You can see Gail has put in quite a bit of effort to build his site and is asking for our help because as he says, "I'm really not too happy with it but can't see the trees for the forest." So lets help Gail find some of those trees at: http://www.todaystopmoneymakers.com/
Susan
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Review Comments
My Comments -
When Gail submitted his site I sent him an email and stated"It looks like you've set up a directory of online business resources and products" along withthe following comments:
- While the size of your menu is very impressive it's also overwhelming. You might want to only list your top choices on your home page and create a resource directory page for your menu.
- For those pages that lead away from your site have them open in a new browser window. Then when your site visitor closes the page your page will still be available to them. (Some of his links still take visitors away from his site but he mentions that on his home page.)
- Put a link to your home page and your resource directory page on every page of your site to make it easy for your site visitors to navigate. (Looks like he's done that for his home page.)
- Check your pages for font consistency. I saw a different site font on your ezine page. (This is still a problem and there are now 2 different size fonts on the main page.)
- While you don't want to use a lot of hype or make false statements, you do need to be bold in your statements.
- You need to move the Amazon box up since it's not visible when you read your statement about it and most people won't go looking for it. (Looks like he's done that.)
It wasn't until Antony's comment that I learned this was a ProfitMart site. (If you don't know about ProfitMart you can use Gail's link to find out.)
Now since we've had several sites primarily focused around introducing online money making programs, tools and resources and they've had several banner ads on all the site's pages I'd like to share a little general information about sites that consist primarily of banner ads that may or may not have some content sprinkled throughout.
- When most people arrive at a web page that contains no informational content and displays only ads they seldom click on any of the ads and move away from the site quickly. (If anyone disagrees with me please leave a comment and if you know of a site like this that works please share it with us.)
- If you do have informational content on some of your pages like Gail does then put a heading over your menu like "Articles" or "Get Information About" and list those pages with content under the heading. Putting a heading that tells your visitors that you do have information on other pages may entice some of them to check them out.
- It's extremely difficult to get targeted traffic to a site that consists of banner ads for many products and services. Since your site covers many areas of online money making opportunities, tools, resources, etc. and does not contain any information specific to anything it's extremely doubtful that your main page will ever be indexed high enough in the search engines to get any traffic. This is also true for the other pages on your site even though you may have provided content.
Now Gail has overcome this particular problem because when I did a Google search for "top money makers" (without the quotes) I found Gail's site listed #2 on Google which is very good. I also used Google's keyword tool and found that the average search volume for that term was 1,600 a month which isn't bad. So Gail has done a very good job of getting indexed well in Google and should be getting a good amount of free traffic. - Although banner advertising is not dead and it does work it must be used sparingly. A few banner ads sprinkled around on your site may get some clicks however the banner ads on a page where banner ads are the primary content usually won't. The best way to use banner ads is on a page that gives useful information about the problem the product or service will solve, offers a solution and makes a recommendation. If the content is written for search engine optimization then these pages will also get indexed better by the search engines.
- From my experience it is possible to make a few sales with those Amazon, ClickBank and Ebay provided ads however you won't make many. Most people don't even look at those ads and for those that do you have to hope that a product they're interested in shows up while they're on your page. People that shop Amazon and ebay regularly go straight to those sites and only go through an affiliate's page if they've been enticed to it by some other form of advertising.
- As Anthony pointed out, when you make many offers all at once you confuse your site visitor so they usually don't take you up on any of them. The only time multiple offers of similar things work is on a directory site. When someone goes to a directory they expect to see many related things. Now directory type sites have been around for a very long time and some of them have done very well. The trick is to pick a type of directory site where you still have a chance to be found since there's already millions of sites offering directory services for just about everything. This is especially true for anything related to making money online.
Since we know Gail's site has been found and should be getting some traffic his site does have the potential for making money. If the site isn't making money then I would suggest you look at what some of your competition has done with their sites and pick up some ideas on how you could redesign your pages with some content and fewer banner ads.
Currently most of your stiffest competition comes from forums and blogs and both of these types of sites provide information and make recommendations. You could also make comments on the blogs to possibly pick up some of their traffic however you won't get a back link to your site since all the ones I checked use the nofollow tag to prevent search engines from seeing it as a link to your site. - One of the hardest things to learn about having a web site is that while you're designing the site to make money, your visitors are coming to your site for useful information and don't usually want to buy anything. In Gail's case, his site visitors are looking for "top money makers" and to most that means making a lot of money quickly and hopefully without much work. If multiple opportunities are going to be presented on a single page I suggest that they be limited to money making opportunities on your home page with the appropriate opportunities on the other pages, they be listed in order of recommended and that you write some information about each of them preferably in your own words and not a pre-written ad. Remember, the sales page for each of the opportunities is selling 1 thing and you're writing a pre-sell description telling why it's so good and some of the benefits to get your visitor to check it out. You can have your link to the opportunity or service within the content and possibly show a big banner ad for the top recommendation at the top or bottom of the content. If you want to use other banner ads for some of the other things on that page then use smaller ads and put them in 1 of the margins possibly with a header like "My Recommendations", "Top 5 Money Makes" or "Other Money Making Opportunities."
If you can't use your ClickBank and ebay ads in the margin then I suggest you create a separate page for them and ad the appropriate link on each of your pages for other money makers, more graphic, ezines , ect. opportunities. In other words give your page viewer 1 choice or just a few choices and then the chance to look at others if they don't like the ones you've recommended.
Susan
Tags: site review
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