Getting listed - my first site attempt!
 

hehe well im sure its an every day occurence for you guys, but to me today (technically yesterday, but i got accepted today) is/was my first day in adult! I submitted a freesite ive been working on for about 2 weeks (!) to about 40 lists and got a lot of acceptances :) So im super happy. So far no sales, but im optimistic. All I want is one sale this month and ill have that extra confidence :) Well.... ill have the confidence / determination to continue anyway, but a sale would be nice - just to pay my bandwidth bill.

Thanks for reading - im off to smile some more. :D

Congrats on getting listed |thumb

Now, keep on building and cranking em out...the more traffic...the better your chances of getting that first sale :)

Thanks Mr Yum ;)

I am in the process of building up a procedure where by I can cut down the time spent designing sites and therefore spend more time on SEO, submitting and getting my advertising text to a higher standard.

Its really cool to keep seeing my stats climb though :)

Would anyone mind sharing what they would consider to be a typical click through rate? Currently im at 190:7 (that is, 190 unique visitors, 7 have clicked on my sponsors). To me that seems quite low, but then im a newb! :D

|thumb

Don't worry too much about the numbers right now. Go start on your 2nd site & cut that 2 week time down to 2 hours :)

Some excellent advice for ya there Secret |thumb

You can always tweak the numbers once you get more traffic to work with. But to answer your question...that's not bad at all for a new site builder. So, keep on building and you'll get better as you go along. You'll find that you're tweaking new sites as you build and learn. It just takes time, tenacity and an open mind to keep learning :)

Congratz!

Think pretty much everything has already been said, some good advice. I kind of think of the whole business like selling anything, the more prospects you show your product to, the more sales you will make. It is a numbers game.

ronnie

Greenie and MrYum pretty much nailed it on the head for ya.

I have one more bit of info. Do not worry about hit ratios, stats and seo. Your biggest search engine is the linklists. You should just worry about being accepted and build more, many more sites. Then your sales will come. And there is nothing more motivating then a sale or two. Plus it can take a couple of months before the search engines will give you traffic while linklists can give you traffic in a day or two.

Robert

Keep at it. And take it from a fellow newb, don't worry about ratios, or fancy stuff when you first start out. Freesites have a funny way of making sales long after you've forgotten about 'em. |thumb

Just churn'em out like butter baby cause your on a roll :D

cheers all ;) Thanks for the comments, i really feel boosted. I am working on more sites - i can forsee a time in a few months when i can do a site in 2-3 hours including submits, but right now ill be happy doing 2 sites a week whilst im learning and building up my skills.

Really helps though to have such a friendly commmunity behind my projects! :)

Your at the right place hun. |waves|

These guys absolutely rock! |bananna|

At this moment, Google especially ( Yahoo! is following Google I think in their link addiction madness ) ranks pages based on the # and quality of the links pointing to them. So, you really should focuse your time and energy on building sites that will get accepted to as many LLs as possible, which will result in a bigger # of backlinks. Other than a h1 containing your targetted keywords, some bold / italic text should not consume much of your time. Good luck! :)

Congrats and good luck

my advise would be to stop looking at your stats for like a week
and really concentrate on building and submitting

posting on the board is a smart thing to do
the tgp owners and LLs see your name on the board and are generally more accepting of someone they are familair with

That's some damn fine advice right there |thumb

Congrats!

Be sure to let us know when you get that first sale.... and you will.

The research you did obviously paid off with so many acceptances so dont consider that two weeks a long time. What you learned is going to help you in future and cut that time down.

If you havent already, consider getting a submit account with Tommy - once you are listed there then you'll get a ton of traffic. A couple of sales will cover the cost. I know I dont regret the 50 bucks it cost.

Congrats SecretEden |thumb

Can't really add anything to the good advice already given, just to re-iterate what the others said - ignore CTR and sponsor stats for the time being, concentrate on building.

One thing that has just sprung to mind - make a folder called 'templates' and a folder inside that named simply '06' and stick all the pages of your freesite you have made in there - July 6th you open that up, swap the pics, adjust text/titles/metas and that's your freesite done for the day in fairly short order. With your refined text on that new template, save that over the old '06' pages and your first 'tweak' is completed.

Do the same for your future freesites, save them in a folder named that days date in your templates folder and repeat the text/image swap/title changes, and that's the freesite template for the corresponding day of the following month.

As you get quicker and learn better sales text you can tweak each one as you go, changing out sponsors further down the line, and then look at your stats more to see which freesites are doing well with CTR/Sales and what not.

Ok, that template system sounds like a good one. A quick question though, would it be advisable to try a new sponsor per site? What I did for my first site was copy the colour scheme of my sponsor. If I were to keep promoting the same sponsor, wouldnt link lists get bored of my colour scheme? Or are they more interested in varying page layouts?

OR... should I go with a few different sponsors, or just different niches from the same sponsor? My god, theres a fair few questions there :)

Thanks all for your replies, im trying to take everything on board - i write them all in my 'big book of ideas' :D

In a word, yes.

It's not just the color scheme or templates that can get old, but the same sponsor on a free-site over and over again will get real old very quickly.

I'd suggest just a couple of sponsors with several niches that you would like to premote. If you premote too many sponsors your traffic will be too thin as you will only be sending a little bit of traffic to each. Better to send more traffic to just a couple of sponsors IMO. And if those sponsors are not converting like you had hoped, then swap one of them out until you find a good fit.

Good luck |thumb

Ok, thanks for the advice, ill have a nosy round for another couple of niches that take my fancy :)

if I was a newbie starting out

I would make new templete everyday for the next 31 days
put them in a folder and number them templete1, templete 2, templete 3 etc etc

on july 4th I would use templete 4.
On august 6 I would use templete 6

I would spend some time surfing the LLs I wanna get listed at
if I seen something I liked on a free site I would copy it in to a folder

when I build templetes go in the folder and use those those peices or pages as inspraition, DO NOT COPY

now if I found a cheater on those LLs I would email the owner
send a friendly and very nice email telling them you found this site doing whatever

now the LL owner knows your name
even if they dont anwser the email
Networking is important when it comes to getting listed

and by surfing the LLs your gonna find a lot of sponsors that you might wanna premote

if you see a lot of sites premoting one sponsor its probably because that sponsor sells

I would try and work 3 sponsors in one niche heavy
and then try a totally different niche and totally different sponsor part time

Ok thanks for your input Tommy, its very much appreciated. I have started up a template system as you mentioned, so far it looks like it will work nicely.

I wouldnt really know where to look to find a cheater, but I have been emailing various link lists - and had a few replies too, so the networking process has started.

Right now im going to go looking for a few more sponsors. I think greenguys stats will be my next port of call, and ill start alternating between 1 gallery from each sponsor every 3 days, which should keep things fresh. Also once a week ill promote something different, and ill see how I do.

Ill keep people updated with my figures and stuff, im sure other newbies out there wouldn't mind seeing whats involved, and it may give you pros some nostalgic chuckles ;)

Jel's advise was very close to mine so try and remember him when you make your first milion

good luck !!!