Ask HN: Inherited a Website...ideas on what can I do with it?
onlyforpetlovers.com
onlyforpetlovers.com
--1a. I'd get more of the articles and forum posts above the fold. These are potentially some of your best spots for getting click-throughs.
--1b. Consolidate that massive top menu. Make more options part of the sub-menus, or let some areas (polls, photos) just stand as content sections on the main page.
--1c. Remove or move that topmost nav bar to the footer. None of those links are priorities; it's just taking up space.
2. It doesn't look like you're currently using Google Analytics? You should really add it, and get a sense of where your traffic is coming from. Particularly where your search traffic is coming from.
--2a. Check which keywords you're getting traffic from that have a high(er) bounce rate. This can be a good guide for new articles. You could also write some code (or see if your CMS has a module/plugin to do this, Wordpress does) to display a message based on the search terms used to enter the site, and recommend some next pages.
3. Style your AdSense ads to get a better click-through rate. ViperChill recently posted a great case-study: http://www.viperchill.com/adsense-account-income/
4. Nuke your current forums. They're dead, and will take years to gain momentum in their current forum. Use software that does a better job of showing activity, and start small with one (two or three at max) broad section.
Don't take your tiny audience and make them look for conversations in 50 different rooms. Start with one room for everyone to go into, and it will be easier for newcomers to see conversations happening and join them. You can create more specialized sub-forums later.
I've been told by folks who make a living writing that pet stuff is among the most profitable for authors, far more so than porn.
I know, weird. But jellyfish are a hot new trend in personal aquariums. We just started an affiliate program that is doing really well. Our affiliate commission is 5%, conversion rate is 0.25% and average purchase is $198. Would you be interested in signing up as one of our affiliates? We have banner ads you can run.
Otherwise, if you aren't looking for quick cash, I'd sit on it and see how the AdSense performs while trying out some affiliate offers. Standard practices for content sites like this. You'll have a better idea of its worth after a few months.
It's hard to invest in something like that for a long time if you're not passionate about it. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do something with it if you're not, but maybe you could find someone who is excited about it and have them help you with ideas and content?
One idea is that you could feature a member and their pet on the home page each week. Kind of like how there is an "ADOPTIVE PET OF THE WEEK" — which isn't actually a pet of the week, it's just a random pet with each page load.
This would take some more work, but you could do some really cool things with geolocation, like post adoptable pets and upcoming community events that are actually in the area.
It's the biggest manufacturer and reatailer of pet clothes in the UK. Maybe you should get in touch and see if you stock some of their goods?
You could start with putting a pet lovers forum on it and see if it takes off, sounds like the perfect domain for it.
* Install Google Analytics. Collect some data on what search terms visitors are coming in on.
* Use the Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to find what keyphrases you could compete well on. You have to strike a balance between finding something with decent search volume, but not too much competition.
* Use SEO Best Practices. For example:
- Your home page currently has a TITLE tag of "onlyforpetlovers". Something like "pet social networking - onlyforpetlovers" would be better.
- Your search results pages could be huge traffic sources, but the TITLE tags of them are all "Pet friendly resources," and there are no links to results pages for crawlers to access. If you had links in addition to search, you could have a link saying "pet friendly hotels in chicago" with a link to search results with the TITLE tag "pet friendly hotels in chicago."
Just those couple of things would greatly increase your traffic.
It's pretty much what Demand Media does. But if you are really passionate about pets and don't mind not turning it around for profit then I'd just keep it updated and try to build a community out of the niche that it has.
Old-skool affiliate model FTW
The money is in the list