Win 5,000 Visitors by Reviewing Retireat21.com

My thoughts:

* What can Michael do to improve the interviews?
The interviews look solid. However, the write up leaves something to be desired. It is a lot of straight text. Try to mix in bullet/numbers lists, take advantage of Italic and Bold fonts to help emphasize certain points. I am drawn toward your bold question, but not so much to the answer.

* Design — I like the use of green/black/white on the site. You are pushing money so you went with colors to reflect that. However your main page, to me, looks like a way to just make money. 6 – 125×125 ads, a newsletter/ebook sign-up, two partial answers that require a click, a ad banner that is larger than your content. You offer no real main page content which seems like you are trying to just increase page views and ad impressions. Give new visitors a reason to stay be offering some content when they show up. Make them want to keep reading because you have solid advice not because they are forced to.

* Content — A great post would be to take tips from each interview and create a top tips from top web entrepreneurs post. Top domain ideas/site ideas/monetization ideas. A best of the best type post could generate nice buzz.

* Monetization — The lack of ant contextual ads from google is surprising. You have a nice set of keywords and you don’t seem to be taking advantage of it.

The interviews seem pretty in-depth. Something that would make them even more interesting is to ask a case where they learned something they never read about anywhere else – simply due to pure experience.

People always like to know what makes other people cling on, while the rest let go.

Design – First of all, you have “home.php” as part of your html on the homepage. Get rid off it. The font for the navigation on top is too small, perhaps giving it a diff. background color would help as well. I think you need a more definitive logo, rather than just a text based one with a “@” symbol. The rest is satisfactory. Perhaps not having your photo at the top of every page of the site would help as well. This would give it a more “resourceful” view rather than a “personal” one. Maybe if you place it at the bottom, except for the homepage of course.

Content – An idea for a viral post could be an overview of before and after summaries of people you have interviewed along with some of their most treasured secrets. Then let people vote for a winner and offer a prize of a one on one consultation to a random voter/reader/commenter.

Promotion – You seem to be doing pretty good so far. You could also try doing case studies and do a group project with interested bloggers. Let them write about you, the person who sends the most traffic gets a prize that you get sponsored by someone else.

SEO – Yeah, you have too many spammy links at the bottom of your site. If they turn humans off, they probably turn spiders off too.

Monetization – Probably doing more in depth reviews of products used by people you interview, with affiliate links obviously. Gives a more credible stance to it, you know what I mean?

Crossing my fingers so that you like my suggestions good enough for winning.

The most ironic thing is that it’s my 22nd birthday today.

I wonder what would happen if you had posted this yesterday.

Well, you didn’t ask about mechanics, but the site does not validate – and it’s really odd to see a site use an : XHTML 1.0 Transitional Doctype and not even come close to being so.. usually sites that don’t care about validation wouldn’t choose that as their Doctype. Anyway, it would all be easy stuff to fix, so its kind of silly.

Interviews: repetitive text at the beginning.

“Interview with Matt Wegrzyn of Bodis.com – a very young and very successful domainer. ”

“Interview with Matt Wegrzyn of Bodis.com – a very young and very successful domainer”

Careless with mechanics: many questions do not end with question marks.

The front page disclaims the emphasis on youth, but obviously the prejudice is there: constant repetition of “young, young, young”

Other than that, I thought the interviews were insightful – certainly so on the questioners part.

But the whole website screams careless: “there” for “their”, “lets” for “let’s”, lower case “i” when it should be upper case:
front page carelessness, worst place to have it, big turnoff.

The carelessness continues within: “bit to risky” and so on..

I’d move all those junk ads off the front page. Some of ’em I’d get rid of permanently, but the front page is not the place to start assaulting me with “Make $5,000.00 a week!”. It makes the site look spammy, and the interviews definitely are NOT, so it is sending the wrong message.

But then again, everything does. Those “click here for full answer” links. Great idea, but the resulting anseeres are disappointing (no depth) and the big newsletter promotion at the top screams spamming.

Overall, this blog says “young, careless, hard sell” to me. It’s NOT going to attract older people because of that.

I would: clean up the grammatical errors and spelling, de-spammify it by cutting back on the hard sell throughout, and stop concentrating so much on “young” – I don’t mean cut all that out, but cut back on the concentration, the emphasis (unless, of course, you only want the young – in that case, don’t).

Your interview with Allen Carlton was good in that respect (de-emphasis on youth).

Stop turning off older readers. Your http://www.retireat21.com/young-entrepreneurs-who-changed-the-internet/
needs an acknowledgment that older people have value too..

More carelessness there: “Were possible” s/b “Where possible”.

Even your “About” box: “more geared towards retiring prior to having a fake hip installed”. C’mon – that’s bad, bad, bad. That whole thing needs rewriting.

Then when we click on through:

About pages written in the third person are not good.. and what the heck is that ever-present newsletter ad doing on the about page?? And again, the concentration on youth: “The scariest part is that these young entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger”.

Michael, you have an inspiring story there. Tell it in the first person, and while you are writing it remember: YOU get older every day. Someday YOU will be 40, 50, 60.. try to keep that in mind as you write.

Cutting down on spammy: Your http://www.retireat21.com/blog/9-ways-to-increase-your-blogs-traffic-for-free/
is way too enthusiastic and lacks depth. Point out why some of these things are just pyramid schemes, why some could damage your reputation.. this is very shallow stuff, little meat. You obviously have the intelligence to dig in and see beyond the gloss, but you aren’t doing it enough.

Stop plugging that newsletter and ebook so loudly on every single page. Move that off to a sidebar where it won’t be so spammy.

I hope you can understand that the best thing that can happen to this site is for you to get a little older.. a little more judgment, less carelessness, less hard sell.. and less age prejudice – again, unless that’s your aim, and if it is, then just forget the disclaimers about not worrying about being older. If you want the young market and nothing but, embrace that, celebrate it, live it: there’s nothing wrong with that.

Hi!
First of all: I like the topic of the website.

I like the informal style of interviewing and their pretty bare transcription: it fits the “young” image the site boasts. But reading through the interviews I can’t help but think: these should have been video interviews!! That is of course a lot more work for you, but it would definitely add to a quality impression. Your content is already of good quality – now make it look like you put more effort into it than transcribing a phone call! ;)

A second thought about the interviews: to find the questions your readership is interested in, you could try and announce an interview before you’ll have it, and let people suggest questions (perhaps through a comment section). The interviews currently have no comment section either – is there a reason why you made a separate blog section? (which isn’t the first thing one finds – I wouldn’t have noticed if this review didn’t get me to stick around a bit longer) I’d say, just combine the blog with the interviews, making the site overall more interactive.

Site design: the navigation bar is messed up in Firefox 2.0.0.10 – some of the items fall half below the visible region. This is easy to fix. Something more important: your current advertisers are putting up animated images that degrade your site’s appearance (eg. “Make 5000 a week!!!” is flashing all the time). If you’re catering to the business crowd, you don’t want the “online casino” look…

Another thing I like: the “ask an entrepreneur” section. You could improve on it a bit by putting a name with the answer – which super-entrepreneur is answering my question? This makes it more personal.

I don’t have viral post idea for you, but here are some general thoughts on content that would fit your site. People who come to a site about successful entrepreneurs are probably looking for that feeling of success. Running some news/opinions about the lifestyle bits that go with such success would cater to the needs of that audience. You can talk about which cars the “top 21” (I like that section too btw) drive, what places they go for food, parties, etc…

And what about this one: which schools did they attend? What courses did they follow? In general: is there a common factor you can find? There’s still a lot more material you can generate around the interviews, is all I’m saying.

Promotion? I’d say you need a big resource-type section. Your other content – interviews and stuff you promote – are interesting to someone who has already found the site. They aren’t the type of things people looked for in a google search query. If you set up something like info pages for school kids about which colleges they should aim for (again: make it interactive) – that will draw in visitors. Once they’re on your site they’ll find the interviews are cool.

SEO – I had to look up the term, so take my advice with a grain of salt :) The only thing I noticed: no tags on your blog posts right now…

On monetisation: take it easy. You want to keep a quality image. If you have good books, good courses, good advice to sell – that’s all fine. Reconsider the shouting adds – they’re short term income.

Interviews :: I would like to see the young people interact with older more seasoned entrepreneurs to show the contrasts and comparisons. It would provide a nice contrast to the site. Maybe even some interviews with veteran money makers.

Design :: It is clean and has great ‘pop’. It looks professional and will make first time visitors want to explore deeper. It could use some more ‘focused’ and visual navigation on the front page to move visitors in the right direction. some peoples eyes will get lost looking for a graphic to click on…give it to them. The text nav is great for people looking for that. I also think you’re asking too much of visitors right when they get there when dead center on the front page you are asking for their email address…high pressure is out. On some monitor resolutions the headline for the first post is below the fold.

Content :: Be careful with content about how to make money, there is too much out there. From what I have read the site isn’t making any outrageous claims which is good. But be careful and distance yourself from sites like that. People will scoot on by if they get the idea that it is a ‘get rich quick site’

Promotion :: A front page ad in the New York Times would be nice. But let’s be real. I would look to getting banners on a few blogs/sites that have the traffic you are looking for. I would stay away from keyword campaigns as this genre is super saturated and wouldn’t be cost effective. At the end of the day good content is gonna get you there.

SEO :: Loads fine. You hit the magic number of scripts (3). I’m sure there is a site map, but I couldn’t find it. No live bookmark/RSS icon in the address bar. There is a Feedburner icon to grab the feed, but you need to stick with the standards, drop the RSS icon somewhere high on the page.

Monetization :: Maybe too many ‘blinking’ ads. A little annoying. But then again…the people you want will probably click them and people that are annoyed by them wouldn’t click on the regardless.

Good Luck

# Design — Navigation is ok, the only thing I don’t like is the flashy ads, yes they do make you look at them but I think color “red” is not what it should be on there. Down almost by the footer you have lots of space and you could use it either for ads or something else. Remove those 125 readers and place RSS button instead.

# Content — Content should be always something regarding your given domain name, so don’t write about cloths if your blog is about making money. Overall content is not bad, make sure you point out stuff in first 160 characters because that is what is going to be displayed on google search.

# Promotion — Adsense? it could get expensive tho, due to high volume of “make money online” keyword, try private ads just like the one here on problogger, hit more other blogs like problogger yes you will pay more but you will be more known if you know what i mean?

# SEO — you placed keywords but not description? ON MAIN PAGE? get that done today and remove keywords and place description for your blog. Get some plugin that does the auto description. Like for wordpress “All in one seo pack”

# Monetization— Since your blog is fairly new, try to keep less ads on your blog, don’t make your visitors belive you created that blog just to make money and that you are not devoted and passionate about your content. See http://www.bontb.com for example.

Design —

The first thing I would do is get the sidebar working in IE7, it wraps to the bottom of the screen.

Next I think the typography could use a lot of improvement all around the board. There’s no consistancy with line-height, line breaks, type column widths, etc. Settling on a group of typographic styles is very important to keep the reading as easy as possible for your visitors. If you can get a set of conventions going then there’s much less effort involved after reading a few articles.

I would also like to see regular navigation at the top of the page instead of a sitemap. There’s too much text and it’s too small. I really had to look for what I wanted instead of easily finding the blog or interviews. Maybe moving the sitemap to the end of the page would make more sense so if someone doesn’t find what they’re looking for they then can check the sitemap. You could also devote more space to it and make it more readable.

Content —

The interviews aren’t that bad at all although the author could definitely use some copywriting improvements, especially with his headlines. He could also follow up his questions better by asking the interviewee to further explain their one sentence answers.

The blog section needs a lot of work and the posts could be a lot more thoughtful and turned into complete posts. Most of the blog postings are have baked ideas and with not a lot of meaty reading

As far as a viral post, I’d worry about writing some really solid content to actually make going viral worth it.

Promotion —

I would start by activily participating in dicussions on other sites within his niche in effect proving he’s worth his salt by adding to the conversation. He doesn’t have to find 100 sites and comment on each post or in every forum, but find some with high volumes of traffic and start building there.

Maybe he could try and win this contest himself and get 5000 free visitors to his site :)

SEO —

I would start by adding alt attributes to every image and title attributes to every link. He could also work on his keyword usage in his titles for both the interviews and the blog posts. I would also recommend using h1 heading tags for the titles and h2’s for the subheadings or questions in the interview. I would also get rid of using tables for layout in some spots that aren’t necessary so crawlers don’t choke on them. It also looks like he’s missing the meta information for most every page.

Monetization —

I think he should get rid of all the flashing ads in such close proximity to each other, I just look away and definitely don’t even think of clicking. He could also try to use a few text based ads for readers who scan text rather than images.

CFO Yourself – you guessed right, here in comments is fine.

Eric – we close this Friday – Australian time. To be safe get your comment in by Thursday.

How about some legit businesses, instead of promoting domain squatters and MLM’s? Or are there no such honest ways for very young people to make oodles of money?

1st interview is with a “domainer”–in other words, one of those obnoxious squatters who register domains and charge exorbitant prices for them.

The 2nd and 3rd interviews are with “affiliate marketers”–in other words, people who have figured out how to artificially drive traffic to sites and make money off it. It’s a form of spammer, in my opinion.

The ads on the side include some popular Multi-Level Marketing schemes.

I’m very unhappy with this post, ProBlogger. Usually your stuff is very top notch. This one seems like the folks at retireat21.com paid you to write it.

I wouldn’t change anything. Once I saw this site I spent about half an hour reading through the different articles and interviews, which is very uncommon I think with sites on this topic. Great content, design and a layout which makes it easy for people to delve deep into the site.

Arriving at the home page reminds me of the many landing pages for ebooks out there. On first loading, I immediately ignored the newsletter sign up form because it looked like it was a form for buying an ebook. You also break some usability conventions on that very form. For example, the fields are coloured yellow, which will mean different things to different people (e.g. Google Toolbar users will recognise this as meaning there is data available to be populated into those fields). You also use an image of a Windows XP form button. I can’t quite figure out why. I’m on a Mac so seeing this button scares me and puts me off. If I’m on Windows I’m going to assume I can resize the text as per usual and I would expect the slight highlight on hovering over the button. But there’s no hover behaviour and as the button is an image, the text can’t be resized. It just seems gimmicky for the sake of being gimmicky.

The front page also seems to be missing one very crucial element, a description of what the site does. The tagline “Young entrepreneurs making money online” implies that it’s a site documenting successful, young entrepreneurs. This is then reinforced by the fact that the most prominent space on the page is occupied by a list of interviews. There’s very little above the fold on the first page that really sets out the purpose of the site.

On a more practical note, I find some of the navigation extremely confusing. I clicked on one of the links in the sidebar of the home page that points to a recent blog post. This one. Yet when I get there, there’s no interview on that page. Instead it’s just a placeholder blog post that points to another page within your site. And then, to make matters worse, clicking the link to the interview opens up in a new window. There’s really no justification for opening links in new windows these days, especially when linking within a site. It would seem sensible to incorporate the interviews into the regular flow of the blog, you could tweak your theme fairly easily to achieve this. This would also assist in constructing a structure to the site, which seems to be sorely lacking at the moment.

Another inexcusable omission is that of search functionality. if it’s there, I can’t find it anywhere. And in the area where I would expect to find it (i.e.t he top right), there is a subscribe field which many users will attempt to enter search criteria into.

I took a look at the “Making Money Online” page and a few things struck me. Firstly, the main content column is too wide and that hurts readability. Secondly, there’s an awful lot of text there that hasn’t been broken up much. There’s also a table further down which is coloured in such a way that it is somewhat difficult to read. Your methods for scoring each type of site aren’t really explained either, which will reduce the amount of confidence a reader will ultimately have in your findings. (and what’s the difference between a website and a blog?).

This diminishing reader confidence is exacerbated when you scroll slightly further down the page, to the section that has products you have used. You seem to have added some quotes to this section but have failed to cite them correctly. This raises two questions. Firstly, where do the quotes come from? Are they from genuine users or just from the sales page? It’s heavily implied that they are not from you. Secondly, if you have used these products to make yourself “a lot of money online” why aren’t we reading your opinion of the products, and what they did for you. of you want to sell something like those products, back up your sales pitch with cold hard facts that resonate with your readers. If the facts, and positive effects of those products, have been personally experienced by you, your readers will empathize and you’ll get more clicks.

After a while of clicking around I found myself in a sort of loop. Each page was pushing the same content. Regular blog posts point to interviews (eventually), the front page points to interviews. You don’t seem to be pushing any of your core content anywhere other than in the top menu bar, which is strange.

Overall, I quite like the look of the site (although I can’t quite shake this feeling that I’ve seen it before) and it’s a nice idea to showcase and inspire young entrepreneurs. Some of the spelling and grammar needs to be looked at and by making some fairly minor changes you could make your blog seem far more authoritative than it does currently. Some of your articles baffled me, and I couldn’t see the source or reasoning behind them. Backing up your content with the research you had performed would be a step in the right direction.

Good luck with it.

If your target audience is young entrepreneurs, than they are the ones who should critique this site.

What I like in a site/blog and what my 21 year old grandson would like to see, is totally different. Thus, I will cut my comment short and move on to another post.

Hi, Michael,

You’ve put a lot of hard work into your entire site. Here are my thoughts and comments. I hope you find something of value in them.

Design: (1) It’s a nice looking site. However, your ebook screams “buy me.” It should be easily seen, but not the first thing a visitor sees. (2) I was frustrated by the fact that there are no complete paragraphs on your home page. Every time I started to read, I was cut off in the middle of a sentence and had to click a link. This made reading difficult and the visitor was left with too much navigation. There should be an enticing paragraph telling what your site has to offer and which makes the reader want to go looking for more to read, especially on your home page. (3) Your tag line also bothers me. “Young Entrepreneurs Making Money Online” sounds like the site is only for people already successful. I think a better line would be something like, “Be A Young Entrepreneur Making Money Online.” Those may not be the best words either, but do let the readers know you have something valuable to share with them. (4) There are way too many grammatical errors. One here and there is okay, but there are many. This gives your site an unprofessional and unreliable look. (5) “Ask Entrepreneur” is a good idea. But it should read, “Ask The Entrepreneur.” Also, get rid of the “view full answer” links. Make it easy to read by putting all Q’s & A’s on a separate page. (6) I think switching back and forth from “retire@21” and “retire at 21” is confusing, especially since the URL differs from the site name.

Content: How about titles such as, “Top 10 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make”, or “10 Secrets To Online Success”, or “10 Best Ways To Jump Start Your Business.” Provide good advice that your readers will want to bookmark and read again and again.

SEO: Use Technorati tags. Use key words in titles and your opening sentences.

Monetization: Highly praise the products successful entrepreneurs use and have affiliate links to them. What products work for you? You could use Google ads, but I personally am not a fan of their ads.

Interviews: (1) Put a “Q” by all the questions and an “A” by all the answers. Sometimes your questions are not clear enough to let the reader know it is a question. (2) You tend to repeat the opening line. Readers don’t want their time wasted. (3) The questions don’t go into enough detail about the interviewee’s niche and the steps he/she took to achieve success.

Lastly, the fact that you are catering to the 21 crowd doesn’t bother me. Not every site is for everyone, and I find nothing wrong with targeting a certain group of people. But, I think your site is lacking the most important thing … quality advice! What advice you provide, is hard to find. And that makes me want to click to another site. If I am looking for a site to teach me how to make money online, I want to read something that will empower me. Unfortunately, your blog does not do that. When you write a post, try to picture a newbie looking for a lot of information, and ask yourself, “Did I really tell them something worthwhile and did I get them motivated into action?”

Best of luck to you. I wish you tremendous success!

As other commentators have noted, it isn’t possible to search the site from the site, and there are typographical errors everywhere.

I think Undine, above makes an important comment about being “unprofessional,” and I want to echo that but qualify it a bit. What people perceive you as aiming for determines how they will judge you. Your site comes off as ambitious in its look: at first I think “oh! this is going to be like http://www.fool.com, I’m going to get tutorials on what activities help me make money online and advice from all the professionals frequenting the site.”

But then the little things – starting with lack of a “Get started here” section explaining exactly how you can help me and what I should be thinking about as I peruse your site – start getting to me. Clicking on Ebooks and Courses transfers me to other products that I haven’t been sold on yet, because I haven’t been told where to start (credit to Ryan above for the “this site feels like it’s trying to get me to download the e-book comment:” that might be something you want to build up to as opposed to push outright). The “Making Money Online” section just throws ideas for monetizing at me. It doesn’t even attempt to tell me what approaches I should consider depending on where I am in life and what I want to accomplish, and then list pros and cons. It more or less throws information at me.

Ironically enough, that’s a strength in the interviews – the more specific the people being interviewed are, the better the interview. The interview with Matt Wegrzyn is where I want to start commenting. It’s a good interview – Matt gives a quick background, talks about his successes, and the narrative makes me want to try domain name investing. He tells his story and thus introduces me to a way of thinking about how to make money – he gets me ready to start the process. The questions are down-to-earth, the sort of thing anyone who wanted to know and was smart but not too knowledgeable about domaining would ask.

But as has been noted above, the interview looks sloppy. It looks like it was cut and paste from an e-mail. At the very least, this text:

Interview with Matt Wegrzyn of Bodis.com – a very young and very successful domainer. If you ever wondered how to make money buying and selling domains then this interview with Matt will inspire. Real step by step advice on making money buying and selling domains

could have been put in italics. A period ending the whole section and “step-by-step” and “If you ever have wondered” are just some of the little things that add to the professionalism aspect. Again, credit to Anthony Lawrence for pointing this out before, but it really is obvious.

Yung-chin is right about allowing comments. There’s little or no interactivity on the interview section, although you do allow comments when the link to the interview is posted on the blog. I don’t see a forum.

I also don’t see a place where I can be introduced to the rest of the “team,” and it might be nice to know them esp. if they’re contributing some of the content. One thing about this site is the question of authority – there are many sites like this, why should I pay attention to this one?

If the interviews are central to your site, then they need to look a lot better. I don’t see a problem with content: looking over the Volk interview, I think the questions are good, it’s up to the interviewee sometimes to provide the relevant information.

If I had to change your site around, here’s what I would do:

* put the blog front and center, to make it clear things were being updated and this site invited feedback and interactivity.

* change the design entirely. The “Retire @ 21” logo looks stark and cheaply made to me. I’m sorry if I’ve offended, but I think something brighter with a cleaner sense of line (I look at the logo and it looks smudgy to me) would be better. I also don’t like, on the front page, how the “franchise inc” ad stands right next to the blog posts area, and all of that is lower down the page. I would cut that ad or make it a footer, it just seems completely out of place. And do note that the blog feels marginalized, as does the archive.

* You don’t need quotes around the tagline, and the tagline isn’t very good, if it isn’t misleading, as has been said above. Your tagline should mirror your about me – what are you going to do for me? My own thought is that you should say something like “Introducing You To the World of Making Money Online,” and then play off that tagline and give a few pages to a going-over basics section saying “depending on what you want to do, here are ideas and suggestions.” From there, you can introduce your reader to the interviews, and put links to the people you interview under the relevant way of making money.

* People have noted above how to fix advertising your feed – there’s nothing that says “subscribe to the feed in a reader.” Again, the feed is only important if the blog is important. The blog seems secondary right now. If you want forums eventually, you need a readership talking to you and each other.

* the e-book ads are too many and too often.

* please consider reorganizing the site around ways of making money: the Making Money Online section does a great job listing those ways, and if it had depth, you’d have a killer site and I’d read every interview there ever was just to see how things work.

I realize it sounds like I contradicted myself with the blog/reorganize the site advice, but I think you know what I mean. Your permanent pages will be complemented by blog posts on the topic, your permanent pages on a particular type of making money will be an introduction to that “theme,” and will link to all the relevant blog posts concerning that theme.

This sounds trite, but properly organized and updated content people want to read will gain attention. It’s always a fight to keep the archives relevant, and so when your site gets older, you can have “a look back” feature or just do a related posts thing like Darren does. But the organization will do wonders, as will an introduction to the topic of making money for total beginners, ones that have never even tried setting up a website.

Interviews: The questions are fine (and I like the consistency across the board). Maybe include more variety in what people do. And what consists of a “young entrepreneur?” Do they have to be under 23?? I’d like to see more “young” people my age (30).

Design: The site is well put-together. I hate flashing ads, though. They detract from the feel. I like the AskEntrepreneur section on the front page, but can you link the title to a whole page of questions and answers? The page was a little slow for me to load.

Content: Great resources. I’d like to see a Bookstore section where you refer other books on entrepreneurialism and retiring early. You offer tons of resources that illustrate the point that people can become rich young, but not enough ways and tools to do it. Include articles on each of the points you have on Making Money Online and break them out. How can people use these tools? People appreciate step-by-step, not just a short overview.

Promotion: finding more people to interview is one way, since they’ll definitely link to the interview. Working with other bloggers can build your promotion, but you seem to know that.

SEO: it’s fine.

Monetization: I think you do this in a way that is not annoying to the reader, which is important. Don’t overdo it or you’ll lose your audience. Just keep making sure everything you sell on your site is relevant.

Ok, may I summarize the points that I have to say:

1) The right portion including “:: About Michael “, “:: Website Sponsors” could be made to look something different than what it is currently. Ok, that Michael made this site, this does not mean he has to focus himself.
2) Put your sponsors in the front. They are what your one of the top priority has to be. They paid for it.
3) The Newsletter section can be somewhere in the middle and right/left portion of the page. Focus on the Entrepreneurs, not your newsletter, which is your main focus, if I’m not wrong.
4) The top menu also did not quite appeal to me.
5) Regarding SEO, I focus on meta tags, and I say only one meta tag, which I think is not enough.
6) Instead of content which is currently in the newsletter section, you can focus any random Entrepreneur or Entrepreneur of the months types :)

• The site features a good number of Young Entrepreneur interviews (accessible via the main page) – do you have any suggestions for better interviews, better questions etc?

How about Seth Godin for an interview, questions seems ok.

• What can Michael do to improve the interviews?

Considering this is a link bait post, not much..
• Design — usability, visual appeal, readability, navigation.

Make it w3c complaint. In some countries it is the law now.

• Content — got an idea for a great viral post the blogger could write?

Would I be here if I did….

• Promotion — how would you suggest the blogger promote the blog?

Probably trying pay per post. The only problem is Google has got wise to that now.

• SEO — can you see areas for improvement?

W3c will help SEO

• Monetization — could this be done more effectively? Do you see any missed opportunities?

There is always a better advertiser, it is just a question of making your product better.

The url pf the website is an eye-catcher, especially to young people who are in high school and college that may want to explore earning a living online. This seems to be the focus group that he wants to appeal to – 18 to 21 yrs. old. But sites that are geared toward making money have a universal focus so the first thing that I would do is trying to not limit the focus on the age group, but make it more interactive for all age groups. I happen to be 47 years old, and there is little incentive for me to stay on the site once I am on it. There are no mechanisms for interaction other than signing up for the newsletter. I would add a forum section on the main header that would allow users to make comments on different topics relating to making money online.

The other problem with the site is that the navigational structure of the site. The navigational structure as it is laid out tends to take the user away from the main content areas and is quite cluttered, with bulletted subheadings. It may be easier to find another theme or modify the existing theme so that it utilizes tabbed navigation – for example I would lay his navigation out this way:

Home Page – should host the main blog content only

About Page – could have the press releases, the about Michael page, and the About Making Money Online in this category. This would give the user a better idea of what the site is about.

Resource Page – Entrepenuer interviews, Top 21 Websites, Young Rich List, & No Grey-Haired CEOs are good resources to refer back to, but he needs to expand this category with additional resources that will actually aid a would-be-entrepenuer in getting started.

Software/Tools: Another page that can be expanded to add additional software, including his own to help entrepenuers.

E-Books and Courses: Another page that can be expanded to add additional e-books and courses, including his own to help entrepenuers.

Support: Should have only one contact form, two is redundant (Ask Michael/Contact Us).

Other Suggestions:

Sidebar is too cluttered: Category of Latest Blog Posts should focus on just the title of the post. Adding the first sentence of the post did not appear meaningful. A user wants to quickly get to the content by clicking the permalink.

The Other Links Category should be broken up or renamed. The posts focused primarily on the interviews.

He needs to add a social bookmarking widget to promote his blog posts as well as the category as well as feed buttons to give users with different feed readers an opportunity to subscribe to the blog feed.

Hi Robert

One of the biggest “take aways” from this is that we need to have a wider age focus – on the whole make money online niche as you mention.

Funny enough my Dad is 47 – and he has been saying the same thing.

I have some ideas – but if anyone else wants to make suggestions on how to make the AGE focus wider while retaining the URL (which I have found is a good icebreaker – that makes people want to find out more) I would be all EARS!

thank you

Michael

While the site is aimed at young entrepreneurs, older entrepreneurs have been through the trenches and can offer a lot of advice. Take advantage of their experience.

Please pay attention to grammar, word usage, redundancy and please don’t make up words. “Domainer” is not a word. Poor grammar and made-up words convey inexperience and lack of thought or effort; entrepreneurs, whatever their ages, need to be professional.

Example: corrected blurb for the Matt Wegrzyn interview: “Interview with Matt Wegrzyn of Bodis.com. Real step-by-step advice on making money buying and selling domains.”

I could not find an RSS feed button on the pages, only the email feed. I could get to the RSS subscription by clicking on the number of subscribers, but there should be a recognizable RSS button somewhere prominent.

Some of the menu texts do not convey what they lead to. The Top 21 Websites, for example, doesn’t convey that these are 21 websites created by young entrepreneurs. It also appears to have very similar content to the No Grey Hair CEO. Along those lines, “Be Our Friend” should ask for what you want (in this case, perhaps, “Spread the Word”).

Everything on the main menu should go toward furthering the message of the blog. When I clicked on the software and tools, I expected a list of software and tools that would help someone retire early. What I saw was a “my favorite things” list. This needs to be pulled back into the direction of the site.

Good luck with the site!

Hi Folks

Michael at Retireat21.com here again.

Once again – thank you everyone. The amount of time and effort that has been put into this community consulting is amazing. I am also very grateful to Skellie and the ProBlogger team.

As I mentioned the other day, I am currently in Ghana (doing some voluntary work) and getting a reliable internet connection is not always easy – plus I have also been quite ill this week. I would have liked to have been more active in these discussions – but it has just not been possible. So I really appreciate the number of comments and also the amount of detail that so many of you went into.

Rest assured – as soon as I can I will be updating my Blog about this community consulting and also going to work – to implement many of the suggestions.

Just about everyone has mentioned I need to proofread all of my copy – as a dyslexic this has been one of my biggest challenges. I do however accept that that is no excuse and while I think it will be rash to state I will no longer make errors in grammar or spelling, there will be nothing like the quantity of them in future. (I promise)

Really it is unfair to single out any single comments here – because just about all the comments have been helpful but if I may I would just like to specially acknowledge Easton Ellsworth, Anthony Lawrence and Yung-Chin

One thing in particular that impressed me was knowing that so many of you did a whole lot more than just vaguely look the site over. I feel I have been well and truly examined and I accept that in many areas there are failings, which is precisely the reason why I took the advice of my father (Barry Dunlop) and also my good friend Dean Hunt who suggested applying for community consulting.

Thank you all again – I do hope you will check back on the site from time to time, to see how I progress.

Of course, also feel free to comment further – especially if you feel something has been missed.

Michael Dunlop

Hi Michael,

I think your URL is fine – “retire at 21” is an eye-catching and easy string to remember; what more could you want? As long as you acknowledge for yourself that it’s only a “figure of speech” phrase, and that you’re just as interested to address older members of your audience, it’s fine. Your intentions will show from your writing – so simply don’t focus too much on “young”.

What software do you use to create content? While getting someone to proofread would be ideal, you could already gain a lot from a tool with some powerful spell-checking built in.