Christian Little

Wow it’s January 26 and this is my first real blog post of the new year. Don’t I suck?

Well simply put, I’ve been super busy. I’m working full time, putting in time on my MBA, working on my MBA project, family time, and playing the occasional World of Warcraft (yeah…that’s a stupid thing to do with my 5 minutes of free time but it’s cheap entertainment).

Anyways, since this is my first 2009 post, I figured I’d give you a nice list of useful tips for marketing your websites in the new year:

1. Eliminate Bugs – a lot of webmasters do not take the time to ensure their websites function properly, they just make assumptions that everything is working as intended. Don’t be foolish and do this, every month or two test every function and feature of your website. Yes that can be a lot of work, but you might find something broke and it’s really upsetting your visitors and turning them away.
2. Don’t Jump on the Next Bandwagon – there is always ‘the next big thing’ on the horizon. Don’t be a sheep and follow what hundreds of other webmasters are telling you to do. Chances are, there the hype over it is bigger than the actual product/method/technique. And chances are better still that all these webmasters telling you how much money they are making with it are just telling you that so you’ll click their referral link. Just because somebody says “this is awesome”, doesn’t mean that it’s true.
3. Don’t Forget About the Recession – yeah it’s hard to forget about it since it’s always on the news right now. But never forget that it is happening, hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost every month (CNN reported that the US is losing 250,000 jobs/month right now). You have to consider that the average customer right now is very strapped for cash (especially right after Christmas). You also have to bear in mind that advertising campaigns that use the recession as a selling point won’t work, maybe they did 6 months ago when this mess started, but now people are desensitized and won’t fall for it.
4. Keep It Manageable – I’m a but of a hypocrit when it comes to this, but simply put – don’t take on more projects than you can realistically handle. Downsize if you need to. I for one have gotten rid of over 100 domain names in the past 12 months simply because I knew I would never get the time to use them. Don’t be afraid to get rid of things, if you have a good domain name but don’t have time to do something with it, try auctioning it (I recommend TDNAM.com, it’s run by Godaddy and very well done, otherwise use Moniker if your domain isn’t with Godaddy). At the end of this year I’m expecting to have no more than 5 active domains running. Why? Because I would rather spend the time bulding 5 really successful websites instead of 50 that don’t do anything.
5. Live Your Life – don’t let working on the web take over your life. Too many good webmasters get burnt out and drop of the radar. Spending 100+ hours online every week is only going to hurt you. I try to stay offline over weekends (doesn’t always happen), but when I do go online on the weekends it’s either to do homework or play World of Warcraft – I don’t touch my websites or lurk on the webmasters forums.
6. Fight Procrastination – the #1 enemy of the webmaster is procrastination. I’m guilty of this, as are all of you. Rather than say “I’m going to do this next week”, get off your ass and do it right now. Don’t push things back, just do it. A week will turn into two weeks, two weeks will turn into a month, and before you know it a project you wanted to do last year still hasn’t even been started.
7. Schedule and Prioritize – set a schedule and stick to it. It doesn’t have to be rigid and strict, but at least give yourself some idea of what you’ll be doing on any given day.
8. Learn Something New – try to learn 1 or 2 new technologies or methods every few months. You don’t need to become an expert, just expand your knowledge. For example, last year I taught myself how to install and manage Linux on my laptop (including learning how to dual-boot it with Windows XP). I also spent some time learning Ruby on Rails (and learned that I hate it, but at least I tried). I also learned that JavaScript is the bane of my existence, especially when it is used in tracking codes, but I took the time to learn how to deal with it and get around common JS errors when it comes to tracking codes.
9. Don’t Write an eBook – ebook writing is DEAD. Stop it. Don’t write another word. For the love of all that is holy and just, if I see another ebook on internet marketing I swear I’ll pull my hair out. Most ebooks are written by somebody in China or India or the Phillipines (and they got paid about $0.50/page for it), and they have no knowledge of the actual topic. Want proof? Logon to any freelance site (i.e. RentACoder.com, Scriptlance.com, etc), and take a look. You’ll see dozens of contracts posted for people wanting ebooks written for $5 (which they then proceed to sell via Clickbank for $99). Don’t be a moron, ebooks are dead. Help the ebook resistance, stop buying them, stop talking about them, just ignore all talk of ebooks. They are dead, there are no ebooks.
10. Stick to What You Know – everybody will tell you this, but very few of them actually follow their own advice. If you want to blog, then blog about something you are familiar with or passionate about (i.e. I only blog about internet marketing as that’s what I do for a living, it would be stupid of me to blog about cooking as I’m a dunce when it comes to such things). In the past year I’ve seen a lot of threads on Digital Point about people asking for blogging ideas for their new ‘make money online’ blogs…that’s a really bad way to get started when you are asking people who are your potential readers.
11. Spend Time on Forums – I recommend finding a few forums that are related to your website and becoming a member. Don’t flog your crap, just be a member and post useful information. From time to time drop information about your website when it’s appropriate, but the main purpose here is to get involved with the community that your website is based in and try to get some interaction. Build up a good reputation with your readers/customers, even if it is on a different website. If you want helping finding forums related to your website, check out www.big-boards.com, they keep lists of the biggest forums in the world, sorted by subject. It’s one of the more useful websites I discovered in 2008. With that in mind, don’t spend more than an hour every day on forums, you’ll suddenly find all your time is gone. I, for example, only go back to Digital Point every 3-5 days now (whereas last year I was on it every day).
12. Don’t Spam – This should go without saying. Spamming laws are getting more and more severe, and you’re only going to hurt yourself. Sure, you could send out 10 million emails and probably get $100,000 in sales from the penis pills you tried to sell, but now you’ve got a multi-million dollar lawsuit filled against you, you’re facing jail time, and your domain/IP has been blacklisted. Besides, you look like an ass.
13. Don’t Go For the Quick Buck – there is no such thing as easy money. I can’t say this enough times to aspriing webmasters. If somebody tells you otherwise, it’s preamble for their sales pitch on their ebook they are trying to sell you. You’ll always see people saying “I made $XXXX with this method, find out how by clicking here!” the link then sends you to a POS clickbank product.
14. Break Into New Markets – earlier I said to stick to what you know, but if you have the time, try to get into some new market that you haven’t established yourself – but make sure you have an interest in the market or you’ll get bored. For example – my MBA project is focused around particle physics, but I love science and I’ve never run a science site before. There’s no harm in stretching out to new markets, but keep it to something you know at least a little about.
15. Stick to It – If you run a blog, don’t abandon it. Keep posting to it, take breaks if you have to (i.e. I havent posted here for a month). Don’t just abandon a website. If you are finding you can’t keep up with it, then sell it and make a small profit. Never just give up and let a site die, that’s a waste of all the time and effort you’ve already put into it.
16. Think Logically – don’t just decide to do something and jump at it. Spend some time thinking about what exactly you want to do, and what you’ll get out of it. Deciding to build a website on cats and putting it up 5 minutes later is stupid, spend a few days planning out the content, where you’ll place advertisements, how you’re going to market it, who your target market is, etc. “Point Shoot Aim” marketing does not work.
17. Understand Your Target Market – who is your target market? What do they like? How old are they? Male or Female? What country? What language? Do you actually know all of these types of statistics about the people who come to your website? Is your website appealing to them? Why are you advertising male vitamins when 90% of your traffic are female? Review your visitor profile and make sure you are sending the right message to them.
18. Have Fun – if you are not enjoying what you are doing, then stop. For myself, I hate working with graphics and images (mostly because I suck at design), but I love putting together websites and marketing campaigns, and occasionally programming – you’ll never find me trying to do web design. Yet I build websites for clients – they know from the very beginning that I’m not a designer and I expect them to have a design ready.
19. Set Expectations – Related to the previous point, make sure everybody involved in anything you do has a realistic expectation. As stated above, I don’t do graphic design so when I take a contract to buld a website I make sure my client understands that. I never offer to do it, because I know it will suck and they won’t be happy. I would rather help them find a competent designer and take longer to get the project done, rather than risk the entire project falling apart. Same goes for websites, for example – this website doesn’t update frequently, and everybody knows that (join my Feedburner list if you just want to get emailed whenever I post so you save the time of returning here to find nothing new). My readers expect that I post infrequently, what do yours expect of you?