CC9 - Random Dude

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vinnypolston

vinnypolston

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Hey guys, Vinny here. Very excited to be one of the chosen CC9. You guys have my word that I’ll keep you updated AT LEAST weekly on where I am on this “project”. It’s more than JUST a project for me though. Failure isn’t an option.​

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Having said that, I guess it’d be good for you to know what niche I’m going in. I’m going to be pretty broad here and just say consumer technology in general. Not brand specific. I tossed around the idea of starting a fresh site for submitting to the CC9 but chose to stick with one that I’ve been working on for SEVERAL years.

My overall goal of the traffic leak experiment is to grow this site to be the “go to” resource for people looking for answers to common questions having to do with consumer technology.

What will I gain? You know I’ve given this a lot of thought and it really comes down to reputation and branding. There will be of course monetary gain… but being able to say, “Check my online resource at xyz”. That would be epic. Something to be proud of. This project isn’t some website I came up with overnight. It’s the real deal.

By growing the trust factor from this website I should be able to directly build my audience and thus customer base. Not to mention there will be numerous affiliate marketing opportunities for services and products.

It’s hard to fix a certain amount of hours that I’d be willing to dedicate to this. Honestly whatever it takes. I could easily say I’d give 2 hours a day… but if there is an opportunity and I have to work all night every now and again it will be worth it. I’m just going to give it my all.

Checking GA it shows me that I’ve had just over 4.6K unique visitors over the past 30 days, of which an astounding 92% from search. Sounds great, right? Well I also have a 92% bounce rate from that traffic. Not so great. Those that DO stay end up staying for just over a minute. I’m extremely anxious to get started on the initial part of on-page optimization.

I’ve given doing a YouTube channel some thought as I really believe this niche could benefit from it. My regular audience isn’t tech savvy. I’m pretty good at explaining something technical in a non-technical way. Really plan to utilize this. It’s been on my brain for months but being “out in the open” really encourages me to get in gear!

Right now I’m at ground zero in regards to optimization. During the initial CC9 submission it made me realize how lacking my onsite is. I had planned to start once the CC9 were announced regardless if I was chosen or not. Having been chosen I haven’t started because I don’t want to make more of a mess of things; just to have to go back and un tweak things that might get chopped anyways. Awaiting my individual assessment of how messed up I am and then will move forward full speed ahead.

Until next time,
 
This is as exciting as the brand new sites. You've got a great start already. Focusing on more non-search traffic will be great but I wonder what you can do to reduce that bounce rate and increase conversions using the traffic you have too. If you solve that problem, the value of the new leaked traffic will have you owning your own island (with jet skis for us to all come visit you).

Good Luck! :smile:
 
Thanks @Samwise89! You're right on. I'm super excited to reduce the bounce rate and optimize what I've already got --then adding traffic leaks and blowing it up :smile:
 
Know you will do well Vinny.

That bounce rate will come down in no time once you get round to fine tuning everything.

Good luck! Staying tuned for updates!
 
My Official Take:

This site needs tons of fixes, especially to the homepage. There need to be funnels and clear call to actions. The target audience is generally older - so they might have a hard time reading the "gray" colored font on a white background.

Audience is limited to the region - I THINK. I see the site is employing some permission based marketing, I want to dive further into what's being done once we get into things.

One thing I always stress is hitting up your audience weekly if not biweekly to keep them fresh REGARDLESS of the size of your newsletter. WHY? Cause the person that inputted their email doesn't know how big your newsletter is, if they took the time to input their email, you should be hitting them up once a week regardless, otherwise they'll forget about you after a month.

This is one thing I will be touching on when we are revisiting newsletter marketing, since for some reason, not saying Vinny is doing this, but for several people don't email people on their newsletter right away, even though they signed up. Think about it from your perspective, if you sign up for a newsletter and never hear from the company ever again? You'll probably forget about them.

Back to the site, one of my initial hesitations with this site was it looked like a wordpress blog, but if Vinny is committed we can take it to a new level just with the on-site factors. There is a lot of work that needs to be done here.

I'm thinking, cause of the target audience, craigslist might be one place to look for traffic, and some other less tech savvy traffic sources. I figure it's an older audience, and they'll respond to previous iterations of the internet, and more direct selling. This is another example where Newbie guides can make things great, as well as the video idea mentioned. There is definitely some brainstorming that's going to be needed - a proper challenge that can be overcome.
 
@CCarter

You’re completely right on all of the things you mentioned. Up front: I’m one of those who hasn’t hit the mailing list at all. It’s got around 125 signups or so. Haven’t optimized at all. Haven’t even sent out emails. I’m sure when I start hitting the list weekly some will leave –but those that stay will be keepers.

Yeah. The target audience is generally older (thirties and above). I’m really not happy with the structure of the website at all. The website does look like just a wordpress blog. Really don’t know why I didn’t realize this from the get go. It’s pathetic. No sales funnels –no nothing. Having said that, I am 100% committed to doing whatever is needed.

Thank you again for taking myself and other CC9 under your mentorship. Awaiting further instructions. There is a theme that I have been eyeballing but I will hold off till you say go.
 
vinnypolston said:
@CCarter

You’re completely right on all of the things you mentioned. Up front: I’m one of those who hasn’t hit the mailing list at all. It’s got around 125 signups or so. Haven’t optimized at all. Haven’t even sent out emails. I’m sure when I start hitting the list weekly some will leave –but those that stay will be keepers.

Yeah. The target audience is generally older (thirties and above). I’m really not happy with the structure of the website at all. The website does look like just a wordpress blog. Really don’t know why I didn’t realize this from the get go. It’s pathetic. No sales funnels –no nothing. Having said that, I am 100% committed to doing whatever is needed.

Thank you again for taking myself and other CC9 under your mentorship. Awaiting further instructions. There is a theme that I have been eyeballing but I will hold off till you say go.
Click to expand...

Vinny a theme I highly recommend for you is OptimizePress. It's fantastic funnel wise, check it out and you won't be disappointed :smile:
 
@RomesFall,

Appreciate that! I actually have a copy of OptimizePress but also subscribe to LeadPages and really prefer it. I have the tools just need to use them :smile:
 
Funnelkit
Instabuilder
OptimizePress

These are the go scripts that can make your funnel and landings pages be great and easy to manage.
 
Thanks @MoneyStalker, appreciate it.

Haven't received the official direct instructions. But knowing what needs done, work has begun. The website needs a total revamp. Right now it just looks like a blog. No call to action. No funnels. Shoot. It's literally just a blog. I don't know how I let it get this way. Purchased the executive pro theme from StudioPress. Rebuilding the site on a subdomain blocked from search engines. Here's a shortlist of what has been done / will be done this week:
  • Purchase theme and set up Wordpress on subdomain
  • Create home page with specific CTA
    • evaluate what brings in the most money and optimize for those
  • Create fresh content for nav pages: Testimonials, Services, About, Contact
    • Excited about the testimonials. Have had several long-time business clients offer to do testimonials. Going to get a good mic and do some video testimonials. Will then transcript that to have some reading content.
  • Evaluate what specifics bring in the most profit and make a content outline to brainstorm ideas.
  • Brainstorm some ideas for the first batch of videos for Youtube. I would like to do one video daily. It would be a lot easier to do these in batch and then just drip them to Youtube. Have begun researching bluetooth lapel mic. Will be using my iphone for camera. Any one have suggestions for a good budget friendly bluetooth mic?
    • Excited to see how I can utilize the mailing list to get people to the youtube videos.
My goals are to have all of the above research and actionable items done by his coming Monday.
 
Day 2: Whoa.

After reading the on-site crash course @CCarter posted last night, I'm completely mind blown. Taking actions from that post alone has the potential to completely change my online presence.

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I've begun to realize one issues that I must overcome. Self-delayed perfectionism - Even picking out a new theme I spent too much time on. It's important. What's more important is taking whatever theme and customizing it like no other. I have to keep myself focused on the end goal here.

Setting a new goal. Have entire website re-created by Monday. Will keep you all updated. Instead of doing weekly reports I'm breaking this down to daily. I've already realized that the initial audience base that Carter pointed out was right --but not the money maker. There's a whole other field that I should be targeting with this. It was one of those Ah-ha moments. Today I will be fleshing out the home page.

Until next time,
 
Your site is loading way too slow, over 700ms till first byte. You need a CDN or better hosting. I'll find you examples of what I want the homepage too look like.
 
Alright time for me to chime in.

You need to clean up your writing

Just looking at the newest post (that with a date in it)
Horrible title, awkward syntax .. rambling on three different topics in one post ...

And then there is gems like this:

"That’s my goal with this email."
Really? And here is me, thinking I was reading your site.

"Being a ‘small business’ owner.."
Oh, your audience is gonna love you for those quotation marks, you 'expert' you.

Even the call to action needs tightening up
"You could give us a call.."
Yeah, I could, but shouldn't that be "give us a call..."

Go and use this: http://www.hemingwayapp.com for a while (or forever).. it will train you to write in a more active voice.

That's all for now, but really, that was the one thing just really BOTHERING me right from the start.

::emp::
 
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@CCarter , Thank you. I will move it over to some better hosting. Sending you a PM regarding the homepage.

@emp , Thank you for chiming in. I appreciate the advice and input. No excuses. I'll go back and re-evaluate the articles that are currently on the website. Will do whatever re-writes that are necessary.

In the mean-time I am going to make a backup of the website and do three speed comparisons...
  1. Pingdom with website as-is on this hosting
  2. Copy website and do Pingdom with website on DigitalOcean
  3. Enable CDN with website on DigitalOcean. Do you guys have a preference for CDN?
Appreciate your thoughts.
 
DigitalOcean? Your going backwards mate...
 
Oh. Well that's off the list. I'm so misinformed. You have any suggestions?
 
Who are you hosting with?

Blindape is actually hosted on a shared dreamhost account and it is doing fine without any optimization whatsoever.

Sadly, a 700ms ping to the first byte really points to bad hosting, so change to somewhere else.

NOT digital ocean
A PAIN, and in my experience very, very unreliable. DO is a dev playground, not a reliable host.​

NOT stablehost
short reason: slow
long answer: slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow​

::emp::
 
Day 4:

Thanks @drsmiley & @emp for the suggestions. I'm going to try both today and see which one yields best results. Will be sure to report back my results. Also working on article re-writes today.
 
Sloppy. Went through and noticed I had tested a BUNCH of plugins on this site. Some needed and some not. Disabled all that junk and went from 74/100 to 89/100. This is on current hosting. Will now do some testing between dream host and known host. Will report back.

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Before moving hosts I wanted to see what the difference would be between the current theme and the one I'm looking at moving to. Got the load time down to 1.52s. Still a long way to go but we're getting there.

Current hosting after removing plugins and changing theme

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Finished copying the site over to dreamhost for some speed testing. Something must be wrong. Getting a load time of 3.25s.

I went with their starter VPS. Same exact site from the last test that got 1.52s on my current hosting. Need to dig deeper and see what's causing this.

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https://i.imgur.com/uZ8AfR9.jpg
 
Mine jumped up at first too and then settled down. Coincidence? Maybe.
 
@Calamari you might be right. I'll give it a day and go back tomorrow and run a test. Had to take a break from messing with Dreamhost VPS. Went ahead and started running images through kraken. After optimizing the images got the page size from 508 to 403. Sweet. Got the load time down to 1.12 seconds on current host / junk plugins disabled / new theme / images optimized. Going to go ahead and put this on cloudflare and see what we get.

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Okay. Probably the last update for today. Looking through the pingdom results; a huge portion were from a GA plugin and an embedded youtube video. Disabled the plugin. Removed the embedded video and replaced with an image linking to video. Got it down to 786ms on current hosting. Still haven't moved over to cloudflare. Will report back tomorrow!

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