Today I want to talk about three big mistakes I think a lot of you guys are making with your new websites and I have been guilty of some of them when I was starting out.
It is possible that they are preventing you from getting your site off the ground.
I see new webmaster make these mistakes every day and I am very excited to share them with you so you can avoid them and do the right things from the beginning.
It is very important to know them beforehand because if you keep making them yourself, you will never succeed with your online business.
1) Using Free Web Hosts
If you read this blog, you probably have seen me say this many times but it is definitely worth repeating over and over again because there are still way too many newbies that launch their websites and use free web hosts for them.
Almost all new website owners are in the rush and are too excited about their new projects that they simply forget to pay attention to crucial things or even worse, they do not even know about the importance of having a reliable place where your sites are located.
New webmasters should understand that your web hosting is crucial and if you use free web hosts, you basically risk of losing your sites at any time.
There are countless reasons why you should never use free web hosts and you should read this post if you want to know the most important ones.
Choosing a free or a bad web host will surely cause you many problems and it is better to pay more and sleep safely than rely on sites that offer very poor customer service and do not really care about their customers at all.
If you want to create a real business online that will make money, then choosing the good paid hosting is the only option.
2) Choosing A Broad Niche
The second thing I want to talk about is your topic choice.
So many new webmasters are going way too broad on their topic choice.
You are doing things like fitness, sports, you are also doing business, health and all these broad topics where you do not really know much about who your audience is.
It is also difficult to get traffic because you are competing with such broad phrases.
Instead of doing fitness, you should be doing Pilates and instead of doing just Pilates, you may even want to narrow it even more and do something like Pilates for seniors.
When you have a site that is that focused, you know two very important things about your visitors.
So you know that they like Pilates, so you can focus all of your content on Pilates only and it is going to be targeted to your visitors.
You also know that they are seniors.
When you are running an advertising saying for example if you want to become an AARP affiliate, you know that this ad is going to be very relevant.
Your click throughs are going to be better and your conversions are going to be better as well and the overall engagement for your website is going to improve.
One of the biggest problems I see today and this may happen to you, is that a lot of people go too broad with their niches.
You could get away with that a few years ago but nowadays with the net being saturated as it is, it is much more important that you spend the time, in the beginning, getting your audience together and focus your site.
It is going to make it much easier to write content and all your stuff is going to be much more targeted.
3) Missing Personality
The third thing is that your sites are missing personality.
I know not everybody who builds a content, affiliate site or whatever type of site that you have, thinks that they should have a personal connection with readers.
That is not a prerequisite by any means but for me, I talked about that a lot because that is what has worked for me.
I am always talking about my personal experiences and showing you that I use the different things that I talked about and how I use them.
Or I talk about what has failed or what has succeeded and I think that makes for a more engaging site when you have a personal involvement of personal connection to what you are talking about.
I will give you guys an example.
The one client of mine was building the site on the high blood pressure and it was a content site.
I was looking at the site and I was reading it and it read like an encyclopedia.
I am sure that you have seen these sites as well, because there are lots of them.
Maybe this is what your site is like.
You go to the homepage and first of all the text is very small and it is like reading a one long gigantic paragraph.
There are just a few breaks or none at all, the site uses the small font and the author is just rattling off facts.
It looks like:
“The history of high blood pressure blah blah blah… Everybody is dying (…) We are all obese.”
It is just this depressing long encyclopedia like content that if somebody wants to read the history on high blood pressure, they can do that by turning on the news or they can read about it by going to WebMD.
That information is out in the Internet in abundance.
The person that has this site, has a very personal connection to the topic.
They lost 60 pounds and lower their blood pressure naturally.
I said to him this: “You know what, you have a very important angle and even though it is mentioned on the site, I could not find it.
Instead of starting your homepage with this encyclopedia like content that people can find anywhere, why not open it by saying: “I lost 60 pounds and lowered my blood pressure naturally and let me show you how to do the same.”
You can use quick short sentences and click them over to a report that gives them ten easy steps to start, grab their email address and most importantly, engage those people based on your own personal experience.”
If I was searching for how to lower my high blood pressure and I am faced with two sites.
One with the long paragraphs full of boring text and another that has this personal information with this person who has conquered the high blood pressure without medication.
I am of course going to be more interested in the latter.
It is much more engaging when it seems like the post is written by a real person and they are telling me up front to forget all the encyclopedia stuff, they are getting right to the point saying:
“My name is Jim. This is how I lowered my blood pressure and I am going show you how to do the same on this website.”
Hook them in right away, a real man with his own personal story.
Do not go overboard with your personal story, because remember, it is not about you, it is about your visitors.
It is always about the other person.
Well, you can talk about yourself but always turn it back around to how you can help them.
That is why I just think that it is such a huge advantage when you have a personal connection with your story.
I am definitely finding that out again with my other new sites.
It is just that people are connecting with me because a lot of them want to do with what I did.
They want to build their own successful online sites in their own niche.
Another point about being personal is that I noticed that my affiliate commission started going up again.
I looked at my content and at my stats and it was because I have been writing a lot more about my own experiences on my blog.
I have been showing people how to do things and I shared how I have done them and that is what has caused it to convert.
If you are going to talk about your own experiences, using the product and showing examples of how it is working for you rather than just writing some generic information.
On my sites, I want to show people how and what I am using has worked for me and that type of content always converts better.
Here Is The Bottom Line:
Now, I know that some of you might say that you can give me an example of where this what I have told you is not the case.
Well, of course, there are always going to be exceptions.
There are still going to be people today creating sites on very broad topics and they are going to be able to find success.
Maybe they have a really good angle or maybe they are really good at writing compelling posts.
Bottom line is that there are always the exceptions.
There are also other reasons your sites may not be doing as well and these are not the only three.
But these are three common things that I see a lot when I am looking at other people’s sites and even people in my life personally when I am looking at their sites.
Either they have gone too broad or they are not using enough of their own personal information and their own success stories or even failure stories to tie their audience back in.
I have read a countless number of stories about new website owners that lost their sites because they used the free web hosts that suddenly vanished into thin air.
I think that if you do those three things, you will be amazed at how your conversions will improve, how your email list subscribers will get better or how your traffic will improve.
It just makes for a better experience for your visitor.
I hope you enjoyed this post.