No Excuses - Part 2

fm1234 said:
Jersey Girl

If you're getting 1,000 organic hits a day after just six days online, why bother with PPC?


Frank
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Click through percentage is still pretty marginal and the organic hits I'm getting, while broadly targeted, aren't specific enough to someone ready to buy/ submit something.
 


I posted some ads on Gumtree & Kijiji, 'Seeking reviews of online dating sites' - I received loads of feedback - mostly from men and mostly negative, which is disappointing but informative. One in particular was very helpful, which has brought me onto another site-plan:

Jackie's blog posts will be backdated to begin in January '08 - new year, new life etc etc
In February she will date a guy that she has a lot of fun with but no 'spark'
They keep in touch, become good friends and in June, the guy starts contributing to the site from a male perspective.

So I've decided to split the site into 4 sections. The main blog section of Jackie's pursuit into online dating. The male blog perspective of online dating which will feature more stories than daily updates. An article section relating to online dating (safety etc) and then plain old site reviews, based on Jackie's findings along the way.

I'm happy writing the articles & basic site reviews based on info from other websites but as I have no wish to try out internet dating myself, I've decided to recruit a blogger for that part. I've advertised on Craigslist and Getafreelancer and have already had a few applicants. I'm also advertising for someone to be the face of the site because I'm not happy with using flickr images or photoshopped.

Once the site is looking half decent and filled with affiliate links I will build a blog farm using datapresser to support it. I am so impressed with datapresser and once I get the hang of writing madlibs I think it will be an amazing tool.

Question for you; one blogger applicant sounds quite promising but would like to write from a polyamorous point of view (I'd never heard this word before!) basically she has a fiance of 9 years but they both date other people through the internet. Do you think this would work for this site or should I stick with a single girl seeking single guys?
 
SEO_Mike said:
I know a lot of coders that can write some complex code, but can't write good sales copy to save their lives.
Click to expand...
I'm one of those people, I can write, not to top notch quality though. So if you're looking for someone to do code in exchange for some content I'm more than willing to work with you. Send me a PM if you're interested.
 
janwonders said:
Question for you; one blogger applicant sounds quite promising but would like to write from a polyamorous point of view (I'd never heard this word before!) basically she has a fiance of 9 years but they both date other people through the internet. Do you think this would work for this site or should I stick with a single girl seeking single guys?
Click to expand...

I have a female friend who is polyamorous, so maybe I can lend a hand here. She was married for 3 years, and would date other guys (openly, not on the sly) and so would her husband. She slept with the guys she dated, and her husband slept with the women he dated. This blew my mind at first, but then I got a better understanding of it after spending some time living on their couch (long story). Basically, to be polyamorous is to accept that you're in love with your husband/wife/fiancee/etc, but that you still have certain, shall we say, carnal needs that require you to go out and chase tail. Poetic, isn't it?

That being said, I think it might hurt your blog to have the main "character" be polyamorous, just because so few people know what it is/what it means (yourself included), and the idea of anything other than the 1950s-Leave-It-To-Beaver famalial unit would probably scare most average people. It seems like a strange concept to them, or worse, seems like the person they're reading about is cheating on their partner, because they have no other way to associate the experience. (Finally, all the years I spent studying psychology in college pay off.)

I'd kindly ask the blogger if she'd be willing to write, but leave out the part about her fiancee and being polyamorous. Just ask her to write her experiences, truthfully, without that bit of backstory.

BTW, I really like the idea for your blog. I've been following this thread since it started, and your idea inspired me to post (My first post on WickedFire, even though I've been coming here for what, a year? Hah, go figure.)


SEO_Mike - is there going to be a No Excuses 3? I was waist-deep in about a half dozen projects when this one started and I didn't have the time to devote to it... I wouldn't have been able to do anything during the 30 day limit. But I'd definitely get down with the next one, now that my schedule is back to "normal".
 
So where's all the updates? to be honest i'm kind of disappointed there aren't more!
 
You shouldn't be disappointed waiting for responses, you should be working on your projects.
 
I am working on my projects, while at the same time I am disappointed that no one is providing updates :)
 
Thanks for your comments Zygotesix, yeah I agree that polyamorous blogger would be a bad angle for the main character of the site. Your experience sounded pretty eye-opening! You said she was married for three years, do you mean they split up after that? Not that it matters really. I guess I'm sceptical about a polyamorous relationship lasting the test of time.

Well I think I've got my main blogger now so I'm just waiting for her to provide me with the first ten posts and I'll see how Jackie Logan progresses from there.

I've written quite a lot of pages & posts for the site, some of which are scheduled for the next few weeks. These are to boost the site content and will run in addition to the main blog diary. I've also got a voluntary blogger providing a couple of posts each week about online dating from a vegan perspective so that could be interesting.

Still not decided on the character pics but I might rope in one of my friends if I can't get anything else soon.

I've added lots of affiliate links and changed out most of the adsense blocks for actual aff links.

I have a couple of questions. I don't really understanding pinging and trackbacks. I've so far had 8 comments posted on one blog post, clearly from other blogs who are looking for a link. Seven of these were caught by akismet spam. Should I delete them or allow them? Do they bring any benefit to my site or can they cause damage?

The other thing I don't fully understand is tags. How many tags is appropriate for each post? What I've been doing is putting the main search term for the post (Eg. Vegan Dating) into Wordze then I take every single keyword generated from that search and use them as tags for the post. This means I now have 772 tags across the site. Is that excessive or good for SEO?

I'm also a bit disappointed in the lack of updates on this thread but I'm also disappointed in myself. I guess its a busy time of year for people, what with holidays & socialising in the sun :)
 
Another Question: Should I be filling my post content with relevant aff links or is it better SEO to leave links out of the text and just have the banners around the posts instead?

Thanks
 
I'd like to take part in this as well! I'm also a noob so I'm keen to learn alot from this!

I currently have a domain, it's spyware news

I was thinking of aggregating the top threats from a whole bunch of anti-spyware vendors' sites and stick some product reviews on it, then monetize it somehow.

any ideas?

also, it seems that it displays a directory listing when i put the www in but shows the blank html without the www?
 
janwonders said:
The other thing I don't fully understand is tags. How many tags is appropriate for each post? What I've been doing is putting the main search term for the post (Eg. Vegan Dating) into Wordze then I take every single keyword generated from that search and use them as tags for the post. This means I now have 772 tags across the site. Is that excessive or good for SEO?
Click to expand...

OK, so Seocracy helped me out here. I had WAAAAAAY to many tags. I've now spent an hour cleaning them up and have cut down from 49 pages to 6, which is much more managable and sensible. Having so many was going to be bad for SEO and would send a warning sign to google. This makes total sense now and I'm sure it was a total newbish question.

As far as pinging goes, I realise it is good for me to ping other posts, but I'm just not clear if I should be accepting all comments & pings to my blog, can it harm the site if they are spammy?
 
Holy shit everyone! I'm sorry about disappearing on you. Like many of you, I've been up to my eyeballs in projects. I've gotten so busy, I haven't even been on WF much lately. Maybe 15 minutes or less every other day.

Anyhow, if anybody wants a free domain, just go pick one out from the list I posted, then PM me your Godaddy information for the push and it's yours. For those of you that will inevitably ask about sending some sort of payment, don't. Just pay it forward someday.

This will be my gift to you.
 
Hey i have question if anyone can help. At the PHPBay: Start to Finish Tutorial : eurekadiary.com tutorial at the end it has a section to turn the search into an automatic ebay search. I tried copy pasting that code every which way and it just will not find anything. All it does is make a blank page with "your results" at the top. Im using the standart limauorange search.php file and the tutorial is very unlcear on where to paste it.
 
Hey everyone and congrats on another successful no excuses season. Any chance to get a poll "who has the best chance for cash" so we can vote or a profit leader board of the current season up at the top of this post? We can make this event similar to a game show or whatever. This would generate more energy forum wide as there are some pretty damn big names on this board who have totally ignored both of Mike's threads.

janwonders said:
Thanks Radio, I'll get building. Any suggestions of where to find a good 'character' image? For pics I've been using Stock.Xchng which is fine for actual things but I always feel that any images of people found there, are likely to lose the site credibility very quickly if anyone was digging for further info. Then again, it maybe would'nt matter too much.
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Ingenious idea Jan. Love the idea for your blog as it could potentially be something exclusively for guys or neutral gender, depending on which direction you take it. So sex and the city meets the temple of poon.

links building suggestions:
1. comments at places like youporn & torrent sites ... hit the guys with your kinky story when they are looking to fap.

2. celeb/cosmetics/beauty sites are for advertising to female gender. Also, lots of chics read digg so your blog would be dripping with linkbait. Using the polyamorous angle ... "Woman sleeps with dozens of men in 2009, says it's necessary for a healthy marriage" or whatever, I'm not good at that stuff but your site would be perfect for it.

face of the site suggestions: If you are pretty presentable, camp out in front of a modeling agency or shake joint (in a non-stalker type way) looking for some hottie yet girl next door types.

Regardless which of the two locations you get this person, they are probably looking for some publicity and your blog *could* serve as a launching platform for their career. Another benefit is that this person is local, getting some pictures made & delivered should be trivial

radio said:
Here's the site: EPN Store

It's Wordpress MU where I've swapped out the default theme and have a modified theme limauorange as the default.

The idea is that I offer free hosting for EPN Stores. I have a couple of my own links to eBay w/in the theme, but there's no swapping of Campaign IDs. I'll probably put up some adsense as well.

Things to do:
  • Add additional themes - probably add a few limauorange themes w/ different colors to start.
  • Custom home page
  • I want to get phpBay Lite (or another similar plugin) to be automatically installed in the mu-plugins directory
  • I want to remove all indications of Wordpress (will help with another project I'm working on).
  • I want to send out a newsletter to subscribers w/ EPN Store tips and encourage them to build content into their stores.
I'm working on a couple other sites - a phpBay Pro site, a blog for n00bs, and a b2b site. We'll see where I'm at in 30 days!

---

What does this mean? Did I miss some more shit (i.e. post limit)?
Click to expand...

Hot damn, and we have a winner!!

great idea radio, best long term potential I have seen in a while for a site on autopilot. By tying this into wpmu, you have really opened the door for quite a bit. Making it very user friendly and finding clients will be your only obsticle.

The only real suggestion I might have is to make sure and set up each account on subdomains, not subfolders. This will make each user get their own "link juice" so all these sites won't suck yours off. Many pages inside digg rank well in google because people added just a few direct links. This is an example of people leeching off the authority from the mother site.

This would be perfect for wildcard subdomains as there would be no manual setup on your part for each account.

phplist is a pretty easy to use newsletter, but honestly I would just stick with rss feeds until you get pretty popular. Nothing sucks more than composing a newsletter that 3 people are going to read.

About that phpbay / phplite plugin thing .... I'm assuming you are talking about a method to pull ebay listings from auctions so you can present it on people's pages using their app id & keywords. If this is the case, I would just dig in with the ebay developer's api. It's going to be far more customizable and won't take much massaging to get to work with wpmu.
 
puroz said:
Hey i have question if anyone can help. At the PHPBay: Start to Finish Tutorial : eurekadiary.com tutorial at the end it has a section to turn the search into an automatic ebay search. I tried copy pasting that code every which way and it just will not find anything. All it does is make a blank page with "your results" at the top. Im using the standart limauorange search.php file and the tutorial is very unlcear on where to paste it.
Click to expand...

I believe the part you need to replace is everything between "<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>" and "<?php endif; ?>" So you'd delete those 2 lines and everything between them, and put the search code in its place.

If you prefer you can just delete everything in your search.php file, and copy and paste everything below into it.


Code: 
<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
    <div class="middle">

    <p align="center">Your search for '<strong><font color="#FF0000"><? echo $_GET["s"] ?></font></strong>' returned the following results:</p>
<p>
<?
function phpBaySearch($term) {
    $kw = trim(urldecode($term));
    # set the number of results to return here.
    $num = 20;
    $cat = "";
    $excl = "";
    if ($kw) {
      # turn error reporting off in case of a server timeout when connecting to ebay
      # if you are having troubles, set error_reporting to (1)
      error_reporting(0);
      include(ABSPATH . "wp-content/plugins/phpBay/ebay.php");
      $ebay = new ebay();

    # set the number of auction listings to display
    if (intval($num) > 0) {
      $ebay->eb_frpp = intval($num);
    } else {
    # if number of auction listings to display is not set, then default to 10
      $ebay->eb_frpp = 10;
    }

    # if there are words to exclude in the search, assign them here.  ie "word1 word2 word3"
    if ($excl > "") {$ebay->eb_exclude = $excl;}

    # Set all global options that are stored in the phpBay Pro Admin Panel
    $ebay->eb_saaff = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_aff_type"));
    $ebay->eb_pid = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_ebay_pid"));
    if ($cid > "") {$ebay->eb_custom_cid = "_" . urlencode($cid);}
    $ebay->eb_cid = urlencode(get_option("PB_ebay_cid"));
    $ebay->site_url = get_bloginfo("wpurl") . "/";
    $ebay->encode = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_encode"));
    $ebay->url_prefix = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_url_prefix"));
    $ebay->eb_salic = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_salic"));
    $ebay->eb_saatc = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_saatc"));
    $ebay->mod_rewrite = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_mod_rewrite"));
    $ebay->eb_aff_text = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_aff_text"));

    # Set Country Code Information
    $ebay->eb_siteId = get_option("PB_eb_siteId");
    if ($PB_eb_siteId == "") {$PB_eb_siteId = "0";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "0") {$ebay->eb_language = "en-US";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "15") {$ebay->eb_language = "en-AU";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "16") {$ebay->eb_language = "de-AT";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "123") {$ebay->eb_language = "nl-BE";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "2") {$ebay->eb_language = "en-CA";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "71") {$ebay->eb_language = "fr-FR";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "77") {$ebay->eb_language = "de-DE";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "201") {$ebay->eb_language = "";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "203") {$ebay->eb_language = "en-IN";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "205") {$ebay->eb_language = "";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "101") {$ebay->eb_language = "it-IT";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "146") {$ebay->eb_language = "nl-NL";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "212") {$ebay->eb_language = "";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "216") {$ebay->eb_language = "";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "186") {$ebay->eb_language = "es-ES";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "193") {$ebay->eb_language = "de-CH";}
    if ($ebay->eb_siteId == "3") {$ebay->eb_language = "en-GB";}

    $PB_sort_order = get_option("PB_sort_order");
    if ($PB_sort_order == "1") {$ebay->eb_fsop = "1";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "1";}
    if ($PB_sort_order == "2") {$ebay->eb_fsop = "2";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "2";}
    if ($PB_sort_order == "3") {$ebay->eb_fsop = "3";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "1";}
    if ($PB_sort_order == "4") {$ebay->eb_fsop = "3";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "2";}

    $PB_eb_fcl = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_fcl"));
    $PB_eb_fts = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_fts"));
    $PB_eb_saprclo = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_saprclo"));
    $PB_eb_saprchi = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_saprchi"));
    $PB_eb_sabdlo = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_sabdlo"));
    $PB_eb_sabdhi = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_sabdhi"));
    $PB_eb_fspt = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_fspt"));
    $PB_eb_fpos = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_fpos"));
    $PB_eb_sadis = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_sadis"));
    $PB_eb_sasl_cb = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_sasl_cb"));
    $PB_eb_sasl = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_sasl"));
    $PB_eb_fbfmt = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_fbfmt"));

    # search items with free shipping
    $ebay->eb_ffsh = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_eb_ffsh"));

    # ebay logo
    $ebay->logo = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_logo"));

    # sort drop down
    $ebay->sort_by = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_sort"));

    # alternating rows
    $ebay->row_alter = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_row"));
    $ebay->row_odd = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_row_odd"));
    $ebay->row_even = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_row_even"));
    $ebay->row_hover_cb = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_row_hover_cb"));
    $ebay->row_hover = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_row_hover"));

    # columns
    $PB_columns_cb = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_columns_cb"));
    if ($PB_columns_cb > "0") {$ebay->columns = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_columns"));}

    # buy it now items
    if ($PB_eb_fbfmt == "1") {$ebay->eb_fbfmt = "1"; $ebay->eb_sabfmts = "2";}

    # items with photo only (if set to 4)
    if ($PB_eb_fcl == "4") {$ebay->eb_fcl = "4";} else {$ebay->eb_fcl = "3";}

    # search titles and descriptions (if set to 2)
    if ($PB_eb_fts == "2") {$ebay->eb_fts = "2";} else {$ebay->eb_fts = "";}

    # items by min/max bid price
    if ($PB_eb_saprclo > "") {$ebay->eb_saprclo = urlencode($PB_eb_saprclo);} else {$ebay->eb_saprclo = "";}
    if ($PB_eb_saprchi > "") {$ebay->eb_saprchi = urlencode($PB_eb_saprchi);} else {$ebay->eb_saprchi = "";}

    # items by min/max number of bids
    if ($PB_eb_sabdlo > "") {$ebay->eb_sabdlo = urlencode($PB_eb_sabdlo);$ebay->eb_fbd = "1";} else {$ebay->eb_sabdlo = "";}
    if ($PB_eb_sabdhi > "") {$ebay->eb_sabdhi = urlencode($PB_eb_sabdhi);} else {$ebay->eb_sabdhi = "";}

    # list items by zip code
    if ($PB_eb_fspt == "1") {
      $ebay->eb_fspt = urlencode($PB_eb_fspt);
      $ebay->eb_fpos = urlencode($PB_eb_fpos);
      $ebay->eb_sadis = urlencode($PB_eb_sadis);
    }

    # list tiems by specific seller id
    if (($PB_eb_sasl_cb == "1") && ($PB_eb_sasl > "")) {$ebay->eb_sasl = urlencode($PB_eb_sasl);$ebay->eb_fss = "1";} else {$ebay->eb_sasl = "";}

    # search items with free shipping
    if ($PB_eb_ffsh == "1") {$ebay->eb_ffsh = "1";}

    # pagination form
    $ebay->paginate = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_paginate_cb"));
    $ebay->paginate_per_page = unhtmlentities(get_option("PB_paginate"));
    $ebay->page = 1;
    # each instance of the paging javascript must be unique
    $js = $ebay->jsText($kw);
    $js = str_replace("-", "", $js);
    $js = "pagenum_" . $js;
    if ($_POST["$js"] > "") {$ebay->page = intval($_POST["$js"]);}

    # sort order form
    $ebay->sort_by_value = 1;
    if ($ebay->sort_by == 1) {
      $js = $ebay->jsText($kw);
      $js = str_replace("-", "", $js);
      $js = "sortnum_" . $js;
      if ($_POST["$js"] > "") {$ebay->sort_by_value = intval($_POST["$js"]);}
      if ($ebay->sort_by_value == 1) {$ebay->eb_fsop = "1";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "1";}
      if ($ebay->sort_by_value == 2) {$ebay->eb_fsop = "2";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "2";}
      if ($ebay->sort_by_value == 3) {$ebay->eb_fsop = "3";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "1";}
      if ($ebay->sort_by_value == 4) {$ebay->eb_fsop = "3";$ebay->eb_fsoo = "2";}
    }

      # call the main ebay function, receive the listings in html and replace the phpbay tags with the content
      $ebay->listings($kw, $cat);
      $text = $ebay->html;
    }
  echo $text;
}
phpBaySearch($_GET["s"]);
?>
</p>
    </div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>
 
Thanks, i guess i had it right after all. The code must be bugged. It doesn't display any results after it announces what the search was for.
 
janwonders said:
Jackie Logan is pursuing Online Dating.
Click to expand...

That reminds me of "lonelygirl15" on YouTube, which had a lot of followers on YouTube, even after it was revealed that it was all made up. That sort of thing could really take off if done properly. Haha - get the readers to get updates via an aweber list and hit them with offers in the emails.
 
The biggest issue I ran into was making it easy for the end user. My site had like 30 steps - all small, but I needed to make it more automatic. It still has some potential, but figuring out how to monetize it is a bit of an issue as well. I'm keeping it for playing with, but got distracted with some other stuff. Seeing shit through and focusing is where I need to improve. I'm too scatter-brained. I did some facebook ads for a project and feel pretty comfortable with those - now I just need to do it in a fashion that generates revenue vs. the awareness campaign I was running.
 
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