Congratulations. I always love seeing folks go about doing something, particularly something which solves an actual problem for people.
There's always another thing to do, but I think you'll find that even in a non-technical niche you get non-trivial ROI out of grabbing one of the looks-a-wee-bit-more-professional $15 templates on e.g. ThemeForest or what have you. One of your core challenges at the beginning is convincing folks who need to be published that you are trustworthy enough to give a credit card to even though you're on the big, scary Internet which is full of viruses and scam artists and other things preying on poor defenseless folks such as themselves. Design can help you do this.
Yes, fixing up the front page some is certainly high on the list of things to do. I actually really liked the article about the HighriseHq.com restyling, but fear that a really fancy design like that is indeed a bit out of my reach, so maybe a theme like one of those is a better bet.
In terms of payments, one of the very convenient things about LiberWriter is that since people want to publish on Amazon, I use Amazon Payments without having to worry much about which system(s) to use.
They have to get that far to see that, though, and yeah, better design would help that. It's encouraging that it's making money even without that, though.
I'm curious how you think BCC ranks on that "professional-looking" scale. You've obviously A/B tested the hell out of it, have you written a blog post on the green/purple color scheme or the overall design of the site?
There's always another thing to do, but I think you'll find that even in a non-technical niche you get non-trivial ROI out of grabbing one of the looks-a-wee-bit-more-professional $15 templates on e.g. ThemeForest or what have you. One of your core challenges at the beginning is convincing folks who need to be published that you are trustworthy enough to give a credit card to even though you're on the big, scary Internet which is full of viruses and scam artists and other things preying on poor defenseless folks such as themselves. Design can help you do this.