Learning From Your Mistakes: Austria-2008.co.uk

I started my Euro 2008 blog over two years ago and it was my first foray into a mass-event blog so I was really feeling my way.

I didn't put too much effort into it, just the odd couple of hours a week but did enjoy it. But now as I'm starting in earnest on my World Cup Football and Euro 2012 sites I'm wondering what I've learned.

So here's my thoughts:

1. I didn't do enough link building. The site is in DMOZ and some other directories, but I should have worked harder link building and publicising it via blogs etc. I relied too heavily on links from other sites.
   
   
2. I didn't do enough link bait. I managed to get 2,000 visits in one day from a post about a fake England shirt but I should have carried it on and tried to do something every month.
   
   You can see that spike here:
   
   
   
3. I should have focused on the successful long tail keywords and prepared them much earlier on. Despite there being 43,000 different keyword variations that the site was found from. I could have easily doubled it.
   
   
   
   
4. I should have looked to monetise it more in other ways that adsense and football shirts. there was loads of Sky stuff I could have done. I should have lost my dislike for the company and the affiliate programme and taken the cash.
   
   
5. I should have known that England weren't going to qualify as it was chuffing obvious that Mclaren was crap manager and we wouldn't make it.
   
   
6. I shouldn't have stopped working on the site when when we didn't qualify - I should have looked at the betting angle. I don't like betting, so again, I should have left my morals at the office door.
   
   
7. I shouldn't have had two holidays during the tournament. This seriously messed things up. I could have still kept the traffic flowing if I'd just done a couple of match review posts a day.
   
   
8. I should have worked closer with content providers and merchants and add content to the sites. I had some of the football shirt retailers sending unique content and ideas through, but I should have worked harder on this.
   
   
9. I should have started with a email-capture competition or a simple registration form so I could have mailed people through the tournament and increased revenue that way.
   
   
10. I should not have got fed up with all the spammy registrations on the forum and actually approved the legitimate people so they could post - and actually post myself.
    
    
11. Web 2.0 stuff like the Google My Maps and including them in your site not only provides useful information for users that they'll link to from other sites, but also you can get traffic from searches on Google maps itself. Check out my Basle stadium guide page. (I did these the day of the last match - I wish I bloody waited for us to qualify before I did them!)
    
    
12. Remember that dmoz isn't just there for being there's sake. It can actually deliver traffic and be a source for other site owners to find and then link to you. Dmoz was my second biggest site referrer:
    
    
    
13. I should have actually taken time to participate in relevant forums and built links and users that way.
    
    

It's all good fun though. My World Cup site is ready to be blitzed for qualifying. And I'll slowly build up content for my Euro 2012 site.

The work I've got to do now is leverage the 2008 site for links and traffic, and see work out if I'd just want to let it go out to seed or if there's anything else I could do with it. There's some PR on it and should I just turn it into a footy ShopWindow type thing or just forget?