[syllogism]

You can start by being specific. There's no generic answer here. You can't really try to understand "succeeding at businesses" in the abstract. You have to do things on a case-by-case basis. So if you ask about one of your _specific_ sites, people can help you.

[Mz]

Okay. How would one get more quality traffic with this specific challenge: It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. The rest of the world thinks it cannot be done either so it's a hard sell.

So far, I have been working on building an audience painfully slowly. Since I am also working on getting myself well, content does not go up as regularly as I would like. My feeling has been this is probably a good thing for now because the first thing I have to do is win over my audience and the world just does not believe this can be done. Maybe I am completely wrong (about needing to build the audience this way)? But without participating in email lists and hearing what other people are asking, I also don't really know what to talk about -- I don't just psychically know what is different about what I am doing compared to other people. So for me that relationship to the audience is important and there has been a huge barrier for a long time. It is gradually coming down. Maybe I do know exactly what I am doing and it just takes time. Or maybe I am an idiot and someone else would have no problem slapping some content onto the site and generating an income.

Thoughts?

[yummyfajitas]

Some thoughts:

It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done.

Besides your Mom, no one cares about getting you well.

Since I am also working on getting myself well...

Supposing I were sick, I'd care mainly about getting myself well. It sounds like you don't have the answers, so why am I bothering?

It sounds like you aren't selling solutions. So your best bet is to sell sympathy and motivation. My suggestion: make it more of a forum, allow other people to tell their stories as well. Focus on sharing emotions as much as sharing solutions.

Monetization will probably come from ads selling snake oil. Near as I can tell, that's the primary method of monetization in health related sites - selling homeopathy and herbs to desperate people.

[Mz]

Besides your Mom, no one cares about getting you well.

As noted elsewhere: The site exists because there are people who are interested in what I did to get well, not because I had any plans to create such a site. It gives them clues as to how to get themselves healthier when all else has failed. I talk about what worked for me in large part because I have zero interest in giving advice per se. I think that is part of what is wrong with conventional medicine: Doctors routinely prescribe treatments with short term benefits and long term costs, which is not so bad if you are basically healthy and can take the hit for an acute problem. But it's deadly if you have a chronic health issue. And the fact that they take this basic approach is no secret. It's done quite openly: We all know about the huge fold-outs detailing the negative side effects that come with most prescription drugs and the waivers that have to be signed before they will perform surgery. Since getting myself healthier relied heavily on trading short term costs for long term gains, I have zero interest in replicating a system that I am convinced is part of the problem.

So your best bet is to sell sympathy and motivation. My suggestion: make it more of a forum, allow other people to tell their stories as well. Focus on sharing emotions as much as sharing solutions.

I own several email lists. I cannot for the life of me get conversations going on them. I also briefly had a forum for the site. It was overrun with spam and had maybe three members (myself included). So I've tried that route and failed, quite consistently and miserably. It works better for me to try to get people sharing info when someone else owns/runs the discussion space. And that is a piece I am working on elsewhere, for the purpose of helping people help themselves. I'm also not interested in selling sympathy or motivation per se. There is a saying that "an example is the best lecture" and I have found that to be true. So I do offer myself as an example in hopes that it inspires people to feel "If she can do it, I can do it". But I have zero interest in being some cheerleader.

Again, I was not asking about monetizing the site. Only about getting traffic, a question you have not addressed. As stated earlier: I have several websites. I really don't expect this site to be where the money is. But it is the most mature/developed of the sites I own and it basically serves as a proving ground for me to learn stuff.

[yummyfajitas]

You didn't ask about getting traffic, you asked about getting "quality traffic". Since you didn't define "quality", I assumed you were going with the standard definition of quality - traffic that earns you money. Hence, a discussion of monetization.

Anyway, I was going to list the ways your site is an SEO and navigation disaster.

But then I saw that your content is a deceptive mix of good advice, snake oil, and stuff I don't know enough to evaluate. It would be unethical of me to give you any tips on directing more people to it. You should take your site down. You are clearly unable to evaluate scientific evidence, and your anecdotes of how the placebo effect helped you are not providing any benefit to others.

[Mz]

I am curious what you view as good advice, what you view as snake oil, and what you don't know enough about to evaluate.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Vmabuza]

Honestly this is like trying to sell pages off your own personal diary. Im going to say from my POV there is no way you can make serious money of of this.Google adsense yes but we all know how that goes if you have low traffic. BUT if you can gather an Audience and after that write a book about this..your blog audience could spread the word about ''the guy who defied the odds''

[Mz]

In regards to both this reply and the other one where I wrote a lengthier response, please note I have not asked "how do I monetize this?" I have asked "How do I get quality traffic for the site?"

My expectation is that at some point there will be an app and that will have more potential for being monetized. For now, I only want to know how to get more traffic. Can anyone address that specific question and leave out your opinions that I am crazy to try to monetize this?

Thanks.

[hayley]

You might try Tumblr for audience building.

The caveats to this advice are that this worked for me a couple of years ago (so I'm not sure if the same community exists there now) and that my thing was much more about fat loss.

Still, I was shocked at how quickly I felt like I had been embraced by a community, especially since I had only started out with the intention of using Tumblr as a free place to host a diary (I was quite ignorant of the community features at the time).

Another caveat is that Tumblr tends to favor short form content rather than longer blog posts. However, this could actually be seen as a positive since it's a lot easier to do shorter, more frequent updates.

Aside from that, finding forums where people are talking about these issues and then getting actively involved could be one of the best ways to indirectly build an audience.

A few thoughts on your website:

* I'd either make your blog the main page or automatically pull in at least the latest blog onto your main page. Otherwise, I get the impression that the site was last updated in 2009.

* I'd write a one paragraph summary of who you are and what you're trying to accomplish, the "elevator pitch" if you will. I feel that a lot of what is on your current main page would be more appropriate on a longer form "About" page. I'd put the elevator pitch front and center so that new visitors can know exactly why they should care and keep browsing your site.

* I'd consider coming up with a short timeline - as a new visitor, I might be interested in quickly knowing things like how far along you are in your journey. Like were you just diagnosed? Have you just recently decided to turn your life around or have you been working on this for awhile? As a new visitor, it helps me more quickly identify with your story and what I can expect to get from you.

To sum up, I think there's an audience out there for this. Plenty of people are going to be interested in the everyday perspective of someone who's down in the trenches battling an illness.

So if keeping the site going makes you happy, don't give up!

[Mz]

I'd either make your blog the main page or automatically pull in at least the latest blog onto your main page. Otherwise, I get the impression that the site was last updated in 2009.

I have considered making the blog the main site and the main site an "archive", because the information there is mostly pretty outdated but makes for a good intro/overview. It would involve a lot of work and I'm not sure how to tackle some of the technical issues.

Any idea how I could easily make the blog more visible?

I'd write a one paragraph summary of who you are and what you're trying to accomplish, the "elevator pitch" if you will. I feel that a lot of what is on your current main page would be more appropriate on a longer form "About" page. I'd put the elevator pitch front and center so that new visitors can know exactly why they should care and keep browsing your site.

I actually started working on redoing the main page. This past year has been very hard in terms of my physical healing process. It's been enormously eventful (like I have had way too many Saturdays where I threw up all day). There are plans to redo the main page, there really are. But I really don't want to put the focus on me (re your comment about explaining "who I am"). I have struggled a lot with the fact that information on the site is so personal -- not because I care about sharing such info (I spent years in therapy for sexual abuse endured as a child and both my therapists were ministers -- I'm perfectly comfortable blathering on about crap that makes other people desperately want to tape my mouth shut) but because of the negative fall-out that occurs and that it takes the spotlight off the information per se, which is where I want it to be. So I wrestle a lot with that and I very much want to work on making the site more about "this is good info and helped me" and less about "me, me, me", which just causes all kinds of problems in all kinds of ways.

I'd consider coming up with a short timeline - as a new visitor, I might be interested in quickly knowing things like how far along you are in your journey. Like were you just diagnosed? Have you just recently decided to turn your life around or have you been working on this for awhile? As a new visitor, it helps me more quickly identify with your story and what I can expect to get from you.

Thanks. I did start a time-line. I never finished it or published it.

So if keeping the site going makes you happy, don't give up!

Oh, it doesn't really make me happy. I would much rather be in the entertainment space. But you can't separate this dramatic piece of my life experience from who I am and I don't think it's possible for me to entirely walk away from it. I think if I shut down the site and made a fortune doing something else entirely, then years down the road reporters would hound me for info on how I got well. I would rather just leave the site up and say "here's that info -- now back on topic, it's so not that interesting, thanks". As I noted elsewhere, the site grew out of an off-the-cuff remark I made on an email list I belonged to and the strong reactions people had to the information I casually commented on as a normal part of my everyday existence (a list, btw, that had nothing to do with health issues at all).

[mechanical_fish]

Without even getting into the ethics of selling health advice before the experiments are complete, consider the probability that it's just a terrible idea to try to monetize your personal health site, no matter how you do it.

The point of your health regimen is to get yourself well. The point of your health site should be to help you get yourself well -- by motivating you to stick to your plan, by helping you keep records of your own plans and thinking and data, and by recruiting folks to help encourage and coach you and share advice and conduct experiments along with you.

Don't screw up your own priorities and motivations by introducing an additional profit motive. When your health is at stake, you need to do what you need to do, not what your audience wants to pay for. If, after all your experiments, it turns out that the healthiest path for you is the most boring thing ever, something that nobody wants to read about and that can't be sold for money but that is nonetheless effective for you... great! Mission accomplished, you're healthy. Don't bias your judgement by asking a market to vote with its money. They'll end up (e.g.) steering you to the latest fad, whether it's healthy for you or not.

[Mz]

I'm guessing you didn't look at the site.

A) I am well on my way to being well. Although I continue to learn, the site does not exist to get me well. It exists because I made some off-the-cuff remark on an email list where I was held in high esteem, got attacked for it, was politely asked to "prove" what I had said and I said "give me a day or two to get back to you so I can put together the information". The response to the next email where I backed up my remark was stuff like "Can I forward it to someone I know who has a child with the same condition?". So I began working on putting the information on a website so people can share the links without asking to forward my emails.

B) It turns out that there is actually research that backs up some of what I kind of stumbled across. But it doesn't get much press because it won't make any drug companies rich.

C) I don't mind helping people but 1) I have bills to pay myself 2) if it benefits others and has value, why shouldn't I get something in return? and 3) people don't take it seriously when it isn't "for profit". Just being some nice person who got well and is willing to share what I know is very unconvincing for helping others.

D) I often contemplate just taking the site down. I am okay with just getting on with my life now that I am healthy enough to do that. But other people have made it clear they don't want it to come down. Both this year and in a previous year, donations paid my hosting service renewal when I couldn't afford it (this year: Thank you HN!).

As for the ethics question, I have had that thrown in my face before. People are dying from what I have and doctors can't really help them. Is it possible for people to misuse the information on my site and wind up with a problem because of it? Yes. Is it likely that doing nothing is worse? Very much so. My approach is much more conservative than what doctors do and much safer.

Thanks very much for responding.

[seanp2k]

You are 100% incorrect about C-3. I don't take sites that want you to pay for information seriously. Information and knowledge should be free. Charging for information makes you "them" instead of "us" and totally leads people to not trust you.

Examples: - Get rich selling stuff on ebay! (internet treasure chest) - Save your marriage! (google "save your marriage ebook") - Penis enlargement! (...) - How one mom found a cheap way to whiten her kids teeth! (in ads everywhere, usually leads to a site where you pay for an ebook).

Also, people will pirate it if it's any good.

[jodrellblank]

You don't take academic sites with paywalls seriously? You don't take O'Reilly subscription eBooks seriously? You don't take curated commercial data feeds seriously? You don't take licensed film/Netflix style sites seriously?

You do value free "get rich selling stuff on eBay" and "save your marriage" sites?

People want free information, but people don't act like free information has any value.

If I tell you about the feeling elimination technique, which is useful where you imagine a situation and feel a sudden physical feeling (e.g. imagine a being in an aircraft and feel your stomach tense up and you get anxious, or imagine eating fish and your face screws up in disgust, or imagine confronting someone and wanting to curl up and hide, that kind of thing).

That the technique involves imagining one situation hard, noticing the physical reaction in your body, focusing on what you're imagining to intensify the physical response - like grasping a nettle hard - then holding that state while counting backwards from your age to 0 (start in 5 year increments to age 5, then 1 year increments to age 1, then month increments to -9 months) and each time pause a couple of seconds and ask yourself if you still feel this way.

That's it. It exists, it works, if you practise doing it you can get rid of some kinds of automatic fears which have been a deep set part of your life for decades, and you can do so in minutes. This is free, potentially life changing information. I would bet money that you wont even try it, and think it probable that you wont even take seriously the idea to try it and plan to do so "one day" and never do. That nobody who reads this will give it a second thought.

But if you'd paid good money to meet a consultant about some fear you have, and they told you about it, you would think hard about it, try it, and when you fail the first time, you would try again. And if you can't do it, you would try a different fear assuming it was you at fault not the idea. But if it's free, you're much more likely to try it once and if you can't get it to work first time on one fear, assume it's bunk.

[Mz]

Information and knowledge should be free.

I completely agree. And the site is free for use. Still, how does one monetize an informational site? If I know something of value that was hard-won knowledge, how do I share that without feeling like I am cutting my own throat for the benefit of others?

(Please note that I have said elsewhere in this discussion that I don't expect this site to be where the money is. But problem solving for this site is intended to be a learning experience for me.)

Also, people will pirate it if it's any good.

In this case: Yay!