18,077 Visitors in 7 days by Ernie Lonardo - HTML preview

18,077 visitors in 7 days

How It All Begun

It all started in April 2007 when I was thinking about the condition that has been haunting me the last 8 years of my life. I’m one of the many sufferers of the male condition Gynecomastia, or better known as man boobs. No I’m not overweight yet I have man boobs and the only way to lose them is to have surgery.

It’s not important whether you completely understand the condition or not, but what is important to take notice of is the fact that I took an idea that was close to my heart (well closer to my chest:), and used that as my website idea.

You don’t need to have a passion for the theme of the website however you do need to have some knowledge of it; otherwise you will never convince your readers that you’re genuine.

Anyway, I was thinking of a way to raise money online to pay for the surgery fee and I got a crazy idea in my head. I remembered how I’ve seen many weird websites in the past which ask for a donation towards some crazy cause. I thought to myself, if some guy can make thousands of dollars by asking for donations for some (to be quite frank) “stupid” cause, surely I could raise the surgery fee since my site is towards a good cause.

And there it was, the idea was there, and the belief that it could work – that’s all I needed to go through with it.

The Domain Name

20 minutes after I thought of my idea, I registered the domain name. I settled on removemymanboobs.com I knew with a domain like that I would at least intrigue people to check out the site, and it worked!

Having a captivating domain name is an excellent idea because the domain name alone is capable of making a website viral. Many webmasters don’t put enough thought into the name of their domain names. It’s a big mistake they make, as your domain name is a walking billboard for your website. Your domain is the first thing they are going to see before they view your website. Your domain name will either be clicked or ignored. If they ignore it, you’ve lost that visitor. Do you see where I’m going with this?

I’m not saying you must have a weird/crazy/funny domain name to succeed, but if you can come up with a good one, then by all means – use it!

Designing the website

After registering the domain name, my next step was to design the website. Now it will depend on the type of website you have, but generally if you want a website to go viral it’s best to have a simple design. You don’t want too many flashy images and other things which increase loading time and distract viewer’s eyes away from the main focus of the site.

Read this part because it’s very important. Your idea is the most important part of your website, when designing your website everything you do should place emphasis on your idea. That’s why if you have a simple design viewers will immediately start reading or looking at the important content on your website.

Many people believe you need to have a flashy website to succeed, but I’m telling you right now – that’s not true! If you don’t believe me, go take a look at Google, Craiglist or most other popular websites, and you will see they focus more on functionality rather than flashy designs.

Now with removemymanboobs.com I basically have a simple cartoon image of man boobs, a progress bar so others can see how well I’m doing with the donations and a long story about my condition so viewers can understand my condition and hopefully sympathise with me.

Promoting the website

This is the most interesting part of this report I think. I did one thing and one thing only to get 18,007 visits in 7 days, and it didn’t cost me a cent!

 

IsentoutFREEpressreleasesaboutmysite

You better believe it, those free press release sites which many believe are useless made my site go viral in a big way. Not only did I get traffic from the press releases, but once the word was out about removemymanboobs.com, various blog owners and forum members starting posting news about my site – without me even asking them! My site was even advertised on the home page of many high traffic websites.

Not only that, but people who found my site interesting posted on social bookmarking website like Fark and Stumbleupon, and those sites sent thousands of visitors to my site.

The best thing is I didn’t have to do anything at all, besides submitting the initial free press releases.

 

Thentheunthinkablehappened

 

I started getting donations, money, moolah, whatever you want to call it, I couldn’t believe it, my site was a success.

Not only that, but I had a few radio stations email me requesting me to do interviews with them about my website. I had one from New Zealand and two from the USA.

Maintaining traffic flow

Although I consider my results a success, it was evident that the traffic was going to die down if I chose to sit back and do no further website promotion.

 

Here are a few things I have (or will be doing) to extend the life of my site and keep the traffic and donations coming in.

 

- Write Articles on Gynecomastia and submit them to article directories

- Send out more press releases updating the public about advancements on my site. This is where you should be creative. I could make the title of my new press release something like “36,000 eyes witness the man boobs”. You need to use every weapon in your bag, be creative and people will notice you.

The above are just a couple of methods I can use to ensure more traffic to my site, however if a site is truly viral you won’t need to constantly promote the site, your visitors should be doing that for you!

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