Reading a book on Power Thinking inspired me to set a goal to earn $25 from our website (looklovely.net) in the month of September. Those of you have read previous articles on this quest will know that my web partner, Tricia, worked on putting the Google ads into a new format. This format is intended to attract more of our viewers to the ads.
I have been trying every day to promote the website, to gain new viewers.
Both of us continue to work on content, to retain our viewers.
This article describes our activities on 29th September 2009, and gives the financial result.
Most of my efforts on Day 29 were channelled into producing new content for the website. We post a new Day-by-Day guide every Thursday, and I drafted this and emailed it to Tricia to check the words.
Tricia writes most of the content related to fitness, and contributes each week to these Day-by-Day items. She returned my email with some suggested changes to the words, particularly on Wednesday, which is the day we focus on keeping active.
Those of you have been following this series will know that I have spent considerable time posting ads on Gumtree. This is an on-line community notice board that has separate pages for about 60 cities throughout the United Kingdom. I have posted ads on all cities except Belfast (which only accepts truly local ads) and have been returning to keep the ads up to date. We have had several viewers through Gumtree, so it seems worth the time spent.
I also spent time studying the search words that have been used by viewers accessing the site via search engines. I am trying to discern which combination of words will be best to use to get close to the top of search results. I am aware this is called Search Engine Optimisation, which makes it sound like a scientific process. Sadly, in my case it is not – I have failed to date to discern a magic pattern. However, I think I have got one good idea, and yesterday added some words to a recent article. This is an experiment!
On Day 28, Tricia had built and added an Amazon shop to looklovely.net. I still have not figured out how to add items to the shop, but I did spend time sifting through the weekend papers trying to find things that might be featured in the shop. I wrote a list on both sides of an old envelope. On one hand this does not look very professional, but on the other it means that I was making full use of the envelope. (Remember, we don’t as yet make a profit from looklovely.net.)
My theory about people clicking on ads towards the end of the month did not hold up – we had no income from Day 29. Not even a penny. Maybe they’ve all got money invested in the stock market.
On the bright side, our viewer numbers were good. Monday has been our worst day over the previous 4 weeks, but yesterday brought a significant increase. While we are not making money, maybe we are cheering up our viewers.
