

Ask HN:  Inherited a Website...ideas on what can I do with it? - keltecp11
http://www.onlyforpetlovers.com/

======
JayNeely
1\. Create a clear next action on your front page. I'd bet you have a
significant bounce rate right now -- people arriving from a search engine or
linking site, and leaving within 5 seconds because they're not clear what the
site has to offer.

\--1a. I'd get more of the articles and forum posts above the fold. These are
potentially some of your best spots for getting click-throughs.

\--1b. Consolidate that massive top menu. Make more options part of the sub-
menus, or let some areas (polls, photos) just stand as content sections on the
main page.

\--1c. Remove or move that topmost nav bar to the footer. None of those links
are priorities; it's just taking up space.

2\. It doesn't look like you're currently using Google Analytics? You should
really add it, and get a sense of where your traffic is coming from.
Particularly where your search traffic is coming from.

\--2a. Check which keywords you're getting traffic from that have a high(er)
bounce rate. This can be a good guide for new articles. You could also write
some code (or see if your CMS has a module/plugin to do this, Wordpress does)
to display a message based on the search terms used to enter the site, and
recommend some next pages.

3\. Style your AdSense ads to get a better click-through rate. ViperChill
recently posted a great case-study: <http://www.viperchill.com/adsense-
account-income/>

4\. Nuke your current forums. They're dead, and will take years to gain
momentum in their current forum. Use software that does a better job of
showing activity, and start small with _one_ (two or three at max) broad
section.

Don't take your tiny audience and make them look for conversations in 50
different rooms. Start with _one_ room for everyone to go into, and it will be
easier for newcomers to see conversations happening and join them. You can
create more specialized sub-forums later.

------
nlwhittemore
That's cool. Sounds insane, but I actually thing pet services and businesses
are totally under appreciated. People are crazy about and spend shitloads of
money on their pets, even in hard financial times, and there are very few real
entrepreneurs taking advantage of it.

~~~
anamax
> Sounds insane, but I actually think pet services and businesses are totally
> under appreciated. People are crazy about and spend shitloads of money on
> their pets, even in hard financial times, and there are very few real
> entrepreneurs taking advantage of it.

I've been told by folks who make a living writing that pet stuff is among the
most profitable for authors, far more so than porn.

~~~
eagleal
Someone should really make a study for this market. Also you have to take in
consideration that porn involves actors, and they require payment (I'm not
talking about user content distribution).

~~~
mattmaroon
Also I'm not sure what writing would be involved. "I'm here to fix your pipes
ma'am" doesn't take an English major.

~~~
eagleal
I was actually talking about comparison of underestimated markets (like the
parent).

------
aandon
I run an ecommerce business that sells jellyfish aquariums:
<http://www.jellyfishart.com>

I know, weird. But jellyfish are a hot new trend in personal aquariums. We
just started an affiliate program that is doing really well. Our affiliate
commission is 5%, conversion rate is 0.25% and average purchase is $198. Would
you be interested in signing up as one of our affiliates? We have banner ads
you can run.

<http://www.jellyfishart.com//affiliate_info.asp>

~~~
keltecp11
I just got an email from you today... call me? I love your site... sounds
good. email me some more info pgroverman@tapinko.com

------
bjplink
This is kind of a hot niche with website flippers at the moment. With the
domains age you might be able to sell it pretty quickly on a place like
Flippa.

Otherwise, if you aren't looking for quick cash, I'd sit on it and see how the
AdSense performs while trying out some affiliate offers. Standard practices
for content sites like this. You'll have a better idea of its worth after a
few months.

------
zefhous
Are you a pet lover?

It's hard to invest in something like that for a long time if you're not
passionate about it. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do something with it
if you're not, but maybe you could find someone who is excited about it and
have them help you with ideas and content?

One idea is that you could feature a member and their pet on the home page
each week. Kind of like how there is an "ADOPTIVE PET OF THE WEEK" — which
isn't actually a pet of the week, it's just a random pet with each page load.

This would take some more work, but you could do some really cool things with
geolocation, like post adoptable pets and upcoming community events that are
actually in the area.

------
mikmo
Believe it or not my friend owns <http://www.urbanpup.com/>

It's the biggest manufacturer and reatailer of pet clothes in the UK. Maybe
you should get in touch and see if you stock some of their goods?

~~~
keltecp11
That would be great - pgroverman@tapinko.com - wanna make an intro?

------
jacquesm
Whether it is worth something or not is what you'll find when you try to
auction it, but at 200 hits per day that's not bad at all.

You could start with putting a pet lovers forum on it and see if it takes off,
sounds like the perfect domain for it.

------
NEPatriot
Talk to pet lovers and see what they need. I have a dog and here are some of
my issues... what is the best type of dog/pet insurance out there? What is the
best type of dog food out there? Where can I get a toy my dog won't destroy in
2 hours? Where are some of the best places to take my dog around Boston? Am
not looking - but is there a place for pet owners to meet other single pet
owners? Joel Spolsky mentioned in his mixergy interview that he wanted to
create versions of stackoverflow...

------
kadavy
Wow, the SEO on this could be improved drastically:

* Install Google Analytics. Collect some data on what search terms visitors are coming in on.

* Use the Google Keyword Tool: <https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal> to find what keyphrases you could compete well on. You have to strike a balance between finding something with decent search volume, but not too much competition.

* Use SEO Best Practices. For example:

\- Your home page currently has a TITLE tag of "onlyforpetlovers". Something
like "pet social networking - onlyforpetlovers" would be better.

\- Your search results pages could be huge traffic sources, but the TITLE tags
of them are all "Pet friendly resources," and there are no links to results
pages for crawlers to access. If you had links in addition to search, you
could have a link saying "pet friendly hotels in chicago" with a link to
search results with the TITLE tag "pet friendly hotels in chicago."

Just those couple of things would greatly increase your traffic.

------
benreyes
Personally I'd take a look at where it does well on certain Google search
terms and then try to build and scrape data from other websites that you could
use (legally of-course) like pull in twitter feeds or Wikipedia articles from
DBpedia. Tidy up the design and get rid of the dead wood on the site. And then
flip the site in a few months when traffic starts to pick up.

It's pretty much what Demand Media does. But if you are really passionate
about pets and don't mind not turning it around for profit then I'd just keep
it updated and try to build a community out of the niche that it has.

~~~
jacquesm
A mini mahalo ? Yes, we really need more of those...

------
kadavy
Check out <http://dogster.com> and <http://catster.com> for some ideas.

------
keltecp11
Now that I have OnlyForPetLovers.com - around 200 hits a day - any ideas? Is
it worth anything?

~~~
bseo
You also have almost 700 users. Motivate them to create some content. More
content -> more traffic -> more users -> more content.

------
johnconroy
decent affiliate marketing possibilities, I'd a thought. Get some quality
content. Offer deals on... I dunno, whatever pet owners might buy.

Old-skool affiliate model FTW

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ddemchuk
build an email list and push pet related affiliate offers as well as your own
custom guides and videos at your customers.

The money is in the list

