Advise or Thoughts on my side project please be gentle...

[JONJON]

I've decided to build a website/blog site as a side project related to Business, Finance and Technology as these things have always interested me.

The site is built and published the URL is BIZ365.co.za

I would like some feedback form anyone willing to take a look at the site either from your preferred browser or even your phone.

I'd like some info on the below:

Site Responsiveness
Readability
Design and overall look

Also if you have any advise regarding getting more traffic to the site and optimizing for search or just any comment what's so ever I'd greatly appreciate it.

Disclaimer the sites data is mostly generated using AI so that's something i will be changing it was just to fill the site up for now while I test it out.

Side note the website is built on Wordpress and thus far I am not using any paid software or plugins.

Please be gentle this is my first time building a site or doing anything like this.

 

[Oj0]

If you're not wanting comment on the content as it's AI-generated, I'll ignore that and rate the rest.

The theme is boring
The tiles are too big - even at 1440p I can only see 6 at a time
Responsiveness comes and goes, sometimes pages load instantly, other times there's a 2-3 second delay
Readability is fine

Based in Cape Town, we’ve grown from a small blog to a trusted [source?] source for thousands of readers worldwide [why worldwide when you're targeting SA?].

Our team is made up of experienced writers, editors, and industry experts who are passionate about what they do.

This is in conflict with

Are you interested in writing articles or want to somewhere else to publish your existing articles but have no were to publish them contact us.

Ignoring the slightly broken English, the latter suggests accepting content from just about anyone. An experienced writer won't work as a guest writer and will have at least one (possibly more than just one) place to publish their content - and get paid to do so.

Want to feature as a Author?

"a" should be "an", author is not a proper noun, and author is American spelling which conflicts with stating you're based in Cape Town.

Interested in one or more of our services?

What services? None are mentioned on the site. Additionally, do you really want to monitor three email accounts?

Why do you have a reversed and broken TikTok logo on your about page? You have a completely different logo in the header.

vs

Right now is probably FAR too early to give decent feedback. You're asking for comment on what is essentially nothing more than registering a domain, hosting a WordPress 6.4 site, and installing a theme. If you had actual content there would be something to rate, but right now it has the feeling of those brand new tech sites that spit out a few thousand articles per day. Either that, or a placeholder for a parked domain.

I would certainly remove the AI-generated content ASAP, as it's very easy to tell it's AI-generated just by reading it, and that's enough to stop people from returning.

What are your goals from doing this? As someone who has done so independently in the past, you'll slave away for cents. As someone who has done this for a large publication, the name takes many years to build.

This might not be the most gentle post possible, but mollycoddling doesn't help other than making you feel good for the right here, right now, and just sets people up for failure they don't expect and can't handle.

 

[Raatle]

I have little experience as to the quality of the content but from the perspective of a developer, Its a little bland and simplistic. Its a good start though.

How serious are you on this? Is it a small side hustle that you do in your free time or are you dedicating a good portion of your energy trying to innovate a product that will generate income?

Do you have finances to invest into this?

What you are trying to do is not easy and its not just the technicality that is difficult. Building these things right requires a sort of taste that comes from experience or talent or a team of people that are specialized in each aspect of its foundation.

 

[Areola Grande]

Besides being fairly bland and incomplete, my major gripes are covered by @Oj0 above.

 

[squirrel]

Seems you forgot to fill some placeholder text on the about page

"For inquiries, suggestions, or collaborations, feel free to reach out to us at [contact email or form link]."

 

[Oj0]

Seems you forgot to fill some placeholder text on the about page

"For inquiries, suggestions, or collaborations, feel free to reach out to us at [contact email or form link]."

It's a Fiverr site for SEO baiting traffic

I'm not sure what should be rated other than your ability to load a free theme on WordPress. I'm not being a dick at all, I LEGIT don't know.

 

[squirrel]

It's a Fiverr site for SEO baiting traffic

I'm not sure what should be rated other than your ability to load a free theme on WordPress. I'm not being a dick at all, I LEGIT don't know.

More grilling in this thread than my steak lunch right now 🤣

 

[pɐlΛ‾pɐq‾ƃᴉq]

Also... Change or hide wp-admin.php

 

[JONJON]

If you're not wanting comment on the content as it's AI-generated, I'll ignore that and rate the rest.

The theme is boring
The tiles are too big - even at 1440p I can only see 6 at a time
Responsiveness comes and goes, sometimes pages load instantly, other times there's a 2-3 second delay
Readability is fine





This is in conflict with



Ignoring the slightly broken English, the latter suggests accepting content from just about anyone. An experienced writer won't work as a guest writer and will have at least one (possibly more than just one) place to publish their content - and get paid to do so.



"a" should be "an", author is not a proper noun, and author is American spelling which conflicts with stating you're based in Cape Town.



What services? None are mentioned on the site. Additionally, do you really want to monitor three email accounts?

Why do you have a reversed and broken TikTok logo on your about page? You have a completely different logo in the header.

vs

Right now is probably FAR too early to give decent feedback. You're asking for comment on what is essentially nothing more than registering a domain, hosting a WordPress 6.4 site, and installing a theme. If you had actual content there would be something to rate, but right now it has the feeling of those brand new tech sites that spit out a few thousand articles per day. Either that, or a placeholder for a parked domain.

I would certainly remove the AI-generated content ASAP, as it's very easy to tell it's AI-generated just by reading it, and that's enough to stop people from returning.

What are your goals from doing this? As someone who has done so independently in the past, you'll slave away for cents. As someone who has done this for a large publication, the name takes many years to build.

This might not be the most gentle post possible, but mollycoddling doesn't help other than making you feel good for the right here, right now, and just sets people up for failure they don't expect and can't handle.

The theme is boring
Agreed but as mentioned I am currently using only free themes or plugins and this was the only somewhat decent one I could find.

The tiles are too big
Might be due to the fact that I'm doing this on a laptop so they appear small on my screen will address this.

Responsiveness comes and goes, sometimes pages load instantly, other times there's a 2-3 second delay
Properly due to my hosting as I went for the cheapest possible option while testing this out will investigate.

Thank you for this feedback I will definitely look at each point you have raised and see how I can improve or completely remove the unnecessary elements and content.

 

[Oj0]

Thank you for this feedback I will definitely look at each point you have raised and see how I can improve or completely remove the unnecessary elements and content.

What is the desired end-game here? Learning how to setup sites? Using this site to generate revenue? An affordable outlet for your (own, not AI) writing?

 

[Zyetta]

If you want your site to be credible in a pool of AI generated nonsense, simple referencing tools is needed, to fact check the statements made. Check wikipedia, researchgate & IEEE. E.g. This article is incredibly wrong for the puddle of depth it has - ref
You also need transparent author ratings, to identify if the author is an actual credible source.

 

[JONJON]

What is the desired end-game here? Learning how to setup sites? Using this site to generate revenue? An affordable outlet for your (own, not AI) writing?

Would be great to make extra money from it, but mainly want it's a writing outlet as my studies are related to business and Finance.

However its also becoming educational at the same time.

 

[JONJON]

@Oj0 Took a look at your site its done very well, did you build it yourself?

 

[FireProof]

I have zero experience in website building. So most of the comments are above my pay grade. But the idea is appealing ,if I hade to take a guess you are aiming at a site similar to Mybroadband. I know you used AI to generate the Topics to fill in the site Abit. But the general feel of the site feels a lot like a PowerPoint presentation at work . I do agree with those above get a better idea of the direction you are heading , do you want a fun approach to Business and tech or like a Professional view on the world around us .

 

[Oj0]

Would be great to make extra money from it, but mainly want it's a writing outlet as my studies are related to business and Finance.

How much is "extra?" If you're hoping for R 100 or so per month, you might make it. Something that will make a noticeable difference at the end of the month is going to take a LOT of work to pull off. Sites can generate stupid amounts of advertising revenue, BUT they spent years or even decades getting to that point, and treated it as a full-time job throughout.

@Oj0 Took a look at your site its done very well, did you build it yourself?

Mostly, yes. It's based on an ecom platform, but I've made extensive modifications to it.

 

[JONJON]

I have zero experience in website building. So most of the comments are above my pay grade. But the idea is appealing ,if I hade to take a guess you are aiming at a site similar to Mybroadband. I know you used AI to generate the Topics to fill in the site Abit. But the general feel of the site feels a lot like a PowerPoint presentation at work . I do agree with those above get a better idea of the direction you are heading , do you want a fun approach to Business and tech or like a Professional view on the world around us .

Thank you for the feedback I'm definitely going to try change the appearance so its not so bland and boring however I think that will require spending a bit of money.

I will continue working on it.

 

[JONJON]

How much is "extra?" If you're hoping for R 100 or so per month, you might make it. Something that will make a noticeable difference at the end of the month is going to take a LOT of work to pull off. Sites can generate stupid amounts of advertising revenue, BUT they spent years or even decades getting to that point, and treated it as a full-time job throughout.


Mostly, yes. It's based on an ecom platform, but I've made extensive modifications to it.

Well even if its R100 where it pays for its self but I know these sort of things take time, specially for your site to build up authority on Google.

I will keep messing around with it and improve on a few things but your site is done really well, and I've noticed a trend that if you want a nice looking site it comes at quite a cost.

 

[🇹🇭🇪 🇩🇴🇳]

Hi, most of these concerns are very valid.

However Let me just share some insight, I know this media game has changed a lot. But back in the day, I ran ByteSizedBits.

Keep in mind at the time I was 14, so no money for this and just passion.

Now I was passionate about tech and also website creation at the time, so what worked to scale it from an idea to something fairly large was the content and some key things we did at the time which are very common place now.

the domain was bytesizedbits.com
The site was WordPress, and started simple.
Content began as just daily articles for weeks/months

------
THEN WE WORKED VERY HARD and things changed.


- Expanded the writing group within my family, so spun up a mobile section and an anime section
- Created a segment called Daily Bytes (A super summary of everything in Tech for the day, in a 3/4 min read)
The above introduction rapidly got the site visited, at the time the bullet summary you are familiar with in articles did not exist
- Google AMP became a fresh thing so if you had AMP-powered web fronts for mobile you would be in the news section
- We made a PWA for mobile making it a swipe magazine in essence.

Now combine that for 2016 to open ByteSizedBits it gave a breath of fresh air, no adverts, no shitty view. You could consume the content easily.

Sponsors came as well, @RebelTech was incredibly supportive in our early days and offered to even off-load the hosting onto their web servers. Con-joined with support at the time from Rebel we got invited to Rage and made some key sponsors with MSI, Gigabyte and even had Monster ever so shortly. It was a great experience and the best part about this is because I was in school my parents never let me attend a rage expo or even go further on this opportunity. (My older cousins who were writing went)

***Rebel got involved a year before its existence, when a site just called techsense was created. At the time techsense did the best gaming builds (part listed) with a link at the bottom to open that up into a basket to buy, that was how the @RebelTech relation and discussions began. I would write articles around part combos I felt suited a particular instance and then if you liked that combo a 1 click buy now was the idea, but never put the traction on this.

Some of the old media (for validity)

IG - Login • Instagram
Image - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwROmmjXgAUkOtO.jpg

 

[JONJON]

Hi, most of these concerns are very valid.

However Let me just share some insight, I know this media game has changed a lot. But back in the day, I ran ByteSizedBits.

Keep in mind at the time I was 14, so no money for this and just passion.

Now I was passionate about tech and also website creation at the time, so what worked to scale it from an idea to something fairly large was the content and some key things we did at the time which are very common place now.

the domain was bytesizedbits.com
The site was WordPress, and started simple.
Content began as just daily articles for weeks/months

------
THEN WE WORKED VERY HARD and things changed.


- Expanded the writing group within my family, so spun up a mobile section and an anime section
- Created a segment called Daily Bytes (A super summary of everything in Tech for the day, in a 3/4 min read)
The above introduction rapidly got the site visited, at the time the bullet summary you are familiar with in articles did not exist
- Google AMP became a fresh thing so if you had AMP-powered web fronts for mobile you would be in the news section
- We made a PWA for mobile making it a swipe magazine in essence.

Now combine that for 2016 to open ByteSizedBits it gave a breath of fresh air, no adverts, no shitty view. You could consume the content easily.

Sponsors came as well, @RebelTech was incredibly supportive in our early days and offered to even off-load the hosting onto their web servers. Con-joined with support at the time from Rebel we got invited to Rage and made some key sponsors with MSI, Gigabyte and even had Monster ever so shortly. It was a great experience and the best part about this is because I was in school my parents never let me attend a rage expo or even go further on this opportunity. (My older cousins who were writing went)

***Rebel got involved a year before its existence, when a site just called techsense was created. At the time techsense did the best gaming builds (part listed) with a link at the bottom to open that up into a basket to buy, that was how the @RebelTech relation and discussions began. I would write articles around part combos I felt suited a particular instance and then if you liked that combo a 1 click buy now was the idea, but never put the traction on this.

Some of the old media (for validity)

IG - Login • Instagram
Image - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwROmmjXgAUkOtO.jpg

This is very insightful feedback thank you!

That's my understanding of these sort of things not all websites will start out as well polished as you see them now, and this is obviously not a overnight process.

But I think my niche is to broad need to consider sticking to either Business, Finance or Tech.

But I'm leaning more to business with a few articles around finance as that's what I'm studying.