Question about Press Releases:

Looking at the companies mentioned in this thread - is this primarily for back links and SEO? or is there SOME chance that an actual blogger / media type person could pick up the story write about it?

To quickly re-hash (I wrote about my site a few pages back) - my site is www.loopchange.com - 100% free - currently no ads (more focused on helping people than making a few dollars at this point).

I'm trying to come up with a plan for the end of the year. As blogs/articles are written about new year's resolutions - my site would be a great candidate for inclusion because it's free and decent. Could a press release help there? Or would I really be wasting my money?

Wanted to edit ^ but was too late.

You do not need an account to view the site - just click "browse missions"

I have gotten great feedback right here in this thread that my home page needs to be re-worked - that my 'catch line' isn't great - and other things. I do intend to change those - but have to be patient being on a limited budget

I lol'd at this one heh, http://www.loopchange.com/mission_de...x?id=82&us=196
NO GAMBLING!!!!

I went to your site earlier and basically didn't know what the interface was because I didn't feel like signing up and didn't see "browse missions." I would do something to drive users to the "browse missions" so they see what your implementation is like.

On the individual mission pages I think it might make sense to have things in reverse chronological order. I'd also do something to make the FAQ less wall-of-text-ish.

Nice job so far.

Ya - the no gambling one is interesting. I'd never heard of "gambling cafe" type places - they basically sell lottery tickets in the form of sitting at a computer playing a slot machine with structured winners....so you spend 10$ and 1 of the people playing for the next 10 minutes will will 30$ (rigged) sounds like a major scam.

I agree about browse missions being too hidden - as a quick fix - I'm looking at putting some kind of 'bubble' around it - like you'd see in a comic book saying "Kabam" (that might not make sense - but the sort of jagged type bubble to draw attention to it) - or possibly doing that AND changing the wording to say "Browse Missions without signing up"

I've considered the 'reverse' order MANY times - maybe it's just my own issue - but I have a hard time reading bottom to top. And I like that someone coming in later can read the full journey from top to bottom -- I don't know... I may end up changing it at some point.

Agree about the FAQ too - I wish I knew how to do any programming at all - would make it much easier to tweak things here and there - but since I'm going through programmers it seems to this point there have always been "more important" things to get done.

Thank you for the comments.

maybe i missed it, but what did you use to design/build loopchange?

Does anyone have any experience using PPC to get links?

I'm going to start a news related website once I sort out some other stuff and I figured that a cost effective way to build links might be to target to people who have blogs/twitters that might talk about my site. SEO book touches on this concept here.

I think the success would be very niche dependent. It would be ultrabad for something like poker because people don't like just giving links away and everyone is competing for the same signups. But for my idea, a website dedicated to contextualized current events, there are a slew of pundits, bloggers, and non-profit types that are interested in the "future of journalism."

I'm figuring this could be targeted through the content network on particular blogs, facebook ads based on interests such as "blogging," ads on specific subreddits, maybe name searches of bloggers on google to gain the attention of people googling themselves, display ads on industry sites where people with big twitters frequently visit and probably a lot more ideas I'm not thinking of.

Thoughts on any and all of this?

Your site looks good overall. I think the idea is pretty cool too.

The founders of twitter are working on something that i think is going to be similar http://lift.do/

The only complaint that I'd have, design wise, is that they're resizing the logo images in html. I'd want them to either resize the actual images or use the actual size in the html.

If you have a really clever piece of linkbait the content network might work. Otherwise I would probably stick to search PPC. One thing to note as well is that a competent blogger type probably is WAY less likely to click a banner ad or an adsense website. I have a tendency to never click on SERP ads but that might just be me.

Yeah, I'm sure the CTR would be lower than if it was generally marketed, and I also almost never click ads but I think I would curiosity click stuff that came up with my name search, or was very targeted to me, such as "Are you a professional online poker player? Check out my new website that rates the game quality across sites in realtime"

My rough idea for ad copy on FB ads would be something like "Attn: Journos The inverted pyramid is broken. Tell me what you think of my new format."

That would be a far cry from the typical crap that gets advertised on FB and should stand out.

Obviously, I'd have to have something very good on the site or else I'm just lighting money on fire, because the threshold for attracting a link is much higher than attracting a reader and these people wouldn't really be potential readers.

I paid someone to do it. Mssql and ASP.net

Interesting - thanks for the info about twitter...that probably won't be good for my site

I agree about the pictures - it's annoying to see them stretched/squished...I wish I could fix things myself, the list always seems so long!

I'm curious how much that cost you and what your arrangement is for future updating. Your project seems simpler than a lot of other things on the web, so maybe this doesn't apply as much, but if the guy who made it bails on you, isn't there a learning curve for the next guy to figure out what the previous person did that you probably have to pay for?

If you don't feel comfortable saying how much, no worries.

It's all database stuff - so yes - there would be some learning curve involved but probably not that bad.

A good friend of mine is basically acting as PM of the project - and he is outsourcing the work (currently to a guy in London; started in India) - and he oversees everything.

We've had 3 rounds of programming so far - the first was pretty much most of the site. Second we added a feature called loopgroups which are private groups that anyone can form - and we just had an updated that added paging and a few other minor changes (including the share this thing)

Next is some improved email options for notifications if your mission gets a comment - or a mission you're following gets updated - and a few other administrative stuff (but mostly SEO stuff that was recommended to me in this thread several pages ago is finally getting done several months later...)

So amongst all of that - I've had the same Project Manager - and we've had 4-6 different "programmers" who handled different things - including the designer - but I've never interacted with them. It's not likely the Project Manager bails on me - we've been friends for 15 years, were in each others' weddings; etc

The main reason I don't want to disclose what I paid is because it will make me feel bad if everyone here thinks I got ripped off!

Ah ok, that makes sense if you know someone personally who runs the tech side. I was envisioning you laying out the specs for some freelancer and hoping that he doesn't get a full time job or higher paying work later on and will be able to squeeze in your upgrades and bug fixes.

I'm curious how many very successful web apps were started off as an entrepreneur paying some random freelancer off of one of the many elance/odesk type sites.

Only one that I can think of is Digg, which was originally created by a 12/hr freelancer. There must be more, but there has to be a lot of hurdles to overcome if you are relying on strangers to do the heavy lifting for you.

Outsourcing is a fascinating topic for building websites IME. I've gotten a fantastic in-house programmer for ~$10/hour before BUT the problem is after 12 months that programmer is probably worth $25/hour. Honestly if they are good and your website can support it you eventually want to bring them on as a head developer who can coordinate everything. It is just so valuable to have someone who knows the customizations and can outsource specialized projects really efficiently for you. Another technique I like it outsourcing but using the specialist for very few hours to learn the key points and then hacking it together yourself .

Great thread

Sorry for the newb question but i just bought the domain name "footballfanstytips" and have it hosted at bluehost, i think i installed wordpress but how do i add content onto the site? Does anyone on here uses Bluehost and know how to upload content? Thanks for any help and sorry for the basic question.

If you just did it, it could take up to 24 hours to propagate. Otherwise go to the WordPress login screen, generally located at http://yoursite.com/wp-login.php or http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/

It's yoursite.com/wp-admin and whatever your info is.

Hmmmm yeah that the thing im not sure if i did install it all, bluehost had a "one click" installation that says it on my website now but do i need to download stuff to my computer? I thought it was as simple as something like adding content to a preview page then upload it to the site, am i miles of the mark? Thanks for any help

I don't use BlueHost, but I think it's similar to HG with a cPanel. The one click install for WP should be in Fantastico. When you do that it will allow you to pick a user/pw. Once you've installed it, go to yoursite.com/wp-admin and login.

You don't need to do anything else. Once it's installed, you login, and then you can add pages and such. It's very easy. Even for an Irishman.

If you've installed wordpress, you just log in and add/publish posts/pages. You don't need to download anything.

Thanks guys for all the help (esp Txp for the P.M) i figured it out, it was because i didn't have my domain name transferred over to my hosting site (it wasn't an Irish thing Phesh ). Thanks again.

Custom designed blog?

First of all, design/aesthetics is extremely important on our website. I asked my web designer if we should just use WordPress or other for our blog and simply plug it in to our site. He said that it's very simple for him to custom design a blog and then we'd have complete control of the design. Obviously, he is biased, so I just wanted advice from some others.

1. Is it really likely that we wouldn't be able to make a plugin look in a way that matches our website?
2. Are there any other reasons, other than cost, why I should go with a plugin or with a custom-build?

Thank you.

I am far from a dev but the main reasons to go with a pure custom would probably be speed and security. If you understand Wordpress well you can fix the security problems yourself. For basic blog type stuff you can get really fast load times through Wordpress as well so I really don't see any problem with it overall. The more complex you go in the coding the more you might consider a really well built custom CMS but those can be really expensive (think $100k+ range but Im just guessing). I think for most using a CMS + making security adjustments is the most effective route.

How your site looks is completely customizable in Wordpress, it simply gives you backend functions that you would otherwise have to code yourself. Another reason you might go custom is simply because what you intend to do is beyond the scope of the CMS realm but the majority of websites can be handled by the CMS's available.

Thanks, cwar. We have a very full site with a variety of content, so we wouldn't simply just have a blog on our site and what I meant by wondering about the customization possible with just using an external blogging format is could we make it look and function the same as the rest of our site. Maybe you were able to gather that from what I said, but if I wasn't clear would you still say WP is fully customizable? Thanks.

Wordpress is fully customizable but it doesn't mean that it's the best solution for your site.