More Mistakes !

[Richierich]

Hi All - not been on for a while so apologies to Clinton !, been busy trying to get the sites up and running ! - I am very new to the internet business. Made a lot of mistakes already but hopefully learnt from them. Anyway, I have got a little site that I have been using as a test bed really. It is www.four11.com

Unfortunately there in not much "content" in it yet. It is basically a Directory site that I set up and had links to other sites that I own that I have parked. I have got an affiliate programme and also Adsense on there so it was coming together. I only had a small amount of traffic, so on seeing some adverts for boosting traffic thought it would be a good idea to see if I could increase it. Anyway it was really cheap to do a "taster" and so I ordered a 1000 visitors - Felt really good ! when I saw people going to the site. So 2 days in and I get an e-mail from the "Parking" website saying I was sending spam to the parked sites and in a word was chucked out ! - No further traffic allowed and I also lost the small amount of money I had made already (approx £20) - I thought these visitors were real people and could click on the site or not? so I did not think it was spam - Anyway lessons learnt, what do people think - must say this internet biz is not easy to crack, but then if it was we would all be millionaires !!

[Richierich]

Sorry, not www.four11.com but www.four11.co Doooooooooooooooh !

[ClaytonL]

Never ever buy traffic from a traffic reseller. At best, you waste money on useless "visits".

[hooperman]

It's good that you're having a go Rich! I'd bear in mind the following:

• "Unfortunately there in not much "content"" - you should probably get content on the site before you even think about monetising.
• "I have got an affiliate programme and also Adsense on there so it was coming together. I only had a small amount of traffic" - you should also get traffic first and then monetise, not the other way round.
• I'd think about completely rewriting your site - on arriving at the home page, it's not clear what the site does/is or what I'm supposed to do. Find a phone number, gift experience, driving a ferrari, food directory: all these conflicting messages are confusing. As far as coding goes, there are no <h1>s, title tags are not so good... Please ask
• Follow ClaytonL's advice

It can be tough getting a new site off the ground. Looking forward to the follow up questions

[Clinton]

Strip all those ads out, create reasons for people to visit your site, build links and think about monetising later. Can't emphasise enough how important that is.

And while you're about it read the terms of the program before you start using it. You've been terminated from one program. No big deal. But at present your site is blatantly not compliant with Adsense, and I'm not talking just the missing privacy policy. I suggest removing your Adsense ads urgently before you lose your Adsense account (there is no appeal process with Google and you don't want to lose this account just yet!)

[Richierich]

Thanks Hooperman and Clinton, for the great advice. I have stripped the site completely and will start again.

The idea for the site was initially to try and grab some of the traffic that was looking for Directory Enquiries in the USA. This used to be www.four11.com
My site was www.four11.co - Unfortunately I did not do enough research at the beginning and did not know that four11.com was actually now a "dead" site (even though it is still on page 1 on google etc. shows up on Alexa ) and this had been superseded by www.411.com - To be honest I have been flogging a dead horse ever since. I tried to add other domains that I bought to it, www.redletterday.co www.yeschef.co www.poshfun.com etc. to try and make it into a directory type site but realise it was all a bit disjointed.

I did not realise about Adsense, lucky not to lose the account ! so thanks again Clinton - I will look into this further obviously before I start again. I knew about the privacy policy (and did have one ready) but thought that because I was not taking or recording any peoples names it was not needed? - anyway will definately included going forward.

Thanks Hooperman for the info on the H1 tags. I did see this when I used a programme called web analyser. This came up, but I was not sure what I needed to do so any help would be much appreciated.

Anyway we live to fight again ! - I will start with content ! as you have said many times previously Clinton and go on from there. Thanks

[hooperman]

Thanks Hooperman for the info on the H1 tags. I did see this when I used a programme called web analyser. This came up, but I was not sure what I needed to do so any help would be much appreciated.

No problem

Ideally you want a heading 1 tag (<h1>) so that visitors know what your page is about. What you put in there also helps that page rank in the search engines for that phrase. If appropriate, you will want to use <h2>s and <h3>s etc to give headings to the different sections of the page. It's a bit like writing a well structured Word document, if you've got experience of that.

To save you battling with the design of a website (unless you want to use it as a learning experience), you could download and use some free CSS layouts like:

• http://www.free-css.com
• http://www.free-css-templates.com/
• http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
• etc

[Clinton]

It doesn't necessarily have to be content. It can be a service, the right collection of links, something that will save them time / save them money / let them vent steam ... basically, you need to come up with some way of providing value to the visitor.

Also when you realise you've made a mistake, it pays to cut your losses early. As soon as I had learned of the 411 issue, I would have ceased working on the four11.co.

To add to hooperman's list, I've got a free template site or two
http://ramblingsoul.com
http://getfreewebdesigns.com

[delta4]

I agree with clinton and hooperman: stop thinking about monetizing. What would i do in your situation?

Think of things you like, things that exist where you are, things that you like to know more. After that register a domain. A .com and not a .co

If you create a site about a topic you like your chances of success increase a lot. And in my opinion, don´t look for keyword domains in niche markets. Buy a brandable domain. And invest time on this new site. And more time. And it will work.

You are too worried about the wrong things. You have a site with no visitors or very few. With worry so much about monetization?!? If must plan your strategy of how you are going to monetize site off course. But first get visitors. And preferably visitors that want to come back because your content or your service was good.

[hooperman]

Think of things you like, things that exist where you are, things that you like to know more.

I think that this is good advice when you are starting out and trying to get a handle on things. Sometimes it's hard to keep yourself motivated to invest your energies into a site, so developing one that interests you can be a help.