Archive for October, 2008

The main problem is still to ensure that our web site will be known for the good links pointing to it. This is key to attract a lot of good trafic. One interesting source of of such links is DMOZ.org. This catalog-like site (as Yahoo! was in the past) is originating a lot of links, even for other web sites. So, it is useful to be identified here.

My advice to ensure all goes well:

• Be honest: You will suggest your site in a category; It must be clearly adequate. Ask yourself if your web site will really improve the category list (not if you would gain from the listing).
• Be precise: You will suggest your site in a category; It must be precisely adequate. Look for the right category, not any category. Think that only one will be kept. Don’t suggest if it would be just “good enough”.
• Be complete: You are requested to provide some information, give it all. It’s no use going against the system. The moderator will not call you if something is missing. She will just drop your suggestion. You need her, not the opposite.
• Be patient: It can take months to be accepted.
• Be tolerant: If your suggestion is rejected, accept it. Go and improve significantly your web site. Check the sites listed in the category and try to best them before starting again in a few weeks.

Don’t even think a second that you can jump over these rules. But follow them because you can get a lot of visibility (including on many search engines).

Is it the end of an era or the beginning of a new one?

One thing is clear: The recession is upon us, the crisis is here. Nobody will be spared. But as an entrepreneur (web site creator), what will be the impact on our site(s)? I think that there will be a small number of significant impacts. These issues may even be very noticeable.

The impacts

First, Recession means reduced activity. Let’s be prepared to see ad spending and the overall activity go down. After September 11, 2001, I had observed a drastic fall-off in non-essential spending (I was working in the business of art on the Internet). This end of 2008 and year of 2009 will probably follow in the footsteps of 2001-02. I would not be surprised to see visits/trafic seriously reduced in the coming months as Internet users concentrate on issues more “important” for them.

If your sales (of ads or anything else) are linked to “consumer-oriented markets”, everybody will tell you that they will slow down. Companies can easily reduce spending by cutting the ad budget (and this will be fast on the Internet). And the Internet users will not be compelled to buy T-shirts, caps, photo prints, etc.

Another issue (but what direction will it take, really?) is the exchange rate of Euro against US Dollar: It wil keep changing. For European site owners like us, this is critical since most of our sales are made in US dollars and paid in Euros. During the recent period of depressed US dollar, my ads revenue (biggest part of my web sites income) was under serious pressure (I kept less and less Euros for the same amount of ads). It starts being corrected; If the US of A are the first to get ou of Recession, the exchange rate wil soon favor the US dollar (and so, my own income).

What can I do?

This is the question asked by Lenine! What can I do? Most of these factors cannot be influenced. But, against all odds, it is possible to counter-act the ineluctable. My proposals:

• It may be time for you to start your own campaign ad, to get more visitors, to increase your market share. The ads price should go down and this is a good investment if you succeed at it.
• Beware! Reduce all accessory spending. Anything not clearly aimed at increased traffic or revenue is nto really important. It may not be time to replace your PC now.
• Create new services (or new web sites) susceptible of kicking new life to your activity(ies) without waiting for an external improvement.

With this advice, we may be able to go through the Recession in the best possible conditions. As you noticed, I am already implementing several of these ideas by myself.

One of the big questions open to bloggers and web site publishers seems to be: Should you create 1 web site per idea or 1 big concentrating web site?

Actually, it seems that the answer lies in what you want to do with it. Probably, if you are interested in getting a lot of traffic and personal visibility, it seems better to have one and only one webs ite (certainly holding your name). This is what I did a few years ago when I created Roumazeilles.net, my personal web site and blog. It has been quite representative of my own interests (varied, diverse, changing). If your are mainly targetting friends or fans, this is perfect. But this approach has a lot of issues. The main one is that people (your visitors) may not appreciate the exact mix of information that you provide and unless your are able to compete alone against big-media, some visitors will not come back because they will not perceive the aim of your blog/website.

This is exactly what led me to create several independent (but cross-linked) web sites, like YWantVisits.com (here) or YLovePhoto.com or YLoveBigCats.com.

There is also an advantage of separate web sites when you monetize your web site with advertising. Some of the advertisers who contacted me before only wanted their ads to appear on some of the pages of the Roumazeilles.net site. They were not interested in the rest of it. This is manageable if you are prepared to tweak the web site code often. But really, who wants that?

Furthermore, for ad networks like Google AdSense, the more subjects you cover in one web site the more difficult it becomes to choose ads according to context. In the case of Roumazeilles.net, I often observed that there was photo-related ads on software-discussing articles or vice-versa. This quickly becomes counter-productive (less people click on the ads), and annoying to your users (they see totally unrelated ads, so they loose the possibly useful commercial information).

Of course, if you aim at very little web sites (a few pages only) this may have no meaning, but I strongly advise now to have separate web site. And YWantVisits.com will stay the location where I am trying to talk only about Search Engine Optimization, increasing traffic to other websites, optimizing the revenue from the web sites.