Should I stop working on this website?

[Alex62]

Hello. I'm Alex, I'm new here.
I liked the book a lot and decided to register on this forum.

Some months ago a heard about FMyLife.com, a site with short user-submitted stories that's worth millions. At that time I was frequently visiting a Russian website zadolba.li, a similar site with people ranting about how they're pissed off, how this and that sucks. I did a research and found that there are no close analogs in english-speaking part of the internet.

This site had to contain stories about how people are pissed off, had to be pre-moderated in order not to turn into junkyard, had to have a rating system and the stories themselves had to be interesting.

So I assembled a site engine (Wordpress + some plugins) and started searching for initial content, I googled "pisses me off", found a lot of topics on forums where people bithed about things, and started copying more or less interesting (to my taste) posts from there.

I haven't been consistent with it though, and I'm clueless (for now) about SEO and promotion. I have only 15-20 visitors daily from youtube links.

The site is WPMrg

My question is, should I spent time SEOing an promoting, adding more content or this site just isn't interesting?

This may sound stupid, but I haven't had anyone's opinion on my website before. I haven't even done any research on how to make money with sites like this before beginning the work, my bad.

 

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[jljtech]

I think the website concept is very interesting. You have the opportunity to make it into something that could Go viral quickly. Now I don't claim to be a complete subject matter expert but I have been on the web for a number of years and I do own a few web properties. I have found that once the content interests people enough you will be able to reach critical mass faster than you think possible. often times without having to do a tremendous amount of the Seo work.

In terms of you deciding whether to stop working on it or not, that's truly a decision that would be up to you. I think if you develop the functionality to allow individuals to submit their stories [moderated of course], you could really get something going here. In looking at the site it kind of reminds me of Clients from hell. this is just another example in the same vein as FML. The unique feature of your site is that it's not restricted to any specific category. The stories could be about anything.

Try adding a Twitter account so that your posts get distributed to that platform. It should do a lot to drive some more traffic to your site as teenagers have a whole lot of stuff to bitch about these days.

 

[PatrickP]

so it is basically a copy of fmylife right?

If so then I would drop it.

 

[The-J]

so it is basically a copy of fmylife right?

If so then I would drop it.

Gonna have to respectfully disagree... sort of.

It can be Fastlane. It just probably won't be since you won't be selling anything except a brand (FMyLife, Brotips, Facebook, Instagram) to people who buy these kinds of Web sites and squeeze money out of em.

If you're doing it for the money, yeah you should probably drop it since your chances are much smaller than if you, say, offer an actual product or service that actually adds value to people's lives.

But the site has potential.

 

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[Alex62]

so it is basically a copy of fmylife right?

If so then I would drop it.

No, it's a kind of copy of zadolba.li, a russian site.
FML success story just inspired me.


What bothers me is zadolba.li has a specific 'culture' of its own and the stories are long enough (it takes in average 2-3 minutes to read one) while my site has more 'random' rants that differ in length in style a lot.

Would you post your story on WPMrg after reading already posted ones?

The problem is that no one did yet

 

[townhaus]

Try adding a Twitter account so that your posts get distributed to that platform. It should do a lot to drive some more traffic to your site as teenagers have a whole lot of stuff to bitch about these days.

Ye i quite like the idea actually, id stick with it.

I can see some room for potential. Definitely add social sharing functionality to help the chance of the stories going viral. Its easy just to copy/paste the twitter and facebook like buttons. Since your using wordpress i'm sure there are plenty of plugins for that, 'sharebar' for example.

Get rid of the standard wordpress replys and add facebook comments plugin

 

[H. Palmer]

Alex, have you actually put some thought into how to monetize the website?

 

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[itsme]

so it is basically a copy of fmylife right?

If so then I would drop it.

Google...
Apple...
Facebook...

 

[JoeV]

Do you have time and money to burn on this site? It looks like a fun site to have, but monetizing a site like this is a pain. It seems like your only real option to make money with this site is for it to be HUGE and sell advertising. Anything less than that and you will not generate much revenue.

 

[huy]

I haven't been consistent with it though, and I'm clueless (for now) about SEO and promotion. I have only 15-20 visitors daily from youtube links.

What kind of videos are you posting on Youtube? I've heard of marketing on Youtube, but have never really understood what kind of content is good.

 

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[Future Ed]

How about creating a YouTube group instead where people submit videos to it ranting about all the stuff that pisses them off? Then you don't have to find the stories yourself, the users create the content for you on auto pilot. Some will be good and will go viral and promote your group/brand.

How about a facebook group?

I'm willing to bet this is already being done though surely? I don't know I can't be bothered to look.

 

[PatrickP]

Google...
Apple...
Facebook...

apples to oranges

 

[SirKonstantine]

I've flipped a few site. Basically, no proof of earnings = no flip. Viral content is hard to monetize so it might be hard to flip.

Find a way to monetize it first.

//sidenote, i'm not good with "popular" website and focus more on niche websites myself.

 

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[EastWind]

You build the site, but you are not selling it!