance on their own site they can see what the hot topics and videos of that day are without checking multiple sites to find out. It's similar to what RSS news feed do, they grab news articles from a specific topic, world news, sports etc ..and it shows up on their website so they or visitors can read it , it adds content. How would you promote it and get it out. I would get it put into AP Press and see if it gets picked up as a news story that way, then you're viral if it comes out in national/world wide news. You can pay for AP Press and you can also see if they'll pick it up but your story has to have something interesting and news worthy on national level. Perhaps go through somebody that will get Press much easier than you could, example, a celebrity. Figure out who they will be and call to propose the idea and settle on one or a few with their understanding by contract, that you will feature them and their career stories throughout the year , regardless if they're a hot topic and viral video at that time. That's what they would want to hear ESPECIALLY if you can make that application the next viral super application. Start big , work you're way backwards. If a celebrity talks about that and perhaps you can come up with some sorta story that they can submit to AP Press that's newsworthy enough, they'll get the AP Press and your application will be known national. Second plan ask press sites, national news, if they want to be part of having their own section on your application so that when people click news, its their news company. !! Third plan, try to get the application involved with any type of govt or entertainment industry so that it becomes the standard program used for those types of jobs to get world hot topics and videos at a glance. The idea would be to try to include them into it , (start with celebs) and upon their approval /understanding) you design a free press or paid AP press release focused around them using your new technology. If you don't have that kinda ambition or faith in application, then if you have the money 1. Start in the highest density population (think New York and New Jersey etc) and run a cable tv ad in one or more counties in those states...and have a professional commercial created by either existing company or lower cost as a college project at a college. ) 2. talk to an advertising agency for a campaign (but those spend lots of money and get little done..but they will at least get it in front of people. ) 3. run your adwords, banner ads and small scale ads. If it was my choice, and if all the celebrity etc failed for AP Press. I would start the cable tv campaign. The application would be free , so you won't make money on that..You will have to raise sponsors. You hav target marketing with sports, news, etc all those topics ..which relates to target marketing advertisement by other companies. If your application is being given out free and becomes popular to millions using it , sponsors will want to be on those application category sections. Call potential sponsors, tell them of your campaign strategy of commercials and ask low at first, after a couple years when you have 150 million people using it and its as popular as Facebook or Youtube, then you can request higher.
50 thousand is a lot to spend on one website! i think right now you need to do more marketing and promoting. get some profits first through ads, etc. before spending more money.