My Way of Putting together a Website.
I have been working online since 2004 and I had my shares of up and downs when it came to internet marketing. One of the biggest headache or pain in the ass while starting online is putting together a website.
I don’t mean in technical terms. You can hire anyone to get a website in a week or less. No I meant in terms of Marketing, Producing, it’s like giving a birth to website.
1. What’s Your Goal? – When I am starting out, I ask myself a very simple question. What’s my goal? Now of course, your goal can be, saving the world, making money, just plain old vanilla putting your business offline.
But in this phase, you have to find out how you are going to achieve your end goal.
For example, this website http://www.varunpratap.com/ went through many phases (from a personal website to fitness blog to again a personal website to professional website to phew… tooo many). I ended up scraping all of these earlier versions just because I wasn’t satisfied.
I am a creative person and I need an outlet where I can speak, shout, rant or just be darn creative.
Currently my slogan “Desire. Commit. Succeed” is something I want others to experience. And to me, there’s nothing better using a blog to share your experience. With my experience in many diverse fields, I know I’ll end up talking about tons of different things on this blog.
So you have to decide what’s your ultimate goal? And how you are going to achieve it?
2. How are you going to create a connection? – Websites do not exists in solitude. In fact nothing exists in solitude. So when you are going to make a website, you have to find a way to create a connection with people who are going to visit your website.
There’s no other way. You cannot avoid this. No matter who you are. No matter what business you are in. No matter what your race is or where you live.
Your website cannot live without visitors and there has to be a way to connect with them.
2 Easiest way to connect with them are
1. Blog Like this one.
2. Newsletter
3. Forum (I am adding this one but it takes lots of efforts to maintain a forum).
You also have to understand about the media (Audio and Video). Because they ultimately create a connection. You have to check whether you can use it or not.
3. Potential to monetize or not – Third thing I think about potential to monetize a website. It’s very simple, If you are already making an effort to build and maintain a website, then why not monetize it?
There are many ways to monetize. The easiest to implement are :-
1. Sell advertisement space.
2. You can create a list and sell advertisement.
3. Create a product/s and sell it.
4. Promote affiliate products.
5. Sell your services.
Now this is how I start even before I order a website design to be done. I worry about my prospects. I prepare about how I am going to connect. I prepare about how to market. I prepare about how to sell.
Like I said, any one can put a website online. These days even toddlers and their pets have one. But all of this underestimates the real though that goes behind putting a website together.
It’s not that complicated. In fact it’s easiest the moment you decide “What’s my Ultimate goal with this website?”.
This is first of my 3 part formula “Decide. Commit. Succeed”. The moment you decide and decide to commit, things changes. Everything will work in your favor depending on your will. And Succeeding is just next step.
Notice, there’s no where I talked about SEO (search engine optimization) or any other new internet technologies. Because we don’t have to worry about them.
First build a website in mind, then on paper and only then come online.
Best Regards,
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
What’s The Singlemost Factor Behind ANY Successful Website?
If I were to ask you, what’s the singlemost factor behind any successful website then what would be your answer?
This factor is common to Catalog sites, Personal sites, business sites, content sites, portal sites and every other sites that exists.
Here are few of the answers people believe are right-
1. Website Design
2. Slogan
3. Graphics and Logo
4. Marketing approach
5. Any latest Internet Technology (web 2.0, blog and ping, rss feeds etc)
5. any other answer (any answer that talks about getting traffic is not right, we are talking about website)
If your answer is any of the above, then it’s wrong.
The right answer is “The Words You use on your website”.
I know this is surprising but imagine how a website would look like without any words. Imagine what your graphics, design alone without words would say?
In fact if you take any B2B website, remove their words and then look, you’ll get Same design, Same style that it’ll be hard to differentiate between them.
You are on my blog not because you like the design or you just know me or you think this is the next coming of internet technology. No. You are here because of the words I wrote. You are spending time because the Words jump out to you and resonate with you.
Just take google.com the world’s best search engine website. What’d happen if I remove the words.
Can you make head or tail of it? You have no idea what to do? Heck even their logo is made up of word google.
What I did was erase “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” from the buttons above.
Before you came at google, you knew what’ll happen if you enter a term and click “Google Search”. But now you are clueless.
That’s why I suggest in the website, the most important factor is the words you use.
It’ll help differentiate your website than your competitors.
It’ll help you connect with your customers/prospects easily.
It’ll give meaning to your pictures, graphics on your website.
It’ll help you build trust with your visitors.
It’ll help you share information with your visitors/prospects/customers (isn’t that’s the whole reason you got your website?)
Words will help you brand your business and website.
Now the question is does any kind of word will help you? Of course the answer is NO.
You have to use words, that helps your visitors to guide through your website, understand how your website can help, and show them how to get solution to their problems.
Words will make a heck a lot difference if you just open your eyes and listen to your customers voice.
Click Here if your goal is to create a High performing website.
What has internet marketing taught me in last 5 years.
Whew, it has been 5 years and right now I am looking back at the lessons Internet marketing taught me over the years. Of course I am not discussing marketing tactics and techniques here otherwise this blog post will probably turn in a huge book.
First lesson :- Strike and Grab the Opportunity fast whenever it presents
This is the first and most important lesson that you’ll learn while doing Internet Marketing.
It all comes down to speed of implementation. If you are slow, time will move on and chances of your profiting from the opportunity has left you by.
If you compare internet time line to offline line real world time line, then time is moving at least 4 times faster on internet (that’s due to advancement in Internet technologies). The cause and effect can be seen almost immediately of internet technology and time.
People who sit on the side line and wait and check are often late and broke.
That’s why I said speed of implementation is important.
Second Lesson : Ideas are dime a dozen, Action is rarer.
Too many people have way too many ideas… but people who take action are rarer. And thats true in harshest of terms for people on internet. With the access to ever changing technologies, people can exchange ideas in a blink. But People who take action on those ideas are rare and those who do, often succeeds.
Again complimented with first lesson of speed of implementation, this will help you tremendously.
Third lesson : Sell whenever the damn you can
Someone told me, “Every attempt at communication is an attempt of persuasion. Either you are persuading someone or being persuaded by someone”. When I am writing as “Sell whenever the damn you can”, it sounds like a sleazy salesman or slick opportunist.
But that’s not my intent at all.
In internet, the method of communication changes a LOT and if you have a business, you have to learn, adapt and implement different communication methods. If you are selling online you have to utilize every opportunity to communicate efficiently otherwise you’ll not sell at all.
Fourth Lesson : Learn to communicate with written word.
Now as you can guess, learning to write is going to be one of the most important way to communicate online. If you can’t write, you can’t communicate. Oh yes there are videos, audios too but let me say it again, written communication is a HUGE part of Online communities. You just cannot ignore it.
Fifth Lesson : It only takes one silly mistake to get crushed in the time
Doing business ethically is important. With internet and the ease of communication methods, you can be easily crushed. If you are a good businessman, then people won’t be able to slander you even with internet. Why ? because your evangelists(customers) will help you fight against them.
You are nothing but a speck of dirt in the time line and trust me, it’s going to be important to do your business ethically and grow and succeed.
There are many other things I can write here but I think the long laundry list is unnecessary. 5 lessons will suffice for now.
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
Beware of Sharks When You are Getting Your Business Online
How to harness the true power of Internet for an Offline Business?
Business Owners tend to get burned by greedy sharks when it comes to getting their business online. One of the simplest way they get burned is by SEO (Search engine optimization) Experts. Typical SEO techniques might not work for offline business, Infact I dare say, often they don’t need those services at all.
And often these services are quite pricey even at their lowest packages (at around $5000).
Just couple of days I got a call from one of my reader asking about XYZ SEO company’s package. So I checked out their package and I almost spilled my evening tea on my PC’s screen.
SEO services are expensive and they are the kind of the expense sometimes you can live without. Their price ranges from $5000 – $50,000+. If you are wondering if it’s right decision to buy a package like that, then step back and again rationalize.
The worst part is most business owners can’t differentiate between good service or bad service when it comes to SEO. Heck this field is so complicated it even makes most online marketers sweat. And it’s purposely set that way to wring more money out of you.
When it comes to harnessing the true power for an offline business.
You are better off if you focus more towards creating and building relationships with your customer base.
You are better off spending more time utilizing Audio and Video to help create more trust in your visitors.
You are better off spending more time creating product demos which can help you sell more products.
Think of your website as platform which will help you sell more in real world. Do not worry about Typical SEO or things like that.
Think how can your website help your current marketing efforts in your business?
Think how can your website help you relate with your customers?
These questions will help you understand what kind of marketing approach you should use on your website. Without a sound marketing approach all the SEO, all the bells and whistles, all the graphics on your website is just waste of space.
Think about your marketing first, then about your website.
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