Zavose » Web Startups

Become a Better Blogger Part 1: Plan Your Website

Chuck Lockhart (Zavose) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 04:39:38 +0000

This is the first post in (what will become) a series that will outline the steps you need to take to become successful in the online world, and not just become another site that fades into internet oblivion. These tips apply to online businesses too (we’re just big fans of the whole “Become a Better Blogger” alliteration thing we’ve got going), and following these tips will help to ensure you get noticed in the online community.

Okay, so as far as boring goes, this first post is pretty much the absolute epitome of monotony, and believe us when we tell you, the most important stuff usually is. But don’t worry, we’ve tried to make our maiden post as compelling as we can, but be warned – making “blog planning” sound exciting is kind of like trying to assassinate a cockroach with a toothpick (It’s hard, in case you didn’t pick up on the analogy).

Remember your career counsellor back in high school? The one that always gave you the “you’re-wasting-my-highly-valuable-and-precious-time” look? The one that always told you that you’ll get nowhere without a career plan? Well, as much as we all hate to admit it, there’s not a lot of denying that they’re right. Planning is actually important if you want to succeed at something, and when it comes to starting a profitable website, if you don’t have a plan, you’re not going anywhere.

Without trying to sound like a motivational speaker, the advantage of a website plan means that you know where you want your website to go, and you know the goals you want your website to achieve. It doesn’t have to be elaborate (in other words, no need for a multilayered, color-coded mind map) – all you need is a list answering a few basic questions. The perfect plan should set out in your mind exactly what your site is, what the goals of your site are and how are you going to achieve those goals?

What is your site?

Probably the most important aspect to your plan – what is your site? Is it a blog, a business website, a membership site? What are you going to write about, or what are you advertising? Many online entrepreneurs mistakenly begin with a unclear view of what they want their projects to be, and most often, they’re the ones who fail. By setting out the basis of your site on a sheet of paper, it provides a clear foundation for you to build everything else upon, and acts as a framework you can return to in order to ensure your blog is fulfilling its initial purpose.

What are the goals of your site?

By starting a website or blog, what are you hoping to achieve? Are you spreading information and contributing to a specific online community? Do you want to monetize your online venture? Set goals, short term and long term, to keep you motivated, and to give your site a direction. For example:

-In the short term, I want to attract 500 visitors a month from online advertising
-In the long term, I want to be accepted into an advertising network (e.g. BuySellAds – review here), so I can monetize my website.

How will you achieve these goals?

How are you going to make your site a success? Will you drive traffic through social networking predominantly, or will you guest post on relevant websites in your area to attract visitors? What steps are you going to take to put you plan into action?

It’s easy to dismiss the idea of website planning as pointless and unnecessary, and we can’t blame you – planning is seriously dry. But the truth is that by creating a solid future plan for your website, you are already a step ahead of any other startup, because you know what needs to be done, and how it’s going to get done. Of course the website plan is by no means concrete – it will change as the goals of your website change, but in the short term a reliable plan provides you with actionable steps to help you grow your website – an absolute essential for anyone who wants to be successful online.

Cross Browser Compatibility & Why it will Ruin your Life

Chuck Lockhart (Zavose) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:50:29 +0000

Making your website cross browser compatible (that is, so it looks the same on all web browsers) is kind of like cooking a soufflé – the recipe looks simple enough until it comes out of the oven all flat and gross, and you end up hurling it into the wall at 150mph. Building your website to be cross browser compatible is a lot harder than it looks.

There’s a lot to be said for a standardized web browser. If only Microsoft and Apple could sit down at a table, and agree to only support Mozilla Firefox, the world of website creation would be a helluva lot simpler. Of course that’s not going to happen anytime soon, and while Firefox (the world’s best browser, obviously) currently occupies just under 25% of global browser use, Internet Explorer still commands over 60% of browser use worldwide – and as we all know, Internet Explorer sucks.

Over the last decade Internet Explorer, in it’s various incarnations, has gone from Prince Charming of the browser world to that distant intellectually-backward cousin with the monobrow. IE’s rapid demise is through no fault of it’s own, of course, but compared to the alternative browsers (Firefox, Safari and Chrome), it really can’t compare both in speed and usability. You and me know Internet Explorer is crap. 60% of internet users, however, don’t. Mmmm….

So what’s the problem with IE? Microsoft’s browser will display most webpages, and people will be able to read what you write. The problem lies in the little details, where IE will usually always generate something wrong, and let down your entire web design. Granted, most users won’t really notice, but that’s hardly the point, is it? You go to so much effort to create a visually impressive website which is let down by a dated but very dominant web browser.

The solution? Don’t even bother supporting crap browsers. A few of the larger websites have already taken this initiative which is encouraging to small scale websites. The only way to phase out the ancient browsers is to stop supporting them, it’s that simple. Of course until that happens, the only solution is to painstakingly modify and re-modify your website graphics and css code until your website displays roughly as intended across all browsers. And when for the eighteenth time your website search box looks crap in Internet Explorer, we don’t advise hurling your computer at the wall – as we discovered, it doesn’t actually help…

Affiliate Marketing versus Advertising PPC: Which one is right for you?

BuySellAds: The Definitive Review

Chuck Lockhart (Zavose) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:00:39 +0000

It used to be social network websites. Then there was the video uploading sites. And now, apparently, we are witnessing the rise of the advertising networks, of which BuySellAds, a project undertaken by Todd Garland, is one of. But is it any good?

Just Googling BuySellAds (BSA, to those already familiar) results in a couple a’ million different reviews, all of which with a different opinion on whether the latest incarnation of a tired formula is worth your time. Regrettably, in an age where one good idea leads to a thousand second-rate copies, it’s often difficult to weed out the godawful from the genuinely good. So where does BSA fit in?

BuySellAds, as the name indicates, is essentially a service for both advertisers (a.k.a. you’re advertising a product) and publishers (a.k.a. people are buying the advertising space on your website), allowing the sale and purchase of advertising space through a sophisticated, well-rounded system that takes the hassle out of advertising.

the advantages

BuySellAds separates itself from other networks first and foremost through an incredibly intuitive and simplistic user interface. It’s clear that the aim of BSA is to simplify the process of buying and selling advertisements, and it certainly succeeds in this area.

Everything about BuySellAds is just easy, from listing your website’s advertising space (publishers) to buying advertising space (advertisers). The whole process is as easy as breathing, which is a huge plus for anyone who finds the process of selling and buying ads frustrating and time consuming.

A fully-fledged analytics program as well as support services are also a click away for both advertisers and publishers, again another huge advantage. At the moment banner ads seem to be the way to go, although BuySellAds is undergoing private beta testing of pay-per-click advertisements, which will allow both advertisers and publishers a bit more freedom in the future.

For publishers, your website is listed in the BSA directory, allowing advertisers target-specific searches to help find a compatible website. A gray place holder box that’s become a somewhat recognisable icon sits in your advertising space, potential advertisers just a click away to purchasing that space in monthly subscriptions.

We found that payouts were quick and seamless, the PayPal system very efficient. Wire transfers and cheques are also available as payout and payment options if PayPal is not your thing.

the drawbacks

Too good to be true? You know the saying, and yup… it is. Well, sort of…

Let’s start with the publishers. By using BSA, you are paying for the simplicity, and you’re paying for it big time. The BSA system will take away 25% of your earnings – for those who failed second year maths, that means BSA will take 25 cents in every single dollar you earn. Compared to the major ad networks out there, or to selling advertising space privately, the cut is unusually high, and can be quite damaging for higher earning websites.

The circumstances change depending what your website focuses on, but another aspect to consider regarding BSA is the fact that it is a very niche-specific network, meaning only websites focusing on tech, web design / development or freelancing have a chance of succeeding in this system. While this will probably change in the future considering BSA is relatively new on the scene, at the moment it’s a fairly limited community of websites all focused on specific areas. In other words, if you blog about the nutritional value of capsicum, you haven’t got much of a chance.

And because no one cares about the nutritional value of capsicum, and therefore you have no visitors, you will again be rejected because BSA requires a base impressions level of at least 100K per month, although we’ve found this figure to be very flexible. BSA is not all that welcoming to websites with little traffic and no reputation – you need to have a solid foundation of steady traffic to stand a chance of being “accepted” into the BSA system.

The Verdict

Publishers
For startups and smalltime blogs and websites, BuySellAds is unsurpassed as a well-rounded easy to use advertising network, so long as you can be accepted. BSA really does remove the stress of selling advertising space like no other service can, and for small time websites BSA is the ideal solution.

For websites commanding larger amounts of traffic (and consequently a bigger income) BSA may not be the solution you are looking for, only because of the steep 25% cut, which when you are earning thousands of dollars will severely eat into your profit. BSA provide a good service, but no one likes a company THAT much to give them a quarter of our earnings…

BuySellAds takes the pain out of selling advertising space and is certainly a service that should be considered for all web startups and small time websites focused in the design and web services area. If you don’t fit into any part of that previous sentence, Google Adsense, or privately selling your advertising space may be the smarter option.

Advertisers

For ease of use there is no service quite the same. We have yet to compare click through / impression rates compared to the other major services, but as long as you are advertising a product relevant to the design, tech or web services industry, BSA really is a no-brainer for driving targeted, specific traffic to your website. Stay tuned for the site-wide release of PPC advertising.

BuySellAds

Affiliate Marketing versus Advertising PPC: Which one is right for you?

Chuck Lockhart (Zavose) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:47:38 +0000

Monetizing a website is an exciting yet challenging process, and depending on website traffic it can be very easy or extremely difficult. There are thousands of choices out there which will almost always come down to just two options – pay-per-click advertising or affiliate marketing? So what should you choose?

Advertising Pay-Per-Click

Let’s start with advertising. To keep it simple, we’re going to compare the most popular form of web advertising, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), a system used through countless advertising programs, the most well known being Google Adsense.

the advantages

The biggest advantage of using PPC advertising on your website is that it’s immediate, easy money. Earning 25 cents or whatever the amount may be per click is as easy as implementing a small amount of Javascript, and you’re earning straight away. The entire process of installing the advertising script, watching your profits grow and receiving your money could not be any easier, and this is the primary reason why these types of network are so popular among so many websites.

Recent advancements, particularly with the Adsense system, mean that advertisements are now targeted specifically at users using the information stored in their web browsers. How fascinating, I hear you say, but what this means for you is visitors are going to (potentially) click on more of your ads, more often, increasing your profit. And you didn’t even have to do anything.

the disadvantages

The problem, as far as PPC is concerned, is about your income, and how it can change very rapidly. PPC networks traditionally are very secretive as to how much individual clicks are worth, and this can be annoying, because your monthly profit can change very quickly.

The rules and regulations surrounding PPC advertising is enough to give anyone a headache, and limits some of the freedom you have for your monetization strategies… AdSense Policies

Using PPC advertising on your website can be a great for blog income, but you don’t have complete control over your marketing strategy. On the other hand…

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the other option here – so how does it compare?

the advantages

Affiliate marketing means you become the salesperson. YOU are flogging someone else’s product, and getting a cut of the profit upon that product being sold. The immediate advantage with this is that it allows you to work with products you choose – affiliate marketing provides much more flexibility in regards to what you are actually advertising compared to PPC. You can implement affiliate links wherever you like, you can encourage people to click on them however you like (within reasonable limitations) – the choices are up to you, and when done correctly your profits will be larger than what you would receive from equivalent PPC advertising. And above all, you’ll know exactly how much you’re going to earn every time someone buys a product using your link.

The sheer amount of affiliate products out there means you can advertise products relevant to your own website. For example, we are affiliates with WooThemes, a wordpress theme company, and we provide affiliate links in our Wordpress themes posts. Unlike PPC which can only estimate what visitors would be interested in, by using affiliate links we can directly target our visitors with relevant products that will benefit them.

the disadvantages.

What makes affiliate marketing great also makes it suck – there is work involved. Well, not necessarily, but if you want to make the most of affiliate links, you’ll have to put in the effort. Sure, a simple banner advertisement with a link will garner you some profit, but to make the most out of affiliate links, incorporating links strategically into content, recommending products to users, creating custom banner advertisements and trawling through the countless number of affiliate programs out there will mean you need to put in the work. But when done right, the reward will be well worth it.

Affiliate marketing does not provide that instant profit that PPC provides, either. Visitors clicking on a link is (usually) not enough to gain a profit – they have to actually buy the product for you to get a cut, meaning the products you are affiliated with have to be worth your visitors time.

So what’s the better choice?

Ideally, both. No one said the two cannot work together in perfect harmony – employ both systems to get the best of both worlds. But we know you didn’t read this blog post looking for that answer, so if we had to choose? Affiliate marketing would win every time.

PPC is a godsend for small websites, or for webmasters who want the easy option, but affiliate marketing affords you so much more freedom to advertise what you want, how you want, knowing exactly how much you can expect to earn off each purchase.

Website Breakdown – the guide every startup should read

Chuck Lockhart (Zavose) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:58:03 +0000

Just what is important in starting and maintaining a successful website? Why think about it yourself when there’s a list here waiting for you…

Website Content – 50%

We’re not going to lie to you. That would be bad. But no matter what other tutorials may or may not tell you, at the end of the day, despite all the fancy marketing tricks you have up your sleeve, your website will go absolutely nowhere without good, quality content. Hopefully that statement is not too much of a slap in the face.

While marketing is essential to drive people to your website, it is ultimately quality content that will ensure those same visitors return again and again. To put it less technically, good content allows your blog to be “sticky”, meaning people will always want to come back. It always comes down to content, and writing / collating your website content should be your top priority. Contrary to what many think, however, is that website content, while important, is not the only element necessary for a successful website. In fact, people who are of the opinion that content is the only important aspect to creating a successful blog could not be further from the truth.

No doubt you can guess what’s coming up next, however consider how you prioritize the following, and if you have enough information in a particular area to properly succeed in it.

Marketing – 20%

Next up is marketing, which really should be occupying 20% of time and planning. Of course this figure isn’t set in stone, as it all depends on the level of exposure your online enterprise already demands, and is of course subject to change as your website receives more visitors.

Good content is useless if no-one is around to see it, naturally, and it’s surprising that so many startups have a poorly formulated marketing plan. Ensure that you have an SEO strategy in place so that your content will benefit search engines.

Design – 15%

Then there is design, and we’ve split this area up into two sections, the first being physical website design, and the second being how the design will complement your marketing strategy, both areas that can be greatly overlooked by website creators.

Successful website design is something that must be considered, especially if you are entering an area that is already well developed and content rich. At the end of the day, the sites that are easier to use are the successful ones, and the ones that have issues fail. It really is that simple, so in order to succeed, you are going to have to have a website designed not only to complement your content, but also to make visitors want to return.

Successful design is easier said than done, of course, however with Wordpress a lot of the effort and struggle can be alleviated – do yourself a favor and purchase a premium Wordpress theme already designed with ease of use and compatibility in mind.

Site Accessibility – 5%

User experience is something that can make or break a website, so don’t let the “little” bits let down your site. Optimising your website is a very important aspect to consider, as having extended page load times can turn people off your website. There are a number of ways to optimise a website – click here for an extended review.