My New Website And Ultimate-life-purpose-course Review

[Gerhard]

Hi all, I'm hoping this falls under career/entrepreneurship well enough,,

I have recently taken a big leap and decided to not renew my contract with previous employer, and instead go full out on trying to create my own independent income creating a website, which has a few novel features. After 6 months of teaching myself the necessary coding and creating the infrastructure needed, it is finally reaching a phase where it is usable, and now the nerves are coming through as the idea will be put to test in the harsh, uncaring world of the marketplace Leo's videos on business has made me very anxious

I was hoping to ask you guys a two part question

1) The idea of the website is to combine aspects of a wiki and aspects of a forum (I won't say too much more as the process should be spontaneous). The first few articles I have started have been on topics that I find interesting, and one of them included a "Review of Actualized.org", and another Review was on Leo's Life Purpose Course (I love Leo's top-quality content, so I'm sure the forums will say positive things too, hopefully the pages could maybe help promote Leo's Life Purpose Course  ). The name of the website is "ReviewedByConsensus.com", and as the name suggests, the idea is for people to use the forums naturally, and from what is said in the forum a "Consensus" is written, which should mention all major perspectives which feature in the forum. So far for the two pages I mentioned about Actualized.org, I have created all the content myself, but the idea is to have more opinions than my just own! So if anyone does care to mention any thoughts they have relating to Actualized.org or the Ultimate Life Purpose Course (especially if anyone has actually purchased it!), that would be so greatly appreciated!  I think it would be a good test run of the general system, and I'll update the "Consensus" to agree with what you guys say -- The forum section over there does not require registering to use so as make it easy for everyone to access, although unfortunately to do sub-threaded-replies doesn't work for Anons due to a software limitation atm ---- so to sum up, not really a question I guess, more asking for help to test out my idea so that I can see if the "Forum Section" at the website works as intended.

2) I've provided two links below, any feedback on the website would be appreciated if you do spend any time on the website - that would be HUGELY appreciated (hopefully nothing too harsh comes along, but I'd rather hear the harsh truth than be oblivious to it). Seriously, any feedback at all, about the theming, ease-of-use, technical aspects... anything (except maybe that I need more content, I am in the process of doing that, as well as general polishing)

Peace be with everyone, I'm really nervous about this risky venture, wish me good luck

Here are the links:

• Review of Actualized.org
• Review of Actualized.org's Ultimate Life Purpose Course

Edited July 10, 2016 by Gerhard
Caps needed

[Time Traveler]

I didn't understand what the first question was about, so I'll try to answer the second one which was "any feedback at all."

My impression is that this site is empty  oh shit, sorry, that if you plan to be successful with that type of site you'll had to do one of two:

1) find the niche where competition is very low, but demand for information is very high (clearly no self help)

2) put into your site so much high quality content that you will rank higher then number 10 in search engines for majority of requests.

If you know another plan, please tell us.

[Gerhard]

7 minutes ago, Time Traveler said:

I didn't understand what the first question was about, so I'll try to answer the second one which was "any feedback at all."

My impression is that this site is empty  oh shit, sorry, that if you plan to be successful with that type of site you'll had to do one of two:

1) find the niche where competition is very low, but demand for information is very high (clearly no self help)

2) put into your site so much high quality content that you will rank higher then number 10 in search engines for majority of requests.

If you know another plan, please tell us.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out TT.
Yup, I agree it's pretty empty, I'm just trying to get a proof of concept / feedback with this one example -- I'm sure I have a lot more tweaks to make, and don't want to be making those only after having written 50+ more pages. And yup you're right, niche competition is a big deal (my first 10 or so pages about lucid dreaming, nootropics were a big bomb because there is so much competition), but "Review for Actualized.org" and the ULPC is actually a nice little niche to get started I reckon

Thanks again TT, I always appreciate someone taking out time from their day, and all good points.
Any more feedback would be greatly appreciated!

PS I added a sentence to first question at the end, does it make sense now?

[Time Traveler]

OK, I do not agree that tweaks to "mechanics" of your website are harder to make when you have more content or that ease of use / look of website are more important then content.

 

If I was to build review site, I'd try to invent some "knowledge aggregation engine" which would scan web for all reviews and make aggregated (summary) review for every item.

And i would definitely test how many review requests of every kind are made and how many actual reviews are out there for every request.  Some times there are only product owners reviews available disguised as real peoples reviews, these can be good niches to target if anyone would be interested in product.

But that's just my way of thinking, sure you can do it your way.

Could you give us links to your  first 10 or so pages ?

[Gerhard]

I do not disagree with your first point, true enough

Good point about finding niches where "there are only product owners reviews available disguised as real peoples reviews", that would work really with what I'm going for. I'll check that out for some ideas

Yea, and I think I really see what you mean by "empty", I'll do some major formatting to make it feel more article-like and visually appealing

Just to save some space, I won't post all 10 links here, but they're all immediately visible on the home page: ReviewedByConsensus.com
Keep in mind, those ones will also look very empty at the moment, they were more starting point for a conversation to start-up

Edited July 10, 2016 by Gerhard

[Omega]

You talk and talk about formatting, layout/presentation, and all this 'improvement', marketing/niche stuff. (I try to generalize the discussion.) What exactly are you trying to accomplish with ReviewedByConsensus.com?

Urgh.. This.. There are so many aspiring life coaches... We can't all be self-help gurus. The problem is that while the information may be important to share, aspiring coaches primarily pass on information with a lack of originality. Don't reinvent the wheel by writing all those articles. Sure, if that is what drives you, go for it.

I think that your focus with the site is too scattered with written Wikipedia-style articles on self-help material, 'fun'-quizzes plus forum/consensus-reviews.

However, customer reviewing for self-help METHODS, not necessarily the material - not "recommendations of 'best, most life-changing' self-help courses". YES! I like that idea very much. We need statistics in personal development. What methods ACTUALLY work? E.g., what lucid dreaming methods produce the most results the most consistently? Results dependent on personality types, etc.? We need something more tangible, numbers, graphs, pool results - not dismissing subjective, emotional ratings. More transparency and possibly formula-orientation, tossing out my ideas, allowing people to judge value/effort, grounding personal development in worthiness of pursuit.

(Up till now, I have mostly just read batches of diaries and biographies, trying to understand common challenges, pitfalls, success principles, etc.)

Did you learn to code and subsequently quit your job to start that website?
And do you really intend to earn money through your website through general, non-specific, random, affiliate marketing?
Please reconsider that. I hope that this feedback will be useful  Maybe raised new ideas?

Edited July 10, 2016 by Blaze35

[Gerhard]

What the website is trying to accomplish is basically to have a forum or forums discussing a particular topic, (such as, people's thoughts on the Ultimate Life Purpose Course, and then from what everyone says in the forums, all the major trains of thought can be summarised in a Wikipedia style manner at the top

Yea, that's a good idea about trying to put some statistics to it, were you thinking of something like the Review of the Ultimate Life Purpose Course page (link in the original post, I can't post it here for some reason)? After an edit I just made, there's now a place to write your subjective opinion in the forum, rate from 0 - 100, and I just added a poll too (the poll could be used more flexibly on other pages perhaps). Is there anything you would change if you were I?
What it will need though is people to rate the course!!

Yea I taught myself some coding first, but I've still been learning all the time so far!

Well, my first focus was to get the website started and ranking in some searches, but I was thinking of adding page specific affiliate links on pages where it would be relevant (eg. on a nootropic discussing page) once I reach that stage.

Thanks for the other info and feedback, much appreciated and I'll definitely carry them forward! Definitely new thoughts to swirl around in my head tonight!!

[Time Traveler]

1 hour ago, Blaze35 said:

...

However, customer reviewing for self-help METHODS, not necessarily the material - not "recommendations of 'best, most life-changing' self-help courses". YES! I like that idea very much. We need statistics in personal development. What methods ACTUALLY work? E.g., what lucid dreaming methods produce the most results the most consistently? Results dependent on personality types, etc.? We need something more tangible, numbers, graphs, pool results - not dismissing subjective, emotional ratings. More transparency and possibly formula-orientation, tossing out my ideas, allowing people to judge value/effort, grounding personal development in worthiness of pursuit....

Yes, that would be interesting.

But also time consuming, to get all stats. Seems like building another Google of Actualization

And another BIG question: can it be monetized ?

[Omega]

33 minutes ago, Time Traveler said:

And another BIG question: can it be monetized ?

Trustpilot does something similar, but their cash flow strategy would not be appropriate for ReviewedByConsensus.com, if a community is to be build around the site, I think.

[Gerhard]

Thanks for the input Blaze and TT, I'll keep your points in mind, and I've tried to incorporate them into my next page on doing strong determination sits -- hopefully it doesn't look empty, there are a few statistics people can engage on, and I've focused on making the content higher quality. I do think this page is of much better quality compared to the previous ones, I should revisit those some time (although they aren't in a promising niche). It seems like the next few weeks will be looking for niche articles to write, writing them, and learning, and hopefully the traffic builds up over time!

Any more input would of course be much appreciated

[abrakamowse]

How are you going to generate income from that website? Just curious.

And, I don't know if this has to do with what you think to put on the website, but I was thinking that helpful guides about how to meditate, techniques to get enlightened can attract a lot of people.

But I am not sure if it is in the scope of your website.

On the other hand, the site works really well, it's a true wiki. I like that and the idea of having it connected with a forum, I never saw a wiki with forum, but maybe it's me that I don't know too much about wiki software. Nice.

Did you have any knowledge of web programming before?

 

Nice website!

[Gerhard]

Thanks for some kind words!

In terms of income, I was hoping to use affiliate links to websites related to a particular page (such as nootropic suppliers on any nootropic pages for instance), but I'd have to expand into other topics other than meditation and self-improvement at some point (and possibly Google Adsense as well) - If anyone has other ideas, I'd be keen to hear it out! however, I wouldn't consider paid membership or sponsored reviews.

 

I think I will continue to create some pages on meditation in the near-moderate future if you (and TT and Blaze) think there's a demand there to be fulfilled, if nothing else I enjoy creating useful content on that topic

 

Before I started this project, I had a little bit of practice fiddling around with my computer, and I also took two units in uni

Thanks again for all the input so far!! and again, any more would be appreciated; I feel like the input so far has already helped me a lot
 

[abrakamowse]

@Gerhard  Cool, I let you know if I have any idea or suggestion. Good luck in your project!

[poimandres]

Above all else: congrats on the launch. You've accomplished more than 95% of people will ever accomplish in life. The lessons learned are invaluable in this project and your next ones.

Unfiltered feedback:

1) What about a ranking system? Similar to Reddit/YouTube. Higher the ranking, the more practical/effective the technique. Rate articles, videos, etc, look at the thumbs up button here, for example.

2) I wouldn't think a wiki would be an optimal platform to accomplish want you are looking to do. Look at how others are doing something similar with building a community and do it. Great artists steal. Consumerreports.org for example. 

Good luck!

Edited July 12, 2016 by agnosis

[Gerhard]

Thanks for all the support, it's helping me push on!

In terms of 1), I already have a capability sort of like that, (which is applicable for some, but not all pages), you can see here if anyone is interested: How to Have Your First Lucid Dream.

It's not the most elegant of solutions, but with my current resources it's the best I can do, and I reckon it gets the job done. If you have any thoughts on it I'd be keen to hear. I'm thinking it might get crowded with too many options, so I think putting them in expanding tables as I've done a few other places might be a good alternative for that.

 

For 2), you could be right, but I really hope not! My whole website has been built with it as a wiki in mind, so I don't think I could really change it apart from starting a new project (thanks for your thoughts though). And thanks for telling me about consumerreports.org, they do something similar, and I got at least some inspiration from there

I've already received more feedback than I thought I would, thanks everyone!!!! But once again if anyone has more feedback at all, I'm all ears