Wednesday, October 27, 2010

A learning experience

During my time as a mostly unpaid blogger I've learned a few things that pretty much everyone running a website should know. If you're thinking about starting a site or a blog of your own feel free to read the list below and learn some basic strategy on marketing your site to the masses.

1. Try to use social media to your advantage. This can be done by starting a Facebook page or getting a twitter account. Both of those sites can be very valuable tools in promoting your site and I honestly wish I would have known that earlier.

2. If you have a twitter account make sure you engage with people on there. Don't be afraid to talk to people and let them know about why they should be coming to your site. If they like it enough you've just earned yourself a new reader and possibly some free promotion.

3. Use a link shortener. A link shortener such as bit.ly can save you a ton of space in tweets and it gives you more room to tell people about your link. It also can be used on every other social media site and forum. Its free,its easy and you should click here to start doing that.

4. If you have a website you're gonna need some advertising. There are several companies out there willing to advertise on your site and some of them are better than others. Make sure that you research any and every company that you're thinking about using to advertise on your website. Sites like Adbrite,Chitika and Google adsense are your best bets if you want ads on your site that make sense and can make you money. Of course if your site is a business this is the one thing that does not apply to you at all. The last thing you're gonna want or need are ads for products that might be from a competitor.

5. It is always a good idea to get SEO services for your site. Having a high ranking on search engines such as Google,Bing and Yahoo can and will greatly increase your traffic and potential reader/customer base. And on top of that it's no fun having a website if you're the only one that can find it. Of course to get this done you may have to spend a few bucks but with the right company doing it for you it's more than worth it and the return on investment will be amazing.


Follow those simple rules and your site will be well on its way to success and not becoming another random act of failure.

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