Slowly losing visitors to sites after a good start..

[michro01]

Hi everyone,
I started off with a bunch of BANs sites, and I promoted them (submitted them to social bookmarking sites, wrote some articles, added content, etc), and it started off OK.. Nothing spectacular or anything I would brag about, but it was getting me some decent money in..

However, I have noticed over the last little while that there has been a steady decline in the amount of money I'm making, and the amount of visitors I have been getting. Since I have already submitted my sites to the social bookmarking sites, I can't do that anymore.. I have already wrote a bunch of articles, and now when I would assume I should be growing (since my domains have some age to them), I am actually getting far smaller...

With that said, what can I do to turn this around? Increase visitors, thus increasing money. Any tips? Software?

Thanks.

 

[siberia77]

Use SEO techniques for a start....?

 

[michro01]

... That is what I did and have been trying to do since I started the site, I just don't know why now I'm starting to lose visitors, and rank in Google.

 

[Diabolik]

I think this has happened to everyone who's an affiliate for Ebay since the last Google update. I think they also devalued all incoming links from the usual bum marketing sites.

Pretty soon the SERPs will only show Google owned sites...Googletube, Googlepedia, GoogleSpace, GoogleBookmarks, GoogleGroups, SquidGoogle, GooglezineArticles, GooglesList, USGoogleAds, etc.

 

[michro01]

Really eh? Those fuckers, lol

 

[goonieguhu]

Hi everyone,
Since I have already submitted my sites to the social bookmarking sites, I can't do that anymore.

Nothing's stopping you from creating more social bookmarking account and starting the whole process over again. Just remember to bookmark more than just your own sites.

 

[eponus]

Michro, I've had the exact same experience with BANS.

To be honest, I'm really worried about BANS; it can't be too hard for the big G to find some signature code tidbits in the BANS sites and rank those sites lowly. For instance, all of the BANS sites have the exact same freakin' search box... that can't be good.

Let's face it - most BANS sites out there are just the default install with some article fodder thrown on a poorly picked niche. These sites do not provide any value at all, so it's definitely in the search engines' interest to limit their ranking.

I'd customize the BANS site pretty thoroughly to avoid this pitfall, making sure to hit the CSS as well as the HTML, and place high quality content and images on each page. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid?

 

[wargamer6]

Google's been axing BANS sites iirc.

 

[the mad hatter]

With that said, what can I do to turn this around? Increase visitors, thus increasing money. Any tips? Software?

You said you started out fine. If your talking about your first month, then that's not considered a start. Obviously You have to do all you can to steadily increase your traffic thus increasing sales.
What SEO techniques have you been using?
Is there anything you can identify that's causing the decline?
Social bookmarking is good, and like goonieguhu already stated, there's nothing stopping you form doing it again all over.
Try jumptags dot com. Don't have much experience with that site, but I heard it's really good.

Good Luck

 

[.:Aural:.]

You may want to give this a read...

Google's quality rating guidelines for websites:

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/100610300/qua***lity-rater-guidelines-2007.pdf.htm

My theory, based on this PDF, is that your site was manually pruned by some
google reviewer for being a BAN site but I can't say for sure. The PDF may shed
some light on your problem though.

 

[scriptkiddy]

It's certainly necessary to keep working on sites, adding content, getting links.

However, you may also be experiencing a 'summer slowdown'. Many ebay affiliates say that the summer holiday period is their worst time for sales. It is for me, currently I'm doing a lot of work to have the same results, I hope that later in the year it will pay off (If I don't get banned first

 

[michro01]

Lets say I'm trying to get ranked for mysite.com... If I create a blog, or an article, and its I like to it (lets say the site is mysite.com/article), does mysite.com get link juice as well, or just the sub-site mysite.com/article?

 

[michro01]

Also, do sites that are linked through the "Alink" wordpress plugin still count as good links or are they irrelevant?

 

[bmph8ter]

Also, do sites that are linked through the "Alink" wordpress plugin still count as good links or are they irrelevant?

It looks like all the alink plugin does is saves you from having to build/type the link. You enter text and it inserts a link for you. That being said, it shouldn't matter one way or the other.

What DOES matter is where your links come from. Links sent from 'bad neighborhoods' will just drag your site down eventually. You also can't just expect to forget about a site after you build it and expect to make money. I don't think that happens unless you're lucky; you've chosen a great domain name so you get lots of type in traffic or there is no competition in your niche.