The longer you sit around the internet, watching what goes on, the more you realize just how flexible you have to be to remain in the job. If you get bent out of shape by changes, you’ll end up burning out quickly. There’s no need to get emotional when you’ve built a business in Cyberspace. You’re alone on the frontier, with no map to guide you. That’s okay, with quick wits, well-honed instincts, and a clear business model, you can succeed. But along the way, you might just discover what I already have: I have to adapt and innovate, or I’m nothing but roadkill on the Information Superhighway.
The web is a great place for automation. When you start a website, you can easily envision how huge of a money making operation it will be. But you still have to get the word out, and try and market your website to everyone on the internet. It’s not easy to do, because the Web is a vast place, filled with hundreds of millions of functioning websites, with many being on the exact same subject. Unless you have deep pockets, or lots of friends in the right places, you won’t be able to launch big enough to catch everyone’s attention.
Continue reading “A Lot Of Internet Marketing Is Personal Marketing” »
I understand why people do social networking, and it’s easy to see how making the “front page” of a well trafficked social network would help a website. But the philosophy of “tagging” or submitting all of your own work to social websites is one I don’t agree with. First of all, it takes real time to do so. Secondly, the pages that link to you are of very low quality. Add to that the presence of the mis-used “nofollow” tag, and you get some very weak links.
Making a website turn profitable is not as hard as you think. It primarily requires making the decision that your website is worthy of earning money, and a monetization plan that you can implement. All websites can earn cash, regardless of what subject they’re about, but certainly fields filled with active advertisers tend to monetize best. How can you be sure your niche is right? Using common sense, you can decipher whether advertisers exist for your website.
In any event, here’s what you need to make money with any website:
1) Cheap fixed costs. Look for a hosting package where adding a new website is not expensive.
2) A plan for consistent updates
3) At least three “partners” in revenue generation, such as Adsense, TLA, Kontera, Amazon
4) Your own PayPal account to sell ads to individual advertisers.
5) Decent organic traffic and strong search engine rankings
That’s it, folks. And believe it or not, you can get all of these “things” without spending a ton of money. It will take a plan, time, determination, and effort. But not as much of any of these as you think.
Just stay dialed in to fields that are actually growing, and you’ll have no problem at all. If you already have a website with a few hundred unique visitors a day and aren’t making money, you need a kick in the ass. Just add some damn advertising programs until your money goes up! Only stop when you’ve plastered so many ads on your site that visitors stop coming.
Once you taste some of that revenue, I bet you never look at webmaster-ing in the same light again.
I’ve always been fascinated by the “long sales page” that so many internet marketers use. Personally, I cringe whenever I land on one of them. They’re almost always the same: long unbroken text, testimonial after testimonial, pushy sales copy, and all the rest. To me, such a page just screams “scam”. I know marketers use them, and I know they must work, but there is one time I can’t imagine how anyone would purchase an item from such a page.
I have always been one of the people who thinks “if you want a job done right, you do it yourself.” And, up to a point, this is true. But as I continue on doing internet marketing, and I build and manage more websites, the responsibility becomes greater. I realized a few months back that if I were to be more successful, I’d need to delegate responsibilities to others.
Continue reading “Successful Internet Marketing Requires Delegation” »
Customer service and marketing are not always considered to be relatives, but they are as far as I’m concerned. There’s no better lead you can get that someone who is referred to your business by a satisfied customer. Not only is the lead free, but there is a powerful opportunity to sell someone who is coming to you because they were referred by someone they trust.
Continue reading “Customer Service And Internet Marketing” »
Community websites are an interesting breed. They can be monetized pretty easily, but in ways that aren’t really conducive to continued growth. If you overdo the ads, you risk alienating the core members who visit the website every day. If you don’t monetize, you risk not paying the bills. For this reason, many forums will decide on charging for memberships. This is a valid idea, but not an easy sell, either.
Continue reading “An Interesting Idea To Monetize Community Websites” »
If you have a website that doesn’t have any traffic, then you, my friend, are basically in the same position that DJ the Pimp found himself in at the beginning of Hustle & Flow. Not only are you having problems getting your money on, your dreams and hopes are starting to fade, making you vulnerable to the worst malady of all faced by mankind: givin’ up.
Down on their luck webmasters are prone to desperate action
There is no point in giving up. I am here to tell you about an alternate reality that exists for all webmasters, even the ones who are near the end of the line. Before you give up on your dreams of flowing on the Internet, don’t be afraid of some good old fashioned Hustle.
If your website is without traffic, then you have nothing to lose by promoting that website. Even if you went to your local CraigsList and posted up one classified ad that said: “Hey, lonely webmaster seeks visitors for nice website.”, someone is bound to click. Once that person clicks, they have entered the Dragon’s Lair and you can convert them into something! If the post works once, then you replicate it until it stops working. (The true hidden secret to all webmaster success.)
In order to succeed, you must overcome the haters
When DJ the Pimp decided he needed to become a success, he went to see already famous Skinny Black who basically just crapped all over his dream, even going so far as to urinate on his demo tape. It’s understandable why. Skinny Black already had what DJ wanted and wasn’t willing to help the new guy out. If this happens to you when promoting your website, then do what DJ did. Kick that hater’s ass and go on to realize your dream anyway.
There is no one in the world that truly cares if your website succeeds, other than you, and maybe a few partners and/or friends. So in the end, it’s up to you to get the word out there to the public. Build traffic, using any means necessary!
It’s that time of the year. Spring is here and it is the time period where you review all of the websites you’ve been building these last so many years. Websites are like anything else, they require maintenance. You need to run all of your utilities and see if you have any mistakes that need reckoning, or any improvements that just have to be made.