Looking for some feedback on my Wedding website

Suzanne · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Hello,

I am looking for some critique/feedback for my Wedding website. The URL for the site is:

http://www.weddinginedinburgh.com

I am particularly interested in ways that I can further monetize this site. It is a UK based wedding site and my search of affiliate programs related to weddings and the UK has unfortunately not revealed much - only a few low paying programs. I have a few affiliate products on the site and some adsense.

My traffic is usually a couple of hundred unique visitors per day and I could probably get it to be much higher, but feel I need to work on monetizing the site further first.

Many thanks!

Suzanne

Lowell Rieger · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:29 pm Post subject:

Hi Suzanne -

My thoughts in general - but remember I'm male, women might have a different take and this type of site is a woman topic.

It helps when you research a niche, to research the money part before deciding on a site topic

I think by limiting the site to Edinburgh Weddings, you painted yourself into a corner by narrowing the geographic focus. With a microniche like this you need a lot of sites in other microniches to make any money.

I see three topics on your site. If it was me, that means three sites. They would interlink very well. And each on it's own would be easier to monetize.
Do you know what three topics I mean?

Pretty site, by the way.

Lowell

Jim Hutchinson · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject:

Lowell Rieger · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject:

Hi Jim,

I don't see where we disagree at all. Small niches are great IF they can be monetized. Suzanne already stated she was having trouble monetizing the site, and before doing any more traffic generation she wanted to further monetize the site.

My comments were directed towards that. While we in the US may have more affiliate opportunities for weddings, I'm not sure this is the case in the UK.

Very few local Adsense ads are served to the site, and these mostly are hotels. While the pages MIGHT be better tweaked for better results, this really isn't worth the time unless Suzanne knows there are Adwords buyers for the kws. No Adwords kw buyer = no Adsense to display.

Since this site is so local, approaching local business owners to place ads might be the way to go if Suzanne is prepared to do this. Or if she is prepared to offer Edinburgh Wedding services herself. Of course then her website turns into a sales and marketing job.

I thought from going through her site that her intent was to monetize via affiliate merchants and Adsense. Am I missing something? Suzanne, can you help us out here?

Lowell

Suzanne · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your comments...

I actually created this site as I was getting married and wanted to blog about my wedding planning experiences... Normally I would have done the research for affiliate programs upfront and I usually do this, but in this case the website started as a hobby rather than a way to make money.

It is only now, that I am thinking that it is worth looking at better ways to monetize the site as I am consistenly getting more than 200 visitors a day from the search engines and I am pretty sure I could increase this by adding more pages and building more links.

The adsense ads are quite targeted when I look at the site, probably because most advertisers select certain geographic areas. I am seeing ads for wedding venues in edinburgh, photographers, wedding cakes etc. I imagine that when you look at the site you will see some US wedding ads, since you are in the US?

Lowell - I wasn't sure which 3 topics you were referring to? I have wedding planning related pages and a honeymoon blog on there. Yes, my intent was to monetize via affiliate programs, but I may have to look into getting local advertisers to advertise on my site instead.

Jim - I have never really paid much attention to meta tags as I don't find that they ever make a difference in SEO for me - I usually concentrate on the TITLE, H1, text, alt text and anchor text in the backlinks. There are probably some more tweaks I could make to the on page SEO, but at the moment my site is on page one in Google UK for most of my target keywords, mostly related to edinburgh/scotland weddings.

Thanks again to you both for taking a look at my site and you have certainly gave me a few things to think about.

Cheers,
Suzanne

Lowell Rieger · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:06 am Post subject:

Suzanne -

Glad you checked in again.

The three topics I meant were wedding planning, honeymoon travel, and Edinburgh (unto itself as a city, travel destination, etc.)

You've done such a fabulous job on your site Suzanne, by adding related sites on topics I mentioned you'd have natural traffic feeding off your existing traffic. Of course there are other possibilities.

To me the only bad thing about your site is that it is "over" - in other words no new wedding or honeymoon story.

Keep up the great work,

Lowell

Rosalind Gardner · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:24 am Post subject:

Hi Suzanne,

I'll pitch in with my 2 cents.

I agree that you might want to look for local advertisers to gain additional revenue. But before you do that, and although your site looks great, I'd spring for a real professional design or header graphic and widen out the content area.

Too, if you are willing to make the extra effort, consider adding a forum and talking with brides to be in the Edinburgh area. With a robust, well-SEO'd forum, you could attract even more traffic to the site and it could well turn into a very lucrative little business for you... wedding advisor extraordinaire for Edinburgh.

I'd add some pics to some of your articles to make them just a little more visually appealing.. such as the one about 'Wedding Dresses'.

Last but not least, I'd get in touch with those to whom you've linked already and offer them first dibs on advertising spots.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Suzanne · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Suzanne · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Johnny · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 26

Don't mix up ad-sense and your own affiliate links on the same web site. The philosophy between making money off the two are completely opposite:

Adsense - you don't want long-term readers. you want people coming in, saying "omg this site is hideous" and getting out of there as quickly as possible (hopefully by clicking on an adsense link). At the same time you want to keep it readable so google doesn't decide your site is just there for adsense and axes your account. If you wanna go the adsense route, the first thing you should do is flip your site horizontally. Most people are used to having stuff on the left to click on, and since adsense ads look like a bar, they'll actually take a look at it first.

Affiliates - since this involves people paying money, it's a good idea to get them to trust you. adsense ads are ugly and this reflects badly on your web design ability, which in turn reflects badly on you. You'd make more money if the products were stuff you recommended after they trust you. You'd probably be better off having a "products" page, or simply insert affiliate links in your actual articles. This way people read about you and you start feeling more like a close friend which in turn means they're more likely to spend money on stuff you promote.