SEM Tycoon

**kasrak** · 10-01-2006, 03:46 PM

Hi everyone,
About two months ago, I released my site ProgrammerMeetDesigner. It got quite a lot of blog traffic, StumbleUpon traffic and was on the frontpage of Digg and Lifehacker. But traffic has been declining. Before September, I was getting over 1500 unique hits per day, but now it's between 200-400 uniques per day.

I'm fairly new to this and I don't know what to do now. Any tips to revive my site?

Thanks!

**dogisland** · 10-01-2006, 04:36 PM

kasrak,

I remember seeing this site on Digg so well done with your marketing. The concept is great and the site looks great too.

Programmers and designers tend to be very net savvy and are not big adsense clickers. Other revenue sources could convert better with your existing traffic.

i.e.

1. escrow affiliate schemes
2. project management software such as basecamp affiliate scheme.

All the backlinks from having been Dugg will help you rank well in the search engines. I would look at you on page seo and think about what keywords your pages could target.

Hope this helps.

**xboxundone** · 10-01-2006, 04:39 PM

I wouldnt say its dieing i think your site is falling to its norm for a new site. Continue to markett it and as the post above stated look at better means besides adsense to monetixe the site. This should help you.

**Ganceann** · 10-01-2006, 06:18 PM

Yeah,

The traffic from digg and stumbled upon is not 'natural and organic' whereby they are actively searching for your site, they are merely interested in the site because someone else highlighted it either via digg or stumbled upon.

You may get some people who have bookmarked it and therefore repeat visitors from that - however, as said the natural level of traffic looks likely to be what you are currently receiving via search etc.

Improving on-page as well as offpage SEO should see an increase in the overall serps of your site and in the longer term traffic should start picking up gradually as you continue to build backlinks etc.

**Otherjohn** · 10-03-2006, 01:13 PM

I would try to push more ways to allow those who use it to promote it. And Im not talking about digg. Try more extensive recomendation setup. More individual profiles too. Give tips and how-to's to your programmers and designers on how they can get more business using your service and promote themselves.
Do some simple marketing to foriegn sites in india - Also find some trade magazines for outsourceing and try to advertise there.
Escrow is a big one, since the better security the people on the site have, the more comfortable they will be with using your service.
Setup a blog to talk about improvements and other interesting stuff on your site.
Also I would also do a featured programmer and a featured designer. Least once every week if you can. that goes a long way. Tell about them and get them to quote a testimony.
Speeking of testimonies, try doing some (about 3 or 4 ) case studies of success of people using your site.
This will help with people feeling safe using the site and with SEO.
just my 2 cents.
[sorry if my spelling is off - im dislexic]

**imported_WillB** · 10-06-2006, 11:17 AM

The first thing that sprang to mind was success stories (as otherjohm mentioned). They're often very inspiring to read, and are bound to get more attention, especially around the blogosphere. If your site is instrumental in assisting with the setup of a large successful website or company, it will get plenty of press coverage - and so new business!

In terms of new revenue streams, think about premium services for your users. For example, offering designers or programmers a "homepage" within your site, where they can pitch their skills. These paid up users would become almost like semi-permanent staff.. then perhaps rotate a weekly random "featured" designer/developer on the front page.