Website is up and going. What do you guys think?

[Colorado Ron]

I just wanted to get some opinions. Im not sure if I can make enough just off adsense click ads, but it would be ideal to not have to sell anything. This would make the site easier to manage during our travels. Is it possible to make it so information rich that I can make enough off of click ads? Anyway-check it out and give me some feedback!

www.Offroad-Adventure-Travel.com

[neuromancer]

for making money with a monetized blog check out www.shoemoney.com www.derekbeau.com www.johnchow.com www.problogger.net

It is possible to make money off of monetizing and these guys make LOTS of it. John Chow made $17,800 last month. He posts his monthly earnings. You want to make money off of adds they will tell you how.

A recommendation about web design. Keep your nav buttons to between 5 and 7 buttons. Go with general titles such as"vehicles," "media" and "travel". Break the sections down into sub groups like my pictures and recommended books and recommended movies. Fewer choices per page are better but keep it to about 3 pages deep. If you are using wordpress for your blogging that's hard to do with pages and categories but it is something to keep in mind.

The reason why is readers get annoyed with too many choices on a page while too few makes them think the site doesn't have much content and if you go more than 3 pages deep, they get confused as to where it is. That was some of the stuff they kept pounding into my head in design school. I guess the pounding worked.

Your site looks pretty authoritative so great start. Keep updating the site to keep people coming back and you should get a regular audience. Now comes the hard part, marketing.

[Ibanez]

for making money with a monetized blog check out www.shoemoney.com www.derekbeau.com www.johnchow.com www.problogger.net

It is possible to make money off of monetizing and these guys make LOTS of it. John Chow made $17,800 last month. He posts his monthly earnings. You want to make money off of adds they will tell you how.
But with some of those guys they got into affiliate marketing which is whole another ball game.

I think the navigation is good (has the F factor), but I would change the colors around maybe eliminate 1-3 links from the nav. bar.

Plus redo the image at the top. It looks like it was done in paint or word.

I would also suggest standardizing the formatting of your site. Some images were wider than the site.

I think it has good potential and with some SEO (search engine optimization) you'll get even better results.

The blog is reallly good, because even if the site doesn't update frequently if you talk about interesting things on the blog keeping will keep returning and it will help build up your site.

[gsimd]

1. Simplify your navigation. You have too many for a first time visitor to decipher. Combine some categories like "Photos and Videos" or "Books & Movies"

2. Rewrite nav titles with clarity in mind. What is the difference between, "4x4 Concepts" and "Choose A 4x4"? "Adventures" World Trip" and perhaps "4x4 Blog" are redundant and a bit vague.

Here are some ideas:
Photos/Videos
Trip Reports (combining Adventures, World Trip etc.)
Resources (Books, Movies & Links)

3. Get rid of ALL of your ads for now. Your goal is to build traffic and repeat visitors. If the ads are "successful" the visitor clicks and is sent away from the site. You want them to stay and read, not "one click and gone".

Don't use ads until you have 1000 Unique visitors a day, then introduce them slowly. In the long run, you'll build you traffic faster and make a lot more money in the long run.

4. If you won't get rid of the ads. At least get rid of that block of Google ads in the middle of the home page. You are "selling" before you have offered the reader anything. You need to build a relationship first.

5. Simplify you header image. One great image is much more impactful than a bunch of postage stamps.

Michael
http://www.familyhack.com

[OneOfEm]

I agree with everything GSIMD said.

You content looks good. However, your goal should be to make visitors stay around long enough to see it.

Work on your banner. Find an image that fits your theme best, and make it the focus. Compare my draft banner (http://www.singularautos.com/carbannerdraft.jpg) with my final banner (http://www.singularautos.com/logo.jpg). Although I like the cars better in the draft banner, the final has much more pull (and who could go wrong with a red Ferrari?).

Once you have an image for your banner, you could either use the colors in the image to establish the colors in your page (http://www.colr.org/) or do some image stylizing to make it better fit your color scheme (http://www.photoshopbuddy.net/stylize.html is just one example I've used).

[Colorado Ron]

Thanks all. Im going to get started on updating the site next week. Look foward to the changes. Lets see what happens!

[BrettnAustin]

3. Get rid of ALL of your ads for now. Your goal is to build traffic and repeat visitors. If the ads are "successful" the visitor clicks and is sent away from the site. You want them to stay and read, not "one click and gone".

Agreed. Get ride of the ads focus on the fold and list 2-4 things that your visitors find of most value (travel tips in a free download for example) then build your list.

Blog marketing is much cheaper than using the content network on Google and can be very effective, especially if you're in the travel sector where you're fighting against a highly fragmented market and need to stand out.

[Mauryd]

I'm new to the forum today. Just bought Tim's book last week. So, I am just beginning the whole process.

To me, the site looks great. I'm sure you have made the changes recommended below.

How did you develop this site? Did you buy a special software?

Maury