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> My SBI! Diary 2009
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| My SBI Diary in 2009"How I built my second Site Build It! website | ||||||||
Summary
of my SBI! journey:
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| <<< Summary of 2008 | |
January, 2009
I'm building about two pages a week, still. More to follow...
(Actually I had a break from my SBI site this month and for half of February. I now intend to add 1 to 2 pages per week, get some inbound links to my site, and concentrate on implementing the Content 2.0 module (which costs $99 per year, I think).)
STATS: 295 unique visitors per day, 44429 page views per month
It's more or less a year since I began my SBI journey. The site has over a hundred pages, is currently getting 300+ unique visitors per day, and is earning...
Okay, the site is earning little or nothing right now. But I did add Google Adsense ads to the SelfHelpCollective homepage, so the income trickle has started. Plus I do gently presell SBI! (from which I earn a commission! :-) )
I still think congratulations are in order! :-) I've created a site that I'm proud of, that will start to earn me money (my target is $US10,000 per month no less) AND I receive feedback like this...
"Your Web site
is wonderful and I found it at a perfect time in my life.
It is helping
me through a transitional period like millions of being
unemployed and the
stress that comes with it.... Instead of sleepless
nights viewing news websites
when I need some peace and tranquility,
to calm down, I visit your site and
will each day. Thank you very much!"
-- Tracey T. from United States
That's what building an SBI! website is all about.
By the way, I discovered I wasn't getting the most out of my forms today. And that's because I only just read about forms (and other ways of building relationships) in Day 8 of the SBI! Action Guide today. Oops. I must go through the last 2 days of this Action Guide asap (especially the monetization bits :-) ).
STATS: 345 unique visitors per day, 44156 page views per month
Another month, another set of improving site stats, and another great site testimonial.
STATS: 354 unique visitors per day, 48900 page views per month
Hi
Steve! I dropped by your site by following your profile after
you commented
on my blog and I must say that I was quite
pleasantly surprised! I really
love your "guru-free" ideals..."
-- Lam
By the way, I find blogs to comment on (like Lam's) by using Google Alerts. It's good way to see what people are saying about a topic you're interested in, as well as getting inbound links, visits and maybe even online friends! :-)
Didn't do too much link building this month, though. I've been preparing my site for the Content 2.0 module - a way of allowing site visitors to contribute content directly to the site. (Think MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook... most of the REALLY popular websites, actually. And if that's not helping, check out Content 2.0 on my SBI tools page.)
I came up with loads of C2 ideas, as I went through my site doing a 'spring-clean' (improved page headlines, meta title tags, spacing at the top of each page, and removed spelling mistakes, etc. for all of the 120+ pages on Self Help Collective).
Yes, I have at least 20 content 2.0 ideas to get my site visitors involved more. Which they will like I'm sure. And my site will benefit from lots of UGC (User Generated Content).
(First idea to implement: favourite inspirational quotes!)
The only thing holding me back is the learning curve - not too steep, but still a lot to take in, that's for sure. Anyway...
STATS: 295 unique visitors per day, 44429 page views per month
Well after about a month of research into Content 2.0 - checking out the SBI forums, visiting SBIer websites to see C2 in action, checking out my own site to see what ideas would work there - I've finally created my first C2 invitation (as it is known).
Yes, you can now 'vote' on your favourite inspirational quotation
You can tell visitors why one particular inspirational quote is your favourite and give reasons why, and other people can make comments.
It might not be the best use of C2 - user-generated content, that helps you connect with your site visitors AND helps you create more pages on your website! :-) - but it's a start.
Hooray!
And long may the C2 contributions continue. :-)
(There are 2 favourite inspirational quotes so far. Why don't you vote for yours? It will help you see how this whole C2 thing works! ;-) )
Note: if you want to know more about C2 then I talk about it on this SBI tools page.
April 30th, 2009
...Also gone live with 'share your story' and got about 7 or 8 self-help stories so far (though crafting the 'invitation' is a bit of an art)
Update on stats - they are down for the first time ever! But I think traffic to all of my sites was lower. I blame Easter! :-)
STATS: 305 unique visitors per day, 43493 page views per month
Got big plans for the site this month.
1. Going to focus on creating more pages (in 3 categories: fear, goal-setting and passion no less.
2. Going to also focus on building inbound links to the site.
3. I shall obviously be doing the Content 2.0 thing - getting visitors to contribute content to my site, AND...
4. I will also now focus on monetizing my site. Will look at affiliate marketing primarily, but will also thoroughly read the Action Guide too for monetization ideas. Yes, it's time for SHC to start paying its way lol.
By the way, this is SBI! as done by a Do-It-Yourselfer. You might want to at least get started with SBI! in a more structured, scheduled way. And in that case you'd be wanting SBI! eLearning. Or, you might just not have the time for all of this, but still want a website that works - you'd need to call in SiteSell Services, then!
Just in case you're interested, of course! ;-)
May 20th, 2009Just gone live with another C2 invitation (as they're known in the SBI! biz) - this time to do with happiness lists! (or an answer to the question 'what is happiness to you?) :-)
So, what makes you happy? ;-)
Also re-reading the Action Guide* as I feel I may not be following it as closely as well as I should.
In particular, 'Day 4 - planning monetization mix' has been an eye-opener. I must use Site Info a lot more (this is detailed site information about the top 10 sites listed on Google for a particular keyword, including inbound links, the PR of those sites etc.)
E.g. for the keyword happiness
May 31st, 2009
STATS (MAY): 335 unique visitors per day, 46158 page views per month
Going upwards! :-) 10% better than April.
Am cracking on with content, content, content this month. And for the next few months too.
So far, I've written about passion (including some passion love quotes) and I've changed my site hierarchy a little to include inspirational poems as a main subject theme. (People just love reading these poems, it seems. So why not make it easier for them.)
Also trying to monetize the site a bit, now. I do love Self Help Collective as a great place to self-help (help and be helped, actually) but it's important that I earn a good income from the site, too.
So I'm looking at Adsense and only the best, and most appropriate affiliate marketing programs to join and promote. Programs like Site Build It! (ahem! Well, I think SBI! is about self-empowerment, so why not!) and the Guy Finley program (am a big fan of Guy's teachings)
June 24th, 2009
Reflection-time today!...
Starting to feel a bit deflated today, actually. When you see SBI! sites executed almost perfectly (as in the case of Elad and his Coolest Parties websites) then this can sometimes act as a de-motivator! That is, I hear 'the voices inside my head' telling me that I'll never be able to 'get it' like Elad has. (And Elad really, really 'gets' SBI!)
Thankfully, those dark (and unhelpful) voices only stayed around for a few minutes. And now they've been replaced by positive 'I can do that too' noises, and I've already started to plan how I might redesign Self Help Collective to better communicate 'the message' AND to better monetize.
SBI! is a great way to make an extra income online, of that I have no doubt. But you really, really must follow the Action Guide and every now and then I have been guilty of ignoring the AG advice and doing it my way. And I have not been focussing enough on monetization, either. Double ooops!
Still, I'm confident that I can correct my slightly deviating path. So, the rallying cry is "ONWARDS!" :-) How bout you? Tempted to get involved with SBI!, yet? Well... Site-Buildit.com is my free guide to SBI!, as you may well know or you could just check out the SBI! Video Tour to get a better idea of what it's all about.
I can recommend (still) SBI! :-)
PS Just did an interview for Liara M. Covert, Ph.D. on her Dream Builders website. Writing about Self Help Collective and my motivations for creating it was actually very empowering for me. Why not check it out!
STATS (JUNE): 399 unique visitors per day, 53912 page views per month
Going upwards, again! :-) 20% better than May.
Aug 4th, 2009STATS (JULY): 451 unique visitors per day, 39817 page views per month
Interestingly, unique visitors are up (by 12.5%) - which is great - but the number of pageviews reported is down. Now, to me, if my site gets more visitors then I expect my site to have more pageviews. But not, it seems, for July. I shall have to see if this odd trend continues in August. Already there are signs that it will not. Hmm.
And, actually, July proved a frustrating month for me as regards SBI! as I needed to report faults - specifically with how the Content 2.0 module worked - on several occasions. I had contributions deleted that still showed up. I had confirmation messages not working. And I had erroneous reporting totals. (I also had the Monetize It! module NOT working for my SelfHelpCollective.com website - very important, as this module really helps in monetizing each and every page on the site.)
Thankfully, SiteSell Support respond quickly to each and every problem, and the Sitesell programmers work hard to fix problems that are in fact, program bugs!
So, all in all, July was frustrating but I know that my site is still on an upward trend in terms of website visitors and it has started to make money! :-)
Aug 26th, 2009
Update to Aug4th Stats report!
Unfortunately, after being in contact with Sitesell Support, it seems there was a bug with the traffic stats and page views were over-inflated. This bug was fixed in June so even thought my visitor numbers have always been correct, the page views were only really correct (i.e. lower) from July onwards. Which is a shame. I guess I've got to get more people checking out more pages on my site. Indeed. :-)
STATS (AUGUST): 525 unique visitors per day, 42034 page views per month
Well the stats are still looking good. The site is averaging more than 500 unique visitors per day (up by more than 15% on July), and it won't be long (I hope) before it gets to 1000 visitors per day. Page views are lower than in Jun, but that's because of a bug in the stats (apparently) that's now been fixed. (See Aug 26th, for details.)
As for ongoing work on the site, I'm working very hard on the following areas, right now:
1) Site monetization - trying to identify suitable general affiliate programs, and affiliate programs for individual pages (e.g. most common fears). It's a slow process, but am updating a few pages per week that have monetizing links (e.g. daily inspirational quotes - see the TUT link! ;-))
2) Creating new content - now trying to identify at least one extra page per tier2 category that I can create. (And this after creating about 40 extra pages in early summer.) So pages to be created include:
- emotional intelligence
- strange fears
-
happiness poems
- positive thinking
And all these new pages are conceived of, first, via the new and improved Brainstorm It! keyword generation tool (that's central to SBI!).
3) Creating new inbound links - have decided to write several articles that contain links to some of the most recent created pages, and publish them on EzineArticles.com or Goarticles.com. These articles will be rewrites of the pages they link to, of up to 450 words.
Also carrying on with answering questions on Yahoo! Answers, and leaving good comments on targeted blogs (via Google Alerts), and also doing Value Exchange, when appropriate.
Anyway, this work won't do itself... (lol)
Sep 16th, 2009
Added another C2 invitation to the site and am now busily trying to promote it on Twitter and Facebook. Might be especially difficult to get user contributions as I'm asking people to share their (past or present) symptoms of low self esteem. Gulp! Gotta be brave to be able to share that sort of stuff. I guess.
A full list of my invitations for site visitors to contribute can always be found on the 'Your Story' page.
Sep 29th, 2009
Have decided to do a lateral brainstorm using Google and SBI's Brainstorm It! to build a few extra pages for each of my tier2 themes. Which all sounds a bit complicted until you realise it just means pressing a few buttons, looking at a few numbers, and then deciding what pages to build. (See Sep 3rd for the beginnings of this exercise.)
And so far, the pages I'm going to be adding to the site - one page per week hopefully, until the end of the year - include:
1. Positive Thinking (Tier2: Positive Attitude)
2. Positive Affirmations (Tier2: Positive Attitude)
3. Controlling Anger (Tier2: Anger Management)
4. How to be assertive (Tier2: Assertiveness)
5. Strange fears (Tier2: Fear)
6. Achieving Goals (Tier2: Goal Setting)
7. How to be happy (Tier2: Happiness)
8. Happiness Poems (Tier2: Happiness)
9. Funny SMS (Tier2: Happiness)
10. Inspirational Family Poems (Tier2: Inspirational Poems)
11. Inspirational Friendship Poems (Tier2: Inspirational Poems)
12. Personal Growth Resources (Tier2: Personal Development)
13. Inspirational Basketball Quotes (Tier2: Inspiration Quotes)
14. Graduation Inspirational Quotes (Tier2: Inspiration Quotes)
15. Free Self Help Ebooks (Tier2: Self Help)
16. Self Improvement Resources (Tier2: Self Improvement)
They add a little bit more substance to most of the main tier2 pages, and all will be optimised to pass the Analyze It! module, which means they'll all be more or less optimised for the search engines.
Then all I do is make sure these pages are linked to on the Self help Collective Sitemap as well as the respective tier2 pages, and I try and get other site owners to link to these pages, and - voila! - these pages appear on the first page of Google for the keyword concerned.
Example? Well, take a search for 'most common fears' on Google - a page I created a few months ago, I think.
It now ranks #4 on page#1 of Google.com at time of writing (Sep 29th, 2009)
...Anyway, I ought to spend less time here explaining this to you and more time there doing it. Really. Didn't I! Lol
STATS (SEPTEMBER): 575 unique visitors per day, 47957 page views per month. Well, that means the unique visitor no. is up by 10% again! Which is great. Long may it continue. (Though I am still some way off the 10,000 visitors per day target. 10% at a time, I guess.)
Oct 20th, 2009
Still plugging away at creating new pages (1 per week) as discussed on Sep 29th, but I'm also continuing to go through the whole of the SelfHelpCollective.com website adding monetization links. And what this means, simply speaking, that I'm trying to make each page earn an income - from Google Adsense ads or from an affiliate link to related (and respectable) merchant selling a great product at the right price! :-)
So, for example, if I were to monetize this page, in a similar way, I'd now talk about how the Affiliate Masters course is a great (and free guide) to earning money from affiliate programs. See?
Monetization should be win-win-win, really. The site visitor should win because they get recommended a product relevant to the content they're reading. The merchant should win, as my site sends them a highly targeted visitor. And I should win as I earn a fair commission on the sale (or lead).
Anyway, I didn't start this journal entry to talk about monetiztion, I actually wanted to comment on the fact that the Socialize It! module used by SBI! sites now has Tweet It! added. This simply means by adding a bit of code (***SOCIALIZE IT***) to your SBI! pages you will now automatically give your site visitors the ability to be able to retweet the content of your page. Easy to implement, and very useful functionality
If you look at the bottom of this new SHC page you'll see exactly what I mean: Inspirational Family Poems
Oh, and there's yet another SBI! special offer on right now. Buy 1 get 2nd for $100, I think. Details here (whilst offer lasts).
STATS (OCTOBER): 592 unique visitors per day, 48562 page views per month. So well, that means the unique visitor no. is up by 3% which means the rate of increase is slowing. Hmm. This is a little disappointing, on the one hand, as I'd like the 10% increase to continue, but it's still an increase. Perhaps the new design will help things next year (encourage more pageviews per visitor and more return visits)
STATS (NOVEMBER): 644 visitors per day, and 49047 page views per month. And that's a return to a near 10% (8%) increase in visitors! Good. I don't like it when the site's growth in visitors slows down!
Adsense earnings
for this month: £58.74
(Yes that is a far cry from $10,000, but I'm still
going in the right direction!)
And, in terms of income, the whole site is now monetized - each page has a recommended item leading to an affiliate program or an affiliate link weaved into the page copy. And next year I shall think of other, less conventional, ways to earn an income from the site. But still, it's a start
Now the only thing for me to do is to redesign SelfHelpCollective.com, which is December's job. The new-look has already been agreed upon, so it's just a matter of me building the templates in DreamWeaver. (As it happens, there's a design competition going in the SBI! forums which has generated a whole load more SBI! templates for those that don't know how to design their own - all of them 3-column templates too! I may even use of them!)
Read more of my SBI Diary: Feb 2008 (1st Month) | Rest of 2008 | All 2009
Well, my free guide to SBI! explains how Site Build it! works, more or less.
On this site - Site-Buildit.com - you'll find my understanding of how SBI! works (and who it works for) as well as a look at the tools that come wtih SBI!. Plus you can also ask any questions you might have about SBI! via this questions link - a team of SBI owners await, apparently!
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