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I posted here a couple weeks ago sharing my story about starting a website, and my experiences over the first two weeks
I got a ton of great feedback, and a few people said that it helped them (u/claudettej I'd love to hear what you ended up starting!) so I'm writing another post about my first month. Here it is! Hope you enjoy, and would love to hear any feedback or answer questions.
For your reference, here's the site I've been working on.
Day 15. Posted this to r/entrepreneurship and got a ton of amazing advice!! Thank you so much, I appreciate it (especially u/geekgirl32, u/nannooo, u/itsstifu, u/Csplayer55 and u/webconnoisseur). Decided to keep writing in this format because I think it helps. Some of the feedback: seek out online groups/ forums, work on the site design, write in a more personal style.
Day 16. Googled “dating app advice roundup” on the advice of u/nannoo and reached out to some of the people on it-- we’ll see if that leads to something! Hopefully. Also published a new article, “When to ask a girl out on a dating app (hint: you’re probably waiting too long).” It got good traction in /seddit (Around 70 upvotes), and fewer than 10 upvotes in /dating_advice and /online_dating_advice. Also got some people who were angry that it was spammy. These comments definitely sting, but they are also sort of funny and fun to respond to-- I have tried to just be excessively positive and courteous.
Day 17. I have gotten 3 straight days of record traffic on the blog, (in no small part due to r/entrepreneurship). I have been getting more into Google Analytics, set up a “goal,” which is people visiting my Services page. Sort of discouraging that no one is signing up for email list or commenting on the posts. Kind of confused that people are clicking on “comment” but not commenting-- I turned off the setting that made people enter their email addresses to comment.
Day 18. Got good feedback from one of the people who I had emailed because they had a roundup, which was nice. Had a long drive so I listened to “Will it Fly” by Pat Flynn which is honestly amazing-- really really worth reading for someone just starting out. Also listened to “The E-Myth Revisited” which I enjoyed, and made me think in a new way-- “work on your business, not in it.” Made me think about systematizing things and not working for the sake of work.
Day 19. Sort of procrastinating on writing more content, largely because most of the low-hanging fruit is gone.
Day 20. Woke up to a comment on Reddit from an amazing human being (Thank you u/CaffeinatedProphet!!!) who told me they bought a book through my affiliate link! Wrote a long (1400 word) article on “Fun things to talk about during a first date.” This was fun to write and it flowed well. Still, I can’t help but feel I am running out of quality content to write about, and it worries me that I won’t have enough content to get picked up by Google.
Day 21. Posted the new article on Reddit. It started out slowly, I think the copy in the headline wasn’t great, but gained traction up to around 150 upvotes on r/socialskills and r/seduction (thanks to the wonderful u/nannoo for encouraging me to post to r/social_skills). In bigger news-- I got an email subscriber!!!! That’s really exciting to me, and a great validation of what I’ve been working on. I guess now I have to figure out how to communicate with them :)
Learning about modifying the CSS to customize things. It’s really pretty intuitive and really interesting/fun. Big takeaways: don’t modify themes directly, create a child theme to override parts of that theme. Use developer tools/ inspect element to see what you’re working with in your browser.
Posted to some other forums using google search "forums: seduction". It’s really tedious work, but hopefully pretty valuable.
Day 21. Pretty strong traffic from Reddit, roughly 250 views. I was surprised to check back to one of the other forums I posted on to find I had been banned! I suppose it’s because I included a link to the blog, and the forum owner sells their own dating products. Oh well. So far haven’t found a traffic source outside of reddit that works reliably. Answered some Quora questions, my hunch is that this will work but only if I commit significant time to it.
Day 22. I don’t really feel like writing, and I’m not sure this is a good niche to be in. This is hard! However, I’m trying to remind myself that I did this to learn, and it’s been a really great learning experience so far. Another thing that’s kept my morale up has been connecting with people doing similar things, either through their blogs or through reddit-- that’s been surprisingly helpful in keeping me going.
Another interesting motivator: it’s really cool to go on Google Analytics and see people from other countries who have interacted with your posts. 50 people from Australia?! 3 from Sudan!? The internet is an amazing thing.
One embarrassing thing-- I reached out to the fellow who runs tinderseduction.com and asked him for his opinion on my site, and he was really gracious and responded, but said the site was down. I was annoyed, and checked it on my phone and my laptop and at that point it was working fine. I don’t know what the problem was, whether it was with the hosting company or something I did or what.
I’m about to write another post! Wish me luck.
Day 23. Writing another post, Where to go on a first date, but just not feeling it. I think one problem is I have started writing for a Reddit audience. Since my first few posts did well in some places on Reddit, and that’s where I get the majority of my views from right now, I feel like I have to keep doing that. But, there are only so many lists of concrete tips I can make that will get upvoted. I think I need to write more with the user in mind who is coming from search and is already interested in the topic.
Day 24. Went to a good coffee shop, sat down and got in a good groove and wrote 1100 words or so. Posted to some different subreddits (r/okcupid and r/POF) and got mixed results-- r/okcupid was suuuper resistant to any sort of promotion, and were generally dickish. It’s funny how different communities have their own personalities.
Day 25. I got another email subscriber! After changing the call to action to be “sign up to get a free profile review.” Really good feeling. Reached out to him. Page views are holding steady around 35 a day without posting new stuff. Still nothing from search. Interesting finding: subreddits with low traffic (r/online_dating_advice) give traffic for a longer time, because content stays on front page instead of getting buried, even though it only got like 3 upvotes.
This is definitely a slog. I’m enjoying myself but it’s not always exciting. You have to really appreciate the little wins.
Day 26. Working on several articles for Dating Apps Demystified. Starting to incorporate data and visualizations into posts. This is something I’m interested in and regardless of whether people like it, I think it’ll help keep me excited about writing.
Today, I got a couple of hits from Google search, but the search term was my exact URL. Not sure what this means, but it’s frustrating to still not be getting any sort of organic search traffic.
Day 27. Spent a lot of time finishing up an article, “a guide to first dates.” I also spent a while answering quora posts, but haven’t gotten traffic from them. Has anyone seen success with this? It’s such an appealing medium, and it’s so easy to go on and write, but I’m afraid you don’t get the kind of traffic necessary to make it worthwhile.
Day 28. It’s funny, I wasn’t all that excited about the post yesterday but I put it up on r/socialskills and it’s my highest upvoted post, by almost a factor of 3. 600+ upvotes on r/socialskills, and today’s a record day for pageviews already-- 700 and counting. I think this shows me that it’s sometimes hard to realize what people will find valuable. I thought the post was kind of obvious, without much groundbreaking information, but it’s hard for me to remember what I knew and didn’t know when first starting out.
Spent 3 hours responding to comments on Reddit! Lots of work but it’s fun and satisfying.
Day 29. Set up WooCommerce on the site. This was really easy, and makes my “services” page look much more professional than before (it was just a list of services followed by a contact form).
It’s funny, I remember thinking before I started all this “man, if I could just work for myself, I wouldn’t care if I was doing busywork all day. I’d love every second of it.” I definitely realize now-- busywork is busywork. It’s really satisfying working for myself for sure, but it’s still tough.
Day 30. Still seeing traffic come in from Reddit, which is encouraging. People have complimented my writing which is really nice to hear. Also, made another sale through Amazon! Up to $1.34 (which island should i buy?!) It’s interesting to see how I respond emotionally to things over time. For instance, the first couple days, I was super excited to get 20 pageviews. Now, even when I got 700 the other day, I was pleased but not over the moon. Similarly, I’m still really stoked to have made $1.34, even though obviously it’s a trivial amount of money.
Here are the posts I've made to reddit and their success:
| Post | Subreddit | Upvotes |
|---|---|---|
| After at least 100 first dates, these are my rules for making them go well | r/socialskills | 629 |
| Advice on Dating App opening lines based on 2 years and 100+ dates | r/seduction | 269 |
| Some fun things to talk about on first dates | r/seduction | 216 |
| Some good first date conversation starters | r/socialskills | 212 |
| After tons of first dates, my thoughts on making them go well | r/dating_advice | 110 |
| When you should ask a girl out on dating apps | r/seduction | 78 |
| My 5 favorite first date conversation starters | r/dating_advice | 76 |
| Dating app learnings based on 2 years and 100+ dates | r/Entrepreneur | 22 |
| Advice on dating app pictures based on 2 years and 100+ dates | r/dating_advice | 15 |
| Some goofy but fun conversation topics for first dates | r/POF | 6 |
| You're probably waiting too long to ask girls out on dating apps | r/dating_advice | 6 |
| Fun things to talk about on first dates | r/online_dating_advice | 4 |
| After at least 100 first dates, my rules for making them go well | r/online_dating_advice | 4 |
| Advice on Dating App opening lines based on 2 years and 100+ dates | r/dating_advice | 3 |
| Who's the most charismatic person you've ever seen? | r/askreddit | 2 |
| What fictional character do you imagine yourself as when talking to a girl? | r/seduction | 1 |
| Goofy but interesting and fun things to talk about on first dates | r/dating | 1 |
| Best practices for dating app profiles | r/Tinder | 1 |
| Things I've learned after 2 years on dating apps and 100+ dates | r/Tinder | 1 |
| You're waiting too long to ask girls out on dating apps | r/online_dating_advice | 0 |
| Getting your dating app profile pictures right | r/dating_advice | 0 |
Various thoughts:
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If you’re posting blog content to reddit, paste the whole article, then link to it at the end. I’ve found this to be a lot more effective than just linking, and people are nicer about the self-promotion.
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Copy-paste your formatted reddit post into a text editor (notepad or TextEdit) and save it as a .txt file. This will keep you from needing to reformat every time, which will save you time and headache.
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80% of my upvotes came from 17% of my submissions. Not sure what to make of this but an interesting example of the Pareto principle at work!
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Keep a journal like this! It really helps organize your thoughts, it’s fun to look back on, and it might be able to help out other people.
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Twitter: I think a lot of people get twitter backwards. They post a bunch of stuff out into oblivion. Starting out, I’d recommend using twitter almost exclusively to @message people doing similar stuff to you. Just compliment them, or ask their opinion or whatever. Try a 5:1 ratio of @s to normal tweets.
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Email signups: I’ve gotten about 1 per 1000 pageviews. This is without a popup, but offering substantial rewards for email signups. I’m going to try a popup and see how it goes, but I’m really reluctant to damage the user experience, even though I know I'd get a lot more signups
In all, I’d guess I’ve worked about 50 hours on the site, which so far means I’ve earned between 2 and 3 cents per hour (this isn’t counting the $110 or so that I’ve spent on hosting and the domain!)
Much more importantly though, it’s been very gratifying and a lot of fun, I’ve learned a lot, I’m much more confident in my abilities to create things that people want, and it’s given me momentum going forward. I probably would have spent about 25 hours reading about entrepreneurship/ online marketing over the past month, and this has been sooo much more valuable than that would have been. 100% would do it again.
Thanks so much for reading!
Also, if anyone has recently built a business of any kind to “ramen profitability” (>$1,000 a month or so) I’d love to talk with you-- since I’m really interested in this, I’m planning to compile a bunch of stories of people who’ve very recently created a profitable business. Some free publicity for you, and a good way to give back. Shoot me a PM or comment on this and we can set up a time to talk.
Edit: formatting
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