Gimme Gimme I Want! After 1 Month

Hello Folks!

My current project, GGIW (www.ggiw.com), has been up and running for just about a month now and I've got a few milestones to report. First, I set off a small Google AdWords campaign to test the waters a bit. So far, I'm are seeing a very good 10% conversion rate for sign ups. I've also been getting a lot of feedback from our early adopters which has allowed me to really pin down the changes for the next release.

For all of you out there hoping to get going on your own project or working on one today, here are the key take aways from the first month of service.

1. Get together a core group of users to start is critical to getting the ball rolling.

No one wants to hear shills, or paid evangelists, push your site on all corners of the net. Do your legwork and get some real users that care about the site to start using it before launch. GGIW's small group of happy users helps to bring in new users by word of mouth.

2. Test advertising on a small scale.

This is basic advice for online advertising in general, but here goes. I was able to tune the keywords and ad content by casting a wide net (lots of variations on ads) with a pretty small budget ($20!). I setup each ad variation to hit a different landing page so I could easily track it in the logs. Trading a little time for money here, but it definitely helped out when I dialed the ad budget up.


3. Watch you logs!

I have been watching the logs very, very carefully since the site was launched. I have to admit that this is a lot easier to do if you have some Unix/Linux/scripting background, as breaking down logs can be a bit arcane otherwise. Even if you don't have access to scripting talent, reading these logs regularly can really help you understand what people are doing.

4. Use Google Analytics if you use AdWords.

This is an amazing product. If you are paying for ads via AdWords, then you are probably wasting a lot of your money without taking advantage of it.

5. Users are (still) your best advertising.

I said this before in 5 Actionable Tips for Getting Free Traffic to Your New Site, but it's especially true in this context. Most of our new users have come through direct referrals. Every hour I invest in building the user community is worth many times more than time spent tuning and tweaking Google ads or other marketing efforts to date.

I'd like to take a second to thank any readers who may have joined up. We are definitely off to a great start.