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Hey all

A few weeks ago I launched a new website with a friend of mine. During the first few days of the release I told some friends and got a fair amount of hits (up to 100 unique visitors a day). Which was quite good I thought, as it had only been launched a few days before.

It’s been around 3-4 weeks now and the traffic has grinded to a halt. Most days we’re getting around 5 unique visitors (i’m sure some of these would be bots anyways). Also we haven’t had anyone post any new content for a couple of weeks as well.

As the website is based around user generated content, there’s not much at the moment (as the site is fairly new still). I’m thinking that we won’t get much traffic until there is a lot of content, although to get more content we need visitors, sort of a catch 22 type situation.

Anyone have any hints or tips about how to spread the word around? I’ve already done things like tell some of my friends, post it on facebook etc… so running out of good ideas.

The URL is here if anyone wants to check it out http://www.humorlist.net/. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Does your site create a site map automaticly, if so, submit it to Google each time there is new content, and it will increase your rankings, which will in creases search traffic.

Does your site create a site map automaticly, if so, submit it to Google each time there is new content, and it will increase your rankings, which will in creases search traffic.

It doesn’t generate a sitemap automatically, although I generated one a while ago and submitted it through Google WebMaster tools, i might do that again tonight. I’ve also setup the site in a way that it generates keywords/descriptions for each page dynamically (for the content that’s user generated).

I was thinking of signing up for google AdWords and get some traffic in that way. Although i’m not sure if that will help too much, as there’s not much content on the website to be able to stay on there long at the moment. It’ll probably cost less than $50 AUS to get a couple of thousand visitors over a month or so, i don’t mind paying that much if it will help the website get off its feet.

Anyone ever used google adwords?

 
100,180 hits today and not enough cash to pay for the electric used by my mouse
 
If you are planning on making money from your site you may be interested in the above link concerning my site with similar content to yourself.

To increase your traffic a good site IMHO is Sitepoint’s Manage Your Site.
 
The only advice I can give is “don’t give up your day job”.
 
Best of luck.
 
 
 

Thanks for the links.

The purpose of the website is to have a bit of fun. I was hoping that the money made would maybe cover hosting expenses if the website starts to take off, anything over that is a bonus.

The only advice I can give is “don’t give up your day job”.

lol, yeah I’m a web developer by day 😊 I don’ think i’ll be giving that up anytime soon!

 
>>> The stats for the website the top link is referring to
>>> gets only 3000 unique visitors a month or 100 unique a day.
>>> That’s not many visitors at all, of course it’s not going to make much money with that many visitors.
 
I am curious to know where you get the figures from.

 
I use Alexa and the hits quoted was a couple of days previous to posting the article.
 
My site is also for a bit of fun and testing and I spend less time promoting since the ROI time-wise is laughable.
 
It has and still is a very good learning experience.
 
 

I am curious to know where you get the figures from.

Sorry, I was looking at the wrong figure. I can see that you’re getting many more visitors than that. That’s why I edited my post 😛

You could make widgets for myspace and facebook with random jokes, etc. Maybe invest on adveritising like adwords and of course link with relevant sites.

You could make widgets for myspace and facebook with random jokes, etc. Maybe invest on adveritising like adwords and of course link with relevant sites.

Well, I was thinking of investing a small amount into Google Adwords, although i’m not 100% sure if i will or not.

Making widgets for social networking sites would be a good idea, although at the moment there’s still bits and pieces I need to code on the website, so I would probably do widgets afterwards I guess, plus eventually I wanna do an iPhone version 😊

Social Bookmarking with tags relevant to your site, create some profiles in sites like my space and twitter, participate in forums related to your site and post relevant comments on blogs.

Social Bookmarking with tags relevant to your site, create some profiles in sites like my space and twitter, participate in forums related to your site and post relevant comments on blogs.

Works very well when used effectively.

Social Bookmarking with tags relevant to your site, create some profiles in sites like my space and twitter, participate in forums related to your site and post relevant comments on blogs.

Good suggestion. I’ve submitted a few pages to digg and stumbleupon. I might try a few more. I found this page http://www.socialmarker.com/ which seems to make it much easier, although you need to signup and step through each website.

I created a facebook page as well, although didn’t get much in the way of people joining the group.

Post Yahoo Answers with your URL as the reference. Also, post to places like EzineArticles.

Post Yahoo Answers with your URL as the reference. Also, post to places like EzineArticles.

Hahah i should do the yahoo answers thing, although I really doubt my website will genuinely have the answer to many questions as it’s a humor website.

 
It seems as though you still wish to try your luck with the site. Take another look at the link I gave because quite a few knowledgeable and experienced folk offered their advice. I tried quite a few of the suggestions and managed to get a vast amount of people viewing but nobody buying. I am still trying to match a product to the people that visit the site.

FMLE (From my limited experience), if you want to make money then if you are interested in a niche market then punters will go to your niche market site and be in a buying mood. You can expect to achieve the two percent Click Through Rate average returns shown on my friend’s site. My friend’s daily average is less than 2,000 hits per day and he gets over eight dollars. My site gets fifty times the number of hits but the CTR is abysmal.

I have gone back to my day job :(

Best of luck with your site.