Thread: Execution baby! Website prototype is up!

As you guys know, I'm all about giving dating advice. I took all of your suggestions on going narrow and going broader later on. So I will be focusing on the asian male demographic first. I also decided to use wordpress as well. This is the result.

www.theasiancasanova.com

It's a rough start, there aren't any SEO things going on with it at all yet. I'm still hammering away at writing articles.

This was all done with 0 web/programming skills. The layout is simply a template I uploaded to wordpress, which i downloaded online. Everything to getting this up and running, I did with google research.

Anways, I would love to get input from you guys on what you think about it so far? Does the template suck? If so, what is wrong with it?

I realize too that I haven't put up enough content except one article. I'm still working on that! Much much more to come.

Also one more thing, my site is already indexed. But the wierd thing is that when I google "the asian casanova," www.theasiancasanova.com/blog pops up and gives me an error 402 message. I installed wordpress to the root domain, not with the /blog. Strange...

Looks decent so far. Certainly enough to get you going. I even like the template. It's not ideal, but it's certainly better than most of what's out there. Keep it up!

Looks good so far. Like CEBenz said, the theme is a lot better than what most beginners use.

Being picky here, I think you need to add more paragraphs to your text. If there's one thing that causes me to instantly redirect to a new website, it's the ol' wall-of-text.

Also, what are you going to do differently than every other dating coach out there?

Great start man, at least you're taking action.

That's an interesting occurrence with the /blog situation, I've never seen that happen before.

As with the theme, it's ok, not that great though. The sidebar images and header images don't mesh well.

Some cleanup items:
Delete that first Wordpress default post
Delete "Test" category
Delete Blogroll sidebar widget

Intrigue,

Congrats on getting your website up - that's more than a lot of people do.

Some specific suggestions:

1) Decide on the purpose of your website, and then build around that function. I look at DoubleYourDating.com as an example - its purpose is to get you to give them your email, then come inside for a little information. Afterward, you will receive emails about David DeAngelo's dating info products. I suggest you see who your competitors are, and look at what models they use to make money.

2) Remove the Meta and Blogroll info from the sidebars. Users don't need to see that stuff. If you need it to log in, just bookmark the "Log In" link (probably The Asian Casanova › Log In will get you there). Depending on your theme, this might be in Widgets.

3) Use a larger, more readable font. That is a lot of dense text. This can probably be easily modified from your WordPress dashboard.

4) If you're going to have a "Read More" link at the end of your posts, use it properly - show an excerpt of the first couple paragraphs on the main page, then have readers click "Read More" to read the rest. Not sure whether showing only excerpts on the main page is the best course of action - depends on what your readers want.

5) Make it easy on yourself to see what your readers like on your website. Install Google Analytics (there are several plugins for this that make it easy - do a search and pick the one with the highest rating) and then look to see which pages receive the most traffic, and what sources are giving you the most traffic. Then, make more content like the popular stuff, and find ways to get more traffic from your biggest sources (or other sources like them). By the way, Google Analytics is FREE! You'll find more uses for it later when you start to monetize your site.

6) Install an XML SiteMap generator plugin. I recommend Google XML Sitemaps. This will let Google and other search engines know exactly what pages are on your website, so they won't index pages that don't exist (like your /blog 404 page - weird).

7) Reconsider whether you want comments on your website. I have a small website that doesn't generate very many comments, and it looks kinda lame when there's only one comment on a post that is a year old. Better to have no comments than one measly comment, IMO.

This is based on lessons learned from my experience with Wordpress and building my own website. PM me if you need help with executing any of that stuff - I may be able to help.

Originally Posted by UncommonWay

1) Decide on the purpose of your website, and then build around that function.

Definitely. Blogs are hard to monitize without lots of work.

Also, the first thing that popped in my head was that you were a casanova targeting Asians. After looking further it appears you are Asian.

You guys are awesome, thanks for the feedback.

Formatting:
-I haven't figured out how to change the font size yet. Working on it.
-I fixed the paragraph thing, I didn't know how to add paragraphs via wordpress. They make is so damn complicated!
-I deleted the blogroll, per your suggestions. It was indeed useless.
-I still don't know how to delete the meta sidebar. Having difficulty finding it.

Website Purpose/Uniqueness:
If you're familiar with stevepavlina.com, you will see is that it's a heavy content website with hundreds of high value articles about personal development. He is one of the most successful bloggers out there in the web today.

My purpose was to make a website like his focusing on dating advice for asian men (and then gradually expand to a broader audience). Ultimately I would either sell my own ebook down the line or get into affiliate marketing and sell other people's products. I've come to the conclusion that AdSense is worthless until you have millions of visitors. Anyways, high quality traffic building comes first at the moment.

What gives me an edge over other dating coaches/experts, is that I strongly believe that I can give a lot higher quality information than what is readily available/marketed (or even hidden in some cases)- The principle of "doing it better." A lot of what is out there is gimmicky junk or extremely general (useless) information.

I've walked the walk when it comes to dating, so it's time to talk the talk!

Anyways, if you think a more focused approach such as developing a sales page to build an email list for selling products would be more effective, let me know! Or perhaps I could do both?

Back to the template:
@Lighthouse, I think you're absolutely right. Thanks for reminding me that I'm creating a brand. I like the photo-shoot idea... I'll have to investigate that further. Personalize, personalize. I like it.

As for the template, perhaps I'll have to find a better more personal looking one? I feel like what I could create myself would be infinitely more amateur looking than what is readily available to download out there.

Then of course, I COULD hire a designer... I wonder if it'd be worth the $$$.

PS:
I changed the article a little bit to capture the attention more. Feel free to critique it.

Oh, the last part:
"It’s time to take the first steps:
How to Approach That Super Hot Girl.
10 Fashion Rules That Get You Laid."

Those 2 are going to be links to articles on my website.

First, congrats and best of luck!

Some really valuable suggestions up there, all very worth considering. My few cents:

1) Replace this: Just another WordPress site

with your actual punchline.

2) I see some error below the right sidebar. One thing's sure - no site with error on it gonna get my credit card info.
Errors are inevitable, especially as you're just learning it all, but you can turn off error reporting so that it's not visible on site even if the errors occur (it also makes you safer from hackers to not show errors).

You can do it like this:

Open wp-config.php and at the very top, (but below the opening tag <?php)
insert this code:


error_reporting(0);
@ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0);


It simply turns off error reporting, making your site clean, and in no way influences it's functioning.


3) Add opt-in form. Start building your list. If you already are giving away some content, give it away in
emails that push your product. To make people opt in, you can offer some cool and truly useful short ebook or report for free in exchange for email.

4) I think someone said bigger font, and I'd second that. Theme is kinda cute, but there are better as well, BUT...at least in my opinion - if you got the content I want - big enough letters and wise paragraphing (for easier reading) are all the formatting I need.

Btw. you'll have more content if you increase font size Find your way in wordpress to editing the css file, and find the line that says:

font-size:

Change the number that comes after it - and there you go. Of course you have more than one font formatting on site, but this should help.

If you need any coding advice, ask away. And if you need some serious work done - wp devs are a dime a dozen, so wise choice of platform (+ it's pretty stable and high quality).


PS. I like the theme - it fits perfectly, and has just enough eye candy and not too much. If the purpose of your site is to tell and sell, don't clutter it up, most big dogs have stupidly simple pages for their products, you know those, with red headings, black text, and a beautiful inviting ORDER NOW button on bottom

If anything visual needs to be added, I'd try adding some girl pic, probably you want to get them horny (for the idea they can have such a girl)

hey dude... just read the first post, but i can make some recommendations. the PUA community is all about relationships and knowing people. look at guys like el topo.... he has some important things that you should look into.

1) EMAIL LIST: get one! it is great to send information to your audience while at the same time building trust with them. they will eat it up and it will go straight to their email box

2) YOUTUBE: he's got some good content that he records on youtube. it helps solidify his image and style in a visual way with his current audience plus is another stream for attracting new customers

i like the star and the initiative! best of luck to your business

Awesome suggestion about the XML SiteMap...

Google likes an about page and a contact page. Im in the PUA community and it is getting big, so you are in a good market. Here is your number 1 competition The Asian Playboy: The #1 Pick-Up Artist (PUA) & Dating Coach for Asian Men

Concerning wordpress theming without programming knowledge, here's a few shortcuts:

1) Theme generators:

These are free online tools to create your theme in no time, and they're WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get):

Wordpress Theme Generator - Lubith.com (coolest one)

Theme-generator || Wordpress (claims cross-browser compatibility - VERY important to you as a marketer)

Wordpress Theme Generator - Create your own Wordpress Theme. (I googled out this one, you can look for more generators, I'm sure there's a bunch


2) Or if you want to learn, here's a tutorial which absolutely is what it claims it is, ultimate:

How To Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial | ThemeShaper


3) Purchase premium theme or grab a free one somewhere. Usually link is all freebie authors ask for, and since you're not in a web design niche, why would you mind crediting them anyway NOTE: grab free themes only from trusted sites, as some people have habit of filling the theme with malware and stuff.

My purpose was to make a website like his focusing on dating advice for asian men

Is there even a demand for dating advice for asian guys?

You guys have been awesome offering support.

Since my first post, I've mostly consumed most of my time with trying to learn SEO and write articles.

I have also completely change the theme to a premium theme (Thesis).

I'm in the middle of figuring out how to use tags. Luckily wordpress has a simple built-in system for adding tags, I just need to figure out what words/phrases to use and how to use them.

Baby steps