Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 7m 1,796 #website
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Five Tips To A Successful Website
With the ever-increasing number of websites out there, it is an amazing tool that allows every single person in the world with Internet access to add an expression of themselves online through a website, if they choose to setup a personal website. Many people are happy enough to use social media networks and email for their daily needs, but there are many more, and the number increases each day, where people want to express their own opinions, thoughts, and ideas. If social media is like an apartment and a website is like a house, than more people are preferring to own a house.
Anyone can set up a website in minutes and spend less than $30 – $50 getting started. There is really nothing standing in the way of anyone starting up a website, coming up with a new idea, and making a ton of money on it. While it is true that starting a website or starting a blog is not immediately going to roll in any money at all, it is understanding how to make money through a website or blogging that entices many people to start websites and go for blogging.
There is a fair warning that comes with starting a website or blogging: If you are doing it just for the money, quit while you are ahead, because you won’t make any money. Sure, you might get lucky, grab that domain that someone really wants to buy from you, and make money on it. You might start that quick blog that is and have such a specialized niche that a company really wants to buy it from you.
You might even have an idea for a website that you start with a partner and you both manage to make it viral overnight and successful the next day. These stories do happen. Are they common? Not really. Could it happen? Absolutely. Could it happen to you? Definitely.
You have Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a series of other social media networks that have sprung up over the last decade, with Snapchat and Instagram becoming the last two major players in the game. There are still plenty of niches that are unaccounted for that have yet to be thought of as our technology in the world progresses and people are becoming more aware of the world’s needs and demands.
Figuring out and capturing those ideas of what is the “next thing” in the world and capitalizing in on it before anyone else does is what is going to make you successful. However, the unfortunate truth is that there are thousands of startups that happen every year, and only a few dozen of them remain in the game during their first year, with many more disappearing in the following years.
Owners involved in startups believed the demand for their product was greater than they thought, only to find out there was very little demand for it. They may have underestimated their funding, got too many investors involved, never actually started the project and do not have the means to pay to make their idea happen, and some may have gotten their ideas stolen, with someone else running off and making it their own startup. There are plenty of things that stand in the way of a successful website or business venture.
Fortunately for you, having come across this article, I have had several successful websites, if you choose to believe they are successful. Have they made me millions? Not at all. Have they made me hundreds of thousands? I wish they did. Have they made me a few thousand dollars? Sure they have. A few thousand dollars is a number I am fairly happy with, especially because I began as a website designer, developer, and blogger. More importantly, over two million people have been to this website alone.
Here are five things I have learned in my endeavors for the few successful websites I have.
1. Make a website for yourself
Trying to please everyone else will get you no where. Thinking about a website that other people will like is the worst thing you can do for your website. Think about something you enjoy doing, writing about, or even services that might be useful to you that you have yet to see on the Internet. You can make it a personal website, blog, or a professional website, but keep in mind that it is a website you are going to visit every single day for as long as it exists. Make sure it is a place you want to be.
2. Be passionate about your website
If you choose to run a blog, make sure you are covering topics that you know a lot about. Before you even publish any posts on your blog, write a dozen or two blog posts so that you have material, posting once or twice a week, just to get you started. Write the blog post, read them, re-read them, back them up with evidence, data, or whatever the topic may be that you are writing about.
Get a friend or family member to read it. If they have trouble understanding it, you have written a complicated article. Use the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid) and make sure that your articles could easily be understood by at least a 9th or 10th grader, which is about the average reading level of most people.
If you choose to run a website, either because you are promoting a product you created or had a web developer create one for you, than it is a product that you should be personally using everyday yourself. The moment you stop using it or you find it useless is the moment it is no longer a good product and more thought needs to go into a whole new product.
If you find it useful and you can find at least two or three other people who find value in it and have used it on several occasions, even for testing purposes, than it may be safe to say that it is a good product that you can continue to work on and distribute to the world.
3. Know the type of audience you want on your website
Bounce rate is going to be common, especially in the first year of your website existence. Many people are going to stumble across it if you advertise and market it and many people are going to find it useless or uninteresting to them. Over time, however, you are going to attract and keep the audience who is actually interested in reading your articles and what you have to say. This is the audience that you want to have and keep. No one else matters. These are the people who will read your articles and share them because they like what you write.
How can you tell the type of audience you have? Through comments, email, or some type of analytics. You may not be able to personally identify any of your visitors through analytics, but if you know their geographical location, age, sex, etc., you can get a sense of who you are writing for and how to write for them. If you are getting emails with compliments about your website, than always be appreciative and imagine those people are reading your articles everyday.
4. Understand the demand for your website
If you are a blogger or a business running a website, how many people are visiting your website? How many are using it? Using analytics to track down the number of visitors, how long they are staying, where they are going on your page, and even using the comments section to get an idea of their thoughts can be very helpful. If you happen to sell a product and you have a high churn rate, you may want to figure out why by asking your customers as they unsubscribe how they feel about your product.
If your website is in demand, you will feel the need to keep your website going no matter what. Through writer’s block or bad articles, you will keep it going no matter what because you are passionate about your website and you understand that your visitors, despite having “hit or miss” articles, are still visiting and reading your website!
Knowing this, you must keep updating your website, no matter how tired you are of it, or how much you feel it is going to fail. It will only fail if you let it fail. If you keep it going, even through the slow times, or even if you decide to post less, you can still succeed by just keeping it going by doing something on it.
5. Take advantage of social media networks for your website
Imagine inventing the greatest thing mankind will ever know and now you have to tell the world. How exactly are you going to tell the world about this new greatest invention? You could start telling friends or even a local news station, but their reach can only go so far. That is where social media network comes in because it already contains millions of people who are already sharing things with the world and willing to share anything and everything of interest.
If you had a celebrity friend to advertise this new invention, would you enlist their help to get the word out? Of course you would! Social media networking can do the same! Articles go viral everyday and for the most part, millions of people have already read the latest news on their social media feeds already, and you haven’t yet because you are reading this article.
Take advantage of all that social media networking has to offer, especially Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Take advantage of whatever hashtags is trending on all the social networks and use it to advertise your website. You may not attract millions of people who see the hashtag, but you will likely attract some clicks and visitors in the process of marketing yourself on social media channels.
Never give up on your website and know that whatever you chose to write about or do on your website was your choice alone. Whether you are currently only receiving 10 visitors or even a hundred visitors, consider any visitor a success. You can never fail in your website endeavors as long as you never give up. Keep trying, keep coming up with new ideas, keep going. No matter what, the website is for you, but once you succeed, you will attract other like-minded people who will take great pleasure in reading your website. In the beginning, do it for yourself. Once the website takes off, do it for the visitors and the fans you have attracted.
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