PROGRESS THREAD: GymJunkie (36Pounds.com)

[Gymjunkie]

Wow...My blog just passed 1 Year old mark! It's on April 14th of 09 that I had started 36Pounds.com and now it has been online for a year. It's my longest project life ever. I'd get lots of ideas, try them a bit, fail or lose motivation easily and abandon them. But this one lived on for a year.

It has 118 posts and more 40 000 visits. Didn't get over 100 000 pageviews but still.. more than 8500 people visited it at least twice. Few thousand did it more than 10 times!

It's not as big and popular as I hoped it would be but that's my fault! In the second year I see myself finishing my own body transformation and then giving away an ebook that would be guide to others (and get it downloaded 1000 times. Another goal would be to hit 100 000 visits in total.

Blogging is nice, it can be very helpful, you just have to have enough knowledge to create content and share it. This is my first project and hopefully others, will follow it soon!

 

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[stlsmoore]

Very nice, still no ebook yet? I created one for my niche and it's amazing how people instantly credit you as an expert just for providing learning material on a subject. You're getting about x10 the traffic as me so far so I would imagine you could easily make x10 the income than I'm bringing in just by creating a simple 20-30 page ebook and hosting it on e-junkie lol.

 

[Gymjunkie]

WHoopsie...I got my as.s kicked today..by a reader. He came in and left a comment that he deleted my blog from his favorites cuz I haven't updated the routine as I promised on time. Gotta say he got me. I didn't follow up, it's been in my head for a while to post but I was procrastinating and unfocused... I was thinking of deleting the comment but I approved it still. I deserved it and now that post is public.

One thing I still haven't fully grasped...my blog is already in some people's bookmarks as a favorite and they come back often.. damn.. I see the stats that more than 20 percent of visitors and returning and a lot of them have been on my blog for 10+ times but... I still dont fully get it, can't believe I'm referred as an expert in my niche already by some people. Wow... they trust me a lot.. damn.. and they get let down from time to time...but some still do come back either way... wow..

 

[Anon3587x]

Lol I read the blog a bit.
I like it, good stuff.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Lol I read the blog a bit.
I like it, good stuff.

Oh, nice! Thnx!

I actually thanked the guy for kicking my butt in another comment since he came and left another comment.

 

[Anon3587x]

I always knew free weights were better then machines which is why I always do dips & pull ups.
I laugh at people who think they can bench over 300 pounds because they did it on a machine and when it comes down to it they can't even do 225.

But one of your blogs explains the difference between the two and it was just a nice read.

You may want to add some more sponsored links.

I only seen one.

 

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[Gymjunkie]

I always knew free weights were better then machines which is why I always do dips & pull ups.
I laugh at people who think they can bench over 300 pounds because they did it on a machine and when it comes down to it they can't even do 225.

But one of your blogs explains the difference between the two and it was just a nice read.

You may want to add some more sponsored links.

I only seen one.

Yeah, free weights are better most of the time. Some machines are useful (like calf raises, leg press..) but freeweights and bodyweight exercises kick a.s.s!

I might actually take it down also. I will write an ebook and try selling it. Give one for free and one for sale actually. Focusing on the content you know

 

[Gymjunkie]

Some good and some bad news!

Bad news is traffic took a dip without any marketing..

Good news is I still made 139 dollars from affiliate sales last in last 3 weeks. It took me by surprise actually. It will be great if the buyers wont refund products. This is big thing and first real earning from the blog. If I had this much every month, well, thats a nice addition for saving up.

On other note, I'm saving up money for two things - Personal Training course in October to get some qualifications and also for tickets to Chicago this July.. I hope I can save up for both

 

[Gymjunkie]

36Pounds.com has been steady and made another sale and I am now waiting for my check from Clickbank to arrive. In closest future I'm planing to create autoresponder series for my newsletter of 6-8 letters and then upsell them on a fitness product which makes 50 bucks a sale. newsletter grew up to 146 people and keeps growing. I might make a short ebook to give away as a way to get emails also.

 

[Gymjunkie]

36Pounds.com recently eclipsed 50k visits. Cool. Took looong time but that doesn't matter I just love it either way.

I sat down and updated plugins today, added Facebook Like button and hope that will help bring more FB visitors. I only have 137 visitors untill now from there. We will see if this button makes any difference.

I also changed affilaite offer I have on my advertising banner place. Instead of selling ebook and training system now it promotes Nutrition ebook. Wanna see how it works (I also needed something new there to fight banner blindness).

I honestly hadn't spent any time like this updating my blog. Just wrote daily posts for last week about my ongoing 90 Day Phoenix Challenge. After it finishes I am planning to do an ebook about it and give it away for free to build a list.

That's it for now..

 

[Anon3587x]

Have you put adsense up instead of affiliate links?

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Oh yeah man, it was there for almost a year and brought me all 26 bucks!!!! 😀 I changed to one banner and affiliate promo on the side and it brought me 180 bucks in 3 months... Much better even tho not much (still covered my expenses on the blog easily)

 

[Gymjunkie]

Yesterday I changed my email newsletter service from MailCheat(Chimp) to Awebber. MP wasn't bad but Aw is more convenient to me and probably cheaper in the long run! I had a list of 147 subscribers that took a year to build up (!!! talk about slow!!!). I expect to loose pretty much all of them!

I give away an ebook in exchange for email and hope this will help me grow list faster than in the past. I will post results of the change in a week's time cuz by then all the old subscribers will have signed up I believe (if they want to).

Also, interesting thing to me is that I didn't write the ebook and I wonder how it will work!

My goal is to be at 3 subscribers added to a list a day mark constantly. That would mean I will be at 1000 subscribers ( a first good milestone) after a year...

 

[Gymjunkie]

Well, as I expected, I lost almost all the subscribers. I think like 10 out of 147 switched to the new list. But honestly I'm not concerned with it. It's a new start, new page. The list is 15 people now. Looks like I will be getting 1 subscriber a day which is 30 of them a month. It's still more than 2 times improvement over last time. And that is if my traffic stays the same.

And talking about traffic, I'm changing my keywords for the blog. Looks like I found a better ones. The keywords I targeted earlier where low on competition but really unpopular (I thought '' skinny to buff'' phrase was popular..but it isn't)... I think it will either get me more traffic after some time or I will lose most of Google traffic which is about 40 percent of my totals now.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Alright... I made a decision... I'm closing 36Pounds.com

It was a great thing for me. I stuck with it for longer than with any idea I have ever had (almost 2 years!!).

I will reopen it or start a new blog once I have gained enough weight myself. And that will probably only happen in around 2 years.. since I have been stuck for a while..I also intend to get a fitness certification next year. THEN I will be able to give advice to people and start building a fitness empire I envision!

Thank you all who had posted here and popped in to visit this thread. I think it is one of the most popular threads in this forum (which is cool!!!).

Cheers
Adrijus

 

[jportz]

Exit strategy

As someone who has subscribed to this thread since the first post its sad to see you're throwing in the towel.

That said, if you're commited to this path - have you considered selling the site on flippa.com or similar?

 

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[Gymjunkie]

As someone who has subscribed to this thread since the first post its sad to see you're throwing in the towel.

That said, if you're commited to this path - have you considered selling the site on flippa.com or similar?

Seriously?? From the start?? Now that's stunning. Thanx a lot Reps+ for you!

I will do it again with a fresh slate and more qualification to give out advice on the topic.

Site won't sell since it's tiny and I wouldn't want anyone else to use it. It's my contribution, I can't imagine anyone else taking over...

 

[valuegiver]

When someone goes to your site, there are a number of things that run in their mind either consciously or subconsciously. Mine will be:

1) 36 pounds as a website name, it doesn't tell me anything. In the mind of the visitor, he'd ask whether the site owner lost 36 pounds or gained 36 pounds.
2) There are no before and after pictures of yours
3) Your site looks rather dull and boring, I can only see text, there's no audio or video.
4) There is no single purpose on your site. The main theme is a blog, but there's a optin box at the right hand side, and a clickbank link to vincedelmonte site. My suggestion is to remove the optin box, instal Popup Domination. And remove the bloody vincedelmonte link. You want to become Vince Del Monte, the vendor not the affiliate.