Your thoughts on my movie reviews blog

I've just set up my movie reviews blog ("Because Mainstream Movies SUCK!") a few days ago with a new, custom template. I'm just now starting to get ready to promote it and exchange links, etc., but the more I look at it, the more I worry it's too text-heavy, between the content and the AS text ads.

http://www.enriquegarcia.net/moviereviews/

It could be that or it could be I just need more padding around each section.

Any thoughts if I should remove the left skyscraper, or move it beneath my menu? I've already got 2 ads above the fold so I don't mind have one beneath.

A friend also commented that this may be one of the times I use different colors for the content and the ads... which he may be right.

All help is appreciated!

 

The left skyscraper resembels a navigation section to me. Plus your ads are so relevent to your content they might be mistaken for an internal navigation. Which is a big plus in my book, I see you've been looking at the google hot spot map.

But you see your logo how it alternates? Don't get me wrong it looks excellent but I heard it also causes low CTR.

 

The ads themselves seem to blend pretty well, but there are a couple of things with the layout that I think you should sort out. The images in the 'previously posted' section should perhaps be floated so that they align better with the side and top of the column of text. Also the borders on the linked images under 'readers ratings' look fairly hideous and should be removed IMO.

All in all though, a good looking site.

 

It's just the white on black that makes it look "condensed". Otherwise, it's quite a nice looking site once you get used to the color.

 

Thanks patrick and jack, those are good points.

I'll fool around with the white on black, maybe I can use a separate color behind the content to help pull it out from among the ads (just a bit!). The images for some reason I'm having trouble with... I don't know if it's hierarchy or bad code or what but the CSS doesn't take. I'll keep working on that.

And it's not so much looking at Google's heat map as it is stuff I've learned from these forums

 

OK, I've made the changes suggested and I really like the template now. I gave the body section a different background and it really helped a lot. Image spacing has been fixed too

I kinda like the random top left image... does it bother anyone else beside MediaHustler? If so maybe I could just have it rotate on a schedule like every hour or day, etc.?

 

It certainly looks much classier with the different colour background to the body section. Perhaps it would also be worth splitting the footer into three lines - it looks a bit odd now that is crosses over the divide between the two sections.

 

Wow the site is really coming together sketch I read your Fun with Dick & Jane article and I loved it. I highly suggest you buying a seperate domain/hosting for that site.

Because the only thing it looks like you're lacking is some users, you have some good quality articles if someone see's your site i'm sure they'll come back.

I would also recommend a forum for Movies / Movie Reviews etc.

 

Thanks for all the tips and suggestions. I may very well give it its own domain, like I said this one I'm just starting to promote (it's only getting like 10 hits a day).

Forums? I haven't had much luck with those... I used to host a forum on moviemaking, over 300 members... and like 1 or 2 daily posts. I'd rather wait until I've got at least 5 or 6 daily comments on the reviews before opening up a whole forum.

What I WOULD like to have happen (much later on) is to expand the site into movie news and trailers. We'll see

 

Good luck because Movies.com and IMDB.com dominate those catergories.

 

Indeed they do, BUT ... my blog is trying to focus on non-mainstream movies... so I'd be tackling non-mainstream news and trailers.

Because, after all, Mainstream Movies SUCK!

 

What do you mean by mainstream? Like the lame movies that are nominated in the grammies? Because if that's what you mean I agree.

 

I consider mainstream movies to be those that everyone knows about, that get massive publicity and play in just about every movie theater.

Of course there are still mainstream movies that are great, but those already get enough publicity. I'm trying to focus on the small theater releases and straight-to-video movies