Embarked on a concerted campaign to market SIPEP, my male health site and traffic is now steady at a constant 40-50. A couple of advertisers have come on board at low rates because it hasn’t been around very long but, thanks to them, it has made a small profit to cover the earlier expenditure.
Advertisers, like everyone else, do not want to pay much to put their moniker on your handiwork, so there was a lot of haggling involved. It was very Life of Brian… but I’m getting there :) You have to compare yourself with others in the market and bid accordingly. In many cases, the quality of the content does not count for too much so, even though I think I have a unique, high quality product, they take a lot of other factors into the equation.
On the gurus’ advice, I investigated sponsored blogging and, after an initial first success for a worthwhile fee, I have not written again. People seem happy to write 250 words for $3, fitting in the most obscure keywords. I wouldn’t take on anything if I didn’t feel I could make a post with it that was worth reading and I don’t think I’m prepared to get out of bed for $3… or worse… Half of $3!
Another means of getting bums on seats that is being touted all over by the gurus at the moment is guest blogging and I’ve done a couple of posts on other non-sex sites to see how effective that method of traffic generation proves to be.
I made my first pitch to help a friend get her business online. In these credit crunch times, she doesn’t want to spend any money. However, she does want to get more exposure for her business rather than having to cold call with samples, so having a proper web presence would seem sensible. I tried to push her in the direction of the lovely lady who put this website together but, of course, a professional designer is way out of her budgeting sphere.
She showed me her own efforts and, from what I have learned so far, I know I can at least make it user-friendly and SEO it properly, as well as showing her how to market it.
Despite the gurus saying that I should be charging hundreds of dollars for my services and make myself out to be super duper busy and doing potential customers a favour by giving them a moment of my time, I just can’t get my head around that type of attitude, especially as I am effectively using her as a guinea pig.
Things to remember for my next pitch – don’t forget your mobile dongle. You cannot rely on being able to pick up local unsecured wireless networks – or that they will work properly if you can access them. Being unable to use your laptop means that you cannot show how much preparation you did prior to the meeting and you have to try to remember the urls of all the examples that you did set up.
Now I have to put in a proper written quotation. If any of my readers can give me some advice about VAT and small businesses, I’d love to hear from you.
Having My Cake’s stats at the beginning of April were as follows:
April 3 2010
Global Ranking 352,814
United States 197,643
Canada 121,158
United Kingdom 276,334
It has been the most peculiar month.
After the high of regaining my PR3, I watched my Alexa ranking jump another 30,000 places in two weeks to 320,428 on April 17 and I thought I was on course to break the 300,000 mark by the end of April.
Unfortunately, the algorithm had other ideas and, in the space of three days, I lost 50,000 places just like that. Researching the basis for the figures, reminded me that the previous rankings had been linked to the massive traffic spike I had three months ago as well as the more recent google crawls.
As the ranking rose and fell with no apparent rhyme or reason in the high 300,000 mark, I watched my appearance in the top 100,000 rankings of countries like India and Malaysia come into play and then Malaysia disappeared again.
Over the last two weeks, I have started to utilise some of the strategies that I have learned from my various gurus and the details in my stats are now starting to reflect these. Whether it can counteract the other unknown factors, only time will tell.
It was a really good feeling to finally achieve a top 100,000 ranking in my own country, although that figure is certainly not a constant, as it goes up and down like the proverbial whore’s drawers.
For the last four months I have been posting twice a day every day and I think I may start to experiment by seeing what happens if I revert to once a day. Whilst I have stacks of stuff to write about, I prefer to spend more time over each post than just bashing it out. Things always read better when they have been given a chance to mature.
As always, I thank you for interest in my progress and for continuing to read x
May 10 2010
HMC 384,345
India 70,817
UK 92,616
Can 94,645
US 183,965
Onwards… and, hopefully, upwards!
It almost sounds like you were supposed to be a visitor, too (albeit a busy, working visitor) and separated from the actual business end of it,
Available, but, hard to contact.
Im not sure I understand what you mean, boneman??