I Worked My Ass Off For THIS?!

Howdy, this is my first post here.

I recently created this 100% original content website. There are 174 URLs in my sitemap, about 72 pages are indexed, and I'm making $1 per day.

Can someone please help explain what I'm doing wrong?

Here's the site: www.travel-smarts.com

Thanks for your help!

 

because the entire site looks like ads and adsense. you should have the adsense in with quality content rather than a strip of content. Your side links should look like they eblong to your site, they seem as if they lead to more ads somewhere else.
There isn't that draw to people looking at your site. People make money with adsense by offering good content, as people get to the site they read on the subject they searched and find interesting links that relate to the page they are on (ads).
another thing, is how is your google ranking? you can have 5 trillion pages of content but noone gets to your site its not gonna help

 

That template has some problems in FF3 mate, you should take a closer look at this. And a new template can make wonders to those stats Try it for a week or two.

 

Thanks for your feedback. My Google ranking sucks, with very little SE traffic (over 80% of traffic comes from article submission.

How would you recommend improving that?

Really? I use 3.0.4 and it looks OK to me. What's missing?

Also, what template would you recommend?

Thanks!

 

Things can take time. SEO is a big factor combined with unique and rich content that users want to find. Just keep going, tweak things to improve SEO and you will be on your way to a site that gets ranked higher in google.

 

Totally. I agree.

I have to admit its difficult to see other people making hundreds of dollars a month with far fewer pages. No Google love I guess...

 

You need to display that content in a proper way and those ads should blend in. I'll get back to you with some links.

That is not WP?!?!?! Why not if i may ask?

 

I use a laptop and no matter what link I click on, the only thing I see is the large google ad...no content unless I scroll down...and you don't want your reader to have to do that...good content should be front and center

you do have some decent content within your site....rather than the huge google ad at the top of the page, use a smaller one and then hyperlink within your content to your affiliate

add some links to helpful sites...like tsa.gov, or a currency exchange site....don't make it all about making you money....really help your readers

For instance, I provide this page on one of my sites:

http://www.have-a-safe-trip.com/2008/04/travel-resource-links.html

 

Yeah, that does look a bit off...

I know a guy who made a site that follows this format (which I copied almost to the letter) and he makes close to $200 per day.

I look forward to seeing the links, thanks!

 

very plain, very boring.

Someone interested in travel would not stay long on that site. Sorry.

edit: make a WP blog, get caffeinated content...1000x better than this MFA looking YACG-pagegen cr@p.

 

I know it ain't pretty... just following the layout that worked for the other guy.

If I may ask, why use a WP blog? SEO reasons?

Also, what is caffeinated content? I just write everything myself...

Lastly, what does YACG-pagegen mean? I get the sentiment, just curious

 

Is all the content original content that you wrote?

 

Yep, every word of it...

 

that's great, you obviously put a lot of effort in. from a marketing perspective, how about adding some pictures to break up the text and make each page look unique and less encyclopedic?

 

Thanks for your help. I guess my fear is that adding pictures, links, etc. will distract the reader from doing two things:

reading the article
clicking on an ad

My current ctr is reasonable, and analytics shows each user clicks around and views 2-3 pages on average...

It seems like I'm fighting an SEO battle (which, as an adwords guy, I didn't know much about until recently).

Outside of article marketing, do you have any other suggestions for getting quality backlinks to the site?

Thanks again...

 

Pictures make the people stay LONGER on your website.
Links to other sources make your site authoritary -> higher value perceived. Make those links open in a new window. Don't be afraid of sharing links and knowledge. As some wise guy said: you should work on value and delivery - the reward will come automatically.

 

hi ,

everything takes time just wait and see. I have 250+urls in my sitemap and google has indexed 203 pages currently.still iam making only $0-0.05 on average per day.my site is 2 months old. but iam not disappointed.waiting to see a fine morning.anyway good luck.

 

When someone goes on your site, he should know within 3 seconds if he can find what he's looking for. You should have a clear index or rectangle with all your links to articles and everyone should be able to see it easily. Your template doesn't look bad, what looks bad is your ads and content. Your ads almost look bigger than your content. Go out there and change ad formats. On your landing page your ads should be a a skyscraper. Your ads always have to look smaller than your content (take less space). A good ratio would be ads one third of your content in space. And when I click an article theres a huge square over the top of articles instead of thin horizontal ads. Also putting some at the end of your articles could be a great choice because after the person finishes reading your article he's asking himself ok what's next, then he sees those ads as the next thing to look for.

And most importantly, i checked your site on alexa and there was no sites linking to it. Go out there submit your sites to top social sites, top search engines and directories, top most popular blogs, most popular article sites, etc so your site is seen more important to search engines. A crappy site with better search engine position makes more money than a good site that cannot be found.

 

Solid advice... I agree the ads should be smaller, not sure why that's happening.

There are links going to the site. I wrote dozens of articles directing towards it, plus made blog comments, etc. Your point is well taken, though...

 

A higher PageRank should raise the chance of you getting more pages indexed, so work on building your backlinks as much as you can. Having your site URL hyperlinked in forum signatures (on relevant sites) is the way to go.

Couldn't get onto your site before though, seems to be a problem mate, so can't comment on the Adsense.