I have a question for viewers of my draft website

Another look back article, this time to the 2013 draft.

http://pigskinprospects.com/analyzing-initial-final-rankings-top-32-prospects-2013-nfl-draft-ended-going/

AB..there is a thread in the draft forum that LasVegasWally made re: who the Niners would have drafted if they listened to Mel Kiper. If you do some of thos on your sites for different teams, that might bring you some hits

Maybe you can do some film study on undrafted free agent rookies and give us your take and maybe even players that the team sat out last year because of injuries.

Originally posted by GORO:
Maybe you can do some film study on undrafted free agent rookies and give us your take and maybe even players that the team sat out last year because of injuries.

Sounds like a good idea.

I have a question for people. Is there a reason why you visit my website, is it because of who I am? Is it the content, is it good, great, bad, terrible,etc... I'm trying to figure out how to get more views. I bring in about 6GB of transfer bandwidth a month the last 3 months, which is great to me, I imagine a site like GBNReport, or Draftcountdown, or Draftbreakdown brings in double a month or more, but I've only had the site for about 3yrs, maybe a few months more than that, and it went from being 18M in rank on Alexa.com to in the 7M rank range from like January-Feb till now.

Idk if anyone knows much about site rankings, am I going by what Alexa.com says as being just too much, and thinking it has to be in the 1M range to be successful, and for me to keep him, or should I just not worry, and keep doing it, because quite frankly I feel I've gotten better, and I enjoy/love doing this.

Any thoughts are welcomed on what you guys would do in my shoes, or anything content wise of course.

And of course I thank everyone who does view the site on a regular basis, I do have early scouting reports out for I think 7 prospects now, and 1 new one every day until July 2nd scheduled now, with more to be scheduled out in the coming days.

Originally posted by BigYellowKahuna:
AB..there is a thread in the draft forum that LasVegasWally made re: who the Niners would have drafted if they listened to Mel Kiper. If you do some of thos on your sites for different teams, that might bring you some hits

Another great idea. Like maybe look back at what I had them doing in my final mocks, or going from 1st to last mock type thing.

Originally posted by AB81Rules:
Sounds like a good idea.

I have a question for people. Is there a reason why you visit my website, is it because of who I am? Is it the content, is it good, great, bad, terrible,etc... I'm trying to figure out how to get more views. I bring in about 6GB of transfer bandwidth a month the last 3 months, which is great to me, I imagine a site like GBNReport, or Draftcountdown, or Draftbreakdown brings in double a month or more, but I've only had the site for about 3yrs, maybe a few months more than that, and it went from being 18M in rank on Alexa.com to in the 7M rank range from like January-Feb till now.

Idk if anyone knows much about site rankings, am I going by what Alexa.com says as being just too much, and thinking it has to be in the 1M range to be successful, and for me to keep him, or should I just not worry, and keep doing it, because quite frankly I feel I've gotten better, and I enjoy/love doing this.

Any thoughts are welcomed on what you guys would do in my shoes, or anything content wise of course.

And of course I thank everyone who does view the site on a regular basis, I do have early scouting reports out for I think 7 prospects now, and 1 new one every day until July 2nd scheduled now, with more to be scheduled out in the coming days.

I think for something like the draft site, you should do it because you enjoy doing it and really want to put out the highest quality content you can.

If you are really passionate about it, and keep doing it year in year out, and improving, the site will increase in popularity. But IMO if you set out focused on the site's popularity, you will be dissapointed/frustrated and the quality will suffer.

"Build it and they will come"

One of my roommates is a digital editor so I talk to him pretty often about the website/news business. Its a very difficult business to make any money in, and completely dependent on generating unique viewers.

The main strategies for getting unique viewers are:
-Create a lot of short articles very often, always putting out content. But these articles shouldn't be lengthy or time consuming because a) you will be putting in way more time into it than its worth and b) these articles are for people just looking for a quick skim read on their phone or something. This helps get people to periodically check your site because then you become a site that "hey there is always something there to read." Also this helps people find you on Google, because you in theory are covering a lot of topic areas that people will Google.

-Try to maintain a solid database of information to be a "node" of information. If people know they can go to your site to find basic information on prospects, they are very likely to keep using your site because it establishes reliability. Think about people that go to ESPN to look at stats, ESPN gets a s**tload of unique viewers simply because people know they can find X,Y,Z stat on there.

-Doing the scouting reports, in my opinion, is a great idea. I mean on one hand its risky, lets say you say "Player X is slow," you might get a ton of people (such as fans of the school) hate on your analysis, or he might go to the combine and run a blazing 40. So you take a hit on credibility. However, I think its worth the risk simply because it sets your site apart from others. I mean anyone can do lists and rankings, you have to have content that sets you apart because if people think "oh hey I can get rankings AND more info if I go here," over time they will pick your site over other sites that just have rankings

-For draft sites, if you are the "Go-to" site for stuff like measurable, awards etc. IMO you will get people to use your site, and LINK to your site.

-Try to find contributors that are willing to do content for free. They should submit articles to you that you edit based on the style you want for your site and they get the credit for the article. This helps meet the first part about creating every-day content. Because if its a one-man show its difficult to always pump out stuff

-Videos. I don't know your technical capabilities, but this is the age of YouTube. If you are ever able to record a game and highlight a specific player or put together highlight clips or something, I think that would generate a ton of viewers. Of course there are legal issues with using TV Channel's content, and I'm sure its incredibly time consuming and expensive to video capture and put up on YouTube. But people love videos.

-The long journalism is still important too, I think its what creates loyal readers if the content is good. Short articles and databases get people to visit, but I think in-depth material gets people to stay and talk about a site/recommend it to friends. College football has a nice rhythm to it since Saturday is typically a game day.

-Nobody reads your stuff. This is the gripe of everyone that writes content online, which is why I think you need to do it out of passion and not hopes everybody reads your stuff. Even if you are a paid journalist publishing on professional sites, you are still going to say "Nobody reads my stuff." Its very rare to actually get a site/article/post to go viral and become very popular. And even then most people are basically skimming a few lines and clicking on another site.

Originally posted by SunDevilNiner79:

Originally posted by AB81Rules:
Sounds like a good idea.

I have a question for people. Is there a reason why you visit my website, is it because of who I am? Is it the content, is it good, great, bad, terrible,etc... I'm trying to figure out how to get more views. I bring in about 6GB of transfer bandwidth a month the last 3 months, which is great to me, I imagine a site like GBNReport, or Draftcountdown, or Draftbreakdown brings in double a month or more, but I've only had the site for about 3yrs, maybe a few months more than that, and it went from being 18M in rank on Alexa.com to in the 7M rank range from like January-Feb till now.

Idk if anyone knows much about site rankings, am I going by what Alexa.com says as being just too much, and thinking it has to be in the 1M range to be successful, and for me to keep him, or should I just not worry, and keep doing it, because quite frankly I feel I've gotten better, and I enjoy/love doing this.

Any thoughts are welcomed on what you guys would do in my shoes, or anything content wise of course.

And of course I thank everyone who does view the site on a regular basis, I do have early scouting reports out for I think 7 prospects now, and 1 new one every day until July 2nd scheduled now, with more to be scheduled out in the coming days.

I think for something like the draft site, you should do it because you enjoy doing it and really want to put out the highest quality content you can.

If you are really passionate about it, and keep doing it year in year out, and improving, the site will increase in popularity. But IMO if you set out focused on the site's popularity, you will be dissapointed/frustrated and the quality will suffer.

"Build it and they will come"

One of my roommates is a digital editor so I talk to him pretty often about the website/news business. Its a very difficult business to make any money in, and completely dependent on generating unique viewers.

The main strategies for getting unique viewers are:
-Create a lot of short articles very often, always putting out content. But these articles shouldn't be lengthy or time consuming because a) you will be putting in way more time into it than its worth and b) these articles are for people just looking for a quick skim read on their phone or something. This helps get people to periodically check your site because then you become a site that "hey there is always something there to read." Also this helps people find you on Google, because you in theory are covering a lot of topic areas that people will Google.

-Try to maintain a solid database of information to be a "node" of information. If people know they can go to your site to find basic information on prospects, they are very likely to keep using your site because it establishes reliability. Think about people that go to ESPN to look at stats, ESPN gets a s**tload of unique viewers simply because people know they can find X,Y,Z stat on there.

-Doing the scouting reports, in my opinion, is a great idea. I mean on one hand its risky, lets say you say "Player X is slow," you might get a ton of people (such as fans of the school) hate on your analysis, or he might go to the combine and run a blazing 40. So you take a hit on credibility. However, I think its worth the risk simply because it sets your site apart from others. I mean anyone can do lists and rankings, you have to have content that sets you apart because if people think "oh hey I can get rankings AND more info if I go here," over time they will pick your site over other sites that just have rankings

-For draft sites, if you are the "Go-to" site for stuff like measurable, awards etc. IMO you will get people to use your site, and LINK to your site.

-Try to find contributors that are willing to do content for free. They should submit articles to you that you edit based on the style you want for your site and they get the credit for the article. This helps meet the first part about creating every-day content. Because if its a one-man show its difficult to always pump out stuff

-Videos. I don't know your technical capabilities, but this is the age of YouTube. If you are ever able to record a game and highlight a specific player or put together highlight clips or something, I think that would generate a ton of viewers. Of course there are legal issues with using TV Channel's content, and I'm sure its incredibly time consuming and expensive to video capture and put up on YouTube. But people love videos.

-The long journalism is still important too, I think its what creates loyal readers if the content is good. Short articles and databases get people to visit, but I think in-depth material gets people to stay and talk about a site/recommend it to friends. College football has a nice rhythm to it since Saturday is typically a game day.

-Nobody reads your stuff. This is the gripe of everyone that writes content online, which is why I think you need to do it out of passion and not hopes everybody reads your stuff. Even if you are a paid journalist publishing on professional sites, you are still going to say "Nobody reads my stuff." Its very rare to actually get a site/article/post to go viral and become very popular. And even then most people are basically skimming a few lines and clicking on another site.

What would you recommend as a good number of articles to produce each day/week?

I always thought about YouTube, but I have no background with being able to create a video, I don't have any capture software, or anything that would help me do this right now.

I've talked to a friend, the guy who runs NinersNation.com, and he said the Alexa.com rankings isn't really the be all end all type thing of ranking in his opinion. I'm just trying to get a fan base, and have them stick to following the site.

Whenever I get writers they normally disappear quickly, so that's why everything is written by myself(Not calling anyone out).

I think people don't want to write for a site for free, unfortunately I don't have the kind of income that could pay people X amount of dollars a month or per article. So it's tough to get people to hop on board.

Bump, looking for anyone who is willing to help contribute, doesn't have to be a ton of work, whatever you would like to do, whether gathering data, like stats, or a weekly article.

Also always looking for suggestions on unique content.

Ok, so had an issue a while back, where the site got messed up, was down for a bit, and lost some of my Admin users, if anyone was on the site before, or wants to join in, and help write, not expecting a lot, just a piece every now and then, I handle all the major stuff, anyone is welcome to help. I of course want people who are 1. Not bias when writing, and 2. Actually know what they are talking about.

So let me know if anyone wants on board.

Open up your focus to include fantasy football. The draft is for the offseason, but fantasy football is mostly year round.

Originally posted by theninermaniac:
Open up your focus to include fantasy football. The draft is for the offseason, but fantasy football is mostly year round.

I would need someone to join who knows fantasy football better than me, I haven't played since like 2012 or so.

On a side note, Leon McQuay III's father is following my NFLdraftpig twitter account, and favorited, and retweeted my scouting report on his son.

I have no clue what Reddit is, I know right, but I made a page for the website, https://www.reddit.com/domain/pigskinprospects.com/ , if anyone is a reddit member, please share it, trying to get as many new followers as possible.

Also comments now work on the site, all posts/pages are now open for comments, via Disqus, so please comment, and discus between each other.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me, I'm having a blast doing this, right now the site is ranked in the 300,000s in traffic in the US according to Alexa.com, so I'm pretty happy, and we went over 3GBs bandwidth for August already, almost as much as last month combined.