Golf Putter Guide Site Progress
I have had a few emails asking how the new Contest Site is coming along… I just have to say, Marvelous! 
You can see to the left, I have decided to create a simple and basic logo, that really just states what the site is about, and nothing much more! I really want to keep this as simple as possible, without causing any confusion to those of you who are following along and rebuilding or building a new site of your own following the Build a Niche Store guide.
Do We have a Launch Date Yet?
While I don’t have a definitive date on paper yet, you can expect to see a site launch within 7-10 days. The site itself will launch with 5 “Guides” and 20-25 “Product Reviews”, which are being written right now.
After the site is live, My goal is to follow along with the guide and trickle feed new content throughout the first 90 days, and supply the winner with a plan for new content they should add throughout the first year!
How Can You Keep Up?
If you have looked around this site at all, you may have spotted the sidebar status area, showing my time and money spent on this new site, as it accumulates. Someone will ask.. WHY are you spending money on the site if you are just giving it away? (OK, my wife will also ask)
The answer is simple… It would take me roughly 30-45 minutes to write each of the product reviews on my own, so what I have done is outsourced them! Many of you may recall, I value my own time at $75/hour, so spending a few dollars each for the articles is well worth it!
Site Contest Content Sponsors
While the product review pages themselves are pretty standard, there are other sections of the site that I truly want the utmost and highest quality content! I am in conversation with a few different places to become the content sponsor for these high quality articles, and before site launch, will reveal them to you!
The N1WAY Guide Price Freeze!
Many of you already have the guide, but for those who have not yet jumped aboard, the price change to $44 was eliminated! Kelvin and Adam decided to leave the price at $24, and let it fly!
Have You Got your Guide? Got Questions?
I have probably answered every bit of 100 email questions from users who may not understand specific areas of the guide completely. Is something stumping you? If so, post a comment below… lets tackle it together!
Mark
With the new site I am building with the New Guide it is alot different that the original style. With the adding of the code and making pages in the guides and reviews section it really takes some thought and Image making time…
This will not be as easy as Bans or even straight Wp to make it look and feel like the sites in the Build a Niche Store Guide. Though I am looking forward to making better sites that will stand the test of time..which is the main reason we all got into all this in the first place and not to create another job or an unmanageable beast….
@ Otis –
I have found the same thing myself… and went as far as choosing not to use the table format they used in the guide.
The layout is the same, just doing it with the html editor, and left aligning the images, versus using the table.
The one main thing this guide is driving home for everyone using it, is that you cannot rush the site building!! As long as you take your time, create your first product page, then follow that same method for the rest of them, you will absolutely have a great looking and hopefully, performing ste, when its done!
Mark
I wish there were a forum for this guide. There is some basic development information missing…
My biggest question is how does one develop a site using BANS, without having it go live? You state above that your site will be going live “within 7-10 days”, but how do you develop content with BANS without it going live the minute you hit the SAVE button?
@ Frank –
I do the normal install, like you would ANY BANS site, then I just add a file to the domain root, named index.html
In my case, I just created the file and added a “Site coming soon” type message.
If you go to the site, the index.html file will always show before any others, so even though the site is actually live per say, unless someone knows to get into it, they wont see anything.
If you want to view your site during the development process, just type in your domain, followed by index.php, and the site will show.
Mark
Mark, I think you touched on one of my biggest problems… PATIENCE! When I get an idea in my head, I’m very bad to “RUSH” into everything and then have a mess… I really am trying to slow down and realize that it takes time FOR EACH STEP!
I’m so enjoying following you build this site. I’m only just going back to read the manual properly having skimmed it the first time.
I’m wondering where you’re getting reasonable articles for $3.28 each?
@Mark
Sounds good. The only thing that worries me about the “Coming Soon” approach is not knowing what the impact is on ranking well in a quicker period of time. When I’ve done something similar is the past, it just seems that when Google first finds your site and indexes it, it then takes them a longer period of time to go back and update their indexes once they’ve found the initial content (after the site has gone officially gone “live”). Do you use the “Coming Soon” approach pretty often?
@ Frank –
Actually – I rarely ever use it!
I usually work from the home page, and then deeper into the site. On this one, I am building it backward, working from the review pages, to the front page. So… I dont want a blank home page.
Another reason I am doing so on this build, is to try and keep traffic to a minimum, for better measurement of the overall site success. If this site were not so “In the public eye” I wouldnt use the blank index page at all, and just put up a quick home page, to let the indexing begin.
In my opinion, using a “Coming soon” page however, does no harm whatsoever. That comes from 15 years of building websites, and hundreds of websites built.
Engines “Just Come” and rarely listen to what you tell them!
@Mark
That’s cool… I like the approach of being able to build the product detail pages first and then linking to them from the home page, but again, I’ve always had some concerns doing this.
BUT, this is the approach I’ll take on my new site based on “The Guide”. I just started development a couple of days ago and have noticed that Google has already indexed a few of these pages. I’m hoping to be high in the rankings by November 1st (in time for holiday shopping) so hopefully this will work…
@ Frank –
Very good and congrats on the new site!!
I have actually gotten quite a bit farther than I anticipated over the past 24 hours, and hope to share the site with everyone before the end of the weekend.
Mark
@Jake
I am with you Jake… It is hard to get the patience that I need to get this done and have it as close to right(according to the Guide) as I can. Some of the code stuff is not easy for me.
I have made many sites from bans in the beginning and some of them are dead and some keep on making some money.. I do not know why… They were built on the same pretence and with the same pace(sort of)…
And my wp sites are built steadily and most continue to rank well in search engines… I hope I can get the patience(learning curve) that I need to have to make this NEW thing work for the long term..
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Categories
Time & Money Spent Developing Site
- 1.5 Hrs - Initial Research
- 3 Hrs - Site Development Planning
- 4.5 Hrs - Draft Review Pages to Admin
- 2.5 Hrs - Template & Code Customization
- 4 Hrs - Finalized 24 Product Review Pages and added 11 category summary pages
- Added a home page, and Launch site!
- 3.5 Hours: Added 2 more Guides + 10 more reviews
Money Spent to Date: $186.00Niche Guide Tags
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