Taking a site to the pro level?

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by aboyd, Dec 18, 2005.

  1. #1
    I have a site (Publisher Database) that is doing OK. It has almost 2000 members, and it gets a lot of posts in the forums each day. It makes about $200/month from Adsense.

    I have run contests to get traffic. It worked. I've recruited family & friends to seed the board with posts. It worked. I run Adwords ads to bring in potential members, and that works too. I worked on my site design, even released a few phpBB mods that I built to help improve my site. I opened up my site's magazine database, so that Google would index the thousands of magazine dossiers that I have. All these things worked.

    But the site isn't at the "next level." I know some of the people on this forum make thousands of dollars from their sites. I also know there are many forums with TENS of thousands of members. And to be honest, I'm just not getting good results from whatever SEO work I've done.

    So I'm wondering. I don't really need a site review, although tips are welcome. But what I'd like to hear is success stories. How did YOU do it? What is the URL of your site, if you don't mind providing it as an example people can learn from? What things did you do that moved you from hundreds/thousands of visitors to the "I need a dedicated server" level?

    Did anyone just pick a popular keyword and watch the traffic materialize with little effort? Also, how long did it take to get your site to a big level?

    -Tony
     
    aboyd, Dec 18, 2005 IP
  2. SportsOutlaw

    SportsOutlaw Active Member

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    #2
    I am not a big fan of the home page of your site. For me, it simply looks like one of the typical forums based websites when you have that boxy home page setup. I would go for something that didn't look like thousands of sites already out there if that is possible with what you do, but that is just my personal opinion. Others may like that type of look so it could very well just be a personal preference for me. I just dont like a home page that simply looks like a forums portal

    Also, have you considered other forms of advertising besides adsense? I use adsense, but I also work on getting other advertising as well. One way to get an easy $100-$200 per month additional to your income would be with linkworth. With a PR of 5, you should get some interest in people putting text links on your site. You may also consider selling the advertising on your own, but for me, it is just easier to let linkworth keep up with the accounts and sending me the money.
     
    SportsOutlaw, Dec 18, 2005 IP
  3. Cutter

    Cutter Peon

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    #3
    To me the frontpage looks a little confusing at first, but I think it does its job.

    Here are a few suggestions I have.

    Out of all the people who visit your site, what percentage are signing up for your forum? What can you do to increase this?

    Out of all the people who sign up for your forum, how many are posting? Are you reminding the people that signed up and never posted that you exist?

    I would also think about exactly who you want to join your forum, where they are right now, and how you are going to get them to visit your site. That might mean promoting yourself on other writer's websites.

    I think you've done a good job in having images showing people how to use the forum. Believe it or not, there are a lot of internet users that have trouble with this stuff, especially if they've never used a forum before.

    My other suggestion is going to sound very painful, but you might want to think about rolling over to vbulletin. I did it myself a few weeks ago. There are just tons of other options and plug-ins that you can use that phpbb completely lacks. I wouldn't worry about this until you reach a very strong growth rate on your forum.
     
    Cutter, Dec 20, 2005 IP