Hello everybody,My quick story: -- I have been a personal trainer for over 10 years now. I left the corporate gym industry because I am sick of the waygyms treat members as bank accounts. Over the past year I finished my B.A. at Ohio State (Communications)and started a website to share fitness secrets with the world. My website message is "use your gym, skip the trainer". My website: - I purchased a domain name (www)fitnesspatterns.com (1 year) --I purchased 1 year of web hosting. ---I installed a WordPress Blog My problem: -I do not feel the WordPress Blog format is the best way for me to present my solution to the world via the internet. ---I average 10 visitors a day with at least 2/3 of them leaving from the home page. ---- I have NOT used paid advertisement because I am not selling anything. --> Should I be selling something to recoup ad revenue before spending money? It appears most of the people see my website is a blog, do not take it seriously, and hit the back button. Some solutions I considered: -- Start a new website? ----Build a website, NOT a blog? Can anybody give me some suggestions??? Keep in mind.... the #1 goal of my website is to educate people of the behind the scenes business models so they know they can skip the sales process and use a gym on their own. Thank you! Justin Stobbs
I suggest you to recontruct your website (wordpress) its good . You can find beautiful themes for your contents. Also creating a community(forum) will be great. Create a better blog + forum
Juerald,Thank you for the feedback.Do you think a forum will be enough to keep people coming back for more? Or enough to give them a connection?Do you suggest any certain theme?Justin Stobbs
You don't need to start a new website or build a new one. What you have right now is already a good start. Developing a remarkable website is like a trial-and-error thing to do, whatever niche you are in. There are people who just revamped their website if they think it does not meet their expectations. You just have to modify the site, add some features that are necessary for the online fitness community, aside from sharing information on fitness and gym secrets. I suggest you integrate all the features into your site, aside from putting a blog.
Hello Johrone,I appreciate your feedback. I added a discussion forum to my website. You are correct about not needing a new website. Basically, I second guess myself because I know this website is currently just a blog and nothing more.I need to work on more SOLID content. A friend of mine told me "content is king" online Thanks again,Justin Stobbs
Hi FitnessPatterns, I would suggest to start a forum instead of a blog, where your users could interact nicely. http://www.mybb.com is the best free forum software (I use it) and I'd recommend to start with it. Regarding selling any guides, as you were a gym instructor and 10 years of experience is great, I'd recommend not to do this NOW but in future, once your website takes off nicely. Then you can have subscriber groups which could subscribe to and get such premium guides, tips and your exclusive deals. I think it could work great, just think out of the box.
crazy4cs,Thank you for your response and suggestions. I added a forum to my website. I also found a way to "move" my blog off the front page. This way people do not land on my site and see it is a blog.Also, I like your idea about building a community first THEN worrying about selling premium content!Thank you for your advice Justin
You can however start off with displaying ads such as Google Adsense, which will cover and help you with some basic costs and also might earn some profit.