The skills required to be a great webmaster
So building a website is no longer the great mystery that it used to be, but there’s a difference between building a website and building a website that’s successful and makes money. To me it’s a complete package of skills and you’re only going to be successful if you master (at least in part) all of them. Here’s a rundown of what I think it takes:
- Some technical knowledge. Note I’m only saying some because you don’t really need to be able to program to build a website, most out of the box platforms look great from the start e.g wordpress, but it is handy to know a little html.
- Design know-how. Again I’m not really talking about this from a technical point of view, just from the viewpoint that you know what looks good and what doesn’t. Having an eye for creating something that people find easy to use is also very important.
- Marketing. Probably the most important factor and worthy of more than just a paragraph here. However you really have to know what you’re doing here if you’re investing money into the business, the only real way to learn is to practice so it’s best to start with a small project/site before going crazy.
- Perseverance. Also very important and actually the one that causes the most failures. It can take much longer that you expect to create a successful site so how are you going to keep going? Also what if it fails completely, do you have the willpower to start again, most people don’t.
- Analysation. Fancy word but all it means is the ability to figure out what’s working/not working for your site and why. This could be anything from what your seo efforts are not successful to why visitors aren’t converting into sales. It’s that ability to interpret stats into action and to adapt what you’re doing that separates great webmasters from the rest.
Five points seems a bit sparse for what can be a huge process, still you always need a base to start from so I hope it helps. Part of the problem I’m finding with trying to document a lot of this website building process is there’s just too much to cover, plus the fact that everyone has their own process for doing things and overloading people with too much info could do more harm than good! Still I hope the tips above help if you’re thinking about starting a site.
What the “gurus” aren’t telling you about making money
So I feel a rant coming on. I only have myself to blame though as for some reason I can’t stop reading 100s of different SEO blogs, it comes with the territory of being interested in something I suppose. Don’t get me wrong there’s lots of “interesting” content out there when it comes to internet marketing but there’s so much fluff too that you gotta wade through html for days before you find that nugget of useful info.
So anyway I was reading this post today at seo-theory.com where Michael essentially says people are way too hyped up about link-building. I don’t necessarily disagree with this to a point especially when it comes to some of the useless link-building techniques I see around the net today. However he then drops the bomb that he only spends around 10% – 15% of his time link building at also that uber googlar Matt Cuts says links are only 1% of the algorithm. I mean seriously, go spend 10-15% of your time building links for “car insurance” with the rest on your “site architecture” and get back to me. I probably won’t see you in the top 1000.
This is by no means the first time I’ve seen a post like this on a SEO blog but it’s still weird every time I read this stuff. The only explanation I can come up with is people are trying to setup pre-made excuses for clients about the more difficult aspects of SEO.
“Link building is very 2005”
Still as I’ve said before there can only be one guy at No1 making money on every search and for the rest there’s a million excuses. When it comes down to it there’s really only one thing that matters and that’s if you’re making money from your site or not, everything else is just technical nonsense. Part of the problem of course is the inherent nature of internet marketing when it comes to making a living as few people really get the concept of earning money online and how much work it actually takes to get off the ground. Indeed the delay search engines impose on new sites is probably one of the most off putting things for new people that most don’t make it past the first month.
People often ask me what the keys to a successful website are and it’s really one of those impossible questions to answer just because every site and more importantly every market is different. For instance if you are an online store selling physical goods your margins are very different than someone setting up a blog and selling advertising to make money. The problem is that even though people are developing wildly different sites “Gurus” are handing out this universal advice as a one size fits all solution. I’m hoping not to get into any of that rubbish here on the blog and will try to be as specific as possible (even when I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about sometimes!).
This brings me on to another point with the Internet marketing Gurus, all the terrible products and books they sell. Don’t get me wrong not all the money making ideas they “sell” are scams but I’d say about 95% are. They are quite easy to spot though, if they promise the world within 24hours of purchase then you know what to expect and only have yourself to blame. With that being said though I have bought 2 very good IM products this year which have saved/made me quite a bit of money, however I did have to waste a lot of cash on other useless stuff before I found them. Now I’m not actually going to say what they are here, first because I don’t promote other peoples products here (yet) and second because unless you understand the basic principles website promotion they really aren’t going to work for you anyway. It’s probably one of the biggest problems with the make money on the web industry, they are selling these advanced programs to newbie’s because all the advanced people have already bought it (there’s not that many advanced people). I will say though its v exciting when you finally find a program/system that allows you to save days or even weeks of work. Notice how I define the value as saved time and not direct money because at the heart of this thing is work and the time to do it. The work will always be required but the processes can be streamlined, improved and sometimes even outsourced.
So the question remains, how do you know if the latest money making scheme you are reading about actually works? Well you don’t but for a start it should never be a scheme and it should always be founded on principles that you do understand. For instance if you do understand how article marketing works in relation to your website promotion then a tool that helps you speed that up a few hundred percent is obviously going to in-directly increase your income. However if the “system” is another mysterious promise and only talks about the money you can make how likely is it to be legit?
So anyway this post started out as a rant about one guys “seo theory” and ended up in the more general area of internet gurus, are they the same people? The thing is being able to sort the good information from the bad is the fundamental principle of learning in general and not just this internet business stuff. If I had to give advice to someone just starting out in the online world I would say start small with different techniques and see what works. Also you need to understand the general principles of what’s happening in any marketing situation in order to suss out whether a new opportunity is the real deal or not. Blind faith is only going to get you so far my friends.
So that rant lasted a bit longer than I expected but still it’s nice to let of some steam in html form. Until next time…
Do you have to cheat the system to earn money from the net?
So first off I have to make an apology because so far there have been over 1,500 comments on this blog but until today none of them have been approved because I just haven’t had time to check. While it’s true that over 1,495 of these comments were advertising the latest form of medication for “blood flow regulation” it still makes me look me look bad! I mean how are these people going to promote their latest pharmaceutical products if I don’t approve their latest msg (which is usually in Russian for some reason)? So anyway I have some program called Akismet now so hopefully it will allow me to have some genuine comments on here at last.
My Russian pill pusher friends do lead me on to an interesting point though and that’s if you have to cheat the system in order to earn real money online? I can say for more certain that in this case these people are completely wasting their time commenting on random unrelated blogs. For a start Google ignores these links automatically and there’s really no chance of someone clicking on the link within the blog comments section. So what’s the point of it, its lazy marketing at best and very annoying at worst. It actually reminds me of that old Microsoft slogan which I’ve always liked:
“Work smarter not just harder”
The thing is when people see these and other black hat techniques pasted all over the interweb all the time they assume they must be working all the time, however that isn’t necessarily the case. On the other hand though you have a very large group of people going in the opposite direction and trying to follow every solid “rule” they have been told about either how to market at website or start a business online. That old saying “think outside the box” has become an overused cliché but you do have to think about things differently to get noticed. You’ve got to remember that all the best markets (i.e. worth money) are going to have competition and there can only be one big dog at No1 (for Google anyway) so how are you going to persuade them to pick you?
As you may or may not know my main method for making money on the internet is to build websites that attract traffic from Google using SEO. Sometimes when I mention to people what I do (i.e. when at the bar) their eyes tend to go a glassy as if I just asked them 7 times 8. Usually I just say that I build websites as trying to explain the complexity of the Google algo in any intoxicated state in is just about impossible. But there is also a safely in that complexity I have to admit, partly because my ego likes the fact that not a lot of people can do this but also the less serious competition the more money for me! Not that there will ever be too much competition imho with so many different markets and keywords out there.
So what exactly am I trying to say here? Well first off all these black hat techniques don’t really work unless you’re doing them in ridiculous volume and even then the tolerances are so low. At the other end of the scale you have all these people who don’t do anything at all! I mean they might do the occasional post on a forum about their website but fundamentally they just want to sit there and wait for the magic to happen. So what’s the answer? Well for a start you have to be active in marketing your site but more importantly you can just wait for the SEO secrets to arrive at your door. At the same time I’m not saying there are “secrets” as such but there are definitely some more efficient ways to do the basics (which I’ve talked about before). Time is also a big factor here, you’re not going to learn everything you need to know overnight. It could take quite some time, however since the search engines are in no hurry to rank new sites anyway does it really matter.
So back to my original point. I think it’s possible to have all the fun of evil tactics but without the sleepless nights and with more success than your average spammer can dream of. Until next time.
What is the “Key” to earning money with the net? Do you have it?
So been a while since I last posted but I always want to wait until I have something at least semi interesting to say before I decide to clog up your life with even more information. I suppose that can be a pretty big problem when it comes making a living on the internet, information overload! Yes it can happen to us all, you keep stuffing your brain full of the latest “secret” or “trick” to help you conquer the web and you end up getting more and more confused. Analysis paralysis can be one of the most dangerous things that can happen in any field but it’s even worse on the net as there are millions of gurus all trying to sell you something different.
So how to you work out if you’re on the right path to making money online or another road to ruin? One of the easiest ways to tell is by asking yourself if this method even makes sense to you and/or other people? It’s not an easy question to ask, especially if you have already invested a lot of time and money into this system. Some people don’t know when to quit and others can’t get started.
One thing I do feel has been key to my success and made it possible for me to consistently earn good money online is perseverance. I once heard the phrase
“Brute force beats perfect understanding every time”
And it more or less describes my entire internet philosophy when it comes to building websites and making a living as its been as much the failures as the successes that have helped me to learn this whole industry. What it means is that you get to a point where you just have to dive in and see what happens when you test things. Google is one big puzzle and the only way to find out how it really works is to build something. So many people want the perfect formula before they start so they have no possibility of failure but starting with that attitude more or less guarantees one result (and it’s not a good one).
One thing you also bear in mind that despite what you may think internet businesses do not have overnight success any more than any other business. While yes you can get massive amounts of traffic and hype to your website overnight, this will never or very rarely convert into instant money. Remember traffic and visitors do not always = money, just look at YouTube and Twitter, millions of visitors every day and they still can’t make a profit. Remember quality beats quantity every time, don’t chase a market/visitors that you can never turn into hard ££££.
One mistake that I see people making all the time when trying to earn money is to start a website about something they love without researching the market properly to see if the money is actually there. Yes you may have a passion for purple slippers with glitter but how many other people do? How many of them are searching for this every day on Google? How many of these people can you convert into sales and £££?
Ok so far you may be thinking this post is all negativity about the pitfalls about a career on the internet and there are so many mistakes you can make when you start but the truth is that many of them can be overcome with hard work and perseverance. This also brings me to another very important point about online marketing and that is that you really have to have an interest in it at some level to really achieve success. I was actually explaining to a friend of mine who also wants to get into this business that you really have to have an interest in it if you’re going to have any kind of success. He said:
“Im interested in making money, does that count?”
The thing is I told him, you won’t always be making money so how will you stay motivated at these times (especially the start). You see I don’t think you have to be a genius to earn money but like most things I think hard work (and a little bit of luck) are what really makes the difference. So until next time….
Starting a blog to make some extra cash needs planning
Ok so let’s say you want to start up a new blog to help make some extra cash online. One of the biggest mistakes people make is just to start a general blog with the expectation that advertisers are going to want to pay lots of £££ to put up adds. When it comes to internet traffic quality is everything and if you don’t have visitors who are intent on spending money when they arrive at your site then there’s no way you or any advertiser is going to make any money off them. So what happens is many bloggers start a site about their own “pet passion” and hope it will automatically turn into a money spinner. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t write about what you are interested in but you must target it in a way that is going to create some kind of potential for earnings.
Let’s say you are interested in photography, the wrong move would just be to talk about why you love it so much and show all your pictures online. A much better strategy would be to target people looking for a specific camera and to write up a real quality and detailed review on this camera. Then promote this review by attracting links for it from other quality (related) sites. Hopefully with time and some luck you may be able to rank your review when people are searching online for this specific model. The key is that you know people who find this review will already be “thinking” about making a purchase and so this visitor is very valuable both to you and potential sellers of this product.
Many people can’t get over this concept that I’ve just explained as they only want to write about what they are interested in and don’t want to deviate from it for a second. Now i have nothing against personal blogs at all but at the same time you have to decide what your priorities are and if your mission is to earn money or to just entertain yourself and your visitors. This doesn’t mean you can’t combine your passion with your money making abilities, you just need to plan out exactly how you are going to tackle it.