Review my Shitty Blog

J

jeracoo

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Hi just wondering if anyone can have a look at my shitty new travel blog, currently gets 300-500 visitors a day. Is currently generating $2.60 a day.

I'm looking for tips on how to make it better to get people to return, current return rate is 25%.

My blog is stingytraveller, stingytraveller not stingytravel
 
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The sites not shitty imo. The content are good but i think you could add more to the homepage like a good background, a bigger better logo banner.

and i suggest you use pinterest to drive some more traffic.

Good Luck
 
I think the theme is a pretty good fit. My suggestion is to build more interaction.

Facebook like box, live stream of tweets, link to Pinterest. Get users engaged and think of your site as more of a brand. This will help improve your relationship with your users and will make it easier to influence them.
 
Likes:

1) I like the color.
2) I like the Slider
3) I like the contents

Can be modified stuffs:

1) Your site looks empty, I am talking about the sidebar section.
2) The current theme is okish but you can get a much better theme.
3) Add Social Media Icons
4) Use some good fonts :)

Those all things should you to improvise your site.
 
Yo Its far from a shitty site....but...Travel niches are hardwork and you have gone for a niche within that which is even harder work. The sort of person that would be into touring exotic places on a budget are into lonely planet/rough guide type sites. Unless you have a unique angle like you are actually a guy doing this for real and sharing your results then i can imagine you are getting a high bounce rate. Its an ambitious project setting it out as a blog....means that it needs constant updates and fresh content.. I would have tried to keep it static and done something like 10 tips to live of 5$ a day in south america. 5 things you need to do to get the cheapest flights. Stuff like that which will stay relevent....You do need to get some web 2.0 on add some social buttons twitter/fb and for a travel site you need to be all over pinterest.. If you are making $3 a day off google its a good start. I would put a hotels combined affiliate on their and I would think about an Amazon for books and dvds also.
 
the load time is probably whats killing your traffic. took more than 12 seconds on a mac pro. not good, fix that and everything else looks pretty good
 
tennispro47 said:
the load time is probably whats killing your traffic. took more than 12 seconds on a mac pro. not good, fix that and everything else looks pretty good
Click to expand...

Yeah I thought the load time was poor as well but according to your source you have W3 cache installed... Might want to clear that or retest your settings
 
the slideshow is too fast imho (but i'mnot sure if it is possible to adjust the time).
overall impression - nice blog, good colours, easy on the eyes
 
Yeah and I just noticed you have sharing buttons but only on the bottom of posts..You should put them on your landing page...I've installed Floating social media icons by Acurax on a few of my sites recently and they look good
 
If you are that many visitors per day then its better to open private advertising .Its a good option to make money with the traffic you have.
 
The problems with loading times seem to be related to DNS, I was originally using a server in Europe which seemed to work quite well for everyone but me. Ie the site would take 7-10 seconds to load for me but apparently loaded instantly for everyone outside Australia.

So I changed my DNS to Australian ones, so now it's fast for me but slow for Europe which is a bit of a pain considering most of my traffic is from there.

I'm not sure how I can fix this though, is there some way of setting up specific name servers for different regions? Also if I did change my theme what would you suggest? I was considering thematic, though it requires a bit of work.
 
Hmm, I think it looks pretty good and clean. I think your main concern like mentioned earlier is content angle and bounce rate.
 
i like your theme , Color is ok ,good content,and good working , i like it.
 
Would getting an amazon cloudfront help? Or should I get someone to do some advanced dns for me.
 
you should be use Meta description in 150-160 char, 10 keyword and title in 68 char.For return visitor i will suggest you keep update daily or weekly by using comment section review or update some unique information.
 
+I like the layout
+the wording seems fine

-could use some color
-Aboriginals


 
You only have ads in your homepage, put ad blocks on the side bar on every posts(inner pages). For now, I can only see one ad block ad the header. Put 160x600 on the sidebar and a 468x60 below the posts or a big 338x280 ad block. That way you maximize the 3 ad blocks allowed, you will have one on top(header), sidebar and below on each post.
 
The website takes forever to load.... Also keep updating the site.
 
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