Get more traffic to your sites

Discussions about The Off Grid Project and The DIY World Youtube videos. Feel free to chat here with one another and share anything you like.
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happyhippy
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:13 pm

Get more traffic to your sites

Post by happyhippy » Wed Oct 28, 2015 6:42 am

Hey Troy.

Been catching up with the videos and how the idiotic few are still there giving you grief. Also read comments where people are leaving your YT channels due to them not wanting to hear about it (not sure why, afterall its part of your daily life!) so you are losing subscribers.

I know its a bit of a chore but have you thought about popping images etc on the likes of Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter pointing them towards your YT channels, I would guess a few more people would subscribe. I have a small Instagram account where I stick up daft pictures of what I do on my veggie patch, what I cook and how I use pallets and I have people following me who then click through to my website (something I really did only for me so I can have a diary thing of what has worked and what not to bother with again!).

I know its a drag going across multiple social sites, I guess there is software that could help!) but I would like to hope you will get people coming and subscribing.

Apologies if this is teaching you to suck eggs as I know you have a SEO background but thought I would mention it.

Glad you went back on the idea of splitting your YT channels by the way, I can see why you went for it but I think going back to the one, it will work out for people visiting you. For example, I watch a few of your Off Grid vids every day to catch up, I am nearly there, but the TR Tech channel always gets forgotten even though I am subscribed.....

Anyway, have a cracking day, don't let the trolls get to you and carry on with those videos, I enjoy them thoroughly and have learnt a lot. You even gave me the inspiration to fall back on my electrical engineering experience (okay many years ago!) and experiment with things again.

Don't let a few idiots grind you down - you have a lot of followers that enjoy what you do!

HH

OutOfPlaceNinja
Posts: 49
Joined: Sat Jan 24, 2015 3:37 pm
Location: USA

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by OutOfPlaceNinja » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:42 pm

I agree he should get more traffic to his channel (and forum and website) but the question is how exactly. Years back I was great with SEO and had no problem getting a new website to 5000 or more visitors a day within six months. I created a new website about six months ago and despite my best efforts it's still only getting maybe 5 real visitors a day. Apparently my knowledge is outdated now. I've spent a lot of time over the last few months trying to bone up on the new SEO knowledge but frankly it's just not working all that well. I aim for solid organic traffic from search engines but it seems I may have to delve into social media (I don't like social media). Troy might have to as well if he wants his stuff to take off.

I for one will have a problem with that as I've avoided all social media up until the last couple of months and I've been using the internet since the late 90s. One big problem with social media I can see for Troy is the trolls. They will have a field day.

happyhippy
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:13 pm

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by happyhippy » Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:48 pm

Guess you are right ref the trolls - just a shame that a few idiots can cause that much of a problem.

As for SEO, you and me both.....used to be okay, its a tough game now and like you I have been online since the 90s. Ah the 'good old days' (?) of Compuserv dial up :)

OutOfPlaceNinja
Posts: 49
Joined: Sat Jan 24, 2015 3:37 pm
Location: USA

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by OutOfPlaceNinja » Thu Oct 29, 2015 1:13 am

happyhippy wrote:Guess you are right ref the trolls - just a shame that a few idiots can cause that much of a problem.

As for SEO, you and me both.....used to be okay, its a tough game now and like you I have been online since the 90s. Ah the 'good old days' (?) of Compuserv dial up :)
AOL dialup here lol. Once I got broadband, dialup was dead to me. What's sad is the fastest net available at my house is only 10Mbps. My ISP offers ten times that, just not where I live.

I bet you remember the crazy annoying flashy websites full of gifs and crazy javascript. I even once did a "worlds most annoying website" site that used all the most annoying designs and javascript I could find. Not sure if it ever took off as I had it hosted on a free host and never advertised it. Used it mostly to troll friends. My fav page was the thousand alert boxes. It would pop up an alert box with a taunt, close it and another pops up, so on and so forth till it reached 1000. I knew how to escape it but my friend didn't. It apparently took her around a half hour to get through it. I laughed hard. She didn't think it was funny.

techman
Site Admin
Posts: 1329
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 11:49 am

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by techman » Wed Nov 04, 2015 5:50 pm

Like ninja I avoided social networking most of my SEO career and you could build up a website quite well using just organic links and articles on other websites.

But these days its all about social networking and also making your website smartphone compatible.

I am using facebook, twitter, flickr and pinterest for now. I just do not have time to do anything more than that without hiring outside help. I am considering hiring students from the local university to help out for a small pay each month. Would help both the students and myself. Problem with trying to make more money like this is that you need money to make money. Hard to get started. But I am going to have to jump in and do it.

I am also trying to find someone I can trust to write my blog articles and write for my article site as well. I just dont have time anymore for that stuff. Sadly Melanie cannot do this for me because her English is not good enough.

Google is also not only looking at websites which are smartphone friendly which means a whole bunch of programming for all of my thousands of webpages on The Do It Yourself World. That or watch my stats keep dropping from a million views per month to nothingness with time.

Thanks guys for the info and ideas.

happyhippy
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:13 pm

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by happyhippy » Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:25 pm

If you need help but don't want to spend the money (I would prefer you use it to work on your home and land, but thats just because I like the videos!) I can try to help if needed.

I know its a complete stranger and with the problems you have with other people it would be hard to trust anyone you can't shake hands with but the offer is there if needed.

Keep going, your videos are appreciated but a lot of people!

HH

techman
Site Admin
Posts: 1329
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 11:49 am

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by techman » Thu Nov 12, 2015 5:19 pm

What do you suggest? What sites would you use to help me out? I have a lot of ideas and lists of things I can and want to do but dont have time for. But most sites need an account and personal information.

happyhippy
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:13 pm

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by happyhippy » Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:01 am

techman wrote:What do you suggest? What sites would you use to help me out? I have a lot of ideas and lists of things I can and want to do but dont have time for. But most sites need an account and personal information.
To be honest, I would probably start with the big four - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Every blog post you do, send a heads up to each site, pin the image you use. I do this for the blog I write on and you can see very pleasing spikes after posting! Yes its a few more clicks but if its bringing in the subscribers, you will see good things to your income (hopefully!).

Perhaps have sneak peak videos on other sites such as DailyMOtion - not the full vids, just small 2 minute clips with the last frames being 'view the whole video on Youtube.....'. You are then plugging into another big video site with the opportunity to convert.

Perhaps have a look at IFTTT to make things a little automated - I do a little automation coding of my own so could see if there is something I could help you with. A windows app you give your info too and it does the mundane pinning etc to other sites. Will try to get some time set aside to look at that as the nights are drawing in!

Yes you will get the trolls and they will follow you but ignore them. Even on my miniscule blog I have a couple, but I let them play.....as you know, others will jump in on your side and play the trolls at their own games.
OutOfPlaceNinja wrote:
AOL dialup here lol. Once I got broadband, dialup was dead to me. What's sad is the fastest net available at my house is only 10Mbps. My ISP offers ten times that, just not where I live.
Ah the AOL CDs constantly being sent through the mail, I remember them! Luckily I have cable internet now and after the latest "free" upgrade (three months on and there will be a price increase, you can set your watch by that!) I have 150Mb / 10Mb (upload sucks compared to the download but I am not complaining!)
OutOfPlaceNinja wrote: I bet you remember the crazy annoying flashy websites full of gifs and crazy javascript. I even once did a "worlds most annoying website" site that used all the most annoying designs and javascript I could find. Not sure if it ever took off as I had it hosted on a free host and never advertised it. Used it mostly to troll friends. My fav page was the thousand alert boxes. It would pop up an alert box with a taunt, close it and another pops up, so on and so forth till it reached 1000. I knew how to escape it but my friend didn't. It apparently took her around a half hour to get through it. I laughed hard. She didn't think it was funny.
The dancing baby, eyes that followed the cursor and other horrendous animated gifs....how can you forget :) I bet you hosted with Geocities.....every nasty animated site was on there :D

OutOfPlaceNinja
Posts: 49
Joined: Sat Jan 24, 2015 3:37 pm
Location: USA

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by OutOfPlaceNinja » Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:41 am

happyhippy wrote:The dancing baby, eyes that followed the cursor and other horrendous animated gifs....how can you forget :) I bet you hosted with Geocities.....every nasty animated site was on there :D
Although I did use Geocities a couple of times, that annoying site was hosted in a nerds basement (small hosting startup).

As for your reply to Troy, I must add that social networking from my experience only works if you actually have friends to read it. Troy might can pull it off (if he can dodge the trolls) but I'm not social enough to handle social media so almost never use it. Forums, IRC, and the occasional similar service is about my limits.

I will say Troy might want to consider StumbleUpon. I did a recent test with it (liked my newest blog post) and overnight it got over 1300 views for that one post (from the usual 10-20 views a day blog wide). Luckily I had recently installed a pretty detailed tracking script (ditched Google analytics since it sucks hard now). I noticed that ALL of the new visits for that first day came from StumbleUpon. Most bounced and most didn't stay for longer than 10 seconds but about ten out of all of those stayed longer than five minutes (they actually read it). Of those roughly ten, six came back the next day and looked at other blog posts. For a new blog (about six months old), gaining six repeat visitors overnight by clicking a button is pretty good. Of course StumbleUpon seems hit and miss. Another post I "liked" a month ago didn't seem to get any hits according to Google Analytics. Of course my curiosity got to me and I checked over the cpu use for my site over the last few months and it spiked high around the other time I used StumbleUpon. This recent flood of visitors made my account on a shared paid host go over the execution limit (over 10K script executions in 12 hours lol) but half of it was a Wordpress issue (apparently the admin interface loves to do all sorts of stuff if you are on a page edit too long). Luckily my host is pretty cool and they didn't even alert me of my issue. I did speak with the tech support and they said it was cool since it wasn't "all the time" and only barely over the limit.

Don't know why I sometimes ramble.

Anyway, StumbleUpon might be something you may want to look into. I would suggest not using it too much on your own site without some research as I don't know their acceptable limits. However on limited tests it sent more traffic to my site than any other method I've tried over the last six months. Most bounce and probably never come back but some do seem to stick around.

techman
Site Admin
Posts: 1329
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 11:49 am

Re: Get more traffic to your sites

Post by techman » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:52 pm

Thank you very much for the detailed info. I will get back into using stumbleupon then. It is hard to decide what to use and what not to anymore.

Pinterest is sending me a steady trickle of traffic every day so it is a keeper for me.

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