Saturday 28 December 2013

Substantial Webzine Traffic Increase


Published the second edition of Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road http://picoscycling.blogspot.ca/  yesterday. The hope was to double last months page views. The target was 400. I don't think that was too conservative but we have blown that away. Right now the count for December is nearly 500 and still climbing. Before the end of the month I am expecting to triple what we got in November.

As always I would have liked to have accomplished more, I think we're on the right track though. One of the primary goals was to increase readership. That part seems to be going well considering I've not spent a dime on promotion. I would like to double the page views again next month and we'll see what happens. Advertising isn't doing much at this point. I've signed up with Chitka and Bidvertiser and I can't say I'm terribly impressed with the performance at this point in the game. I will be pursuing other advertising options. I have ideas and I think they will do well.

Another area where I can claim some success is having attracted another writer to the cause. I don't have to write everything myself. That is another leap forward. This webzine was never intended to be just about me. This is not only a step in the right direction for readership but also insures that it has at least a chance at longevity.

I have to find a way to made an emailable version of the webzine probably in pdf format. That will be a great option for back issues. That in itself though is a great deal of work. Somewhere along the way we have to make a little money too. That's probably a bigger priority. Focus on advertisers this coming month. That's my intention anyway.

Thursday 12 December 2013

Textmaster Fail



When I started this blog I promised to share my successes and failures. This one is a failure and there may well be a few useful lessons in it.

I subscribe to a newsletter called "Freedom With Writing" where I found a very recent review of Textmaster.com. Good place for beginning freelancers to get started. Very new so you're kind of getting in on the ground floor but you'll have to put up with a few site teething issues and growing pains. Sounds like an opportunity right up my alley. Only downside was a complicated sign up/application process.

The application process wasn't really complicated. It did take time and thought though. Personal introductory paragraphs take a great deal of thought. The idea is to my a positive introduction that gets people's attention in the right way. That part took most of the time I spent on this. The other part was classifying my skills. They had categories and I always find that difficult in the sense that I second guess my choices. Took me a little more than an evening to do the initial application after the sign up.

I was thinking, so far so good. The next step was to apply for either copywriter, proofreader or translator. That is where the process ended for me. They don't need anyone who does English, Italian, French, Japanese or Korean. I was quite irked at that point. The site could have posted that they had enough people for those languages up front instead of the final stage of the application process. I wouldn't have wasted my valuable time then. I'm sure I'm not the only writer that walked away with a bad taste in my mouth.

Couple of lessons illustrated here.

First one is that freelance writing is a very competitive field. There are a ton of writers just like you looking for writing opportunities online. A company or website with a finite number of openings available will likely be filled up very quickly.

Second lesson is that if a "hot" opportunity is offered in a widely available newsletter it'll be stone cold by the time you call up their site and finish applying.

My focus right now is a little scattered so maybe that is part of my problem. I will continue to plug away and refine my approach as I go. This is all a learning process.


Saturday 7 December 2013

Some Stuff Seems to Work This Week


Launching a webzine is one thing. Making it payoff is quite another. My budget for promoting and building a readership is zero. Not that I'm not willing to put cash into it. I just don't have any to spare right now.

I did register with a whole pile of search engines. At this point I can't see any significant increase in my page views that can be attributed to that. There might be a longer term payoff but right now I don't see it. Mostly what I get from them is ads that invite me to spend money on traffic directly or improving my SEO content. I believe I can improve my SEO writing without spending any money.

One thing I did that is making an impact on my page views is spending time talking to other cyclists on www.bikeforums.net. I have added my cycling website to my signature there. This way it is added to every single one of my posts there. I also wrote a post specifically flogging my webzine. I am getting traffic from there.

Another thing that came up through that website is a place to list my webzine on someone else's related webzine. I'm surprised to note that I am getting noticeable traffic from that site as well. I will have to pursue that further. There are a lot of people writing about cycling on that forum who have their own sites. Back links from them might do me a lot of good.

I continue to scour google for information on building my readership with my cycling webzine in mind. I hope to continue growing that product. During the week I did do some work on the layout of the site. I'm a little bit happier with it than I was. Some of those changes are reflected on this site as well.

A bigger project looming on the horizon for me is advertising. I think I've laid the ground work for better advertising on all my sites. I will be working on improving that over the coming weeks as well. I'm not real happy with the 23 cents earned so far on my current advertising. Granted in their defense I don't have very high volumes of traffic at this point. Still my traffic is better than double last month on both new sites and my blog is doing better as well.

I will keep updating all my progress here each week. Maybe one of these weeks I'll have discovered something that will make a big difference. Right now we keep plugging away.