Fret Feed - Re-Design and Re-Launch
In my previous post about the Options Wordpress Theme, I mentioned how I always thought Fret Feed would work better in a magazine-style format, and I was considering using Options as a basis for the re-design. Well, it’s been done. Now I’d like to talk a little a bit my thoughts & processes for the design, and my plans for the future of this site.
The Design
I have always liked and ben intrigued by choosing color schemes and making design choices based on real life objects and environments. For this site, I had plenty of inspiration to choose from. I decided to go with a darker theme, and use colors from the popular sunburst paint jobs on many guitars (Palette from colourlovers). I think it gave a bit of a unique touch.
Launching so Quickly?
Yes, sort of. I’ve always thought the concept of launching a website was a little strange to me. When is it launched exactly? The second it goes online, when I put a lot of PR behind it? Anyway, I’ve gotten stymied on a lot of projects by being a bit of a perfectionist, and not wanting to release and push sites until they were exactly how I wanted them. This time I am trying a more agile ‘quick-release quick-run’ approach, where I’m just going to push it out at quick as possible, and I can always make adjustments and improvements as time goes on. I actually already have a few tweaks to make in the next couple days, along with writing content for it.
Fret Feed’s Future
Of course I have no idea where this is really going to go. But I am taking a slightly different approach to the prioritization of the next few steps in building this blog up, and I am going to try having a more goal oriented approach. Here are my plans for the coming weeks, probably until the end of the year:
1. Content, content, content — My first goal is to get 25 articles up on the site (currently at 
and post a minimum of at least 3 articles a week. I figure a site with this intention will need quite a lot of content to do well, and I understand that it isn’t going to happen overnight. I’m going to be accepting user - submitted content for the site, so hopefully that will help out, although probably not early on.
2. Traffic, Traffic, Traffic — Once I have a decent base of content, I want to shift more of my attention to promoting those articles and trying to drive some traffic to the site. My latest article is on StumbleUpon and Reddit, so hopefully it will get a little love there. I also think that forum marketing will do good things for this site, which I have tried here and there in the past, but never to a great extent. I have also added to my Twitterfeed, so anyone who is following me on Twitter will see updates on that site as well.
3.Money,Money, Money, Money — *falsetto* MOOOONNEEY! */falsetto* Sorry. Monetization only gets easier as you gain more weight in the SERPs and more traffic. I have Adsense currently up on the site, which is only temporary, until the site gets a little more footing. I also have Performancing Ads on the sidebar, but I have no intention of using their service, and booking ads privately. It’s just easier that way.
Hopefully this site will be able to build up some traffic and be somewhat successful. I’ve come to the realization that while I’ve put a lot of work into writing on this blog, the make money online/make websites niche is overcrowded and is very difficult to break into and make any money at. You’ll notice I’ve even taking all advertising off of the blog. I’m going to probably be posting here less, and continue to make this site more an online resume and resource for potential customers.