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.
About the Author
Ruth Marlene Friesen, Editor of A Journal of
God's Provision - Digest. Does God care about your
internet business? Yes He does! Watch miracles at
http://journal-provision.hypermart.net/
Author: mailto:ruth@journal-provision.hypermart.net