As I mentioned earlier in the month (or maybe it was last month), I’ve started working on a side project, a website called Spartan-Football.com. The site has pretty much taken up all of my free time for the last 3-4 weeks, but it’s safe to say I’ve learned quite a bit in those weeks.
So far I’ve pretty much gotten all of the design elements squared away, and have started writing content for the site. Which, by the way, is exceptionally difficult and was only heightened my level of respect for the sports bloggers that I’ve been following and who make it seem so damn easy. The design probably took me 3 weeks or so, basically just piecing together different parts until it started to look like something resembling a serious website. Shout-out, by the way, to Bugsy Sailor (the guy behind such projects as Yooper Steez, Hometown Invasion and Daily Fruuit) for coming up with the idea for the design of using the jersey mesh as the background to the site.
As you might be able to tell, I am building the site using WordPress as the underlying platform, and Thesis as the theme (although I really consider it more of a code base). This is my first time using Thesis and and must say I am exceptionally happy with it. I’m not sure I would say that it’s so easy to use, as much as it provides so many options. I still don’t understand how to program the hooks, but I can use the OpenHook plugin to do pretty much everything I need to do.
In terms of SEO, I think the site architecture is pretty well optimized, especially now that I was able to put together the footer navigation to the third-level site pages, which is really where the meat of the site lives. The site is still very much in the Google sandbox, although just in the last few days I have noticed that the rankings that I’ve been tracking have improved a bit.
While I officially “launched” the site on August 9th, the site really was live a few weeks before then. But it was under development the entire time, and August 9th was the date that I really wanted to have some initial content on the site and start pushing that content out via the Facebook fan page and the Twitter account that I set up for the site. The site got picked up by SpartanTailgate.com the next day, and I saw a huge surge in traffic from that referral.
My goal has been to build up a following from Facebook and Twitter, and then when the students get back to campus hopefully see the site grow virally from the smaller social networking group we have right now. So far, I think the site has a pretty good following. There are roughly 180 Facebook fans and 180 followers on the Twitter account. That’s one of the things I’ll be tracking as things move forward.
I’ve also been thinking about doing a podcast for the site, but I’m not 100% sure on that one yet. Right now I’d probably say I’m leaning against not doing it, just because I want to see how much work the normal site is without adding a podcast component. But who knows, I might change my mind.
I’ve also started considering how to make some money off of the site. But I don’t want to bastardize the site by throwing a ton of advertising up all over the place. So here are the ideas I have so far:
- Sell t-shirts on the site. I would probably need to find a designer who could make some cool shirts, but I could see this being a good way to make some money without throwing banners up all over the place.
- Stubhub/Amazon affiliate – Stubhub, obviously it’s a sports site, people could by tickets, I’d get a cut. Amazon, link to MSU apparel, people buy, I make money. However, I don’t see the affiliate angle making much money, but who knows.
- Throw banners up all over the place. I really don’t want to do this, and I don’t think I will. The only way I’m going to put up and banner type ads on the site is if they are really targeted to the audience. I don’t want to just throw up some AdSense all over the place, but if an East Lansing business wants to advertise to a market that obviously would be interested in an East Lansing business, then I’d consider it.
Anyway, I am going to chronicle the behind-the-scenes stuff for the site here on EricPender.com. Aside from writing the content, which pretty much never ends, the next things on the radar are (in no particular order):
- Getting Facebook Connect commenting enabled on the site. The code for this looks pretty scary, and I wish there was just an easy plugin that would get it to work for Thesis. But the plugin that does exists doesn’t seem to work with Thesis, and there doesn’t seem to be any information in the support forums from anyone who has implemented it successfully.
- Maybe add fields to the contact us page. Probably a good idea, and it seems like it would be really easy.
- Put together the reporting that I want for the site. Traffic, time on site, bounce rate, conversions, all that jazz.
- Drop down menu. Ugh, the last one was problematic in IE and some versions of Firefox. I need to give it a second chance, but I really wish it was just built into Thesis.
- Develop some kind of link building widget or badge.
- Finish putting together the content on those few remaining pages: Ethics, FAQ, Support, etc. etc. etc.
- Google Website Optimizer – does it even make sense at this point? I’m not selling anything yet, and it seems moderate-to-advanced.
- Add email subscriptions. I think I can do this easily in Feedburner, I just need to set it up.
That’s all for now. Check back later for more updates.
