Starting from nothing - The Weed journy

[storytellingmedia]

ya gotta love technology. just finished "training" my crawlers to pick out certain data i need for the Cannabis strains love this free app loads of potential for collecting data

looks like this at the moment

gonna save me loads of time!

its been running for about 30 min now, i have 3380 rows of data and its still got over 10k pages to go through so yeah loving this right now seriously couldn't be bothered to writer a crawler, not that i'm a developer but i could find out how, and even worse i couldn't be bothered to go into each page to find the info i was looking for!

Its seems to be doing around 6k pages/hour if that is useful to any one.


Update -- 6k strains now sorted in to excel an some sort of order. time to add to website hope to be able to add 100 a week, hope to out source the data entry in a bit

 

[storytellingmedia]

So it seems Bing likes my review system, i'm on the 1st page (last) but first page of bing for marijuana nutrients bloombastic lol.

I've been looking at the advertise with us here on Afffix, there is a section there that got my attention, The Reviews section. thats genius, why i hadn't thought of it is a mistery! the fact the is every one know now that that Hangout is a great way to get things Ranked. especially live things. So why i'm not doing video reviews of prodcts is a mistery. So thanks for that idea.

any way. I'll be absent for a bit going nomad for a bit. Well homeless basically at the end of the month. If only it was the start of summer... any way wish me luck will update you as much as i can. Peace

 

[storytellingmedia]

Well, Time to start thinking about going Homeless, can't say i'm please about it, but fr some reason i'm exited as hell. haha always wanted to live off the grid. (I'm a geeky weed smoking Scout have even got my Eagle award if any americans went through scouting.)

any how I've got responsibilities to keep with clients so i can't just go to a different country and start traveling. Every Friday i need to meet up at the World Health Org directors and keep hem posted. - Thats my money cash flow at the moment. waiting on my year contract.
but the rest of the time, i'm going to need power. Camping/surviving is fun and all, but i need to be able to work at the same time so been hunting around and found some cool options. Power at all times and not just for mobile phones and tablet there is only so much i can do on a tablet that being said people do only work on tablets but i don't find it productive and i just get frustrated with it. So a laptop is a must, i've just got my self a MacBook Pro 15 inch. Love it so far but needs good power. One company i've being looking into is the Sherpa 100 Solar Kit | | Goal Zero seems pretty cool and not to bad of an investment. they have bigger things but i'm going to be backpacking so i can't have a car battery in my bag. so i'll be getting that and the Biolite stove might as well charge a couple of things while i cook ey.

Got my self a 3g pay per go internet chip.

got all the camping gear and well now just waiting on some cash to get some bulk food and i'm off gonna be lets say an interesting and frustrating experiance but hope fully i'll be able to really get things going and help me motivate my self that much more.

 

[storytellingmedia]

haha well bing has been messing with me. I'm gone from the entire search haha cna't find me at all on any of the pages now. So any how, Got to sort out all the meta data and stuff and start organizing things better i'm all over the place for no reason.

Laning pages are coming along smoothly (ahaha as if any joomla intergration was smooth) but things are progessing nicely run out of cash so still need to get the text written.

just a quick update

Peace

 

[djcrunk]

Love the concept and love me some green goodness as well... mostly bills though lol. But dude... you seriously gotta work on your optin box and a giveaway. If you gonna bother to build a whole site (not just a landing page + cpa offer "wam, bam, thank you ma'm"), no paid traffic or SEO strategy is nearly complete, if you're not building your mailing list.

A REAL BUSINESS ASSET. That doesn't depend on G's or B's mood. And how comfy the feds feel about buddha. You gotta build an audience through that list, get those leads and turn them into sales and recurrent traffic on demand. Use something like:

GET THE MOST AWESOME POT RECIPES IN YOUR INBOX TODAY FOR FREE.
You won't believe how stupidly easy they are to prepare, your tasting buds will thank you.

GET MY FREE GREENTHUMB GUIDE TO GROW THE MOST AMAZING SATIVA GARDEN, IN FEW SIMPLE STEPS
-Yes please, call me DR. Greenthumb

And please, please, don't use an old ass boring "submit" button, but something cool like "Yeah mon!" or "Poof!", I dunno, something that gets the M crowd actually excited about signing up, heh. Also recomend you to either use a single field just for email, or even better a button that pops a small, name, email form (something like the button you have, but an actual email form, not like a forum register stuff, much harder to convert), It will boost your opt-in rates higher than a mother of, yeah you got the idea.

Best of luck and profits to you man, Cheers!

 

[storytellingmedia]

Love the concept and love me some green goodness as well... mostly bills though lol. But dude... you seriously gotta work on your optin box and a giveaway. If you gonna bother to build a whole site (not just a landing page + cpa offer "wam, bam, thank you ma'm"), no paid traffic or SEO strategy is nearly complete, if you're not building your mailing list.

A REAL BUSINESS ASSET. That doesn't depend on G's or B's mood. And how comfy the feds feel about buddha. You gotta build an audience through that list, get those leads and turn them into sales and recurrent traffic on demand. Use something like:

GET THE MOST AWESOME POT RECIPES IN YOUR INBOX TODAY FOR FREE.
You won't believe how stupidly easy they are to prepare, your tasting buds will thank you.

GET MY FREE GREENTHUMB GUIDE TO GROW THE MOST AMAZING SATIVA GARDEN, IN FEW SIMPLE STEPS
-Yes please, call me DR. Greenthumb

And please, please, don't use an old ass boring "submit" button, but something cool like "Yeah mon!" or "Poof!", I dunno, something that gets the M crowd actually excited about signing up, heh. Also recomend you to either use a single field just for email, or even better a button that pops a small, name, email form (something like the button you have, but an actual email form, not like a forum register stuff, much harder to convert), It will boost your opt-in rates higher than a mother of, yeah you got the idea.

Best of luck and profits to you man, Cheers!

Ha boss man thanks for that!

Yeah i know i need to work on a lot of things for the Landers, I will be chagine the text and like you said also i don't like a a Submit button, i'm just waiting for every thing to be finished and i'll then start customizing to my likings and start split testing different versions.

About the Email list and stuff, that's not my target, i'm not looking to build a List as per say, i'm trying to build the Social Platform , so i need more details in the Optin. The emails list will be built based on the amount of users on the site, hmm but that just sparked some thing, i guess i do need to start a newsletter so i guess your right i do need to think about the newsletter. If you go to any recipe or any site you get a popup for the newsletter even if there is some sort of Forum or social platform

Build the trust and people follow like sheep right?

thanks man i need to rethink a few things and get cracking!

 

[storytellingmedia]

Love the concept and love me some green goodness as well... mostly bills though lol. But dude... you seriously gotta work on your optin box and a giveaway. If you gonna bother to build a whole site (not just a landing page + cpa offer "wam, bam, thank you ma'm"), no paid traffic or SEO strategy is nearly complete, if you're not building your mailing list.

A REAL BUSINESS ASSET. That doesn't depend on G's or B's mood. And how comfy the feds feel about buddha. You gotta build an audience through that list, get those leads and turn them into sales and recurrent traffic on demand. Use something like:

GET THE MOST AWESOME POT RECIPES IN YOUR INBOX TODAY FOR FREE.
You won't believe how stupidly easy they are to prepare, your tasting buds will thank you.

GET MY FREE GREENTHUMB GUIDE TO GROW THE MOST AMAZING SATIVA GARDEN, IN FEW SIMPLE STEPS
-Yes please, call me DR. Greenthumb

And please, please, don't use an old ass boring "submit" button, but something cool like "Yeah mon!" or "Poof!", I dunno, something that gets the M crowd actually excited about signing up, heh. Also recomend you to either use a single field just for email, or even better a button that pops a small, name, email form (something like the button you have, but an actual email form, not like a forum register stuff, much harder to convert), It will boost your opt-in rates higher than a mother of, yeah you got the idea.

Best of luck and profits to you man, Cheers!

Ha boss man thanks for that!

Yeah i know i need to work on a lot of things for the Landers, I will be chagine the text and like you said also i don't like a a Submit button, i'm just waiting for every thing to be finished and i'll then start customizing to my likings and start split testing different versions.

About the Email list and stuff, that's not my target, i'm not looking to build a List as per say, i'm trying to build the Social Platform , so i need more details in the Optin. The emails list will be built based on the amount of users on the site, hmm but that just sparked some thing, i guess i do need to start a newsletter so i guess your right i do need to think about the newsletter. If you go to any recipe or any site you get a popup for the newsletter even if there is some sort of Forum or social platform

Build the trust and people follow like sheep right?

thanks man i need to rethink a few things and get cracking!

 

[crysper]

Man I'm so glad you keeping this up. I'm 100% sure you'll make it with this perseverance.

 

[storytellingmedia]

Man I'm so glad you keeping this up. I'm 100% sure you'll make it with this perseverance.

apriciate it man, Yeah well as they always say A Looser is the person who gives up when it fails or becomes to hard. i'm not a looser i'm here to win and know i'm on to some thing as other sites are poping up all over the place at the moment i've just found this one : Lift it got me thinking about the Color selection i've made i'm starting to think that the black is a bad idea to use and i should start thinking about lightening all the colors up. I've had a couple more sign ups but nothing that actual make me think i've got the correct recipe yet so i'm still playing.
I'm waiting on some cash to start some media buying on some sites i've found to the home page to gather some data about what people do. The reson i'm going to be doing Media Buying is because of the niche i'm in and the targetting medai buying allows me to get. Simply advertising on the a Weed forum or on a cannabis related site i find would work out quiet good to know how react to the site I know people that are on the sites are poeple that are active and or on the forums posting so will help gather data.

I Also know i need to get a call to action above the fold - Either as @djcrunk said a Subscribe to newsletter or a Sign up form to the site.

apart from that any one got any good Copywritters to surgest or reference? My'n sucks, really ^^

keep it real and keep grindin'

 

[storytellingmedia]

Well this is a big move for me i'm going to be redoing the entire site. What i mean is the Design layout out suck. Well they don't suck i love it and if i was going to be the only one using it then i would leave it as it is, but I need to go Broad and at the moment i'm only apealing to the yonger gerneration nothing wrong with that its to small of for the size of the market. I know i'm on to some things because similar niche sites are poping up all over the place. The only difference is Colors and the organization of things.. all my competition are using light colors to get the psycology of people thinking its Medical and Trustworthy, Light blues, green and Orange, the black and green on my site don't refelct that and i need to change that

any how thats the latest

best

 

[storytellingmedia]

Shit this changes maby a bit to much! gone from this :

To this:

Trying to keep the colors pastel and light colors. Then i'm going to color code each section, so the Community would be blue, the reviews area would be orange etc etc

Need to get a sign up form on the home page, Im stugling to know what to put in the slider or header section, most of my competition are putting a search bar so people start searching for reviews. Thats not even one 5th of the site so i think i'm going to put a video comercial there i'm going to have done on Fiver.

Lol got some one asking if I want their Marketing services for free for Co-founder place insted..
heheheheheheheheheheheh! Right! as if thats gonna happend

 

[djcrunk]

I just checked that Lift potsite, and let me tell me, the guy is damn freaking good. Like I'd actually jack his shit and copy that site verbatim lol. But what I like the most isn't the colors man, fuck the colors. The guy has one sentence, not 2, not 3, not fucking 4... but one sentence explaining painfully simple what does his site/company do.

"Lift Makes Exploring, Purchasing, And Consuming Medical Marijuana Easier For Canadians"

Beautiful. Everyone who lands there and doesn't know what the place is about and what it may do for them (BENEFIT, only thing customers care about), is a moron, and didn't have a high IQ enough to buy shit online to begin with. Most people who are into proud mary will get it instantly. You need to get them as soon the page loads.

And what does this motherfugger has below... an actually hot call to action...

Find The Strain Your Health Deserves

What a piece of sheet, I love this guy lol. Only thing I don't like is he uses a search option, instead of just a list, or even better a button that sends them to another page with a list of strains explaining how all the benefits these magical herbs contains, will make their lives so much like "three little birds" sang by Bob Marley himself. Don't make people think, that is your job. Specially don't make them think while high, they'll just come up with stupid ass high talk lol.

Now when it comes to design I actually hate his background, I don't get why the hell canadians will relate a river by the forest to ganja... but I'm no cajun, just as hairy as wolverine, if he looked Mike Myers. "Whatcha talking aboot willis?"

Seriously man, I could just spend hours giving you tips about your site, but just by checking this site over and over again, figuring out why is so good, you will make money. And these are principles you can apply to every kind of site/business.

And when it comes to colors, just make sure to use NEGATIVE SPACE, so that your background colors just make your message (text) stand so much more, and being able to read and understand easy, even if I was a blind mouse... use a braille version if you need to. And please for the love of shiva, get a freebie above the fold and make your visits handle their emails to you already.

I believe the real truckloads of money will come from USA once weed becomes legal all over the country which I believe it will. Republicans don't seem to give a shit anymore about gay people getting married and or smoking weed... it was aboot time.

Cheers and the wildest of success to you mon... Peace.

 

[storytellingmedia]

I just checked that Lift potsite, and let me tell me, the guy is damn freaking good. Like I'd actually jack his shit and copy that site verbatim lol. But what I like the most isn't the colors man, fuck the colors. The guy has one sentence, not 2, not 3, not fucking 4... but one sentence explaining painfully simple what does his site/company do.

"Lift Makes Exploring, Purchasing, And Consuming Medical Marijuana Easier For Canadians"

Beautiful. Everyone who lands there and doesn't know what the place is about and what it may do for them (BENEFIT, only thing customers care about), is a moron, and didn't have a high IQ enough to buy shit online to begin with. Most people who are into proud mary will get it instantly. You need to get them as soon the page loads.

And what does this motherfugger has below... an actually hot call to action...

Find The Strain Your Health Deserves

What a piece of sheet, I love this guy lol. Only thing I don't like is he uses a search option, instead of just a list, or even better a button that sends them to another page with a list of strains explaining how all the benefits these magical herbs contains, will make their lives so much like "three little birds" sang by Bob Marley himself. Don't make people think, that is your job. Specially don't make them think while high, they'll just come up with stupid ass high talk lol.

Now when it comes to design I actually hate his background, I don't get why the hell canadians will relate a river by the forest to ganja... but I'm no cajun, just as hairy as wolverine, if he looked Mike Myers. "Whatcha talking aboot willis?"

Seriously man, I could just spend hours giving you tips about your site, but just by checking this site over and over again, figuring out why is so good, you will make money. And these are principles you can apply to every kind of site/business.

And when it comes to colors, just make sure to use NEGATIVE SPACE, so that your background colors just make your message (text) stand so much more, and being able to read and understand easy, even if I was a blind mouse... use a braille version if you need to. And please for the love of shiva, get a freebie above the fold and make your visits handle their emails to you already.

I believe the real truckloads of money will come from USA once weed becomes legal all over the country which I believe it will. Republicans don't seem to give a shit anymore about gay people getting married and or smoking weed... it was aboot time.

Cheers and the wildest of success to you mon... Peace.

Your a boss man, much appriciate the time you put into your posts. Yeah that first line and the presnetaion of every thing really made me go jeez this is good.

I'm getting a video made presentaion made of the site, whiteboard animation style, next to that will be a sign up to get peoples email, i'm not sure if its going to be a form next to the video or a popup at the moment. But yes you are of course right i need to get some thing above the fold.
For the Actual give away it's gonna be Free review updates, latest recipes and Latest courses with most likly a latest news section. how i'm gonna word that i'm not to sure but yeah that what i think i'll be giving away, i was going to give a way grinders, but i don't have the funds to get a whole bunch custom made to represent the brand. I still think that should be the way to go, i don't like signing up to thinkgs to get emails, but if i can get a physical product i'll sign up. if ya see what i mean. maybe soon.

Any way still lots to work to do so i better get back at it. Need to train my self to come up with some great call to actions. ^^

Peace a keep blazing

 

[storytellingmedia]

Man has it been busy, Ok this is just a quick update ... i've placed an order for 500 grinders and 500 high quality gold metal stickers to stick on top of the grinders just to customize them. need to find a good custom wrap to deliver them in but have time for that yet.

have nearly finished dev on home page made it look a lot cleaner and simple, need to come up with some catchy phases but will get to that in a bit

quick screen shot:

Keeping above the fold as simple as possible.

have also been redoing the entire review system, elearning and recipe section design will hopefully going live with is in a couple of weeks would love some feed back for time beeing working on local.

hmm what else. guess thats about it really

Keep ya guys posted

Peace

 

[crysper]

Looks good mate.

How's your traffic going?

 

[storytellingmedia]

thanks m8, not doing any marketing, only got twitter going that's going slowly but surely. making sure every thing fits and works right before concentrating on traffic. Registrations were messing up and stuff so this next version will be what i start marketing on. will keep y'all posted

 

[storytellingmedia]

Jeesus christ this is a big site, its taking for EVER to get things rolling, i've just got my self a full tie devloper Gotta love inda for their prices ^^ hoping to have the final version out in April.

You can check it out here if any of you are interested in seeing the Advancements Welcome to The MMJ Nation

still messing around trying to figure out the best way to present stuff but should be pretty cool once done ^^ after about 18 months of dev and bashing head against the wall its about freaking time ^_^

peace

 

[storytellingmedia]

Yes. I've finally got my video! wahoo!! haha, what do you guys think? pretty cool huh ^^
Bit and pieces to set up now Mailchimp etc for the launch of the v2 version can't wait!!

 

[T J Tutor]

Great stuff, love the work. I can see this being big for you. Keep it up @storytellingmedia !

 

[storytellingmedia]

@tjtutor thanks man much appriciate it can't wait to get over this hurdle and start marketing ^^