I finally completed a major change to my blog about a week ago. The primary change was to make my home page more focused on my recently released free 10 day course on how to create an income generating website.
I’ve been meaning to finish the free course since last year’s blog world (wow I’m slow) but because I planned to release the course for free other income producing projects kept getting in the way. I finally had some time in late July and early August to finish the course and I’m very pleased with what I was able to put together.
Check Out My Free 10 Day Course Here
Table Of Contents
Why Did I Make This Change?
The free course I put together teaches essential information that I wish I knew when I first got started trying to make money online so this free course was designed to give a step by step overview of how to make money with websites with 10 separate daily lessons. Rather than relying on my readers to come to my blog and not know where to go, I wanted them to start with the fundamentals first.
How Did I Make The Change?
In WordPress you can create pages and set one as the “front page” and another as the “posts page” if you set a WordPress page as the front page you’ll get a WordPress page instead of a list of recent blog posts. Then if you set the posts page as a newly created blank page called “Blog” your new blog page will then look like mine: MakeMoneyontheInternet.com/blog but it won’t affect the permalink structure of your existing URL’s.
Here’s What Else I Changed:
One Other Home Page Change:
On the home page I also provide three small graphical links to my blog, my podcast and my story because I didn’t want the home page of my blog to just be a squeeze page / email opt in alone:
That’s why I also left the sidebar on the home page as well with links to my popular posts etc. I don’t want new readers to think that I’m just trying to get them into my free course. I’m confident if they come through to the blog, listen to my podcast or do anything else they’d be interested in joining my free course then so that’s why I set up the design of the home page the way I did.
Podcast Page Change:
I changed my podcast page using PHP if conditional statements so that when someone goes to MakeMoneyontheInternet.com/podcast it’s not just an archive category listing of all my recent podcasts and instead it provides a few options to subscribe to the podcast and explains why I’m doing the podcast etc.
Check out the new podcast page
What Do You Think Of The New Design?
I made several changes and partly why I haven’t published any new blog posts in over two weeks is because I was busy using my normal blog time to focus on writing free content for the course. Check out the new home page, the podcast page and then let me know what you think of the new design in the comments below.
Hey Chris:I am wondering what wordpress theme u used on this blog?
It’s a slightly modified version of AzonTheme.com.
Great idea and super easy to do.
The one thing I noticed is I found this post via twitter but my iGoogle was not updated. Not sure if what you changed changes RSS or if it’s just taking a bit to update my iGoogle feed.
You know I used to think you were different. Cooler than those marketing types who use their blog for the bottom line. Now I’ve been watching for a while and it’s obvious you’ve gone from an honest guy to a salesman. Congrats. Hope you’re having the time of your life.
–Jack
I’m a sales guy because I’m giving away free information in the form of a 10 day course designed to help people avoid the mistakes I made for several years while trying to build my online business?
I’ve always said that on my blog I never intend to make more money talking about making money than I do by actually just doing what I’m talking about on my blog and that’s yet to change.
In any case, I can’t please everyone and if you’re hating on me because I’m giving away free information that I spent a few weeks working on (again, emphasis on free) then I don’t see why that’s a problem…
It’s hard sometimes to shake off comments like these, but too many people seem to expect too much for free. Do your best to ignore these kinds of comments. I think you’re doing a great service for beginners and personally, I enjoy your podcasts and your website enormously. Thank you for your efforts to share your knowledge! The fact is, we all have to make a living somehow, and if you can do that teaching others to be successful, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not pedaling snake oil. You’re telling people what they need to know, that this is hard work and that to be successful you have to put in the work just like with anything else in life.
Hey Terescia,
My skin is pretty thick after writing this blog for nearly two years in this niche as there will always be haters and non believers. The portion of income related to projects from this blog is still dwarfed by comparison to the income I’ve generated from my website projects so I’m not worried about it ๐
I like the new look Chris. I think changing things up once in awhile is a good thing. But I have a question. Do you think that a full page with email sign up like this is better than having a sticky post with the blog posts underneath? I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Well, it’s all sort of a test right now so I’m sure there might be better ways to do things but I’m not sure yet ๐
HI Chris,
I like the look it give it a more personal touch that new visitors can relate too and can easily find what they are looking for. When I first saw the transformation I was kind of taken back but now its straight to the point. Great job plus you stand out from the rest of blogs.
Thanks, yah I know that some people will be turned off but I really believe the free course I put together provides quite a bit of value so we’ll see.
First off let me say that I knew you could create a static page for the home, but I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t affect the permalink structure of the existing URL๏ฟฝs. That’s good to know. I was thinking it would stick blog/ in front of them and change everything. I see now it doesn’t. ๐
It would have been nice to see before and after shots. I always love those. I’ve seen a lot of people use a static page as the opening lately and the only thing that I find frustrating about it is many times they don’t have a blog page to move to. They just have categories broken down and no real way of going back post by post. Drives me crazy! ๐
Great look. Very clean, very simple. I like that. It should really boost your podcast ratings even more.
P.S. I changed my bookmark to be the blog now. I wonder if others will as well? Do you think a move like this could affect your pagerank over time?
Hey Richard,
For before and after shots you can really just look at these two pages:
http://www.makemoneyontheinternet.com/blog (would be the before)
http://www.makemoneyontheinternet.com (would be the after)
I’m not sure how much (if any) impact this will have on my search engine rankings but I’ve never had a huge focus on SEO traffic for this site even though I should probably spend more time on it.
Good job Chris,
The three ‘small’ graphics have text large enough to be the main focal point and certainly were the first thing I saw on your new home page. Once people read your story and realise that you do know what your taking about you’ll have plenty of more sign ups to your free course.
Alway a pleasure to read your latest posts on my iGoogle desktop.
Hey Adrian,
Yah I’ll have to experiment with the home page some more. Perhaps I’ll find that it’s better to use those three graphics on the right hand sidebar or something? We shall see…
Chris
It’s good that you keep your site updated and that i know the things you have changed are for the better.. i hope that you’ll continue improving and upgrading your site!
Thanks ๐
Chris, I sometimes read your site from my ipod touch and there is no way for me to go to blog from this new static screen.
I would suggest correcting this little problem. Who knows how many people are viewing your site from a mobile device…
Fixed – thank you for the heads up ๐
Nice touch with the graphic banners, very professional. Don’t move them to the sidebar, at least I wouldn’t. They look more like a second banner, a helpful one. As for the static page, I still think a blog is better. Oh well, let us know how it works out.
Well, most people that come to this website (I assume) are looking for information like I provide in the free course I put up so I figure just providing that makes more sense than a list of recent blog posts such as this one where a new visitor would be like ‘why am I reading this?’
I like the new design. It’s different than a lot of blogs where most of the content is on the home page. I found that it made me stop and read it just because it caught me off guard that I didn’t land on the blog section. I could see this being used during a free promotion time period like you are but I would be curious to see if going this direction loses traffic if it doesn’t change often.
Yah I plan to do some traffic analysis later to determine how much (if any) impact comes up.
I’m new to wordpress so this really helps a lot. I wanted to have a static page but I didn’t know how until now. Thanks! ๐
I think your blog looks super professional! and for that reason i would like to ask you a question.
I have a wordpress blog as well. when i create a page and make it as an opening page, i dont know how to put the content i want. I want it to be like yours, i mean that the viewer can see summrize posts with picture that Illustrates whats the post about. Do i need a special theme for it or can i stay with my simple and lovely theme?
Everything on this blog is custom. The theme I use is a modified version of AzonTheme.com if you want to check out that one.
By saying everything is custom, do you mean that i can’t make my welcome page look like yours, as long as i dont change the theme? can i copy-paste spcieal code to make it happen? ๐
thanks for the answer.
No you can still do the same thing with the AzonTheme.com I just meant this one has some other customizations not in the other. To be honest the Azon Theme is more user friendly though.
I like your logo as well as your theme. Green looks good; the menu is complete and convenient. I am used to visiting sites that shows the summary of their blogs in the homepage. Though your site doesn’t, it is still convenient since the menu is easy to spot.
Hi Chris,
The new look is cool and spaces are well utilized. I think the latest trend is moving towards “less sidebar” design ๐