I found this article (and the comments) to be very useful. I look forward to reading about future reboots.

Everything else is as it was when it was reviewed. Hope that helps.

I sure wish you guys took some still pictures of BEFORE .. because it’s really hard to put your advice into practical learning experiences without it. Right now, it seems that some changes are already made? So .. if you do – can you put them up?

(sorry, this wasnt’ one feed in my bloglines, so I have never visited the blog before)

HART

From what I gather, you’re US-based, so catering to US-based football fans (or should I say soccer?) would be an ideal first step. There are some US bloggers writing about football but they try to go after the same UK audience as everyone else.

The stated goal of the blog, as referenced on the “About” page is to focus on the Minnesota Thunder (a team in my state that is one level below the highest level of pro soccer in America), the U.S. National Team, and the English Premiership.

In short, I’ve picked these because they are what I know. Unfortunately, due to extraordinary geography and varying weather, the domestic leagues are not in operation during the late fall, winter, or early spring (thus the national team and Premiership coverage).

Moreover, based on interactions with my audience, I believe that my readers count on me to find the most interesting stories in between all the static. You’re very right; keeping up with all of the news is difficult, and I (perhaps naively) believe that the audience appreciates my attempt to act as a filter.

I put Throughball.com through the blink test and the first thing I noticed was that the post headlines are downplayed because of the AdSense blocks above them and the subscription info in the center of the screen. I’m not saying that you should remove those two items – especially not the RSS subs info – but look at ways to make the post a more prominent part of the page.

The 3 column approach isn’t bad, but to make it work you should give as much breathing space to your post / content area as possible.

I acted on what I believe to be the best suggestions; namely, removing the top adsense block and changing the color green to a darker shade.

I need to give the others some thought.

Timeless content – this is a bit hard to manage with football sites, but here are a few ideas…

I think you are spot on. I need to do a better job focusing on creating original, timeless content. I’ve tried to do this in a few cases (typically when I couldn’t find a particular resource elsewhere on the web and I decided to just create that resource myself) but I could certainly do it more.

add a help page for the social bookmarking and RSS subscription options to help explain to readers what they are and how to use them.

Man, I’ve had that unfinished post in queue for some time now. Hopefully this will be a good motivator.

The fact is – football is not as easy to monetize as gadgets. Here are a few options for you to consider…

Adsense has positively sucked for me. TLA has been pretty good. Will look into TLB

Marketing

For the most part, I do everything you suggest in this section.

All in all, I’m pleased by this review. I think there are a number of things that I can take away immediately (as mentioned, I’ve already put in place two of the suggestions).

I appreciate the time that Ahmed took to do the write-up and the great comments that followed. I’m looking forward to the next reboot!

The best part is that you can see the suggestions in the context of an actual blog and it makes it much easier to apply if there are similarities between the re-booted blog and your own (whether it be content, design, marketing strategies etc).

Keep up the good work!

Here’s the one thing I’d recommend as far as monetizing. CJ.com has some great affiliate programs. Develop a mini store and drive some of your readership deeper into the store with related products.

Also talk about products occassionaly if you are looking to make it more of a professional blogging site income wise.

Overall a great site , and some quality feedback thanks guys.

I’ve implemented the suggestions from Liz and Raj about using a darker green. You’re right, it’s definitely easier to read now.

Moreover, I’ve removed the adsense on the top; frankly, I never liked it all that much and it’s not as though it was producing millions of dollars…

(1) The green hyperlinks are almost impossible for my older eyes to read. I doubt I would have liked them when i was younger. But I like your colour scheme in general, though more black would help the contrast, as Liz said.

(2) Content-wise, I suggest you throw in some more flagship content. I can’t recall if it was Zidane, but some young player is being touted as the next hot footballer/ soccer player, and a bio of him would help. Don’t forget bios of past greats. Few football fans ever grow tired of reading about, for example, the great Pele. Maybe do up two lists:

(a) the 10 greatest retired footballers
(b) 10 up and coming current players

If you have these, forgive me.

Josh, feel free to get in touch if something doesn’t make sense.

Teamwork is a good thing.

Looking forward to your feedback Josh.

Thanks also to Liz for the design-specific comments

I’m not able to digest all of this right now but will give it some time this evening so that we can have a fruitful discussion.

Josh

My solution to the Adsense would different. I would move them below the post officially to sit immediatly–5px–under the Sociable icons. and and mark them off with a border above and below. This would offer a clean, clear finish to the end of a post. Then I would add about 15px above the title of the next post.

If Josh, wants a set of ads at the top — not my personal perference, but a monetization choice — I would use the treatment I just described and the extra space above the post title to make the ads not part of the first post.

My greatest concern is the color of the green text. The color chosen doesn’t have enough black in it. I have the same problem with green on my own blog and will be changing it. The color now is 83B738. One with a little more black would be 6F9C30 even more would be 62892A. It’s worth a try to see what the difference in readability is.

Speaking of readability, the overall type size very small. I would recommend making at least 2px larger. If the type goes larger the main content area can go about 5px wide. However, care needs to be take that the line length doesn’t get too wide for the eye to return to the next line to read.

I wonder why that first post under the Adsense looks different — smaller title, no sociable icons . . .