Website Review?

[AlexNewell]

It is a great idea to have reviews with no affiliate links so you can be more impartial - that might be a solid USP you can trumpet.

So then you'd have to monetise it with Adsense and or CPA offers

A registered membership would be much smaller and harder to earn clicks from.

On the other hand a paid membership may be the best for you - you'd have to get a juicy enough offer together to tempt people - mostly beginners to subscribe.

Not easy!

[Misterhippo]

yea i actually dabbled with the paid membership for a little bit, something super small like $1-5 a month. I'm not a huge fan of adsense but it could help. Maybe ill just use adsense while I grow and when I hit a more respectable amount of reviews/members i can really focus on monetization. maybe even adding affiliate links back to the site? I don't know if people would be put off by that but maybe if i have their trust so far they wont really care? I couldn't charge a subscription now anyway so maybe I should just focus on traffic and not really money

[AlexNewell]

"so maybe I should just focus on traffic and not really money "

I reckon there's one thing to get right first. Even before focusing on traffic- and that's the basic concept of the site.

You need a workable design before you put in all the work to drive traffic, because traffic is easy - it is getting the basics right that is a whole load of trouble. But throwing a shed load of traffic at a site that does not quite work is a huge waste of effort and time and money.

Maybe give some thought to joining us in the Elite section of the forum and get loads more help - including direct help from Lynn.

Have a good read of her blog at http://www.clicknewz.com/ too!

- there's a huge amount of help there.

See if you can get to the free webinars held at noon eastern nearly every Tuesday.

So yeah I think you are right not to focus on monetisation. You have to do the hard work of working out what you offer, how it is different from what other people offer and how to make that stand out in some way.

Try looking at other people's sites - here at the forum. Explore the signature files and you may get some ideas for improvements.

This is not easy stuff and many don't do it. But the people who do it are the ones that make it.

Just keep trucking!

:-)

[retta719]

Also getting the blank feeling on the home page over here. Also, everything is centered and I'm not sure why. I'd go with left or right standard justification for your text. I like the review system idea, very cool.