eZine Press Launch Experiment

We are officially launching our new site, eZinePress.com, this weekend. I thought it would be helpful to document our steps in a small journal or report type of post. We’ll add steps taken and then as stats come in we’ll include those as well to see what works.

$ Cost of Launch $

At first I thought I would go with only free methods of promotion but I want our new blog to grow a little faster than that. I think what I’ll do is keep the cost around $200 at first and then add a little as needed. My goal is to keep the overall cost below $500 USD the first month. We’ll also include free marketing tactics so everyone can benefit from our little experiment.

Your Ideas

We can use your help. Post your ideas and recommendations in the comments below on new ways to promote our new site. With any luck everyone should find new ways improve their next site launch.

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    Brian on November 8, 2008 | Filed Under Launch Experiment

    28 Comments

    Brian  on November 8th, 2008

    Day One:

    We installed the free version of StatCounter so everyone can see the progress of our launch. You can see eZinePress.com stats here.

    Paid promotion:

    We added eZinePress.com to BlogCatalog’s directory and then purchased their premium advertising option for $60.00 USD. This puts our blog in the spotlight position of the category Business/Marketing. You can see it in action here http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/business/marketing

    We also purchased a premium position in BlogCatalog’s category Business/Small Business at $12 USD per month. This puts our site in the top five of that category’s Listing.

    Free Promotions:

    We added eZine Press to Yahoo’s MyBlogLog.com

    We added eZine Press to our Entrecard account’s linked blogs and added to widget to our side bar.

    Stats: Day One and our Google PageRank is zero but it’s already indexed by Google using this method ‘Getting Your Site Indexed By Google‘. Our Alexa traffic rank is: 3,680,066 and our traffic is next to nothing. Total advertising budget to date: $72.00 USD

    Riyanne  on November 11th, 2008

    Organize a blog contest of course! It’s very effective and you do not have to spend that much :)

    Riyannes last blog post..Teh Coolest Blog Contest!

    Brian  on November 11th, 2008

    Great point Riyanne. I’m planning one next month for this site. eZine Press could certainly benefit from a contest. That would be a nice introduction to our new site for a lot of people. Thanks, I appreciate that.

    Brian  on November 15th, 2008

    What have learned after one week?
    stat_chart1_sml.jpgAt first glance at the graph two things are obvious. First we haven’t done enough and second we were not persistent.

    By far the most traffic came from Entrecard dropper. Even though the whole reason to use Entrecard is traffic I will be the first to admit that the vast majority of droppers are simply a quick click and run lending no real value to the site. We will need to capitalize on the Entrecard traffic in order to convert droppers into site visitors and commenters.

    Trackbacks

    We did receive eight visits from a single trackback showing shared linking works. We need to do much more of this.

    Banner Advertising

    We are running a paid banner advertisement on ThouShallBlog.com. We received eleven visits this week from ThouShallBlog.com but several of those were from blog comments we posted there. Commenting on other blogs is a well known method of generating traffic. We did advertise on a couple other blog that brought in virtually no traffic.

    Google Search

    eZinePress.com is very new and can not rely on search engine traffic yet but we did get a couple of hits from Google. Perhaps the most surprising was eZinePress ranked fifth place for the search term average opt-in rate.

    Paid Advertising

    Our purchased ad at http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/business/marketing
    returned seven visits. The purchased ad at http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/business/small_business has not produced a single click yet.

    This Week:

    We have two Entrecard widget advertising approved and scheduled this week.

    Entrecard’s blog 2008,11,23

    SEO-Tuneup 2008,11,19

    Blog for Beginners  on November 16th, 2008

    OK, 11 visits and that’s probably not the kind of returns you are looking for. I tell you what…I’m going to make a shout out on my article later today and hope it will bring it some extra exposure.

    Yan

    Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..8 Google Lessons I’ve Learned from Garry Conn

    Brian  on November 16th, 2008

    Hi Yan, it’s just the opposite. 11 visits in less than a week is better than expected. I should have added the prices to that last update to give a better picture.

    I ran banner ads on three other blogs but didn’t include the URLs because the ads didn’t bring in any traffic. They are good blogs just not as active as yours yet so I didn’t want to point fingers. Yours, on the other hand, did a fantastic job. The proof is in the numbers. Watch this…

    MyBlogLog.com paid advertising at $60 and $12 per month. Banners running on three other blogs for $10, $15 and $15 with no results.

    Total cost = $112

    Total visitors = 7

    Compared to one $15 banner ad on ThouShallBlog.com total visitors = 11

    Total cost = $15

    Total visitors = 11

    So for a fraction of the price your site ThouShallBlog.com out performed all other paid advertising combined!

    Blog for Beginners  on November 16th, 2008

    Hey Brian

    As I have promised you earlier, I made a little shout on my latest article in support of your new venture. I’m just making sure that your money is well spent on thoushallblog.com.

    Here’s the link
    http://thoushallblog.com/ask-my-readers-2/

    and hope you like it.

    Yan

    Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..Ask My Readers #2

    Brian  on November 16th, 2008

    Thank you Yan, you are a great friend and very generous. I appreciate the kind gesture.

    Armen Shirvanian  on November 16th, 2008

    I would say that it is quite a good idea to put in some investment early on, so as to speed up the site-building process. Countering the slow increase rate at the start by targeted spreading of one’s material alters the regular path of growth in a favorable way.

    Armen Shirvanians last blog post..Ways To Respond To Events Presented To You

    Brian  on November 16th, 2008

    I agree Armen, that’s a good point. I should have kept the momentum up throughout the week. Too many projects going at once. Im not ready to announce it yet but I have another project I want to start after the new year called HotBlogTips.com. Keep that to yourself for now, I’ll start adding content a little at a time them launch in January if everything goes ok.

    Blog for Beginners  on November 17th, 2008

    My goodness, how many sites do you run, Brian?

    Yan

    Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..Ask My Readers #2 – Read At Your Own Risk

    Tara from Affiliate Marketing Prodigy  on November 18th, 2008

    Why don’t you run a contest to get it to go Viral? That may work well and it’s free! Also what about a Press Release?

    Tara @ Affiliate Marketing Prodigys last blog post..5 Things to Look For in a Pay Per Click Search Engine

    Brian  on November 18th, 2008

    Both great ideas Tara. I’ve never received much traffic from a press release but it’s still worth a shot. That’s two votes for a contest. I like the idea of a nice contest. Thanks for your input, it means a lot.

    POTPOLITICS™ from Do Follow  on November 29th, 2008

    Hi Brian
    Nice blog I had to switch browsers so I could double stumble.Looks like you’ve done alot of hard work.Unfortunately any business that counts on bloggers is in for a rough road.I guess hard work,patience and LUCK are the virtues of success.I have a another blog called bloganese.com you and any up and coming bloggers can check it out and submit their seo keyword ladden profile post.It’s good to see a REAL Do follow blog,I recently ran a test on all my backlinks and it was disturbing to see just how many bloggers are trying to get slick and saying their do follow and not,deleting comments,switching them to nofollow after the fact.I’m making great money right now. I may just take the money and RUN :)
    You could always work on some do follow backlinks and stop by and say HIGH :)
    I like this BLOG
    Stumbled a few
    Best wishes to YOU

    POTPOLITICS™@Do Follows last blog post..Blogging in the real World

    Brian  on November 29th, 2008

    Hi John, Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment. I do appreciate it. I’ve actually visited your site before, I recognized it right away.

    I plan to stay Do-Follow. I honestly don’t see the logic in adding the no-follow tag unless it’s an advertisement or an internal duplicate content issue such as tags -vs- categories. It just seems a bit selfish to block commenters – just my opinion. I still comment on blogs that are not do-follow because that’s not the reason I comment but it still seems selfish. Anyway, glad to have you and come back soon.

    Make Money Blogging  on November 30th, 2008

    Let me know brian.. I will sponsor a prize for your contest!

    Make Money Bloggings last blog post..Condolences To Singaporean Hostage Killed In Mumbai

    Brian  on November 30th, 2008

    Thanks Ben, that’s very generous. I have a big one in the works. Probably in January. I’ll let you know.

    Make Money Blogging  on November 30th, 2008

    Brian, your banner is up. Thanks for the opportunity. Hope to bring you some good traffic.

    Sheryl Loch  on December 2nd, 2008

    Hi Brian,
    I know I am late getting here but, I have 2 cents to add.

    I know this may not be the most popular answer to your question. I use Twitter. I always get at least 20+ hits when I pop out a link. If you watch & post at a time your followers are active & especially your ones that are big ReTweeters it can get exciting! You do have to send a mini explanation of the link. If all you send is – Currently Reading – you will get nothing.

    I think press releases are kinda Old Hat. It seams that very few people are getting results with them.

    I have not used BlogLog, Encart, or Blog Catalog so, I have no clue what to expect as results from them.

    You’ll be overloaded with hits in no time.

    Brian  on December 2nd, 2008

    Thanks Sheryl, all great points. I like that twitter tip. I’ll certainly avoid the Currently Reading tweet. Did you see we are giving eZinePress.com away in our next contest? We havent launched the contest yet, still in the planning stages.

    Sheryl Loch  on December 2nd, 2008

    I saw that!
    In fact I have been up all night with a sick dog so, I have read every page on the internets! :)

    I was not sure why you had decided to give it away. Maybe I did miss 1 page online – the one that said why.

    I figured you had enough sites going but, I saw you were starting a blog tip site also. I am going now to see if I can find a condition called Web Site A.D.D! I think you may have it! LOL!

    Andy from Do Follow 001  on December 17th, 2008

    What’s the rush?

    I don’t see what a promotional push on your first month as a published website is supposed to prove.

    A good blog is like a fine wine and matures with age

    Brian  on December 17th, 2008

    Do you have a blog Andy or are you letting that parked domain ferment like old wine? If you really do own dofollow.com it seems like a waste to keep it parked.

    Andy from Do Follow 001  on December 18th, 2008

    What do you mean?

    Andy from Do Follow 001  on December 18th, 2008

    I know what I’ve done – wrong address address

    This is the correct URL:

    http://dofollow001.com (not dofollow..com)

    I’ve done that before and somebody else made a comment and I’m like, Parked domain? What are you talking about?

    Do Follow 001  on December 18th, 2008

    Review of DoFollow Search Tool…

    DoFollow Search Tool is another “dofollow” mini search engine for those seeking those love links, this time it is presented by Hippo Web Solutions.

    Again, I’ll run a test using the four keywords I’ve previously used and score for the top five re…

    Brian  on December 18th, 2008

    Hi Andy, That’s funny :) I’ll check it out

    Search Engine Optimization » Review of DoFollow Search Tool  on December 26th, 2008

    [...] A post from Shabahan is result number five of five but the only “dofollow” entry is that of eZine Press Launch Experiment. [...]