PROGRESS THREAD: GymJunkie (36Pounds.com)

[Gymjunkie]

Wow... I'm back home after 30+ hours spent in castle from fairy tales... literally!!! Friends rent part of it and live in REAL CASTLE in Ireland.. spent great time there, met great people, seen beautiful nature and enjoyed my time. Great! In the mean time my blog got loads of traffic from Stumble Upon!! WHOOHOO! YEAH! For two straight days!!!! I had 200+ visits for 2 straight days and SU brought most of it. What is strange, the article that brought this traffic from SU got stumbled FOR THE SECOND TIME!!! It had brought some traffic already about 1,5 month ago and it brought about 350 visits again! I'm so happy (even though today, sunday, sucked and I didn't even get 70 visits probably)...

 

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[Gymjunkie]

After two straight days of 200+ visits, 60 visits yesterday... bummer... such a fluctuation. This sucked but I haven't done any marketing in 2 days so probably that's why.

Today I'm gonna write a new post. Maybe this will bring more visits and subscribers.

The blog will hit 13000 visits today in total... pretty nice!

 

[Gymjunkie]

Things are pretty slow with traffic now. And subscribers. The count grew to 12 subscribers. I'll be lucky to get 30 subscribers by 15th of August (first newsletter will be sent then).

Blog comment count is now over 500. Nice. I get a lot of Spam comments but still, almost half of comments are good. Either thank you's from visitors or questions.

 

[neverfastenough]

Five Ways to Make Your Email Marketing Work Better | Copyblogger

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Five Ways to Make Your Email Marketing Work Better | Copyblogger

Thank you, Speed+!

 

[Gymjunkie]

Even though current traffic sucks (about 70 visits last few days) I want to do a statistical update of how my blog is doing:

Total Visits: 13524
Bounce Rate: 59,23 (after reading one post about bounce rates I now know that blogs tend to have higher bounce rates than sites, I'm gonna be happy when my bounce rate settles at 50 percent!)
Pageviews: 36349
Pageviews per visit: 2,69
Average time on site: 3:29
New Visits: 79,81 percent
Unique visits: 10804
Visits per day: 115,59
Returning Visitors: 2685


Might hit 14000 visitors by the end of 4th month of blog's existence, but it's a small chance to do that.

Also, yesterday I finally decided to post that I'm gonna write an Ebook for Skinny guys. I want to share Phoenix Method (my creation from experience and testing other people's stuff, combining it to make it great). I expected to get criticism from unhappy visitors about it but I didn't, yet. I will pour everything I know into that ebook and it will help me achieve my goal of helping 1000 Skinny guys getting great looking, strong and healthy Beach body.

Cheers

 

[Gymjunkie]

I've just sent out first edition of 36Pounds.com newsletter. Phew.. I'm a bit nervous and excited at the same time. Hopefully, guys will like it!

I got an opportunity to get post on some blog next week. Gonna write a post tomorrow and send it to the guy. Hopefully he has a lot of visitors daily (although I suspect his blog is as small as mine is). But either way it's good to get opportunity like this.

 

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[neverfastenough]

I've just got to give you some kudos! The fact that you've stuck with it is impressive. Content creation (blogs, etc) is the most boring thing for me. It's not about the numbers; it's about the strength of the community you build.

 

[Gymjunkie]

I've just got to give you some kudos! The fact that you've stuck with it is impressive. Content creation (blogs, etc) is the most boring thing for me. It's not about the numbers; it's about the strength of the community you build.

Appreciate it mate!

Yeah, it is a bit boring, but when you have something to say it's not hard.

And creating community is damn hard. I will install Social Networking plug in Buddy Press, hopefully this will make people act more around blog, not just visit.

I'm also thinking about starting a Challenge for them, for a month or for 12 weeks. Something like The Biggest Gainer challenge. But I need to find sponsor for it.

P.S. Yesterday got another small dose of traffic from SU. Nice!

 

[LightHouse]

Even though current traffic sucks (about 70 visits last few days) I want to do a statistical update of how my blog is doing:

Total Visits: 13524
Bounce Rate: 59,23 (after reading one post about bounce rates I now know that blogs tend to have higher bounce rates than sites, I'm gonna be happy when my bounce rate settles at 50 percent!)
Pageviews: 36349
Pageviews per visit: 2,69
Average time on site: 3:29
New Visits: 79,81 percent
Unique visits: 10804
Visits per day: 115,59
Returning Visitors: 2685


Might hit 14000 visitors by the end of 4th month of blog's existence, but it's a small chance to do that.

Also, yesterday I finally decided to post that I'm gonna write an Ebook for Skinny guys. I want to share Phoenix Method (my creation from experience and testing other people's stuff, combining it to make it great). I expected to get criticism from unhappy visitors about it but I didn't, yet. I will pour everything I know into that ebook and it will help me achieve my goal of helping 1000 Skinny guys getting great looking, strong and healthy Beach body.

Cheers

Try working on some things to increases the pages per visitor and time on site. Things like interlinking related posts and tying links and image links into parts of the blog posts. anything to captivate the reader to read more thus increasing your stickiness and hook with your blog readership.

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Try working on some things to increases the pages per visitor and time on site. Things like interlinking related posts and tying links and image links into parts of the blog posts. anything to captivate the reader to read more thus increasing your stickiness and hook with your blog readership.

Thanx for tips. Speed+

 

[Gymjunkie]

I have a guest post appearing on one blog for men today! Cool! Finally, some guest posting after a long hiatus.

I am also trying to get a guest posting opportunity at one nicely sized blog about self-improvement. Looks like the guy doesn't mind but I have to write in certain style. Hopefully he will like what I'm gonna write. Most likely I will send it in tomorrow and wait for an answer.

Sadly not all guest post requests get accepted. I've contacted maybe 6 or 7 blogs/sites about it, but only 2 wrote back yet. But this is part of life. If you don't go after opportunities yourself, no one is likely to give you one.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Dang it... my guest post was declined. But i have to say the guy is great and very friendly, we might do something in the future with him.

I sent an email to Dumblittleman.com and applied for guest post there now. Hopefully it will get accepted It might be a huge thing! Maybe THE thing to break through!

 

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[Gymjunkie]

HOLLY SMOKES!!!! CHEESE AND CRACKERS!!!! I just got an opportunity to interview a great and famous nutrition specialist and post it on my blog!!! I'll email him 10 questions and he promised to answer! YEAH!!!! )))


This wont bring lots of traffic probably but it's wonderful for my blog's brand! I'm so happy and excited!!!! It will give my readers a chance to learn from the best about nutrition, I'm one step closer to making my blog the BEST place for Skinny guy around the world!

 

[Gymjunkie]

Just sent the email with questions to that nutrition specialist. Hopefully, he can answer soon and next week I will be able to post them.

I also go response from DumbLittleMan.com, the editor seems to like the post, just needed me to beef up intro part of it. I edited it and sent it to him. Hope he loves it and then my post will be up there soon! I might also start sending posts every week there. This will be good for building up my writing skills, my personal brand (which sounds strange a bit..but it's the future of marketing)and brand of my blog too probably. One thing for sure though, if I get a guest post on DLM, I can leverage it to bigger sites (and I've targeted Zen Habits to guest post in the future).

Cheers

 

[Gymjunkie]

Still waiting for a reply from DumbLittleMan.com about whether I get a guest post there.

But the great news is I got answers for the big interview and I'm gonna post it on Wednesday! I can now reveal who the expert is.....

.. it's Lyle McDonald!!!

The guys knows shitload about nutrition and gave great answers to my questions.

Looking forward to see how my readers will like it.

Cheers

 

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[Gymjunkie]

36Pounds.com has hit the 15000 visits mark yesterday! Cool! Stats yesterday was:

Visits: 15068
Uniques: 11940
Pageviews: 40235
Pageviews per visits: 2,67
Bounce Rate: 59,79 percent
New visits: 79,32 percent
Returning Visitors: 3065 (Cool! 3000!!)
Visits per day: 113,1 (down a bit, but I haven't been marketing properly..)

I think I will get back to 130 visits a month pretty soon as soon as I start guest posting on other sites.

 

[Gymjunkie]

I'm changing the direction of a blog a bit. From main goal being to help 1000 skinny guys get great looking, strong and healthy Beach Body to creating the best place online for skinny guys. I want to make 36pounds.com a community for skinny guys. A tribe. Etc. From now on I will concentrate more on creating community. I don't know if I will even write an ebook and sell it anymore... Making money off of it would be awesome but fu.ck it. I will do this even making money is not possible..

Short term goals in order to make a great community and best place online for skinny guys:

1. Get more interviews with experts.
2. Get new hosting plan that allows to install BuddyPress and start social networking in my blog.
3. Guest post at DumbLittleMan.com and then try and reach out ZenHabits.com.

That's it for now. Cheers

 

[Gymjunkie]

Just noticed that this week (meaning time from Saturday) was great in that the subscriber count grew by 9!! Wow! Cool! I love it.

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Had a record week on subscriber growth! 11 people signed up for newsletter! Cool Hopefully, I will soon reach a new record.

I finished the experiment with dating product advertisement instead of AdSense. It got more clicks than AdSense (probably because it's picture, not text!). Got 42 clicks in a month but unfortunately no sales..

I'm keeping AdSense for now. Might start new experiment later..

 

[Gymjunkie]

Subscribers on RSS have hit 52 and Email subscribers climbed up to 40. Slow, but still nice.

Gonna try to get another interview with an expert to help out people.

Checked Google ranks and saw that 36pounds.com is on the 3rd page of keywords I compete. Hopefully I will get on 1st page in a few months..

 

[jportz]

I'm a fan of your site Gymjunkie and you've got some great content so I hope these suggestions come across as purely constructive!

It's been raised on this forum in the past that often we can make (false) assumptions about someone's gender by the style of their writing, or others have admitted to being "ageist" at times, despite the poster having great content.

While these are not your concern, I think there's a much larger group (myself included) who judge the authenticity and credibility of someone's work by their writing proficiency, independent of content. Attention on spelling and grammar, proper capitalization etc...

While you have excellent content and I will be continue visiting your blog regardless, I can't help but point out that on your landing page alone, in one reading, I picked up: a missing apostrophe in "wont", "subscribed" with the wrong tense, and a few mid-sentence capitalisations where the web-convention is to use bold/underline.

I suggest you spend an hour or so just surfing some famous bloggers. Notice their writing style, you'll find that posts from the really successful ones are so polished they could almost be straight out of a magazine.

I think if you cleaned up just your landing page, irrespective of your "must-read" posts, you would increase your credibility with a lot of would-be one off visitors.

"The effortless, conversational tone of good writing usually comes on the sixth rewrite." Paul Graham

 

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[Gymjunkie]

I'm a fan of your site Gymjunkie and you've got some great content so I hope these suggestions come across as purely constructive!

It's been raised on this forum in the past that often we can make (false) assumptions about someone's gender by the style of their writing, or others have admitted to being "ageist" at times, despite the poster having great content.

While these are not your concern, I think there's a much larger group (myself included) who judge the authenticity and credibility of someone's work by their writing proficiency, independent of content. Attention on spelling and grammar, proper capitalization etc...

While you have excellent content and I will be continue visiting your blog regardless, I can't help but point out that on your landing page alone, in one reading, I picked up: a missing apostrophe in "wont", "subscribed" with the wrong tense, and a few mid-sentence capitalisations where the web-convention is to use bold/underline.

I suggest you spend an hour or so just surfing some famous bloggers. Notice their writing style, you'll find that posts from the really successful ones are so polished they could almost be straight out of a magazine.

I think if you cleaned up just your landing page, irrespective of your "must-read" posts, you would increase your credibility with a lot of would-be one off visitors.

"The effortless, conversational tone of good writing usually comes on the sixth rewrite." Paul Graham

Thnx a lot! Glad you like the blog and I appreciate the constructive criticism! I will read posts again and will work on it. I'm real busy these days but try to get to in ASAP. :smx9: Speed+

Cheers

 

[Gymjunkie]

I have just added Forum to 36Pounds.com

It's a good plug in that integrates into WordPress and seems to be a nice, small forum.

Hope this will help me create great community!

 

[Gymjunkie]

Addition of forum made a positive impact on pageviews and time on site and a smaller one on bounce rate. At least for now. Hopefully this trend will continue and the forum will grow.

 

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[neverfastenough]

How are things going?

 

[Gymjunkie]

Slow. Real busy with job. Have so much stuff going on I can't spend much time on it. It's traffic now settled at 3000 visits a month. Not much marketing.

I'm also thinking about direction of the blog (there is a thread about it, Free is a business model). I'm staying positive though and believe I can make it and make 36pounds.com the best place for skinny guys gaining muscle on the net!

Thanx for wondering! Appreciate it!

 

[MrPink]

Hey Gymjunkie,

What an incredible honor! You have over 3k pageviews each month - which means you have hundreds of people finding what you are doing useful and appreciate it!

Keep pushing ahead - this is what keeps the wannabee 37pounds.com from taking you over when your site blows up

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Hey Gymjunkie,

What an incredible honor! You have over 3k pageviews each month - which means you have hundreds of people finding what you are doing useful and appreciate it!

Keep pushing ahead - this is what keeps the wannabee 37pounds.com from taking you over when your site blows up

Actually, I have about 8000 pageviews a month. And I'm humbled by the fact that 3000 people a month spend their time visiting 36pounds.com. Makes me think how to make it the best!

 

[MrPink]

Oh, sorry I read that wrong!

Hey even better