Sid - Blogging for Newbie Webmasters’

Hi! Happy Diwali! Hope you are planning for a great Diwali as I’ll be also waving in the Hot-Diwali-wave this weekend. Anyway, I could manage sometime to check for updates in the world of webmasters and was astonished to locate a good number of important resources you must have to be more successful as a webmaster.

Outline of a Course!

This is a blog entry about the outline of a course on how to become a real estate webmaster. It is just an outline, but good enough to give you a quick start covering all aspect of becoming a successful blogger. Hope this entry will be extremely helpful for clueless bloggers desperate to earn some revenues.

Google Webmaster Central!

This is another great blog entry on Google Webmaster Central, a free Google service for Webmasters to monitor the performance of their websites, blogs, or forums. Google webmaster central is aimed to help you achieving higher ranks in Google SERP(!) by furnishing you with different very important statistics about your website. I must appreciate that it has always helped me to align my promotions in the right track.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

At times, you may just get confused about how to promote your website? So many free resources are there, if you do not want to consider the paid options! Have we used them to their maximum potential in order to drive traffic to our websites?

I guess, so far as my focus goes, I’ve always been wandering; without making any promotional plan and sticking to that; just tried to follow advices that come from different sources; mostly like do this or do that.

Though, I must appreciate that those have worked to some extent to drive traffic to my websites and this blog, still I need a continuous stream of visitors to keep my sites running - don’t you?

If you are really serious about promoting your website,first of all make a plan - where to promote, how to promote, how much and how long to promote! It has been said so many times that once you have finished your website, put it for reviews and if you are satisfied with its quality - just go on promoting; quite common phrase - “Let the world know about your website!”

The free resources are well known to all of us:

1. Free Web Directory

2. Article Writing

3. FFA and Classified Ads Sites

4. Newsletters

5. Social Networking Sites

6. Press release etc.
Instead of just wandering around, it is better to make a plan - something like - how many directory submissions should suffice, or how many articles should I write each week? Now prepare a daily/weekly schedule of activity to reach your target and stick to that.

It should look something like:

Name of Website: abc.com
Target Visitors: XXXX per week

Campaign Starts On: xx/xx/xxxx

Campaign Target Completion Date: xx/xx/xxxx

Target Activity:

Dir Submissions: XX per week

Articles: X per week

Classified Ads Submissions: X per week

Newsletter: X per week

Social Networking Sites: X hours per week

Press Release: X per week etc.

*If you are not an expert in writing press release, then just learn it from the available resources; it must be narrative, like a reporter writes.

Once you have framed your target activity, now just keep a log of each activity:
Date Website Dir Articles FFA/Classifieds Newsletter Press Release

- either in the above format, in the form of a spreadsheet, or the way you feel better. This raw activity log will help you to monitor, review and modify your activities based on the available data.

• Many webmasters do submit their websites to different existing directories just after publishing their website, it is a good practice; still they are advised to look for new PR directories, this will definitely compensate for the expired directories.
• Website promotion is not instantaneous, but it spreads like ripples in a pond, the older your domain name is, and the sustained effort you have made to promote your website - the better it will yield in the long run.

The next time, before getting frustrated for want of traffic in your website or blog, at least you can check, what efforts you have made to draw visitors to your website.

Related Topics!

Website Promotions || Free Web Directory || Free Classified Ads Site || Press Release || Free Article Submission || Free Advertising Resources

If you are really serious about setting up your own website design and development business, here are an abstract of the discussions recently took place in WPW forum; I liked the great ideas shared exclusive by the men who know their business and are successful in this industry. So, I like to share it with you all.

To start a website design and development business, apart from having good technical knowledge and infrastructures, you need customer – who will entrust you with the job. To penetrate the world market as a web developer is not that easy with any prior work experience or without bearing a great portfolio; so, the option may be to poke into the local market. A market that you know like your own palm, the customers can trust you for they can meet you direct and can explain their projects. Getting people interested in publishing their own website is not that difficult in these days when a website is an essential means of communication, whether the person is a professional – like a Doctor, or an Architect, or an Artisan – or it is a commercial establishment like a local beauty parlor or a message center or even a store; Website is a must of all of us today. So there is ample number of clients and that fact should not require any more illustration. But, how to dig the soil is the matter of great concern for all of us, and in that discussion of WPW, it has been revealed without keeping anything secret. Since it is a, rather, long citation, so, I would present here the brief abstract.

• Rent an office place in an easily accessible location, location is the key where your potential customers can get to meet with you. It is rather difficult to monitor such business from home unless you have a separate suitable space.
• Create a profile in MySpace and let the world know what services you can offer!

Create a content rich, resourceful website optimized for local search, offer some local discounts. Design banners and make them available on a link to us page on your website as well. As potential clients like to chat a bit before making a decision, so, put up your IM in the Contact Us page, or, in MySpace profile.

• Talk to the business owners
• Cold Calling (in Person) will work the best.
• Approach local cities, towns, scout troops, churches, sports teams and offer your FREE service to building and maintaining a website for them.
• Take part in local Chamber of Commerce
• Print and Distribute nice Brochure
• Utilize Social Networking Sites like Ryze, linkedin, BNI (Business Networking International), meetup.com
• Post ads on Craigslist.org
• Contact local ISPs in your area for exchanging clients.
• Contact local people who are in the related industry, like, Web Hosting Company, SEO Workers, and People Working in Website Marketing; negotiate with them.
• Let the word of mouth spread in your locality.
• Build up a newsletter mailing list.
• For Website Design and Development business non-internet ways of marketing works best.
• Skip the yellow pages, and might be Post Cards - its worthless for web design
• There are no bad customers. If you take the time to learn the customers’ needs, his business and his potential customers you will succeed. Answer the phone when people call with questions. Always be nice no matter how rude and arrogant people are
• Be prepared to hire in help once things get rolling and be prepared for taxes.
• The key is to deliver quality - delivering something that’s fit for purpose.

you can read the full discussion at WPW!

Related Links

Website Promotion | Off-line Marketing | Website Design Services

I’ve all along tried to share with you guys what I’ve learnt and what I’m still learning during my stay here at internet. Site building is not that difficult today for the ready-to-install free scripts and free templates that meet up most of your needs. So, the biggest issue is how to promote a web site?

What is that Golden stick that will bring life to your web site by drawing attention of thousands of visitors each day? I searched the net a lot and ended up in dire frustration as most of those methods involve time consuming affair. But what if you need some real instant visitors?

Someone may have started thinking I’m going to talk about the age-old traffic exchange programs where you have to surf other people’s sites so that you can gain certain credits which in turn will be used to drive visitors to your site. Traffic Exchange may work for certain sites but not for every site in the internet traffic exchange is going to be useful. Also it involves a hard work or investment on your part again and the traffic driven to your site are not generic one and they are more likely to ignore your site as they are always in a hurry to surf more sites: so, traffic exchage is not the one I am going to talk about right now.

If you are loosing your patience to read upto this point, I must express my deepest regrets as I know if I would tell it in one or two lines ( it should not deserve more than that ) you will simply overlook it or ignore it. So, my every effort will be to produce a long lasting impression in your mind so that after reading this article you will also try to promote your site using the super hit formula.

When I started to observe the example site, a blog in fact, it had hardly one to two visitors per day; believe me - only one to two visitors per day. Is that enough for you? If it is enough then I’ll advise you to stop reading as I’m thinking of generating thousands of hits to your web sites. The blog was struggling hard to get some real traffic; the blogger was dissapointed but never gave up hope.

The blogger started a CONTEST. It looked like a very simple task but thrown in a very challenging way claiming that “You can’t do this, and, if you do this I’ll give you $10 as a prize money”. The blogger posted it in different forums and social networking sites.

It worked like magic.

The blog got thousands of visitors rushing at it to win that $10 contest in a single day. The blogger did not announce the name of the winner for quite some time and would continue to receive that amount of visitors per day. The blogger finally decided to declare the name of the winner - and - showed the payment proof also.

The contest was over. It was expected that the site would again start to starve of traffic, but, surprisingly it would continue to get 400+ visitors daily - the residual ones who have actually found some interesting stuff in that site.

Do I need to tell more specifically what is that “super hit formula“? If you expect me to do so, I’m sorry to say that I’m too tired after making this pretty long post.

Take Care. Good night.