The Silent Avatar Speaks

I’m very grateful for the readers of my blog, and especially the comments which inspire me to give out some more useful information about webdesign and Internet marketing in general.

A reader (Casey) recently posted a comment to my previous post “How to get your site visitors (NOT) doing what you want”.

Casey wanted some feedback (which I am happy to do), and I hope that you will relate my feedback I am giving on this website PropertyWishList.com.au to your own site in evaluating its effectiveness. You can open the site I am evaluating in another browser window to check it out as we go.

The first comment I want to make is not to launch a site until you have tested the site.

Testing encompasses a lot of things, not the least to make sure everything works technically. Another test should encompass what users think of the site. Now I’m not talking about you, your offsider, or your web developer. When you have been working on a site for any length of time you can become quite blind to what the site obviously needs. Find someone who fits a typical user. It could be a friend, an acquaintance, or a respected business person. You will want to go through the site and do what I am doing – evaluate it from a user perspective.

Your task for them should be clear. Does our site encompass everything that you (as a user) want and need to be of benefit to use this site? (this is especially the case when your site is a “service” website).

If necessary get them to fill in an online form, or ask them to just make notes and give you a call, or send them to you via email. You many even want to offer an incentive.

So lets go…

How do I think this site stacks up against the competition?

While it might bruise some egos, send out a collective *groan*, and put you in a spin, what I about to say could have been alleviated if you had assessed the wants and needs of the users first over what your competition offers.

I heard something recently (can’t remember where) the saying “Never be the first one to do anything”. I’ve pondered this good advice and now know why. When you are the first to do something you never get it right. You just set the benchmark for someone else to do it better.

I’ve used real estate sites often. In fact very often. For the past 3 years I have been trying to sell a property which I have moved on from (due to re-locating).

Realestate.com.au is by far the biggest competitor (and I have used this site extensively when searching for property to buy), so first know who your competitor/s are and evaluate their website for areas which don’t work or could work better. Do this from the prospective of a user and make notes. Then do it from the prospective of a developer (and take notes).

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Tags: Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Web Design by the silent avatar
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The first question new bloggers ask is “which blog system should I use?” To know the answer is a bit like knowing what fuel your car runs on best.

TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress are the most popular blogging applications and while each have their own advantages the clear winner is WordPress.

You can download WordPress (it’s no-cost), install it on your host server, buy a proper domain name and then get blogging.

MSN Spaces blogging system is used by a lot of teenagers use because it is linked with the MSN Messenger chat service. If you are serious about blogging then take my advice and steer clear of it. If you just want to blog about your dog/girlfriend/how much you hate your job then it’s fine, but if you are blogging for any professional purposes then you need something professional.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU

This could be your story…

Here’s a story about Mike . Mike’s niche blogger. He’s set up lots of little blogs on all kinds of topics (niches) with the purpose of making a few dollars from each blog by placing Google AdSense advertisements on them (Google pays you when someone clicks on the ads)

After a few months he had built up his income. None of his blogs had a lot of traffic, but they got enough from search engines to earn Mike between $1 and $10 per day. In total he earned over $2000 per month from his blogs. All in all not a not a bad effort.

One day he turned on his computer and all his blogs had gone. Just disappeared without a trace…

So what happened to his blogs you ask?

He was using one Blogger.com account to manage his blogs and Blogger.com determined that what he was doing was violating their terms of service.

They thought all his blogs were what are called “splogs” – SPAM blogs.

Splogs are blogs set up to get traffic to other sites. They are usually automatically generated and the owners have no intention of producing a useful website – they just want to get traffic directed to their other sites. You could say they are the SPAM of the blogging world.

Mike contacted the support staff at Blogger.com to explain that his sites were not SPAM sites but try as he may he couldn’t convince them his blogs were legitimate, so they never reactivated his account. Overnight he lost his regular $2000 per month income in one hit.

Therein lies the moral of the story… OWN YOUR BLOG

If Mike had hosted his blogs using WordPress on his own servers with his own domains this simply would never have happened. It may cost a bit more upfront to buy the domain names and rent the server space (WordPress itself is free) but the security and control you get makes it worthwhile.

Besides the ownership benefit WordPress has many other advantages:

• It’s free, very powerful and runs of a MySQL database so it’s quick.
• It has a very easy installation procedure.
• There are hundreds of free themes you can download and install allowing you to change the look of your blog.
• There are hundreds of plug-ins that provide extra functionality.

All of the above benefits are available because the WordPress system is Open Source Software, which means anyone can look at the code and modify the program. Consequently there are hundreds of programmers working to make WordPress the best blogging system and they do it for free – just for the good of the software.

GET STARTED BLOGGING

By now you will have seen the benefits of a WordPress blog.

If you haven’t done so already, here are the 3 steps you can do right now to get your new WordPress blog installed.

1. Go to http://wordpress.org/download/ and download WordPress.

2. Buy a domain name and hosting package. At the moment I use and recommend Bluehost.

3. Install your blog. Done!

If installing a blog is beyond your capabilities then take advantage of the one click installation option in Bluehost. This option allows you have a WordPress blog installed with one click so you don’t have to do the WordPress uploading process.

You can skip step one above if you do this.

BACK-UP YOUR BLOG

I’ll leave you with this one last very important note…

If you are going to stay with Blogger.com, TypePad, or even if you use WordPress there is one task you should add to your weekly “to-do” list – and that’s back-ups!

Make sure you have an offline archive of all your content so if for whatever reason you lose your blog just “disappears” or malfunctions you can restore all the content. If you own your domains you won’t lose your traffic either because you can restore things to exactly how they were.

So the choice is yours.. do you want your latest blog to run on ethanol, standard or super? The choice is clear.

Here’s to your blogging success!

Tags: Blogging by the silent avatar
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