Gambint
Blog and Community for conquering debt
Visit Website
May 7, 2021
Resumed working on Gambint
I took a few months off from working on Gambint, but I'm back. It's time to take what I've learned and start writing quality articles to help people conquer debt.
I also have a renewed focus on building the Gambint community and increasing awareness of the blog.
DM me if you have any feedback or want to work together, I'd love to talk. Thanks for following along!
7 Comments
Hey man,
I'm just starting a (very niche) blog myself. It is a completely unrelated niche (design) to what you're doing, but I figured we're in a similar situation since you're saying that your focus now is on raising awareness.
I've spent a few months collecting, writing and editing content (which was loads of fun), but now I need to get some eyes on it, and I find myself very uninspired to do that type of work.
I just wanted to send my support (I think it's great when people decide to build in public) and to invite you to exchange ideas, tips and tricks on raising visitor count.
Cheers, and hope you don't mind me pinging you out of the blue.
Hey Bojan,
I'm a big fan of the design and the concept of your new blog. It's really impressive that you built that all from scratch. I just laughed my ass off reading your first post on YTAD, can't wait for the next one.
I definitely don't consider myself a growth or marketing expert, but they're such universal and necessary skills I want to put some time into learning.
I couldn't agree more, let's connect and bounce some ideas around!
Oh, and getting pinged out of the blue is one of the most magical things on the internet to me.
Oh man, really glad you liked it!
I would put myself in the same boat - "not a growth expert, but damn it's about time to become one".
Glad to hear I didn't come off as a weirdo. :D
To kick off the idea bouncing off - I suppose you are focusing on SEO - your content seams to be a great fit for that. But what are you doing to get some initial eyes on it? Do you have numbers on your visitor count?
I launched this Monday and so far I'm at ~130 unique visitors (25/day on average). Honestly I have no idea if this is any good. :D
130 visitors in a few days is pretty sweet in my mind! My last post was at the end of January, and I have ~370 visitors since the beginning of 2021. I get a few visitors a week from newsletter directories, a few from search, etc.
I've never really considered optimizing writing for SEO, but I think it's a good strategy moving forward. For example, if I want to write about paying off debt I should use phrases that resonate with the people that are searching.
The topic of paying off debt has some pros and cons. A lot of people have debt and seek help to pay it off, but not a lot of people will be vulnerable enough to admit it. So it seems to me there are a lot of books and resources for paying off debt, but not much in the realm of online communities or support systems.
The reason I brought the above up is because I'd like to get more of those "initial eyes" on the blog, but finding those people online has proven tricky.
I think for YTAD, you can leverage your existing following and some online designer-focused communities to bring some meaningful traffic to your site.
I really like the point of "being ashamed" by the fact you have debt - that could be your spin on the topic and reaching people in that "I understand you and it's nothing to be ashamed of - I was like you" kinda angle. I had moderate success on one of my old projects in the past with using keyword tools to help me create my headlines and I think it could work well in your case - comes down to actually finding the exact terminology people are using when searching for debt related stuff.
I'm currently trying to leverage some existing (already popular) design topic newsletters and ask them to share my link... but so far no success. I'm going to change my approach here - I've been sending very blunt messages so far. :D
I've submitted to one newsletter directory (inboxreads) and got a few visits from there. Do you know of any other directories that have good traffic? Where did you submit?
I haven't submitted to most of them (yet), but this article does a great job of aggregating the most common newsletter directories.
Do any of your current connections run a newsletter or know someone that runs one? If you put out some feelers you might find that to be an easier way to get your foot in the door than cold messaging.
Thanks for the list. And I'm going to to exactly what you propose - I'm gonna fish for those connections on twitter.