No marketing, no traffic, no users
June 20, 2007
I think some people are interested in knowing how my sites are performing from my 28 Site Challenge. The challenge was to create one new website per day for the month of February. It seems such a long time ago now!
Not surprisingly performance is pretty dismal. If someone visits a site like jobseekchina and finds no jobs, they are unlikely to post their own company’s jobs. This is always the difficulty of starting a site like this. I have a couple of other job sites like dotjapan.com and jobsesl.com. I started dotJapan in September 2005. It has taken nearly two years now to get it to where it is today and last month it earned a grand total of $63 from Google ads. To be honest though, I don’t do much with the site at all.
The hotel mini sites I created get very little traffic, but they rank fairly well in Google and make a little bit of money. I think it could be possible to package them up and sell them to a company like asiarooms.com or hotels.com.
A few people have submitted links to affiliate-rank but most of the links seem to be a little spammy. My biggest success is my dating site Wealthy People Dating. Apart from the $25 I spent on StumbledUpon I haven’t done anything else to promote the site. I don’t have any ads on the site as yet, so I am defining “success” as people signing up to the site. I have had about 25 signups so far and 1555 people rating profiles. Again, it is hard to know if these are real people signing up or other dating companies trying to promote their own sites. The dating industry is extremely competitive. I started the site as a bit of joke, but if I can get a few more members I might put the site up for sale on Sitepoint.
Creating dozens of sites is crazy and totally unmanageable for one person, but I enjoy trying out different things. You are far better to concentrate on just one or two websites they are truly interested in. As I wrote the other day, I am going to test the waters by selling some of sites that I no longer want to maintain. I think it is fairly safe to conclude that unless you spend time marketing a site, getting links and getting people to actively use your site, it is going to go no where.
Having said that, if you have a site that is relying on users to generate the content, if you can the site to a stage where it appears to be active, you have a higher chance of new people signing up. A good example is my new Australia Forum. I am paying someone to help put some new posts up, but I have had a couple of “real” people sign up and are starting to use the site. Just a reminder, I am running a competition on the site and I haven’t had any great entries yet so there is still a good chance for someone to win by writing a decent entry.
Site 25 - 28 Site Challenge
February 28, 2007
It is the last day of the challenge and I am not going to meet my goal for the month of 28 sites. Here is the site I have been working on today:
www.wealthypeopledating.com. I just bought the script for it today and it seems to work great. I am trying to customize the template, so it is not looking very presentable at the moment.
This challenge has been pretty tiring and one that I don’t want to repeat in a hurry. Having to do something everyday even on weekends has been difficult.
Many of the sites don’t look like much now, but I am hoping to do some more work on them in the coming months. One thing I have to stop doing is buying so many domains.
I didn’t get all of the sites up, but I got close enough - especially since I felt like giving up around the second day.
The good news is that I am going to spend a little less time at my computer and start to get ready for my trip which I leave for on the 11th of March. I am starting to count down the days now.
Site 24 - 28 Site Challenge
February 27, 2007
Site 24 is up today. It is a property site for Latin America. I thought that it was a good domain when I registered it and was surprised that it wasn’t already taken.
Like any new site, doing some marketing to get people to use the site is the next biggest challenge.
Site 23 - 28 Site Challenge
February 26, 2007
Here is today’s site: www.chianmaihostels.com. This is the last of my hostel/hotel sites and I don’t plan on creating any more.
I am thinking of installing Joomla onto the site. I will be going up to Chiang Mai next month, so I am going to have more opportunity to take some pictures and add more general tourist information to the site.
I am wondering if I can get the site looking good enough I might be able to get some free accomodation.
I was planning on trying to work on at least two or three sites today, but Dreamhost has been having problems with sites connecting to databases. I still have another two days to go, so I might be able to get close.
Site 22 - 28 Site Challenge
February 24, 2007
I am in the process of installing the component Virtuemart for my next site.
There is a fair bit to do to get the component set up, so there is no way I am going to be able to finish it today.
Site 21 - 28 Site Challenge
February 23, 2007
I am getting behind my site a day now and have to catch up.
I had an idea today to create a blog with humorous stories and info found on the net. I thought that since I spend a bit of time reading this kind of stuff, I may as well put anything interesting into a blog.
Here’s the domain I registered: www.irishfool.com.
I hope I am not offending anyone here, but I did find an article that describes an irish fool as: “Irish Fools were marginal men, who served as entertainment to the wealthy and
prosperous in exchange for food, clothes and shelter.”
Day 20 - 28 Site Challenge
February 21, 2007
Day 20’s site is another blog:
At least I am in the 20s now, as I am getting pretty tired of this challenge.
Day 19 - 28 Site Challenge
February 20, 2007
I have created another blog for day 19’s site.
Another blog I run on Takafumi Horie, a Japanese entrepreneur who was charged with accounting fraud was linked by someone on a Japanese Yahoo message board and has brought in some nice traffic to the site.
The ruling is scheduled for March 16th, which should bring in some interest to the site. If he is found innocent, which I hope he is, it should give me more to write about. He is a very vocal person, but since his arrest and court case he hasn’t been able to speak much publicly.
Day 18 - 28 Site Challenge
February 19, 2007
Partly for my own benefit, I decided to create a fitness related site.
The site is running Joomla. There are a few fitness related components that are available in Joomla which I have installed but haven’t had a chance to play around with much, although they look fairly promising.
Fitness is definitely a huge growth area on the internet, with people searching for the latest and greatest dieting and fitness information.
Day 17 - 28 Site Challenge
February 18, 2007
Day seventeen’s site is another hotel mini-site:
