Feedback appreciated! – My online business.

I have been working hard for the past 2 years conceptualizing and developing our organizations website http://risingfa.ipower.com/mockup/Community_-_Landing_Page.php . Before I get into discussing adsense placement let me give you a general idea of what my organization is aiming to accomplish.

Our community is composed of students, mentors, and investors that believe in the mission of improving the lives of farmworkers through the power and resources of business. The community will form interest groups on specific topics and in distance learning courses relating to business and financial investing. Discussions will be held on these specific topics within the forum.

User Roles:
Students (members attending college) will be sharing their life experiences with other community members by asking and answering questions pertaining to certain topics within the forum. Students have the ability to publicize their financial needs and receive investments from Mentors and Investors.
Mentors (hand picked members) are responsible for investing their resources into students through financial contributions and by answering questions relating to their field of studies – either privately or through the public forum.
Investors (the public) will contribute by sharing their expertise and investing directly in students or indirectly through making donations to the general fund.

To give you an idea of one of the main incentives for members to return to the website let me explain the investment process:
Students are allowed to promote their financial needs under the following categories:
1. Financial Aid
2. MBA Preparation Fees
3. Books/Publications
4. Conferences
5. Discretionary
Funds raised by students are disbursed on a Quarterly Basis. In order for students to receive a check he or she must complete an individual assignment for each investment received which must be completed before the end of the quarter.

So that’s basically the whole idea we are trying to promote with this website. Somewhere along the lines I decided it would make sense to incorporate Google adsense into the design because of its potential.

Here are links to the pages we plan on displaying advertisements.
http://risingfa.ipower.com/mockup/Sub_Forum.php
http://risingfa.ipower.com/mockup/Topic.php (note I plan on including a horizontal link unit under each first post)
http://risingfa.ipower.com/mockup/My_Messages_-_Inbox.php
http://risingfa.ipower.com/mockup/My_Contacts.php
http://risingfa.ipower.com/mockup/Search_Results_-_Forum.php

Well that’s basically it. I would really appreciate some feedback on what I have put together. Thanks in advance!

 

Nice looking site. Pretty punitive about making the farmworker kids work, dang. Sounds like you think those farmworker kids might be ... ahem, dare I say it...lazy? I know you don't mean it the way it sounds, you are just trying to let any investors know their money won't be wasted on like porn nights or other such shenanigans.

I really liked the layout and all the little buttons and things seemed to work - that is an accomplishment right there.

michele

 

If you're looking to make very good money, especially with what looks to be an almost social networking arrangement type of site, I would go with relevant targeted CPA and CPV ads instead of adsense.

But that's just me.

 

Thanks for the suggestions ill look into it.

 

Pretty nice and professional website. I agree with Boomachucka above - look into monetizing the site with banner ads from the CPA networks, and deal directly with interested individual parties who want to run ads on your site once you can establish a certain amount of consistent traffic going to your website on a monthly basis. The key here is to test, and then determine which method(s) ultimately give you the highest advertising revenues!

 

Can anyone provide me with a few examples of what other people are doing with CPA ad networks? This is something i am entirely new to and i will have my website up and running in a matter of days so I am trying to consider all of my options.

 

personally, I don´t like it....to bland....needs more life.....more colour

 

for me. Its not impress.Must redesign make more color full or simple and clean

 

I purposely chose a minimalistic design to better serve a conservative audience. I plan on incorporating other components/services to the website with different color themes but with similar graphics. Please note that this "Online Community" is only a sub-section of our organizations main website that is not accessible through this mock-up. The overall goal will be easier to understand once the two sections are up and running. For now my main focus is strategizing methods to monetize our traffic. So far I'm leaning towards a combination of CPA and Adsense.

 

I thought the site was good and appropiate for the audience. No successful business people are going to donate their hard earned cash to a web site with groovy hippie beads and dayglo paint as the main graphics and themes. You want to make people feel comfortable and that you will be a good steward of their money which I think you have done very well. It is a very well designed site with a pleasing palatte that rests well on the eyes. BUT your codewords are going to irritate the liberals and that is who I think in the long run are the peope who will donate the most cash, you might get some staid mentors who will give some of their time, but I think you will have a rough go getting the landowners to donate much cash. So I think your site is well done and I did not find one link that didn't work. Loaded quick all that stuff. Corporate sponsers will get you the most money and they will like that 501-C3 status you'll be getting. Plus they will look good. In fact I take back what I said about the codewords, leave them in. Once you get some traffic you will get that sponsorship. And you can charge some decent bucks too.

 

Thanks for the feedback betty. Corporate sponsorship is a great idea. After doing some more research I'm now leaning more towards CPM advertisements. Wouldn't CPA advertising be a bit disruptive to the flow of the community? I could not imagine forcing members to fill out forms every time they want to access a certain part of the website. Right now the website is completely open to the public. Are there any other types of CPA advertising that would fit better with our business model?

 

Can anyone else please provide me with some feedback?

 

Thought I'd bring this back to the first page in case anyone else would like to share their thoughts.

 

You can also do classified ad, Deals and coupons and social media marketing it will helpful for your business .

 

just make a pretty good design to make it simple, clean but still exclusive.....

 

Thanks everybody for the feedback. I should be making a decision here pretty soon on what advertising methods to use. If anyone is still interested in giving me feedback I would really appreciate it.

 

personally i do not like this, if you can hire good web designer you build great site

 

I would appreciate it if you could give me more detail on what exactly it is you do not like. Color, layout, etc... please be more specific.

 

Anyone have anymore suggestions?