Traffic Building Information |
|
Aspiring Webmasters Want To Know, What Makes A Website Grow?
It appears that most webmasters have come from the world of advertising. Their website content emphasizes "marketing and promotion". Just to prove my point, do a Google search on "marketing promotion". As I write, Google comes up with "about 5,910,000" entries. Gosh imagine the good fortune of a listing on page one! Of course, the number of entries for "marketing promotion" gets shadowed by "sex" which provides you with "about 192,000,000". It's not money and sex; it's sex and money. Prominent webmasters like Jim Daniels, Cory Rudll,and Kevin Bidwell(one of my favorites) et.al teach you Internet success strategies. Of course, they all started way back in '96 (that's 1996) or so when teaching such concepts made them successful because aspiring webmasters wanted the information. Someone asked me recently if Cory Rudll's two volume manual collects dust on my desk. Chagrined, I acknowledge, "sitting just to the right of my keyboard" (been there for two years). Then I think of all the other manuals, ebooks purchased to vault my Internet marketing skills. What then gets you the income so many claim to make? You've read the ads, "so and so made $55,000 in one month" and this was their slowest month. Or, affiliate maven makes $463,000 a year marketing affiliate programs. Each of these testimonials appear attached to some alluring ebook which you must have to succeed. Well, hold off. Maybe you just don't need to enter that credit card number. Here are 5 considerations to ponder before thinking about income from your website. Purpose: Never gave much credence to business plans; however, you can't get from my house to Boston without a map. Whether you write it down (which is best) or create pictures in your mind, there must be a map. A strategy which defines what steps you take. Strategies begin with brainstorming. Sit down, put a blank paper on your desk, grasp your pen, and write. Write anything that comes to mind relevant to your purpose. Write the not so relevant ideas too; who knows they might turn out to be the most important expression of your brainstorming. A number of routes will get you to Boston from my house: some direct and boring, some scenic and slow. Who cares what way you get there. Herman Drost's article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/2507, "8 Steps to Creating a Simple Business Plan...." provides a "how to" outline. Persistence: No matter what the hype reads, this takes persistence. Perhaps the only emotion that separates the successful from the no so successful comes down to persistence. Calvin Coolidge's (1872 - 1933) viewpoint may be worth memorizing. "Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Kevin Sinclair's article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/2508, "Persistence - The Magic Key To Success" inspires you to continue. Also, if you've never read Russell Conwell's "Acres of Diamonds", it's a classic worth reading. Preparation: "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure," says Colin Powell. Well, historians will assess the current geopolitical "learning from failure". However, every endeavor requires preparation. Ever watch a chef work? Every summer I work a weekend at a camp which serves 250 men seven meals. Doesn't sound like much until I observed the chef arrives to work at 3AM. I would get there at 4:15AM in order to dice, chop, stir, and pour in preparation for the next meal. When meals get served, few understand the amount of "prep work" that preceded the meal. No one sees you doing it; it just has to be done. Judy Collins provides clear guidelines on "Ten Steps To Prepare Yourself for Online Marketing" http://www.echievements.com/articles/2509. Probabilities: As this article is written, the banter of presidential poll interpretation continues. Everyone has an opinion, and every pole a changing nuance. However, reading polls provides some lessons on reading the probabilities of website traffic. Most of us read the primary poll results rather than referring to the "internal tracking polls". Same may hold true when reading website traffic: we look at the number of visits without reading the "internal tracking". Travis Reeder provides detailed explanations and reasons for digging deeper into the numbers in his article, http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/marketing/a/visitortracking.htm "How (and Why) to Read Your Web Statistics and Analytics" If you do not track visitors, I recommend http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ AWstats. "AWStats is a free powerful and featureful (sic) tool that generates advanced web, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically." "A reasonable probability is the only certainty," writes E.W. Howe. So what probabilities do you have for succeeding and how do you measure them? Personality: Ever converse with someone knowing that person was not "there"? Many websites give the same impression. What does this webmaster think? What matters to them? What message do they want conveyed? One source of information for news and other resources is Yahoo. Yahoo allows you to personalize your page using my.yahoo.com. I think it takes more effort to insert your personality into your work, to evidence your opinions and world view on a website. Every website page represents you implicitly or explicitly. What matters to you should be evident on your website, and your website should represent your values. Little seems to be written about this subject. Terri Seymour's article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/1296 "The Power of Personality" provides some further insights. Bob Baker's book, Poor Richard's Branding Yourself Online provides substantive help. Oscar Wilde's observation that "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation" deserves a webmaster's attention. As with all enterprise, Internet endeavors involve you with something that does not happen overnight. As with all worthy efforts, it requires a purpose clearly defined, a persistence resolutely affirmed, and a daily preparation involving your complete personality. You must remain passionately focused on the belief that you add value to this incredible enterprise known as the Internet. About The Author Ray Randall serves clients as a registered investment advisor with his firm, Ethos Advisory Services, Essex, Massachusetts http://www.ethosadvisory.com. He has wide experience within the financial services industry, writes a weekly newsletter for Ethos Advisory Services, and coordinates the developments at Echievements . Ray holds a Masters Degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, MA. You may email him or call (877-895-3756).
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Link Building That Makes Sense: Who To Link To When you are building links to increase your link popularity, who do you link to? The question of where to link to increase ranking can be confusing. Logical thinking is needed to achieve link popularity in a natural way. Top Tips for Requesting a Reciprocal Link While most webmasters agree that reciprocal linking is a very good way of increasing web site traffic, get your reciprocal link request wrong, and you won't get the link. Dont Be A Reciprocal Linking Turkey! I had an email exchange with an SEO client today after his webmaster called him pushing reciprocal linking software (when all this web designer was after was to generate some extra work from a client that hasn't needed him for awhile). Then that client called me after he received my email de- nouncing the software, fully convinced by a follow-up phone call from his web designer that the reciprocal linking soft- ware WAS valuable. Triple Your Traffic with Top Keyword Strategies Although the topic of keyword strategy and selection may appear to have been beaten to death already, it remains critical to the success of your website. Choosing the best keywords is only "Phase One" of the process. You must also make the most of the keywords you have. How to Get Great Organic Search Engine Listings All too often I find site owners are confused (or in denial) about how to achieve the search engine rankings they desire on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). So, I am pleased to offer you my version of "Organic Listings 101." 7 Ways to Drive Traffic to your Website If you sell products or services, chances are you have a website promoting these products and services. All website owners are looking for fresh ideas on how to get qualified visitors to their website and convert these visitors into buyers. Using Traffic Exchange Programs Part 1 I have an ingenious concept in store for you! Steer Clear of the Internet Traffic Jam Yesterday, I got stuck in a traffic jam. It wasn't the first time and unfortunately won't be the last time! 5 miles of bright beaming red tail lights flickering in my eyes. Just the thought of it makes me kind of nauseas. Especially, when all I was trying to do was go to the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk! How To Get Guaranteed Traffic With Overlooked And Little Used Methods Traffic. We all know that without it our sites will sit there lost in cyberspace. Gathering nothing more than the occasional spider crawling across lonely electronic cobwebs. Unleash A Thundering, Non-Stop Traffic Stampede To Your Site -- Practically Overnight! There is a new tool available that promise to do wonders for your traffic. It's called Traffic TurboCharger. This piece of equipment doesn't brake any search engine rules and it actually generates beautiful pages visitors would like to see. Getting Free Viral Traffic Using Automated Visitor Referral Systems Would you like to get unlimited viral traffic to your site, for free? Traffic Exchange Primer Traffic exchanges are everywhere. A traffic exchange is a clever way to get hundreds or thousands of visitors to your website. The concept is very simple and the exchange process is easy to put into action. First, you join a traffic exchange program that includes individuals with websites to promote. Next, you set up the website you want to promote. Finally, you visit the websites of the other members and they visit your website in exchange. The Hidden Traffic Strategy That Skyrockets Your Profits If you agree that traffic is the true currency of the web, then you'd want to read this article very carefully? Top Ten Ways to Promote Your Website When the Traffic Dries Up Even the best websites with the best marketing plans can run into some problems with traffic every now and again. However, if this happens to your website don't worry because there are many different ways you can boost traffic with just a little effort. Consider the following 10 suggestions to re-gain your customers and boost your traffic. Seven Red Hot Tips for Linking 1. Vary the keywords in your link 'anchor' text Generating More Traffic to Your Website Are you looking for an effective way to generate more leads or traffic into your online business or affiliate programs? Now you can easily generate more leads and sales by using these techniques. Finding and Managing Quality Reciprocal Links: A Tutorial for The Newbie All of us want to increase traffic to our web sites. It helps our search engine rankings, and is a very cost-effective way to provide us with potential new customers. One of the best, and certainly least expensive, ways to do that is by exchanging links with sites similar to our own, or that contain content our own visitors are likely to find interesting and useful. It is important to restrict our exchanges to such sites because if we indiscriminately exchange with everybody and anybody we become what is known as a "link farm" and wind up being banned by the search engines. Increase Your Tourism Web Traffic & Sales ? Guaranteed Web sites are a major part of the tourism marketing success strategy used by international tourism promoters in the new millennium: tourism boards, Associations, lodging, tour operators, etc. If your tourism web site does not have these four primary elements clearly and quickly represented, you are missing opportunities and losing sales. Link Popularity for a Successful Website: How (Not) to Go About Getting It A classic way of getting seen and noticed on the web is to make sure your site is linked to as many other sites as possible. The strategy of link-exchange has been so overused and abused that search engines are now wary of it and may penalize sites that are linking to "link farms", or to any other sites with non-relevant content. Links Exchange ? a Hazardous Business? So we gather in all the relevant information we can possibly find, and include it in all the right places, taking great care in linking our pages properly, optimise each page in turn with a list of 'keywords' - and making sure that the most relevant keywords are reflected in each pages 'title tags'.. |
home | site map |
© 2005 |