I have just published my new blog. Would love some FEEDBACK

[eqttrdr]

so you dont buy traffic at all? how did you get your very first visitors? The gurus reposted your articles on their social media?

congrats

 

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[Y.B.]

I looked at your blog post and it looks like most/all of it is just copied/pasted from a bunch of other sources?

 

[Zen Dragon]

so you dont buy traffic at all? how did you get your very first visitors? The gurus reposted your articles on their social media?

congrats

Never bought traffic. At most what I once did was to pay a Fiverr to share a message in his social networks, but got almost no response from that.

I got my first visitors all by connecting with influencers in the industry, via social media and their blogs, and building relationships. They liked my content, so they were more than happy to share it with their audience.

So I guess the formula is: great unique content + targeted relationship building.

 

[Zen Dragon]

I looked at your blog post and it looks like most/all of it is just copied/pasted from a bunch of other sources?

If you are talking about this post (http://liveanddare.com/benefits-of-meditation/), then yes, it is a research into over 100 sources, with a lot of paraphrasing and summarizing. Not really raw copy pasting though.

This other post (http://liveanddare.com/types-of-meditation), however, is mostly personal composition (though it involved a lot of research as well).

These two posts are responsible for around 95% of my traffic so far, and the reason why I went from Alexa 22M to Alexa 1M, in less than 3months.

I think the niche helps as well, and also the fact that I am passionate about it (have been deeply involved with meditation for around 15years).

 

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[memelia]

Are you planning to offer group coaching services on the site somewhere down the line? Or just affiliates and info products for now?

 

[Zen Dragon]

Are you planning to offer group coaching services on the site somewhere down the line? Or just affiliates and info products for now?

ATM the idea is information products. But I may go another route. Perhaps a directory of meditation/mindfulness related services, retreats, programs, etc.

 

[Fotis]

Nice site man! I wanted to write a meditation ebook on kindle with a friend of mine, I would "attack" it from the science perspective (I have access in many studies plus I have been researching various topics for my Fitness career, meditation would be really easy since no one is gonna go through pubmed to read every single study that you reference) and he would "attack" it from his personal experience, how he helped him overcome an accident (lost his leg, got depressed then he bounced back with training and meditation) and how he still meditates every day, so many years after the accident.

I had an idea of searching every meditation book on Kindle and taking a look at 3/2/1 star reviews and trying to find quality posters that had genuine complains about X book. Then I would either contact every poster and ask him some questions (what you would like to see in a meditation book, what is missing etc etc). If this failed (and it did, since I had no way of contacting the posters) I would try to find some common complaints/holes in the major meditation books and try to write ours while covering these holes as well.

Hope I helped, I read that your idea is information products, so you might got something that can help you!

 

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[Zen Dragon]

Nice site man! I wanted to write a meditation ebook on kindle with a friend of mine, I would "attack" it from the science perspective (I have access in many studies plus I have been researching various topics for my Fitness career, meditation would be really easy since no one is gonna go through pubmed to read every single study that you reference) and he would "attack" it from his personal experience, how he helped him overcome an accident (lost his leg, got depressed then he bounced back with training and meditation) and how he still meditates every day, so many years after the accident.

I had an idea of searching every meditation book on Kindle and taking a look at 3/2/1 star reviews and trying to find quality posters that had genuine complains about X book. Then I would either contact every poster and ask him some questions (what you would like to see in a meditation book, what is missing etc etc). If this failed (and it did, since I had no way of contacting the posters) I would try to find some common complaints/holes in the major meditation books and try to write ours while covering these holes as well.

Hope I helped, I read that your idea is information products, so you might got something that can help you!

Thanks for sharing.

I think reading reviews on meditation books on Kindle is a good way to have a feel for information gaps out there.

My idea is more, down the track, to create personal growth coaching programs that use meditation as one of the main tools. So it will be mostly high-end video courses, and not so much ebooks. I think that for me to make a living off ebooks alone I'd need to have a massive following; but with more expensive video courses, all I need is a modest number of people that I can truly help.

 

[Emmanuel Pam]

Nice blog! Just subscribed... I'm into personal growth, so this will be a great resource.

Did you design the website yourself?

I did fine-tune it mostly.If you want to learn more about the design,google ''studiopress themes'' .Glad you like the blog,keep reading,I'll keep writing

 

[Andy Black]

Looks great sir. Subscribed.

Well done on your post getting shared. I think you're right, a few good lengthy articles does better than lots of smaller ones.

 

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[eqttrdr]

More proof few long articles are better than a lot of short ones.. --- http://markmanson.net/

only about 1 article a month and his blog has grown by leaps and bounds... quality over quantity and he is proving it.

 

[GGriffinGG]

How do you guys make professional looking sites with wordpress? I'm tinkering around with it right now but I just can't get away from the unprofessional look. I would like my site to look something like yours (or boldanddetermined.com or dangerandplay.com). Your site (and the other 2 I mentioned) look totally legit while mine looks like garbage. Any theme recommendations or sources that teach you how to create professional looking blogs with wordpress?

 

[Zen Dragon]

How do you guys make professional looking sites with wordpress? I'm tinkering around with it right now but I just can't get away from the unprofessional look. I would like my site to look something like yours (or boldanddetermined.com or dangerandplay.com). Your site (and the other 2 I mentioned) look totally legit while mine looks like garbage. Any theme recommendations or sources that teach you how to create professional looking blogs with wordpress?

What I did is I googled "Top Wordpress themes" and things like this. I then spend over 3-4 hours browsing several themes, and selected the ones I liked the most. Them I choose among those.

There are many professional-looking WP themes there, some free, ome as cheap as 50 USD (that's what I paid for mine).

 

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[Zen Dragon]

Interestingly, since I started this thread I started getting a lot of spammy IM services offer through my webform in my site.

Anybody experienced a similar issue?

The funny thing about these emails is that clearly the one that writes them did not put any time in understanding my site. Just an impersonal copy and paste. People think this is the best way to start a business relationship?!?

 

[MikeRaymond]

You could increase the speed of your site by cutting down the code and caching your site correctly.

Apart from that it looks great, the colours contrast very well too!

Also watch out for over-doing the optin form! I, personally, have had negative effects on that popping up all the time on my sites!

 

[MikeRaymond]

Interestingly, since I started this thread I started getting a lot of spammy IM services offer through my webform in my site.

Anybody experienced a similar issue?

The funny thing about these emails is that clearly the one that writes them did not put any time in understanding my site. Just an impersonal copy and paste. People think this is the best way to start a business relationship?!?

They will be trying to get a link from yoursite. I do it with GSA. In the long run you do get a few low quality links, ignore them and put in a spam filter, such as a captcha, in place!

 

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[Zen Dragon]

You could increase the speed of your site by cutting down the code and caching your site correctly.

Apart from that it looks great, the colours contrast very well too!

Also watch out for over-doing the optin form! I, personally, have had negative effects on that popping up all the time on my sites!

I am using caching in the site. Do you have any more specific suggestions?

Which popup you found annoying?

 

[Winning]

Great looking website and content! I think you'll find great revenue streams with ebooks, paid content, promoting relevant and good affiliate products/services, creating an app, etc.

 

[Timbonitus]

Not bad, but for some reason the text/background made my eyes hurt. Maybe try a different font or large text?

 

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[Zen Dragon]

Not bad, but for some reason the text/background made my eyes hurt. Maybe try a different font or large text?

Thanks! I'm actually taking a look at this in the next few days. Probably changing the background and making the font a darker gray.

 

[arfadugus]

Looks nice. Wish there were some drop down menus under the categories to see the blog post names instead of having to scroll through all the posts. Could be useful for when you have more content and so its easier to find stuff.

 

[arfadugus]

Also I've always found the pop up subscribe menus to be annoying and I always leave a sight when it happens. I may be the only one though so dont change it just for me haha

 

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[Entrepreneur21]

Also I've always found the pop up subscribe menus to be annoying and I always leave a sight when it happens. I may be the only one though so dont change it just for me haha

I hate them too but they actually make more people opt in. Great little way to make people take action.
Site looks great OP, well done and good luck

 

[Zen Dragon]

Looks nice. Wish there were some drop down menus under the categories to see the blog post names instead of having to scroll through all the posts. Could be useful for when you have more content and so its easier to find stuff.

That's a fair point. At the moment I have less than 15 posts in total. But its something I will definitely put in in the next weeks, when I have some more.

 

[Zen Dragon]

Also I've always found the pop up subscribe menus to be annoying and I always leave a sight when it happens. I may be the only one though so dont change it just for me haha

I also think they are a bit annoying. However, they work very well, and their conversions are higher than the top bar and the side bar boxes.

 

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[thidr0]

Here is some brief feedback: the overall vibe I get from you blog is that it could be written by a bunch of different people, like a Business INSIDERS blog for meditation or something. What do I mean? Almost all of the posts are lists: "10 ways to..." "22 things that ..." which to me is more about trying to drive clicks and traffic.

What are your goals? If you're goal is to sell info products (like meditation how-to, whatever) I need to know 2 things:
1) Who are you? How have you failed? How have you found success? What has meditation done for you personally? How am I like you were then, and how are you now like where I want to go? And how can I replicate it? Do you write with conviction, honesty and transparency? BLEED on the page. Writing lists doesn't let me get a sense of who you are.
2) What insight do you have that I don't get from other blogs? Why are you an outsider and what can I learn form you that I can't from anybody else in the industry?

James Altucher is great at blogging like this and has a huge fan base (in the millions) because of it. I'd also recommend you study copywriting like The Boron Letters (note: I haven't done this, but hear great feedback on this forum)

 

[Zen Dragon]

Here is some brief feedback: the overall vibe I get from you blog is that it could be written by a bunch of different people, like a Business INSIDERS blog for meditation or something. What do I mean? Almost all of the posts are lists: "10 ways to..." "22 things that ..." which to me is more about trying to drive clicks and traffic.

What are your goals? If you're goal is to sell info products (like meditation how-to, whatever) I need to know 2 things:
1) Who are you? How have you failed? How have you found success? What has meditation done for you personally? How am I like you were then, and how are you now like where I want to go? And how can I replicate it? Do you write with conviction, honesty and transparency? BLEED on the page. Writing lists doesn't let me get a sense of who you are.
2) What insight do you have that I don't get from other blogs? Why are you an outsider and what can I learn form you that I can't from anybody else in the industry?

James Altucher is great at blogging like this and has a huge fan base (in the millions) because of it. I'd also recommend you study copywriting like The Boron Letters (note: I haven't done this, but hear great feedback on this forum)

Thank you very much for sharing this. I think you are right!
I think I will write a few more "epic posts" like that, until I cover most aspects related to meditation. Then I will shift to writing more personal posts, where I speak of my journey more.
Your advice got me thinking a lot. Again, thank you for this.

 

[Zen Dragon]

My goal with the blog is for it to be able to provide me fulltime income, so I can leave my job, and dedicate myself fully to meditation research, practice, etc.
As my audience is growing, I start thinking of which avenues of monetization I wish to explore. Here is a quick brainstorm, and I would truly appreciate any feedback as to which direction to take.
As to the numbers in brackets: 1st number is expected sale price; 2nd is number of units needed to sell per month to make 100k year, with only that item.

PRODUCTS

• My own
• • Ebooks (27 USD, 310u/m)
  • iPad magazine (4 USD/m, 2k subscribers)
  • Subscription site (10 USD/m, 840 subscribers)
  • Coach.me Plans (30 USD/m, 278u)
  • Video courses (397 USD, 21u/m)
  • Guided meditation audio (10 USD, 883u/m)
  • App (1.4 USD profit, 6000u/m)
  • Physical (meditation clothes, cushion) (20 USD profit, 417u/m)
• Other people's
  • Affiliate commission for sales of books, apps, CDs, video courses, physical products (?, ?)

SERVICES

• My own
• • Coaching (100 USD/h, 84h/m)
  • Coach.me Coaching (30 USD/m, 278 clients)
  • Retreats (400 USD profit per person, 250 people per year)
  • Mastermind (40 USD/m, 210 members)
• Other people's
  • Affiliate commission on retreats (120 per signup, 70 u/m)
  • Coaching directory (selling leads) (10 USD/m, 840 members)

What I'm feeling at the moment is: ebooks, Coach.me Plans/Coaching, Video Courses.
The "iPad magazine" and "Coaching directory" idea would be more like another direction onto itself.

 

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