Hello from Bolton, England

[mixeduptunes]

When joining a new forum, I always like to introduce myself, even if it's just very brief. It makes it feel a bit more like a community then

I've played around with blogs for a while now but not really done an awful lot with them.. more so with blogger than with WordPress... Then I read Gobala's sales letter and a lot made sense adding to what I had previously read.

I've made quite a few websites but none really making much money either in Adsense or affiliate sales. The biggest problem was not getting the traffic. My favourite website that I created is a dog website www.doggy-dogs-life.com which took a long time to put up and only get a little traffic... so I bought a new domain name thinking I would make a holiday site and then I did absolutely NOTHING with it.

After reading Wordpress Adsense System it gave me a push. Well they do say that you need to TAKE ACTION. So last week, the www.your-holiday-vacation.com blog was born.

I would certainly like any tips to make it succeed more, so if anyone would like to nip over to the site, take a peek and point me in a better direction, I am open to suggestions as it is only relatively new...

So thank you to Gobala as I am actually feeling more inspired and feel that wordpress is going to be the way for me to go for the forseeable future

------------------
Simon

[andreww]

Hi Simon,
good to 'meet' you and thanks for your introduction.
we're all on this learning journey together and here to learn from each other too!

Both your blogs look good and the adsense placement and affiliate products are positioned well.

my feeling is that driving traffic may be the key to your success.

Have you tried listing your blogs on blog/website directories and submitting press releases/news articles to online directories like PRWeb?

you'll be surprised at the torrent of traffic that comes!

[mixeduptunes]

Hi Andrew,

I've not submitted any articles yet but I have listed the holiday blog in the directories. I used a piece of software I got last week to list myself in quite a few blog directories - still awaiting review and acceptance to most of them at the moment as it was only a few days ago.

I have also used RSS Announcer to get my RSS feed listed as well. I'm guessing this feature will certainly depend on me posting regularly so that it will appear in RSS Readers for people to see and possibly visit.

I have a plug-in question but I will see if there is a more appropriate place to ask it in the forum, if not, I'll come back here and post

---------------
Simon

[ProfitBlogger]

Hi Simon,

Welcome to the forum! Your blog looks good. I notice that one of your sites was created using XSitePro...

Do you mind sharing your experience with this? A friend of mine uses it to the max, but ever since i discovered Wordpress i kinda sidelined other web building systems...

Soon maybe I'll even give up Dreamweaver

-gk-

[mixeduptunes]

Hi GK,

When ever I go on about XSP, it sounds like I should be on the payroll

I started using it about 12 months ago when I was just pulling out my hair trying to get my head around using programs like Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive.
The sales letter sounds really convincing and I loved the fact it came with a 365 day guarantee - gave me more confidence in the product....

So anyway, I bought it and set to work on learning how to use it. The first thing you are advised to do is go through the step by step guide to creating your own site with a tutorial. If takes a few hours - but if you skip this part it will take much longer to learn. The training material has come on a long way since 12 months ago.. There are now a series of tutorial videos which make it so much easier to learn the basics and the advanced features in XSP (I was lucky enough to be one of the few to review the videos in the creation stage before they went live to all buyers)

I could honestly set up a website in about an hour now,including purchasing the domain name. Once you get to grips with what the software can do, it's pretty amazing, I believe a new release is due later this year with even more features!

Setting up the website it the easy bit. The part that takes time is getting all your content together, ready to include it into your website. There is also the keyword research, link building and any other off the page optimization that you can think of.

If you want to create a load of article pages - all you need to do is have all your articles in a folder on your computer and using one of the features, you can import all the articles into a ready made template, which will include having your adsense placed in the articles as well. This will create all your page names for you and add tokens as well.

It has over 100 templates included but these are customizable as well or just learn to create your own using Photoshop.

Once you have your pages created, there is a great feature that goes over your page and gives feed back on what you need to do for best optimisation. This includes telling you how many times your keyword appears in the page and how many words, whether your alt tags are labelled correctly etc.

I personally can't fault the software - as you can see from my doggy site.. with a little bit of playing around.. I've incorporated data feeds, affiliate links to amazon, adsense, RSS feeds, links using a script called AutoLinkster (I was also asked to test this before it's release and it's great for getting links using LinkMetro - can even be incorporated into blogs as it is php)

XSP has been used to create many types of sites now, from full blown affiliate sites, personal sales sites, sales letters and hobby sites.

The key to making it successful is making sure the keyword research is done properly first.

GK - I can't fault this software and although it doesn't have some of the really advanced features that you will find in Dreamweaver, it doesn't have the same kind of price tag as DW but still gets results with a little work done in the preperation part of creating the site.

I hope this gave you some insite into what I think of it but if you want to know anything specific, feel free to message me and I'll try and help... what I would suggest though is checking out their forum. I contributed a lot to that forum and it certainly contains most of the answers now (I'd like to think this will become like that for blogging with WordPress )

[andreww]

Simon,
it looks like you've gone way further than me with XSP.
my sites at bizexcellerator.com and upsizemycash.com and internetmarketingcookbook.com were all coded using XSP.
i think they're a very far cry from what you've done with doggy's life.
i think your site is a real stand out from an adsense and affiliate point of view.

i know that sit stay fetch in particular has a high conversion and txn rate.

i didnt even know about the 100 templates!
are they in the pack or do i get them from a forum?

safe to say my adsense conversions have been really horrible.

if you've any feedback, i'd be keen to listen.

ps: my fallback is to go with a static front page (a la GK's guide) and churn blog posts in the background..

great stuff this forum.

[mixeduptunes]

Andrew,

Firstly, I think I have tinkered with the dog site a little too much and it has lost some of it's 'cuteness' from when I first started.

From a sales / adsense click point of view - it doesn't do that great as it all comes down to getting more traffic and I have a habbit of moving on before something is fully running on gas... Which is why I have decided to work with blogs because I can automate a lot more of it.

The templates all come with the program - when you first create your new project it should ask you which template you want to use or if you want to use a blank one. I haven't got it installed on my PC right now as I have recently formatted my hard drive, so I can't tell you exactly where it is but it's near the beginning before you actually go into design mode.

If you don't want to use a standard one then you can create your own - which I have started to do more of now (I'm no expert!) by using Photoshop.

Kidino has a great site that details how to make your own XSP template for FREE over at this link here

My adsense conversion is reasonable on some of my sites which I have changed... sorry not putting the links here as they don't look that great! but it appears that putting the 720 banner just under your header on your page gives good results, more than what i was getting before. but still lacks potency due to small amounts of traffic.

[andreww]

tks for sharing simon.

i'm relying on affiliate income at the moment. at between $5-$100+ per txn depending on the specific program, it's doing well for me.

with affiliate mkting though, i'm putting in quite a bit of effort in promoting my products. i guess i'll learn to systematize it more effectively at some point.

adsense is something i will need to become more familiar with. my CTR conversions are sub 1%. will need to improve my template first, then layout to leverage on it.

[WordpressConsultant]

Hi everyone,

Look like you guys are XSP users before but I am not. Well, I guess it is because I only started work on IM since early 2005 and never got chances to read any recommendations. I guess right now also will not look into it since Wordpress has a very good platform and with so many developers available, I am confidence that WP is a better tool to build website in the long run.

Anyway, your website sound great and I like it. Pertaining to getting traffic to your website. Wordpress is actually one of the best SEO friendly tool for you to increase traffic to your site.

Stay with us (this forum) long enough will give you good ideas for implement wordpress websites and getting traffic in.

All the best.

[ProfitBlogger]

Originally Posted by mixeduptunes

Firstly, I think I have tinkered with the dog site a little too much and it has lost some of it's 'cuteness' from when I first started.

From a sales / adsense click point of view - it doesn't do that great as it all comes down to getting more traffic and I have a habbit of moving on before something is fully running on gas... Which is why I have decided to work with blogs because I can automate a lot more of it.

Is this your "passion" site...ie do you write all the content yourself, and are you an expert in the field? If it is, then you might want to consider easing off the ads on the front pages, and only use the second / 3rd tier pages for Adsense / affiliate programs. This will drive visitors deeper into your site instead of clicking away immediately.

If it's not your passion site, and you don't really care about the content, then you can start with adsense right away on the front page.

Maybe you can standardize the colors and fonts you're using on the dog page? A bit too much for my eyes...

BTW I can understand what you mean by moving on too fast. I have the same habit too.

I wouldnt say it's a a bad thing, though. If you're like me, then you're more attracted to the creation phase and you get bored when you're stuck doing the updating / routine jobs on a daily basis. You're not the webmaster type and it's no point trying to be one anyway..

You should probably enlist some freelance help to complete your projects and update it from time to time, and you can focus on creating more sites.