Lots to talk about…
Well, a TON of stuff has gone on since my last post and I’m going to discuss:
- Photoshop Splicing to Dreamweaver Templates
- Adwords
- Finding Links
- Forum #1
- New Projects / Niches
PHOTOSHOP SPLICING TO DREAMWEAVER TEMPLATES
So a friend from WickedFire recently sent me a link about how to design a site in Photoshop, Import it to ImageReady and send it, as-is, to Dreamweaver. You can find the tutorial here, and clicking “Super Tutorial” at the bottom.
After going through the tutorial I was absolutely elated. This is exactly what I was looking for! It gave me the ability to design a beautiful website with the exact page layout I was looking for! I immediately took one of my “up-and-coming” ideas and spent all day designing the website, putting it into Dreamweaver and filling in the relevant content that I had.
In my haste, I designed the site poorly. It has some MAJOR flaws that could have EASILY been fixed. For example, each page should have a link back to the site’s homepage - forgot that. Also, this was to be a content site but my layout didn’t allow for additional links and articles that I would prepare in the future. Worst of all I realized this golden tactic of designing in Photoshop and editing in Dreamweaver had a major flaw: the content areas of my site wouldn’t strectch to fit my content. Designing the site 600px high prevented me from putting too much content one page. With a content site the focus should be on the content!
While this method would still be foolproof for 1page arbitrage sites, it is a disaster for content sites. Obviously, there is a way to use CSS/HTML/XHTML/PHP to make these varoius content areas more flexible. That’s the funny thing… I thought I found the Golden Bullet that would allow me to utilize my Photoshop skills without having to know the web coding/programming to go along with it (I don’t know much).
Learning this Photoshop technique will prove invaluable for future projects. I’ll also be learning how to utilize this technique with a greater focus on content flexibility. Perhaps most importantly, I learned that I should get out a pad and draw the layout of my website before diving in head first.
ADWORDS
I put together an Adwords campaign for this site (even though flawed) and another site I recently developed using the same method. I basically but in my “generic” keyword terms and added every keyword google recommended. I only created 1 ad for the entire campaign.
The next day, I saw my CTR on google was absolutely horrendous! But, I did learn something very interesting. The keywords that received the most impressions were not at all what I thought they would be. Of course, for this reason, my ad content was terrible so I received no clicks. Over the next couple days I’ll be writing ads specifically for these high impression keywords to see if I can not only increase CTR, but also conversions. It may also open my eyes to new niches I wouldn’t have previously noticed.
The interesting thing about niches is that all these keyword tools predict how many impressions and searches each one has. But, actually putting these keywords into an Adwords campaign yielded completely different results.
I need to spend more time in Adwords. I spent a lot of time on these 2 sites and I was eager to throw in a ton of keywords and watch the machines do the money making work. Not so fast: I need to spend just as much money making relevant ad campaigns with MANY different ads targeted to the different keyword ‘baskets’.
LINKS
The same goes for links. I searched around last night for about 30 minutes trying to find different forums/blogs and the like to post my URLs. At the end of the 30 minutes I had 0 links and gave up. The fun for me was in developing the idea and the website and I expected the money to just roll in. Well, while creating the concept and site was hard work, the hard work doesn’t end there. This weekend I will be spending a good amount of time finding backlinks for these sites and optimizing my adwords campaign. However, I’m still not sure if I will be redesigning the sites to fix the insufficiencies and providing room for growth.
FORUM #1
Again, the project is up and running and looks beautiful and I have set the launch date for November 10th! Unfortunately, I have found it difficult navigating vBulletin to have the site looking EXACTLY how I want it. I have also done very little to put pre-promotion systems in place. These are two HUGE mistakes… I need this time to plan to make sure everything runs smoothly during the launch. Again, this seems like a case of, “alright, I got the site up now just give me my money damnit!” The hard work is only beginning once the site is live.
This weekend Forum #1 will be my main priority. I’ll also be asking friends and family to sign up for the forum and contribute a few unique posts so it looks somewhat “friendly” for first time visitors. Nobody wants to become a member of an empty forum. Well… some people DO like going to the movie theatre alone… but I’m not one of them! Are you?
NEW PROJECTS / NICHES
I have a few large scale sites in mind that will take a large sum of money and time to get up and running. I don’t have the resources to do this as of now. Unfortunately, I have a lack of “content site” ideas in the queue. I’m realizing that in order to fund these large projects I’m going to need my existing projects and smaller projects to profit.
Over the next week I’ll be brainstorming ideas for content sites for up and coming projects. I haven’t decided if I should register a new domain name for each yet. I suppose that depends on the nature of the site. I’m also waiting to develop any more arbitrage sites until I can find a way to “automate” the process. So, I’ll be researching this as it will be a great investment of time. I’d also like to use this Photoshop/Dreamweaver technique to create some vBulletin forums of my own (I’m paying $1k a pop now!) I guess getting deep into the vBulletin of my existing forum will help me prepare for this.
I’ve got a lot on my plate! My next post will be a review of my Sept/Oct profits, so stay posted! Here goes nothing…
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Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature — George Bernard Shaw