Tag Archives: Web page

Simple Tools To Make Your Web Site Or Blog More Social & Interactive

Meebo
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All of us online are not only in Web 2.0 but in the increasingly powerful social networking era.  Static information still has a place but the tsunami of web use is in the social networking space.  So not only should you incorporate the sharing tools in your new work on the web, but you have the opportunity to go back and add a snippet of code to your static product pages which will make it become alive and interactive and more appealing to your users.

Duct Tape Marketing tells us how in Enhancing Social Funtions on Web Sites. So here’s the game plan:

“The web has become a terribly social place and that raises the expectation of most web site visitors. The ability to add content, comment, rate, review, interact and share information found when surfing the web has become standard fare.

By adding a few simple scripts and widgets you can easily add tremendous social functionality to any web page or blog. Giving your visitors, prospects and customers ways to share and amplify their voice is a great way to enhance their experience of your business online.


JS Kits – This is one of the dead simple easiest ways to add rating, navigation, polling, chat, reviewing and commenting to any web page. You simply copy a line of code and you are in business. Getting customer reviews and reader comments on web page, usually a blog function is great for static product pages.

Social Ad Units – Popular Media recently introduced something they call Influencer Ads. These banner ad type units allow you to place ads that contain an entire social media follow-up system. When someone clicks on an ad for your webinar, they can automatically post it to Facebook or send it to a friend with personalized follow-up. This is a great tool for contests and registration incentive campaigns. (You can see this in action here)

Meebo Me – This simple IM widget can be embedded on your site to allow visitors to initiate an IM chat instantly when they visit your site. This can be a great way to add customer feedback, help and interaction functionality.

Add to Any – These widget allows visitors to easily subscribe to RSS content, share, bookmark or email content using many of the commonly used services.”

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Website Or Blog Building Blocks: The Only Constant Is Change

It’s easier now than it ever has been to get on the web and start a website or blog and make a profit at it. This didn’t happen overnight, however.

I started the process of getting on the Net in 1995 and finally launched AdvancingWomen in March of 1996.  Much has changed since then. Core concepts have not, but they’ve evolved.  I think my journey through the Net and now the blogosphere can offer useful lessons to those about to embark on this journey.

Someone once said ““Change is inevitable. Change is constant.” Since that is particularly true of the Net, you’d better get used it and prepare for it. Learn to be proactive when you see change coming, and failing that, be able to react in a lightening strike split second before change overwhelms you.

Here are a couple of changes I’ve seen over time:

Webhosts

When I first launched in 1995, web hosts were relatively expensive, about $200 a month

When AdvancingWomen.com finally launched, we got about a million and a half page views in a month, melting down our webhost’s server 3 times. This resulted in our web host calling me and giving me 24 hours to bring him $4,000 or have my website shut down. This was the wild and wooly frontier at the time without all the rules in place.  However,  I still considered this blackmail, which apparently it was, since I managed to switch the site to one in Colorado for about the same $200 price. (As for the sudden surge of traffic, remember, back then, the Net was relatively small with little competition.  There were no large corporations.  No Hearst, no IVillage, although I later worked with both of them.)

Web hosting prices went down to about $20.

Next, many good web hosts could be had for as little as $5 to $10. And still can be.

But that depends on the size of your website and your individual needs. Ultimately, I had a horrible experience with a web host who happened to be listed on Nasdaq.  There were sudden and frequent outages, sometimes lasting for days.  You could go for a week without getting service.  Only one person, a system administrator, seemed to know anything about what he was doing. The rest of the time their phone was answered by one of a gaggle of call center people in Manilla who barely spoke English and definitely couldn’t take a technical message.  Apparently, although the client list was long, the webhost staff was skeletal.

So the time had come for me to step up. And that’s what happens with growth.  As you grow your needs become greater and you can’t afford mistakes or downtime with other businesses and workers depending on you. It’s the wild west no longer. Now, “under the hood”, the tech underpinning of our site is maintained with 24/7 service by a dedicated team of high level techs. Our server is in Dallas; our tech admins are in Austin; our techs are in Austin, and London, to cover the evening and night time hours. Our  programming team is located in the San Antonio-Austin high tech corridor. And our job board is maintained by partner/developers in New London, Connecticut.

But you can start with a $5 to $10 a month host.  Why not?  Eventually you’ll probably outgrow your “cheap host”, but hey, you will have been pocketing some savings in the meantime.

Software

Some things have gotten simpler.  In the beginning, in order to produce web pages there was only html coding. The problem with html was that it didn’t do what you wanted it to do, it did what you told it to do and I sometimes didn’t know how to tell it to do the right thing.  Much of it was trial and error. Then Adobe, I believe, came out with the first “What you see is what you get” software to produce webpages.  It was clunky.  Then many other programming languages arrived. For me, Dreamweaver, by Macromedia, was a lifesaver, in no small part, at least in the beginning,  because I could get good techs helping me remotely from Silicon Valley.

Today there are hundreds of content management systems… here’s a list.…both free, opensource and proprietary that enable you to create just about anything you want on the web with relative ease.  I use WordPress, but occasionally go for another system if a particular task is required by an organization or association I’m working with. But you should start with a simple system. Think Joomla or WordPress as a content management system.

Techs

Suffice to say, when I started most of the techs I knew about worked for the government or huge corporations and weren’t available to help small, start up websites.  I was blessed when a Web Girl from Silicon Valley came on my site to help me with some gigantic tech problem for me…. ‘Oh, it’s nothing at all” issue for her.  She continued helping me for a long time and got other Silicon Valley tech women to help me as well.  That’s what networking was all about.

Now the software has advanced to a point that most don’t need any help with a small website or blog.  For larger sites or more expansive requirements, just Google.  There are experts for hire for any time of web work.  Or go to eLance.com and search the globe for someone who meets your requirements and fits your price range.

Revenues

Like much on the Net, revenues have been a roller coaster.  When I launched, commerce had yet to arrive to the Net.  Nor was there a way to exchange small sums on the Net.  Then the arrival of Paypal changed all that.

Ad Revenue

The first website revenue I remember came from Doubleclick, targeted ad system founded in 1996 and formerly listed as DCLK on the NASDAQ.  I was selected for the women’s demographic and went to their opening launch party in New York. It was a heady time. I learned a lot about targeting my demographics and managing my website from Doubleclick, until we went our separate ways. For one thing, I never really made  much revenue from Doubleclick so I struck out on my own. (Unlike many other dot-com companies, Doubleclick survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In March 2008, Google formally acquired Doubleclick.)

In the beginning, without large competitive corporate websites, I would typically make $5,000 from each large corporation which wanted to advertise site wide with AdvancingWomen.com.  That came crashing down in the dot com bust, as did the money I was making from syndicating our content when the syndication company went under.

The next big uptick came from the advent of Google Adsense.  And that was always a wild ride.  It would include what’s known as “The Google Dance”, where they change their algorithm and your revenues, which could spike to the stratosphere for a time, would plummet to earth overnight, leaving you wondering what happened to your revenue model. My advice:  Never depend on a single revenue model, particularly one which has its own best interests at  heart and they might not necessarily align perfectly with yours.

There are a lot of ad networks out there.  Try a broad range of them and see how they work for you. Keep Google in the mix as well.  If you can develop your own ad client base, so much the better. The extra 50% or more you get to keep is gravy.  Plus you can sell text links off a popular page for more than Google is likely to make for you off of dozens of pages.

Job Board Revenue ( which for your demographic might be something very different and specific to your demographic.)

In the meantime, I had always made a moderate income from a job board, and been a part of every morphing of CareerBuilder.com which changed hands or management many times.  I finally decided the real goal of job boards seeking to align themselves with your site was to keep you hidden and small so you wouldn’t grow up to compete with them.  I could be wrong about this, but I noticed when I started my own job board, our revenues increased 5 fold.  So it’s something to think about.  Whatever field you’re in, if you can avoid barnacle-ing on to the big boys forever , figure out a smaller, tighter niche and start your own, whatever it is; you’ll have more control, probably make more money and feel more fulfilled at the same time.

Products

There are many products to choose from out there, particularly  almost every product imaginable which you can sell through Amazon.com. You can also open your own storefront on Amazon.com.

I have read about a couple who made a killing selling auto rugs through eBay.  After trying to sell electronics and various products they discovered a warehouse full of auto rugs and evidently, using only a few unchanging photos and the occasional trip to the warehouse, they are able to make a killing.  But it is not something I would want to do.  But you might, and that’s ok too.

Find something you love that has synergy with your niche and sell it. If it doesn’t work….if, as they say in advertising, the dogs won’t eat the dog food, look for somthing else until you find the right thing that goes flying off the shelf with your demographic.

There’s never been a better time to start than now and it will never be sooner than today.  Good luck!

Let us hear from you what your experiences have been… what works and what doesn’t.

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