My first website attempt - A blog with tutorials

[RottenBananas]

Hey everyone,

well here it is... http://bhaviksblog.com

 

Very open to changes, its about a month old...i'll be adding many more tutorials soon. Please leave as much feedback as you can!

 

Thanks!

[deadlyp99]

First of all I love the layout.

 

There is a lot of whitespace that could be used. Mostly on the left column to bring in a little more content and reduce scrolling.

 

The page fails xhtml validation on w3c, and the third css file failed as well. The first two were good.

 

The code looks pretty ship shape.

 

The google search looks a bit lonely over there on the right with all the space. Maybe you should make it bigger? Thats my opinion though.

 

Oh and if your trying to teach people make sure to use proper syntax.

All the "<p>" tags need to be closed on the tutorials.

 

And finally, you have too many google ads on the page. I can tell you from personal experience that seeding a page with anything more than 2 google ad strips will considerably lower your CPM. Google counts each ad loaded within a page as individual page loads.

 

So with 3/4 ads each page load it counts a click as 1 per every 3 page loads, that is, if someone clicks a link each time they load the page. Google will lower your earnings per click when they see that you only recieve rare clicks. So if clicking is normal rate, having more than one google ad strip makes it look like multiple page loads without a click. See what I am getting at?

 

If you really must have all those ads, I highly recommend using more than one payed ad sites.

And... rule #1 about monetizing a site is never try to do it before the site is already a success, with good traffic. You need to create logging systems to see what areas are clicked the most, and place ads that blend accordingly. With that... the ad strip below the navigation threw me offguard because I thought it was links for your site. It's like tricking the user, but not necessarily.

 

Finally... dont use adsense, they have a habit of screwing people over.

 

7/10

[RottenBananas]

Hey there,

Thanks a ton for taking the time to make such a thorough review!

 

Couple questions,

For the xhtml validation...how can I fix it? What does it affect if it is broken?

I'll see if I can make the search box a bit bigger, thats a good idea.

The <p> tags aren't supposed to be there, I thought i removed them, i'll fix that

I will cut the ads down as well...thanks for the tip. This is my first time, i still dont know what a good baseline is for the number of ads. I see how the CPM works now after your explanation. I think i'll remove most of the google ads for now.

 

Any tips for other ad sites (alternatives to adsense)? And what can I use to log where users are clicking?

 

Thanks so much again!