Written on 11/4/2008 at 12:01 am by

Watch Me Launch My New Blog – TwiTip

Filed Under: Case Studies, Featured Posts

Yesterday on Twitter I ‘soft launched’ a new blog – TwiTip.

The idea for the blog has been ‘brewing’ in my mind for almost as long as I’ve been experimenting with Twitter but I never had the time to dedicate to starting it up. Late last week I realized that if I was waiting to ‘have time’ to start it that I never would – so I bit the bullet and got it going.

TwiTip is a blog about Twitter. It’s a place that I’ll be posting tips, news and reviews of tools for those wanting to improve their use of Twitter whether it be using it for personal reasons, to expand their personal brand, to promote their business etc.

Twitip

At this point TwiTip is firmly in ‘beta’ (if not alpha). It has a long way to go in terms of content, design and almost every other aspect of building a blog. I generally would get a blog in a much better state before going public about it (and I wouldn’t launch it on a Sunday night or on US election eve) – but I thought it’d be interesting for readers of ProBlogger to see the development of TwiTip from the ground up.

So far you have not missed much but let me give you a catchup on what I’ve done so far:

Hosting

I’ve set it up on a very basic hosting package (GoDaddy of all places – I just wanted to get it up quick and as it grows I’ll move it to a more reliable service).

Design

I’m using the Thesis WordPress theme (I’ve long wanted to test it on a live site and I have to say that it’s amazing).

My blog design skills are poor but Thesis is easy to set up and configure – it is also set up really well for SEO which is cool. I plan to give the design more personality in time (I’ll get a designer in to overhaul it) but in the mean time Thesis is a great option and will be a good basis for the design tweaks that will come).

So far I’ve developed a few WordPress ‘pages’ that take the design beyond the default set up. These include an ‘about’ page, contact page and a ‘write for TwiTip’ page.

Content

I usually would have at least 5 posts live on a blog before launching it but in this case have 3 (including one welcome post). I would normally also have a couple of posts in reserve for the next few days. Again – I’ve gone public early as a bit of a case study but will get another post up in the next 24 hours to keep a little momentum building.

My plan with content for TwiTip is for it not to be a daily update initially. I’ll start out with 3 posts a week and work towards more as I find my feet (and perhaps as I bring on other contributers). My focus in the early days will be quality rather than quantity.

Promotion

So far all I’ve done promotion wise is Tweet that I’ve launched TwiTip. That was a nice start because the audience on Twitter obviously have an interest in the topic and it was retweeted quite widely through the Twittersphere pretty quickly.

Other than the Tweet announcing the new blog (and now this post) my only other strategy for finding new readers has been more about on site ‘hooks’ – highlighting subscription methods and encouraging people to track with me on Twitter and RSS.

Analytics

I’ve set up Google Analytics on TwiTip. While it is a little slow and not great for analyzing stats as traffic events are happening on your blog in real time it’s such a solid tool that it was a no brainer of a choice.

Setting Up RSS Feed

The only other task that I’ve completed so far is to set up the RSS feed over on Feedburner. So now the feed is not a ‘TwiTip.com’ one but a Google/Feedburner one. I find that it is best to do this on day one to keep eveyrone subscribing to the same feed. I’m yet to see how many people have subscribed and don’t plan to add a feedburner counter in the short term (in the past I’ve waited until subscriber numbers hit 1000).

Things Still to Do

I’ve done a few other miscellaneous things including adding a ‘subscribe to comments’ plugin, a ‘tweet this’ plugin and adding a sidebar polling tool. There is still a lot to do to get TwiTip up and running to a point that I’ll be happy with it! These include:

  • RSS to Email Subscription Option
  • Email Newsletter Setup
  • Getting a proper design done (I won’t do a custom one in the short term but it does need a header/logo and some styling etc)
  • Monetization – I’m not going to monetize this straight away but it won’t be far off. I need to consider my options here.
  • Plugins – there are quite a few plugins that I want to get installed, test and use.
  • Writers – I’ve had so many offers for guest posts already that I’m at a point of saying no to more as I can’t process them all. Over the coming weeks I’d like to develop a system for accepting and managing contributions.

This is just the beginning of the list (and I’m sure many of you will come up with other suggestions in comments below). The more I do the more I think of. For this reason I’m going to take my time with this launch. I’ll continue to document my progress here on ProBlogger as I go.

Update – a few people have been asking how readership has been so far. It’s a little difficult to tell at this point, I’m yet to see an update of how many Feedburner subscribers there are. Google Analytics shows around 1600 visitors for day 1 (but that’s not finished updating for the day). The vast majority of readers have come from my tweets (and the retweets of others. There have also been a few visitors from facebook (where my tweets get republished) and a few others from StumbleUpon where there are a few reviews/stumbles already). I’m yet to see full stats yet and will update it at some point.

Written on 9/22/2008 at 12:00 am by

10 Innovative Blog Business Models

Filed Under: Case Studies, Other Income Streams

Keeping You Posted by Skellie.Skellie wrote this post. For more advanced blogging tips and strategies, visit her blog, Skelliewag.

When people think about making money with a blog, they tend to think about things like AdSense and affiliate links. You write good content, people come to your blog, people click on links, and you make a bit of money. How much money you make depends on how successfully you can multiply this process.

However, for some entrepreneurs this method of monetizing a blog is just one part of a larger business model that is much more lucrative than advertising on its own.

In this post I want to highlight 10 innovative and successful blog business models that do more than sell ad space or clicks. Is there room for one of these business models on your own blog?

(Please note that this particular post does not contain affiliate links.)

1. Teaching Sells / Blog Mastermind (Educational course)

Copyblogger sells TeachingSells.com

EntrepreneursJourney.com sells BlogMastermind.com

This business model involves selling an expert course on the back of a blog. Each blogger is regarded as an expert in their field and their free content demonstrates that they have plenty of useful advice to give.

These courses may only appeal to a small percentage of the host blog’s readership, so they are usually priced at the high-end to compensate. For this reason, courses must focus on sharing skills and methods that the reader values very highly.

Most commonly these are skills and methods that will–hopefully–yield more money for the reader than they spend on the course itself. If the course doesn’t have the potential to earn the reader money then it must impart a skill that has a very high non-monetary value. A Chess course might be worth $99 a month to someone who is passionate about Chess. A course in Mandarin might be worth $150 a month to someone who is relocating to China in three months and is determined to be able to hold conversations with locals as soon as they arrive.

The determining factor in success with this model is an understanding of what your readers value deeply, and providing them with that, either by providing them with great value or the means to achieve it for themselves.

2. IttyBiz (eBook)

IttyBiz sells Ninja SEO School

Naomi Dunford writes IttyBiz for online marketers and entrepreneurs who are ordinary people with a tight budget. She says her consulting clients were always curious about SEO and how to start using it for their benefit. In response to the demand she wrote the ‘Ninja SEO School‘ eBook. If you click the link you’ll notice that it’s no longer for sale, and I hope the ProBlogger mention hasn’t made Naomi regret the decision ;).

By making the choice to say the eBook would only be available for a limited time, readers who would have post-poned the decision of whether to buy the product until later (and then probably forgot about it) were forced to act quickly.

This is a very clever method to overcome one of the eBook’s weaknesses as a medium: its format makes it seem like the product will always be in unlimited supply, which can often provoke lethargy in potential buyers. Books in bookstores go out of stock, but eBooks technically never do.

If your eBook is expensive then it’s highly likely a potential buyer will think about the purchase for several days and talk themselves out of it. By creating scarcity you can motivate potential buyers to action.

Though there are many blogs funneling into an eBook, I chose IttyBiz as an example because of the clever use of artificial scarcity as a marketing tool. (Though if you emailed Naomi, I bet she’d still sell you a copy!)

3. ProBlogger / FSw / Smashing Magazine (Job board)

ProBlogger.net sells Jobs.ProBlogger.net

Freelance Switch sells Jobs.FreelanceSwitch.com

Smashing Magazine sells Jobs.SmashingMagazine.com

Vocation-based blogs like ProBlogger (bloogging), Freelance Switch (freelancing) and Smashing Magazine (design) are a perfect fit with the job board business model. These job boards that stem from blogs are usually monetized in one of two ways: advertiser pays a flat fee to post their job ad, which is the most common method and used at ProBlogger and Smashing Magazine, or job hunters pay a small subscription fee to have access to jobs, which is the least common model and is used at Freelance Switch.

Building a job board is likely to require development costs of at least several hundred dollars and possibly over a thousand, so it may be best to wait until your traffic levels are healthy before adding something like this to your blog.

4. PSDTUTS / SEOmoz (Premium content)

PSDTUTS.com sells PSDTUTS PLUS

SEOmoz sells SEOmoz PRO

These two blogs both offer members-only content for paid subscribers. At PSDTUTS $9 a month gives the user access to a large library of .PSD artworks and tutorials from well-known Photoshop artists. SEOmoz offers its ‘Pro’ membership at $49 a month, for which you receive SEO tools, guides and extra blog content. Both membership models are supplemented by a larger proportion of free content that serves to bring potential members into the blog and also as an advertisement for the content offered in the membership program.

While members-only blog content can be a lucrative business model you should expect to meet with criticism from readers who are struck by the double-wants of experiencing all your content while also not wanting to pay for it. The internet provides such an abundance of value for free that some people perhaps stop thinking about the creator’s need to be rewarded for their hard work. You should remind them of this and then focus on those customers who see ‘free’ as a privilege, not a right.

5. SpoonGraphics (Freelance services)

Blog.Spoongraphics.co.uk sells Spoongraphics.co.uk

Chris Spooner’s blog is a good example of a supported freelance business model. Freelance services are offered on a portfolio which is attached to his blog. The blog content deals with design and presents daily opportunities for Chris to demonstrate his own expertise as a designer to potential clients who might be reading his blog.

While it might seem counter-intuitive to write for other people in the same field instead of ordinary people who might be looking for a designer, many freelancers find good work covering gaps for other freelancers. For example, a freelancer who only knows how to code might hire another freelancer to create designs for him or her. As the web makes it easier to connect with freelancers across the globe this kind of collaboration is becoming increasingly common.

6. Remarkablogger / Muhammad Saleem (Consulting)

Remarkablogger.com sells Michael Martine

MuhammadSaleem.com sells Muhammad Saleem

Michael Martine writes a blog about blogging and offers consulting services as an off-shoot to the blog, targeted towards businesses who want a strong blogging presence. Muhammad Saleem is a social media power-user who also advertises social media consulting services from his blog. The premise of this business model is to build a profile as an expert in a specific area, give readers a taste of the kind of insights you can provide and then offer consultations to those who want to benefit from your knowledge on a deeper level.

The rates you can charge and the amount of uptake you get will depend on your topic as much as it does on your personal brand. People with entrepreneurial aspirations are more likely to need and be willing to invest in a consultant because they fundamentally expect to earn back more than they spend as a result of the knowledge they’ve gained. A life consultant or sports consultant or any other kind of consultant who might not be focused on helping the client earn money needs to provide immense non-monetary value instead.

7. Pearsonified / GoMedia (Digital products)

Pearsonified sells Thesis

GoMedia sells vector graphics and Photoshop brushes

The ‘Thesis’ theme has been everywhere of late. Probably because its creator’s blog has over 5,000 subscribers and he also seems to have made the right kind of friends. If you’re going to sell a product you’ve built then nothing will help your cause more than having a popular blog to back you up.

The GoMedia design firm does more. It uses a popular design blog (almost 10,000 subscribers) to sell both design services and products: the GoMedia Arsenal vector and Photoshop brush packs. Visitors are drawn into the site via the blog content and can then be funneled into either the branded services or products on offer.

8. LifeDev, Zen Habits and Web Warrior Tools

LifeDev and Zen Habits sell Web Warrior Tools

A blog can also be an excellent way to support your entrepreneurial projects and give them a kick-start. Leo Babauta (Zen Habits) and Glen Stansberry (LifeDev) partnered to create Web Warrior Tools to provide a platform for writers to sell their eBooks and have someone else market them. Both blogs link back to Web Warrior Tools and were able to promote it at launch. Instead of having to claw out an audience from nothing, the Web Warrior Tools website was able to launch with pre-existing hype and an immediate user-base.

9. NETTUTS (Magazine model)

NETTUTS.com

Based on the success of the Gawker Media network of blogs it’s becoming increasingly common to see blogs run like print magazines, with a team of paid writers and an editor, and with an entrepreneur or company behind them, using advertising and other methods to break even and, hopefully, making a profit once staff and running costs are subtracted.

This business model can be one of the most ‘hands-off’ as you don’t need to be involved directly in the running of the blog. That being said, paying writers and an editor can be costly, so most successful magazine-style blogs are quite highly-trafficked in addition to having the starting capital to run at a loss for some time, at least initially. NETTUTS is a web development tutorials site that runs under a magazine model, paying tutorial writers and an editor out of advertising proceeds.

10. Sitepoint (Branded products)

Sitepoint sells books and educational kits

Sitepoint is an exceptionally popular website for web developers and designers. Part of that website is a network of blogs featuring web development news, tips and theory. Former and current Sitepoint bloggers have gone on to publish books under the Sitepoint brand, which are then sold from the Sitepoint website or through other channels (such as Amazon). The books are prominently branded with the website and blog logo.

Your branded products don’t have to be books. Some blogs sell merchandiseprint magazines, audio books and courses, and other products.

***

I hope this post will show you some of the creative ways people are making money through their blogs. It can be easy to approach the challenge of making money online from a very narrow angle and blinker yourself to rarer possibilities that may be a better fit with your blog.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to trail-blaze and invent a business model that is perfect for your blog, even if it doesn’t exist yet!

Written on 9/9/2008 at 6:45 am by

ProBlogger Reader Blog Review: Win a Tomtom GPS Unit

Filed Under: Case Studies

This week I’d like to run a ‘reader review’ competition here on ProBlogger. Chitika kindly emailed me last week to ask if I’d be interested in doing a giveaway with them and so instead of just running a ‘comment to enter’ competition we thought we’d do something that gave everyone a chance to win a prize by helping another blogger.

The Prize

tomtom.png

Chitika (the ad network that is my 2nd highest blog income earner – learn more about them below) have put up a Tomtom ONE LE – (Limited Edition) GPS unit (pictured left).

The Competition

To put yourself in the running for the Tomtom all you have to do is review the blog Girls Just Wanna Have Funds by this Friday at 9am my time (in Melbourne Australia).

The winner will be the person who leaves the most helpful comment in the comments section below (as judged by the blog’s owner, Ginger). I should note that this is not a paid review for Ginger – I simply asked my Twitter followers to let me know if they wanted a review and she was one of many who submitted a link.

So don’t just leave a comment ‘great blog’ – actually look over the blog, talk about what you like, talk about what could be improved, share how you’d suggest they work on different aspects of the blog like design, content, SEO, monetization – the more constructive and helpful your comment is the more chance you have of winning.

My hope with this review is that Ginger will get some good advice, that one reader will get a nice prize and that the rest of us will improve our own skills and knowledge on how to build great blogs both by giving advice and reading what others have to say.

About Girls Just Wanna Have Funds

I asked Ginger to share a little information on her blog with us to help those of you participating in this review to give quality feedback that will help her. Here’s what she provided.

girls-just-wanna-have-funds.png

Girls Just Wanna Have Funds is a personal finance website targeting women in the areas of saving, investing, debt reduction and frugality. Our articles aim to be centered around issues that mainly affect women such as balancing career and family within the context of personal finance, education and the glass ceiling, household budgeting and managing finances with a significant other/spouse. Our primary goal is to teach women how to be mindful of their spending and building their net worth by making careful choices around their money. Women are often socialized to use money to create a certain lifestyle, while men are socialized to utilize money to invest for the long term. We’d like to change that by educating women on how to build wealth long term by paying attention to the present state of their finances and the decisions they make. In addition to the blog, we also have a meetup through Meetup.com that meets primarily in DC but also have other meetups nationally in the US that meet in other states through Meetup Alliance where members are able to create state chapters and begin their own meetups centered around women and personal finance.

Areas for Improvement:

  • Content/writing: How can I improve the content to target women in a more efficient manner and increase commenting on posts
  • Ad placement: I am with BlogHer Ad Network which is great as far as revenue but not sure about the optimal placement that doesn’t become obtrusive as some of the ads are animated via Adobe Flash. Also I am aware of the ad at the top of the theme causing the theme not to work properly in IE. I am working on this with BlogHer and my theme designer.
  • Site promotion: Besides commenting on other blogs/forums, guest posting and blog carnivals, how can I increase readership that sticks? Ive been stumbled quite a few times and even featured multiple times this year on local and national media but would like to figure out how to retain the readers that visit the site as a result of the media exposure.

There you have it – if you address some of the needs that Ginger has mentioned above you’re surely putting yourself in a better position to win the prize.

About Chitika Our Sponsor

I’ve been using Chitika for 2-3 years now and in that time they’ve earned me well in excess of six figures – but I’m not alone. In that time they’ve increased their publisher network to a point where they now have over 30,000 publishers using their variety of ad units.

Their ad units traditionally suited publishers with product related blogs – but in more recent times they’ve introduced their ‘premium ad’ units which display a much wider range of ads and help those with less product oriented blogs monetize their blogs. They’ve also relaxed some of their publisher requirements over the last few months so even bloggers with smaller amounts of traffic will now be accepted into the program.

Update: this competition is now over and I’m just waiting for thhe winner to be selected by Ginger before announcing it. Thanks to everyone for entering.

Written on 7/25/2008 at 1:03 pm by

Million Dollar Blogger Interviewed

Filed Under: Case Studies, Pro Blogger Interviews

Yaro Starak has just published an audio interview with one of his former students (and now a coach) from BlogMastermind Alborz Fallah.

Alborz is behind a car blog here in Australia – a blog that has enabled him to grow his blog to a point where it’s been valued at over $5 million – have a partnership with a major media company, take on investors and more. It’s pretty impressive since he only started blogging in 2006!

This guy is getting luxury cars to review, is competing with the biggest car sites in this country and employs 6 full time staff.

Here’s the interview (there’s a transcript too) – it’s a great story with tips on writing content, finding readers and more.

PS: having just listened to this for the 2nd time what shines through to me is Alborz’s passion for his topic and his believe in writing amazing content. I think these things are central in what he’s achieved – great stuff.

Written on 3/17/2008 at 3:06 pm by

The Top 5 Recommendations for Vista Rewired

Filed Under: Case Studies

It’s time to summarize over 40 reviews of Vista Rewired as part of our ProBlogger community consultation.

Before we begin, congratulations must first go to our three winners!

  • First-place reviewer Troy has won our 1,700 visitor prize, plus a one-month featured link at Vista Rewired.
  • Second-place reviewer Jacob Share has won the runner-up 500 visitor prize, plus a one-month featured link at Vista Rewired.
  • Third-place reviewer TzuVelli has won a one-month featured link at Vista Rewired.

Here were the top 5 recommendations made by the ProBlogger readers who critiqued Vista Rewired:

1. Monetizing without overwhelming

Because the blog is well-targeted to a niche, ProBlogger reviewers were able to come up with some stellar monetization ideas, including:

  • Blending AdSense units to make them the same color as links, which will decrease ad-blindness and increase click-throughs.
  • Sell private sponsorships through an ‘advertise here’ page.
  • Review Vista-related software and sell these products through in-post affiliate links.
  • Sell Windows Vista! At least some of your search traffic will be from prospective buyers looking for more info on the OS.
  • Add an eBay or Amazon affiliate store selling related products.

Readers were divided on whether to place AdSense units on the left or the right of the content — the argument for the left being that people start reading from the left, the argument for the right being that people will ‘read into’ the right.

Lastly, one easy way to get away with more advertising without making the site looks spammy is to remove Kontera from within content. It might convert OK, but does it really convert well enough to be worth making your blog look spammy?

2. Which design?

Many of the design critiques from the ProBlogger community won’t be relevant in this summary because the blog was redesigned during the course of the review. The eagerness to make changes is understandable, but it does present the problem that reviews directed at the previous version of the blog no longer make sense.

One reservation I have about the new design is that there is no way to access a traditional blog-style layout, and without images and excerpts of posts on the main page, it’s a lot more difficult for visitors to become gripped by a particular article. It also means headlines are very small, and lose much of their impact.

3. Taking content to the next level

One very good suggestion from a reader was to differentiate content on the basis of difficulty in application. At first glance, a particular visitor might assume that all the tips are beginner level, or if they’re very new to Vista, that the tips are too tricky for them. Marking each tip or tutorial as beginner, intermediate or advanced will help to communicate that the blog caters to all levels of Vista users.

Another practical tip was to include more images earlier on in the post to attract the attention of social media visitors. It was also suggested that Albert (the blog’s owner) mix-up the how-to articles with list style posts and collections of resources and relevant links. If Albert can provide a unique tip for the Vista community, he may be able to get a link from Lifehacker. Unique or unconventional tips and tutorials would be the smartest way to attract the attention of services like Digg.

4. Boosting traffic and subscribers

My favorite tip in this area was the suggestion to guest-post on MakeUseOf.com. The content is largely driven by guest-authors and OS related resource lists and tutorials are popular. Exposure to 13,000+ subscribers wouldn’t hurt, either! In my experience, guest-posting yields some of the most highly targeted traffic you’ll find, and it’s ideal for boosting your subscriber count. Other than guest-posting, writing for Digg or StumbleUpon at least once a week is the best way to grow both your traffic and your subscriber count.

Another simple, practical tip is to add an email subscription option alongside the RSS subscription option.

5. Search Engine Optimization

ProBlogger readers provided two key tips for SEO at Vista Rewired:

  • Use the All-in-One SEO Pack to generate unique meta descriptions for each post, rather than one generic meta description for the entire blog.
  • Work ‘Vista’ or ‘Windows Vista’ into blog post titles as much as possible (where appropriate) to increase your search rankings for Vista-related keyword strings.

Concluding thoughts

Overall, ProBlogger readers were impressed with Vista Rewired’s design and content, but felt the blog was not making the most of all the monetization and growth opportunities available to it. One thing we also learned: it’s a lot easier to think of ways to monetize a niche blog than it is to monetize a blog dealing with several broad topics!

Written on 3/11/2008 at 7:15 am by

Want to Win 1,700 Visitors? Review Vista Rewired

Filed Under: Case Studies

This week’s community consultation of Vista Rewired gives you the chance to win something very good for your blog: 1,700 visitors! Leave a helpful review with some non-intuitive tips in your comment and you could win a stampede of 1,700 StumbleUpon users to your favorite post. If your content is good, those 1,700 visitors could grow into a much bigger traffic snowball as votes for your content pile up.

What we’re looking for: a thorough review of the blog answering all the questions below and containing some non-intuitive advice. That’s all you’ve got to do to be in the running. There will be only one winner.

UPDATE: Albert has offered a few prizes to sweeten the pot!

1. The Top 3 Reviews will win a sponsored link in the blog’s sidebar for one month. The blog is PR 5!
2. The runner-up review will win  500 visitors to their blog!

The blog’s owner, Albert, describes the blog like this:

Vista Rewired was designed to help Vista users get the full experience out of their operating system. There are numerous tutorials and tips to help them solve computer problems or make their life easier with Windows Vista. My ultimate goal is for the site to become the de facto site for Vista information.

The blog’s owner has asked for feedback on the following areas (you can answer one, some, or all questions):

  • How can I max monetization on my blog without filling it up with too many ads?
  • If you can, please tell me one thing my site is missing. (I don’t know if this question can be worded better.)
  • My returning visitors are less than 10%. Is this normal for a site such as mine? If no, how can I increase the rate of returning vistors other than writing more often?

And the standard five points:

  • Design — usability, visual appeal, readability, navigation.
  • Content — got an idea for a great viral post the blogger could write?
  • Promotion — how would you suggest the blogger promote the blog?
  • SEO — can you see areas for improvement?
  • Monetization — could this be done more effectively? Do you see any missed opportunities?

We look forward to your helpful and respectful advice. Good luck!

Written on 3/10/2008 at 5:57 pm by

The Top 5 Recommendations for Furniture Fashion

Filed Under: Case Studies

It’s that time of the week where I try to shrink down dozens of in-depth reviews into five actionable points resulting from our community consultation. This week we held Furniture Fashion under the magnifying glass. You can head back to its launch post if you want to read the reviews in detail.

Before we start, congratulations must go to Bruce for winning our 1,700 StumbleUpon visitor prize for the best review. He asked an incredibly important question: what’s your focus? Are you a catalog, or an interior design blog? The answer will inform a lot of the steps John Cavers and his blogging partner take from here.

Here were the top 5 recommendations made by the ProBlogger readers who critiqued Furniture Fashion:

1. The interplay between niche and design

A number of viewers felt the design seemed messy and visually unimpressive. There is little padding between elements (making things seem squashed together), and the color scheme of green, white, red, blue and black doesn’t seem to mesh well. The blog’s niche makes this more of an issue. Interior design is an aesthetics oriented industry and I suspect most readers would question a design blog that doesn’t express a sense of the aesthetic in its own design.

Because of the blog’s magazine-style content, I’d suggest switching to an elegant magazine theme like Futurosity EOS. Having said that, if the existing design is working well in terms of monetization, a few simple tweaks would make it a lot better.

1. More padding between the content, sidebar and header, and more space between items. The lack of padding makes it difficult for the eye to isolate specific elements.
2. A simplified color scheme, without the bright blue (orange might work as a replacement).

2. New ways to make money

Some reviewers wisely suggested entering into furniture affiliate programs to sell items directly from your posts. Another option would be eBay or Amazon affiliate programs to sell homewares and smaller, more shippable decorative items.

Another common theme was the color and position of the AdSense ads in the sidebar. Most notably, that the ads were bright blue — a color not found anywhere else in the blog. My suggestion would be to pick a unique color that matches the theme (a reddy orange, perhaps).

3. Boosting your content

Even if the blog contains mainly catalog style content, it’s still possible to mix this up with posts that could do well on social media. For this niche, I’d suggest:

  • Top 10 lists of weird or cutting edge furniture.
  • Photographic profiles of famous interior designers and their work.
  • Collections of themed tips on interior design.

4. Boosting traffic and subscribers

Catalog-style content can be fantastic for generating well-targeted AdSense, but it usually receives a lukewarm response in terms of long-term loyalty and repeat readership. This type of content is unlikely to gather traffic through social media and links. I’d suggest focusing on SEO and keywords within posts and headlines. Without the hope of social media traffic on catalog-style content, there’s little motivation to write headlines with flair — just go for well optimized ones. Working the full formal product name into headlines is a great way to attract cut and paste searchers doing research and price comparisons.

As for increasing subscribers, I would suggest either not worrying about them (they don’t really aid on-site monetization), or creating more value-packed content. Catalog content attracts curious browsers researching items they’re interested in buying, but it’s not great for attracting long-term, loyal readers. If the aim of the blog is to serve as an online business, though, this might not be so important. The importance of subscribers will depend on your goals.

5. Building a community

Catalog style content works well for making money through PPC ads, but it’s lackluster when it comes to creating a community and comment culture on a blog. To change the culture among your readers, you need to change your content.

  • Give advice.
  • Provide opinions and analysis — something readers can add their thoughts to.
  • Post three items of furniture and ask readers to vote which one they like best.
  • Create discussion posts: i.e. “What was the last piece of furniture you bought?”
  • Take questions from readers and answer them in-post.
  • Write reviews with pros and cons. This will encourage readers to chime in with their thoughts.

Concluding thoughts

Overall, ProBlogger readers felt Furniture Fashion was monetizing well but remained unconvinced about the blog’s design and focus. We wish John a lot of luck in implementing the changes!

Written on 3/4/2008 at 9:28 pm by

Another Chance to Win 1,700 Visitors: Review Furniture Fashion

Filed Under: Case Studies

This week’s community consultation of Furniture Fashion offers you the chance to win a 1,700 visitor StumbleUpon campaign for your blog. Leave a helpful review with some non-intuitive points in your comment and you’ll be in the running to win. If your content is good, those 1,700 visitors could grow into a much bigger traffic snowball as votes for your content pile up.

What we’re looking for: a thorough review of the blog answering one/some/all of the questions below and containing some non-intuitive advice. That’s all you’ve got to do to be in the running. There will be only one winner.

The blog’s owner, John, describes the blog like this:

Furniture Fashion is an interior design blog with a large focus on furniture. Our mission is to provide articles and pictures to readers to give them ideas for their own homes as well as follow design trends. This site was created by John Cavers and Will Maack. Our goal is to make this blog a full-time business with six figure revenue. We hope that the readers of Problogger can share their experiences in the form of constructive criticism to help us accomplish our revenue objectives.

John has asked for feedback on the following areas, but you do not necessarily have to cover all of them in your review. You might even choose to focus in detail on one particular point –it’s up to you.

a) Ideas on how to make more revenue
b) Ideas on how to diversify revenue sources – are there other monetization products that would fit this blog?
c) Ideas on growing traffic
d) Ideas on building more of a community
e) Ideas on growing RSS subscribers
f) Analysis of blog layout – strengths & weaknesses; let us know how we can improve and in effect improve monetization
g) Analysis on writing style, length of articles, and sustenance of article content
h) How to increase page views per unique and average time on site – currently at 2.1 page views and 1:35 minutes.
i) Do we need meta description and meta keywords? We seem to be doing well without them. Movable Type does not automatically create them like WordPress. I am doing well in Google, but wonder if I could do better in MSN, Live, and Yahoo. Further, if I make that switch, will that penalize me in Google?
j) How do we improve? (any general ideas)
l) Ideas to create more international readers/visitors
m) Do we need a clearer tag line or some description at the top of the site? (to let readers know what this website is about) (mission statement)

We look forward to your helpful and respectful advice. Good luck!

Written on 3/4/2008 at 4:42 pm by

The Top 5 Recommendations For Free Money Finance

Filed Under: Case Studies

It’s time to summarize and consolidate almost 13,000 words worth of advice and suggestions given to Free Money Finance as part of our community consultation program. While there’s a great depth of knowledge to be mined from the comments on the launch post, I want to highlight the top five most common recommendations here.

Before we start, congratulations must go to Tori Deaux for winning our 1,700 StumbleUpon visitor prize for the best review. Thanks for outlining your tips in such a practical, conversational and, most importantly, easy to apply way.

Here were the top 5 recommendations made by the ProBlogger readers who critiqued Free Money Finance:

1. Improvements to the design

A number of ProBlogger readers found the number of strong colors and shades in the design (green, yellow, red, black, white and blue) jarring and dissonant, and that the logo looked a bit like a DIY job. While these sacrifices are usually inevitable when just starting out with a blog, I think it would definitely be worth re-investing some of the blog’s advertising revenue into a professional design and logo.

Several users also commented on ease of reading within the content, saying that this was actually very good. If FMF (the blog’s owner) decides to go with a more professional design, I’d hope that this ease of reading would transfer over into the second version of the site.

2. Width and exerpts

Few reviewers had a bad word to say about the content. It struck me as very clear and concise. However, I probably wouldn’t want to read it on the site as my screen’s resolution is 1680 x 1050 and the content area stretches very, very wide. Consider fixing the width of the site to fill the screen at 1024 x 768, but allow for whitespace or a background on the sides at higher resolutions.

In regards to the color of the excerpts (FMF had wondered if red was working) I would suggest switching this to an easy to read gray. A number of readers pointed out that red is more eye-catching than black and thus excerpts are emphasized more than the author’s content. In the context of some critiques on the amount of colors utilized in the design, it makes sense to strike red off that list by switching to gray.

3. The final frontier: tapping into social media

The blog is already established and beginner level traffic generation strategies like commenting and so on probably wouldn’t be worth the time investment. The blog has a large enough audience that it could start to mobilize social media votes and bring in traffic through those sources. Here’s how FMF could start doing this:

  • Use post excerpts on the main page with a WordPress ‘More’ tag. This will encourage readers to navigate to the post-page to keep reading. When they click their browser’s social media buttons, they’ll be voting for the specific page, rather than the site as a whole. Specific blog posts tend to do a lot better than whole blogs.
  • Use more descriptive and aspirational headlines. As seen in the ‘Best of’ list in the sidebar, post headlines which tapped into reader aspirations (being ‘Rich’ or a ‘Millionaire’) have tended to do very well.
  • Develop the habit of adding images to posts. Social media users browse the web very quickly and rely on visuals to communicate with them initially. An eye-catching image can mean the difference between a visitor who stays on your blog and a visitor who leaves the way they came.
  • Consider writing longer, thematic posts or resource lists. Short posts rarely do well on social media unless they’re incredibly profound or very useful. Longer, value-packed posts tend to be a favored format.

4. Revenue tips

A number of readers suggested placing some form of advertising in-post, as these tend to perform better in comparison to ads in sidebars. More AdSense would probably be too much, so FMF might look into affiliate banners or privately negotiated banner ads. Several readers also mentioned that the Amazon widget in the left-column seemed to be serving up irrelevant products. If this ad-unit is under-performing, it might be worth removing it to place greater emphasis on the more targeted ads on the site.

5. Ease of use and directing focus

There is an incredible amount of stuff packed into the sidebars on either side of the content. There are some really important elements in the sidebar coupled with a lot of unimportant elements, and I think a lot of what’s important is probably getting lost in the clutter. Here are my recommendations:

  • Move a Feedburner subscription icon above the fold.
  • Move up and emphasize: reviews (good social proof from sources who’re authorities to your target audience) and ‘Best of Free Money Finance’. People want to see the best very quickly when they first visit your blog.
  • Remove: recent posts element (it’s easier for users to just scroll down), recent comments (“person I haven’t heard of” commented on “post I haven’t read yet” — not so exciting for a new user), simplify your category list down to 10 – 15 (it’s so big as to be intimidating), move the blogroll to a separate page, remove lists of posts from the sidebar or put them on a separate page.
  • Move your About and Contact information above the site sponsors on the right. Your About page must be easy to find because new visitors will often give up if they can’t get quick and concise information on what your site is about.

Concluding thoughts

Overall, ProBlogger readers felt Free Money Finance offered stylish and useful content but felt the blog was hampered by an unprofessional design and clutter which made it difficult to use. We wish FMF a lot of luck in implementing the changes!