Welcome to the 7th Reader Blog Critique. Last weeks critique was of Rarst. Rarst has won the best comment for 3 critiques so it was good to see his blog being reviewed.
This weeks review is of People You’ll See In Hell, an interesting blog which looks at the weird, crazy and downright evil people in the world today.
I asked the owner J.D. his thoughts about the blog. Here is his reply 
Monetization Ideas
I recently decided to take out the majority of the advertisements on the blog. I felt that I was becoming too engrossed with the income the site was making (or the lack thereof) and that it was hurting the focus of the site.
Unfortunately, this also means that the income for the site has dropped, much like a rock that was already very close to the ground. This prevents PYSIH.com from expanding by hiring good writers, or paying the good writers that write for us out of the goodness of their own heart. 95 percent of the content is from one person, which is tiring when that one person has websites that do make money and demand attention, along with a full-time job.
Monetization is difficult for the site. I have tried virtually everything I can think of. The only thing that converted well (for a while) was a background check service. Those conversions started going south a few months ago. Banners get clicked often, but there are very, very few conversions – even with freebie offers.
I’d be open to monetization ideas that were not intrusive.
Promotion ideas.
Ideas related to the general usability of the site. PYSIH.com was recently hacked and some files were deleted. They were recovered, but restored from a variety of backups, so things aren’t quite the way they were before the incident. Now would be a good time to get opinions on how things are presented visually and how easy it is for the users to get around.
Any ideas, really.
I love the site, but hate it. It’s my baby, but it takes up a lot of time. Last month was our best yet, with over 70k uniques and 300k+ pageviews, so even with our frequent “CPU overage suspensions” from Bluehost, it’s still nice to see that people like to come and read what we have to say. Keeps us going.
In addition I welcome commenters to talk about the blogs content and design and any suggestions you have for promoting the blog.
People You'll See In Hell
The most helpful and constructive commenter will get $10. Alternatively, if you prefer, I can register a domain for you at eNom and push it to your account J.D. will decide who the best commenter was.
As usual, I remind everyone that positive or negative, all feedback should be constructive.
If you have any questions about any of this please let me know in this thread
Blog to be Reviewed : People You’ll See In Hell
I am pointing out the places where you can improve :
The first thing i noticed were the AFF ads. They ticked my off. It messes up the entire page
Also the search box overlaps the ad. It looks terrible.
The header is great
The horizontal ad pops out to the left.
The advertise page needs a screenshot of traffic. Fix the prices of ads don't give a range.
"Who's Reading PYSIH.com?" is it needed? I saw '29 other people online" which is not really impressive.
You could monetize with 125*125 ads in the sidebar, they pay well and don't irritate like the ones you have presently on. You can replace the 'recent comments'.
Fix these errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://pysih.co…
You can use stumble upon. If used effectively you could get 1000's of visits a day!
Also, i have tips for traffic building on my blog that will help
Hope my pointers help!
First of all, the site overall is great. It's a great brand name that people can easily remember.
There are some things that need to be fixed though:
1) There's so many things going on. I see banner ads everywhere, especially in the header area (which by the way isn't showing up the right way on my browser). Try to place them somewhere in the sidebar instead.
2) The logo needs to stand out more. Right now, it's basically just text that's jumbled up all over the place. Try to make it so it emphazises your brand name. Or if you want, just tweak the header colors around or make the logo bigger.
3) The sidebar has too much elements. The list of recent posts are fine, but the monthly archives don't need to be there. Do you actually expect people to click a link of a month? You can move the monthly archives to a page of itself called "Archives". Another thing that is taking up too much space is the Meta information. If you're someone that wants an easy access to your login, I guess it would make sense to put it up. But for readers like me and everyone else, it's just useless information and links we will never use.
Those are what I have in mind. If anything else comes to me, I'll post it when I can.
Good luck with the site!
Sly
http://slyvisions.com
New one for me so fresh impressions.
Overall blog looks awesome and is clearly sticking to consitent and original topic.
First time impression – it's cool to browse few such articles but no point to subscribe and read such stuff regularly.
Ads are reaaaly bad fit. I don't know if that is intentional to draw attention to them. But they look totally crappy both in how they seem out of place and their content. I mean adult friend finder ad on a page about man drugging his dates from online service?..
Generall stuff.
1. Boring 404 page.
2. Thers is no person visible behind the site. Articles and comments are credited to "admin" which is totally non-personal. Again this may be intentional for not disclosing personal data but I think it's better to use pseudonym or mascot character for such. Not much sense in displaying "admin" as author of posts either, better to simply remove author credit.
3. Blog is extremely JavaScript heavy. 450Kb in 23 files. I don't really see much of dynamic stuff used to justify that much.
4. Markup not validating as mentioned above.
5. Reference to missing image in CSS
"background: url(images/input_back.jpg) 0 no-repeat;"
Moving from top to bottom as usual.
6. Advertise page is bit too short. No graphs, no pics with exact ad placements. Category and "comments are closed" are not neede (applies to rest of static pages as well).
7. Dislaimer lists contact email (non-hyperlinked) but contact page only has form.
8. Hate mail has some broken characters. Maybe it was that way on originals or bad copy/paste.
8. About page could use more personality (see above) and explanation what correctional officer is. Last line could link to home page or it hangs in the air.
Home page.
9. If login link is for admin only – lose it. If not – add explanation what it is.
10. Number of comments could fit on same line as stuff above it.
11. "More" text is too detailed in my opinion.
Sidebar.
12. Right column is white all the way down. Distracts eyes from content lower on page.
13. Using animated feedburner counter is bad because it's blank for people with ads/animation blocked.
14. Email subscription could be more prominent.
15. Recent posts are usual… But it's not very useful when they are all names. Maybe include category to make it more descriptive like "[Name] in Wrath".
16. Top commentators have broken links.
Footer.
17. (c) Copyright = Copyright Copyright. Lose one of them.
18. Links are too dark on hover and both point to same page – can be combined.
Single page.
19. Texts could use some sub-headings.
20. I don't like Yes/No centering in poll.
21. Social links are not fitting well in very red theme. It would be cool if they were remade in red to fit better and give bit of wicked humour.
22. "comment number 1" number alone would be enough.