parenting/baby gear site for review

Grarog

Hi
Ive just put together this blog for parents, specifically it reviews different types of travel cots and playards for the early years. www.travelcotsandcribs.com.
Would love to hear your opinions on its design and usability, is it well laid out, easy to navigate etc. All constructive criticism welcome.
Thanks

Graham

Content is well written, fairly average Wordpress template, bog standard affiliate marketing site. Fairly original niche but not convinced its income potential is there based on just Amazon payouts.

I'm not sure if you're looking for genuine feedback or whether this is just an attempt to get inbound links for SEO purposes so I won't go on.

P.S. http://travelcotsandcribs.com/about-me/ page is signed off with a different name.

Grarog

Hi Graham,

Thanks for that! Worth it alone for pointing out that oversight - originally I was using "Grace" as Grainne is such a mouthful for non-Irish speakers. The site is aimed at the American market mostly, hence the Amazon.com as opposed to .co.uk links and the American (mis)spellings throughout.

No I am genuinely looking for feedback. This is my first foray back in to web design after popping out 3 kids in quick succession and it takes a while to get back up to speed.

I'm curious, why don't you think the income potential is there? I know I'm not going to make a ton, it's a low ticket item, but I'm hoping for a slow but steady trickle, based mostly on Amazon commissions and then maybe if the traffic gets up there I'll look at getting Adsense ads. Is there anything you suggest I do differently or add to the site?? I'm all ears seriously!!

Thanks so much for your time
Grainne

Graham

I think the entire made for adsense (MFA) or single track affiliate website has been done to death. I'm not saying its impossible to make an income from it, its just not easy passive income and the competition is savage.

I think you are going to have two main problems with your site:

1) SERP placement. Do a search for travel cots, or many of the related 'long-tail' search terms. Here's the competition for travel cots (9.4 million results):

Amazon
Argos
Mothercare
Kiddiecare
Asda
Toys R Us
Tesco
Mumsnet
Mamas & Papas
Which

There's no sign of any single-track affiliate sites anywhere in the top results. Sites like yours are being caught as Google continues to spank script-generated MFA/affiliate sites. As well written/researched as your reviews are, they're likely to get tarred with the same brush as the auto-generated junk.

2) Consumer Habits. A few years ago a consumer looking to purchase online may have Googled for a product and clicked on one of the first links they found, more than likely a site like yours. Now they're likely to go straight to Amazon to read customer reviews.


Negatives aside, the site is functional with a pleasant enough design that doesn't get in the way of the content, a good choice for what you're trying to do. I wouldn't give up on the site, keep adding content when you can and see where it takes you. I just wouldn't expect it to make any more than a trickle of coffee-money.

You do have a great writing style and you've managed to inject just the right amount of personality into your site, I would say that's something you could monetise to much greater effect than pimping prams and push-chairs.

Grarog

Wow Graham... first off thanks so much for taking so much time to look through the site, I really appreciate it.

Secondly, feeling deflated..

Have no problem hearing the bitter truth, this is why I'm on boards to get a second opinion as like I say I've been out of the loop for a while, but is it all that bad?

Agreed, there's a lot of competition in the SERPS but all those Google Page 1ers you mentioned - Argos, Mothercare, Tesco - when you actually get to their reviews of individual items all they are is a regurgitated press release, basic bones, lists of features. That's no good to the savvy internet shopper. I know cos I buy a lot online and I'm only interested in reading a review by someone who's actually used the product. Surely Google knows this, that no one reads the Graco site (for example) to find out about Graco products.

Granted, most of the time I go straight to Amazon like you said, but Amazon reviews are limited to one product reviews. If you want to get a product comparison you have to look elsewhere. This is where the "authority niche site" (from what I've read on the subject I think that's what I'm aiming for) comes in.

I'm sure there is a lot of MFA junk out there, but surely Google can tell that kind of automated stuff from a proper mom blog that has pix of my kids, is updated regularly, garners comments and likes on FB, linked to Google+ and Twitter with all my personal info?

I'm not trying to convince you you're wrong.. but do you think there is any way (there's got to be) to convince Google I'm real and get decent rankings?

I have only just begun the promotion stage, my plan is to personalise the site much more with a TRAVEL TIPS section, bang out a blog post every week or so on travel with kids related stuff, I have lots of ideas.. get all social networked up, connect with other bloggers in the same area, do some guest blogging etc, go for blog awards in my niche etc etc. Is this stuff all worth while or am I just stuck back in 2009??

Is there a new way of monetising on the internet?

Again, thanks so much for your time Graham, look forward to hearing from you.

G

Graham

Don't feet deflated for a second. You've built the shop already, you might just need to re-think the product mix and customer retention plans.

As it stands at the moment, you're going to be working really, really hard to get visitors to your site. When they arrive they'll read an article or maybe two before you send them off to Amazon. If you're really lucky 1 or 2% of the people you send to Amazon will buy a product and you'll make a tiny commission. After that, the visitor you worked so hard to get is gone forever. Even if you setup a mailing list to try and capture the email addresses of your visitors, I don't think many parents are going to be signing up to Travel Cots & Cribs monthly newsletter. It's a one time thing.

I can see where you're coming from with the 'authority niche site' angle, you're thinking along the right lines but at the end of the day your site is designed to attract visitors with your content before sending them off through an affiliate link to buy somewhere else. That's nearly the exact type of site Google is burying, a quick trawl through the first 10 pages of results for 'travel cots' confirms there isn't a single affiliate promotion site in any of the results. On top of that you're going to struggle to attract the kinds of in-bound links that your site will need. Manufacturers won't link to you, other bloggers will more than likely link directly to manufacturers or other retailers so you will be stuck with the very occasional link from someone that's come across your site some other way.

I think you hit the nail on the head yourself, your business model is stuck in 2009.

Hmmm, I started this post to try and be a bit more constructive, not to deflate you even further. Let's move on to that part now, here's a few random thoughts that I'll literally throw at you in a list.

1. Leave the design of the site alone, it's a great starting point.
2. Pick a slightly broader niche. Off the top of my head, you mentioned travel tips. How about a blog broadly covering travelling with kids, there's huge scope for you to play with there and I would guess it's something you could write about with some authority. (http://www.alistmomtravel.com/)
3. Pick a new domain, something that's relevant to your chosen broader subject. Don't be obsessed with getting your chosen subject title in the domain name, if everything else is right the domain name is much less relevant. Unfortunately, my first suggestion for a domain name has already been taken www.AreWeThereYet.com, ah well.
4. Personalisation, promotion, travel tips, social networking are definitely great ideas.
5. Guest bloggers, blog awards (and the like) are even better again.
6. Write, write, write, write and then write some more. Establish your credibility through your writing/blog. The bonus for implementing suggestion 2 is that you're not going to be just writing about travel cots.
7. Wherever possible write about what you've done/tried/experienced/felt yourself, or at least what you've found, would like to try etc. If you can personalise you're writing with photographs, all the better.
8. Reviews can make great content. Places, transport, foods, products, hotels, phones, it's all fair game. You have a ready made panel of 3 small reviewers, how about getting each one of them to give you a couple of sentences and marks out of five for the things you/they review. Give each of the kids a nickname so you can refer to them without using their real names.
8. Forget about affiliate income (at least for now). Concentrate on building your blog/followers/traffic, then you can start looking for the revenue.

I guess all of this would be covered by the term 'Mommy Blogs'. Manufacturers, retailers, even politicians are taking the influence of the Mommy Bloggers quite seriously and as such they're starting to target them specifically. There are even on-line communities for mommy bloggers to exchange ideas, suggestion, links etc etc etc (http://www.topmommyblogs.com/mom-blogger-forum/).

I hope some of that turns out to be useful. My intention was to nudge you in a slightly different direction, not to demolish the start you've already made.

Keep us posted, there's at least another 40 people already dropped into this thread

Grarog

Hi Graham if you're still out there..or anyone else reading this thread.

Right, I've absorbed your excellent advice and after a day or two of bitter regret about all the hours I've already put in to those damn cot reviews!!... took a deep breath and decided to move on.

I've got a good catchy domain (I think) and have already drafted 5 posts It will be about living in Andalucia bringing up kids so I guess would fall under Mommy blog / expat blog / maybe travel blog and will incorporate some of my interests - hiking, the great beautiful outdoors of Spain, food, restaurants, fiestas, travel, handmade stuff, recipes and so on.
However I hope to hang on to the cot reviews - I think I can easily fit them in to the projected content.
My question is..
These posts have already gathered some Google juice. I've had 300 unique visitors (and have even made a few sales!) so far purely from Google as I've created no backlinks whatsoever yet. Would it be a mistake to uproot these posts and move them to the new domain, thus starting from scratch again on the Google ladder, or should I link out to the old site from the new site, or what would you suggest???

Appreciate your advice.
Thanks, G