- Achievements in 2009
As a part time webmaster my achievements for 2009 did not come up to my expectations, did yours?
My main intention at the start of 2009 were to have a try at affiliate marketing with the intention of making a few shillings as a part time income.
On the plus side I did learn a lot about affiliate marketing and a whole lot more about being a webmaster, in particular, editing pictures in Photoshop, compiling web pages in Dreamweaver and writing CSS files to use with my relevant sites.
I did make a few dollars (pounds) with my affiliate marketing efforts, these returns came mostly from Amazon (UK and US) and Affiliate Window (UK) but did not amount to more than £200 for the whole year. This just about covered the cost of Domain names and Hosting and as a part time effort I am satisfied that the time was well spent, after all this is just a part time hobby for me and I did learn more than a few basics with Photoshop, Dreamweaver and CSS.
These lessons were put to good use in my full time Web site which relates to my business as a Joiner in the UK.
I must say that the CSS files were the hardest part to get my head around but I found a good CSS editor at a brilliant price which made things a lot easier.
The IPK template and tutorials I used were, for the most part excellent and, for anyone interested in affiliate marketing I would highly recommend the system produced by Craig Kaye at IPK. In fact, I would recommend IPK to anyone who is interested in producing high ranking web sites, the SEO (search engine optimisation) tutorials are worth the money on their own and I cannot recommend them too highly.
Also available from the same people is Website construction software which includes hosting and a template driven site construction method with Price Comparison templates included. I tried this but found it a bit too constrictive, but for anyone who is new to web site construction it is simplicity itself.
I do know of on line website software though, which is much better, still template driven but not as limiting.
I will be covering this shortly in another post if you are interested.
To sum up then, 2009 has not been a financially year in terms of money earned. However, although this would have been nice, financial gain was never my intention. The rewards have been in learning about the software I have used and more importantly, the personal gains that come along with learning about something new.
I feel that I am now in a position to pass my skills on to others, and that in a nutshell is what Blogs are all about.
- Webmaster Plans for 2010
The last sentence may have given you a clue about my Webmaster plans for 2010.
Simply, I want to help people who are interested in becoming a Webmaster.
You may see a few adverts here and I make no excuses for their presence, to pay for the Hosting and other minimal costs associated with my Blog, I put a few Adsense ads here and maybe a donation button. Click on them if you wish, I really don’t care, I realise you are here for information, if I can give that to you I will be happy.
The ambition I have for 2010 is to help people overcome the same problems I overcame in previous years and smooth the way for you to become Webmasters with a serious knowledge of the software and strategies you need to achieve this and to increase my Blog traffic significantly.
- Web or Blog?
Good question this, it all depends on what you want to achieve. Do you want to make cash?
If this is your intention a web site is going to be your answer. You need to plan exactly what your intensions are for the coming year and come up with some sort of strategy that will enable you to make your plan come to life and stand a reasonable chance of success. Web sites can be a once only construction process that require little maintenance once you have completed the SEO and given the site some links to achieve high page rankings, particularly affiliate sites.
A Blog on the other hand is never going to make enough cash for you to retire from your day job unless it is hugely popular. Running a Blog is an on-going, never ending update that needs feeding with new information on an almost daily basis. Ignore this and your readers will disappear like melting snow.
- Increase Your Traffic
Traffic is the life blood of any website or blog.
I don’t intend getting into the details of traffic building here, I will cover this in a later post but, you need traffic to survive.
Website or Blog Traffic to a site is related to four things.
- Keywords
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Site content
- Links
My own goal for 2010 is to increase the visitors to my Blog to 15000 unique visitors a month. I have 2500 visitors a month at the moment so I think 15000 is a reasonable goal to set.
How do I intend to achieve this?
By writing informative posts, Social networking and tutorial videos. Some of these ideas are new to me, particularly posting videos to YouTube. Of course, I will write about this when I have some competence.
This about wraps up my own goals for 2010, how about you?
Have you decided yet on the goals you want to set for yourself?
Make an effort to do this, at least you will know where you want to go in the coming year and this in itself will make it a lot easier to get there.
Ken Trueman
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