h Webmaster, What Have You Got Yourself Into!?
When you first try to design a small web site you don't realize
what you are getting yourself into. Unless you have specific web
design training, I bet you were not fore-warned. Let me brace
you.
Learning and remembering the HTML codes is easy compared to what
comes after your site is up.
1. Checking your links
Besides uploading your pages and making sure the links work, you
need to schedule regular checking or else get someone else
(usually for a fee) to notify you if they need to be fixed.
2. Fixing your links
Most of the time fixing links is simple. Sometimes something has
gone wrong, and you need to ask help you sort out the mess.
Desperate to have your business pages functional as quick as
possible, you may stay up late to re-build an HTML section or
several pages.
3. Submitting to search engines
This is how you announce to the cyber world you exist. but often
you must re-submit again every month, and you'll continually
find other engines and directories. When you revamp your site,
you must start all over again.
4. Writing ads and posting them
This is marketing, and if you are on a shoestring you will need
to do all this yourself. Daily and weekly, over and over. This
aspect of a website alone could keep you busy most of your time.
5. Tracking ads
So you only spend time and money where advertising is most
effective, you will need to track or use software to track your
ads. This can be automated, but it takes time to learn to set up.
6. Creating banners; putting up affiliate banners
Something fun to learn; sooner or later you will want to
exchange banners for more advertising, or sign up to refer
people to an affiliate or 3 - or more!
7. Adding content or new products
People won't come back to your site if nothing new appears or
happens there. Therefore, you'll add more and more content, or
write new ebooks, or create other products. Like when?!
8. Tweaking
Don't laugh. If you subscribe to helpful ezines, you continually
learn about little ways to improve your web site's design.
You'll often be tweaking it a bit here, and a bit there.
9. Fixing tables and forms
For unexplained reasons tables and forms go out of shape, or
need to be revised. Unless you delegate this aspect of your
work, it will eat up time sooner or later.
10. Starting an ezine to build relationships
Before long you will see the best advertising is to be an
authority figure in your field. You'll want to keep in touch
with past customers and those who window-shopped at your web
site but need to be invited back. You might just write articles
like this and let your resource box do your advertising, but if
you start an ezine - watch out - it will take over your life.
11. Corresponding with new friends and clients
If your website and ads will make you many friends and clients
they will want to chat with you and get some business questions
answered. It takes time to answer them all even if you are a
people- person and have the gift of gab. Especially then!
12. Dealing with floods of email!
Some email is truly junk, but it takes a while to sort and
organize your system for recognizing and dealing with it. Still,
some days it will hit you like an avalanche.
Am I trying to discourage you? By no means! It's an exciting
life. I find considerable fulfillment in it. But if you are just
starting out, you might want to make sure you have room in your
life for all this. Do allow yourself enough time to learn. Don't
expect to understand it all and be rolling in money by next
Friday.
Unless you are one exceptionally coordinated team, a committee
will take twice as long. Take time to learn it all yourself. All
this knowledge is going to be very useful to your business
career.