In this Fiverr‑style website review, entrepreneur Evan Carmichael critiques the Blogspot‑hosted site bloggingforcashnow.blogspot.com, submitted by a viewer named Charles. He argues that the Blogspot domain harms credibility, reduces click‑through rates, and prevents the site from becoming a sellable asset. Carmichael recommends moving to a custom domain and WordPress for better design flexibility and professional themes. He advises investing in a polished logo (e.g., via 99designs) and upgrading the site’s visual design. To build trust, he suggests personalizing the site with the author’s photo, story, and video content, positioning the owner as an expert similar to John Chow. Carmichael stresses the need to replace pure ad listings with honest, detailed reviews of the promoted programs, including pros and cons, ideally after receiving the product for free. He warns that excessive ads cause high bounce rates. Finally, he proposes capturing leads through a newsletter and a free ebook or download, allowing ongoing relationship building and higher conversion when promoting offers. Throughout, he encourages iterative improvements, invites feedback, and ends with a call to action for viewers to comment and like.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, your friend in all things entrepreneurship. Today I'm doing another one of my Fiverr gigs where I review somebody's website and give them some advice and tips. So today's website, uh, comes in is bloggingforcashnow.blogspot.com. Best viewed with Chrome or Firefox. I use Chrome, so it looks like we're good to go. This is from Charles, so let's go check out the site. This is it. Now, before even looking at it, I'm not a huge fan of the Blogspot domain name, and I think you should avoid it as much as possible. A couple reasons. One, a lot of people use it for spammy websites, and so as soon as somebody sees a Blogspot domain in the search results, it really discounts it, and you're going to decrease your click-through percentage. You're not going to get as many people clicking on it because they're used to it being more of a spammy type of site. And you're not building an asset here, so you're not going to get as much benefit if you ever want to sell the website, sell your business, pass it on to somebody else. Your value will go down because you don't actually own the Blogspot. A lot more value comes from owning your own domain name, and so you're building up somebody else's asset instead of building up your own. Which, uh, you know, isn't as great as it could be. So something to get— something to consider. Okay, let's get into this website. So Blogging for Cash Now, the, the name itself sounds a little scammy, so, uh, your challenge here is going to be showing that you are a reputable site and making people believe in you. I would probably invest a little bit in making this design a little bit better. The logo looks like it's just been written on. You can go to a place like 99designs and for $200 get a really nice professional logo done that you can be really proud of. And the design on the site is just okay, very basic. Um, I would look at switching this to a WordPress design. It's the same level of difficulty or probably easier to post, which is great. And It also gives you a lot of themes that you can upload for free, a lot that are really nice, or you can pay a little bit of money, you know, $100 or less for a premium theme. But you can get a really nice one for free as well and just get that updated there. So next, uh, this is maybe a little too long, your one-paragraph kind of intro. I'd like to see maybe underneath here one sentence to explain what it is that you're all about. And, and this is maybe cut up into a couple sentences, a couple paragraphs, sorry, or bold some, some keywords so you're not making people read as much. But let's click down and see what we have. So we have an ad here, an ad here, um, I guess this is a big ad. So is this It's basically all ads, I guess, for different make money types of programs. And so it's probably not going to keep people on your website very long. There's not a lot of, uh, or any value-add content. So this is a hard website to drive people to, and when people do come to the site, they're not going to stick because it's just basically ad after ad after ad. Now what I would do to make this better and to, to, for you to get a better result is one, as I said, move to WordPress, put it on your own domain name, make it look a little more professional with a logo and a nice design. Two, make it personal. So who is this person who's recommending these programs? Who are you? Uh, put a picture of yourself. Explain why you're doing this, why did you start this website, what your goals are. Talk a little bit about yourself and post some updates. That kind of personal connection will make people want to sign up with you. If you look at the guys who are making the money selling these kinds of programs, they're guys like John Chow, like you mentioned here, because people like to buy from these kinds of people. So you could be the next John Chow, right? Show your face, explain what you're up to. You don't necessarily need to have as big a following as he does, But it's an opportunity to brand yourself and be seen as an expert. And when he goes out and recommends something, people end up buying because they like him, know him, trust him. Or when he creates his own product here as well. So that could be an opportunity for you down the line. But for now, you want to start building a connection with your audience. Show your face, do some videos, explain why you got started, what you hope to accomplish, and post some updates. And so people will say, "Hey, I want to be like this guy," and will hopefully take the next step and sign up for some of the programs that you're recommending. Especially if you're using any of these programs, that's the best way to do it because it shows that you're getting benefit from it and explain why you like it, and they're more likely to want to sign up for it as well. The next thing is to do some kind of review. So all I see here is an ad. So if I'm looking at this page, it just looks like an ad and doesn't say anything about this program. I don't even know what it's called. And so if I click here, if I'm looking at the bottom left-hand corner, it directs me to a different website. And so I'm not being told why this is a good program or not. So if you actually did some work to review a program, maybe got it for free and said, I want to review your program and explain the pros and cons. That will add a lot more value and give you some content for the website that can help drive some traffic, but also give you some conversions and some sales coming in for you because you've done an accurate, honest review of what's good and what's bad about the different programs that you're showing off here. Finally, I'd probably do some kind of newsletter to capture leads and follow up. So if somebody hits this website, their only option is to click on an ad and maybe sign up for whatever program or bounce, which is not a great way to do it. Um, it's like meeting somebody at a bar and saying, will you marry me? It's all or nothing. And most people won't do that on the first visit. You have to get to know them, let them trust you. And a great way to build a relationship is through a newsletter. So if you gave away some free kind of ebook or download, and they trust you to get into their email list, then you have a way to follow up with them and give them value-add information, not just sales content. Explain again why you're doing this, what you hope to accomplish, things that you've learned, lessons that can help them, and start getting them to know you a little bit better so that when you do promote something, they're going to want to sign up and be the first ones on board because you said it was a good idea. Idea. So those are my initial thoughts looking at this website. A lot of room for improvement, but a lot of opportunity ahead as well, I think, if you did a good job running it. Good luck with it. Keep me posted. I want to see some changes, and I'd love to, uh, to see, you know, where you go with it. For those of you watching, I'd love to hear what you have to think. Give it a thumbs up below, makes you want to do more videos. And if you have a comment about this video or about your own business feel free to leave it in the comment section below. I always check those out and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
