Do you know anyone who’s thrown up a website, sat back and waited for the money to roll in, then been disappointed and disillusioned when it hasn’t? Maybe you’ve done that yourself. It’s an easy mistake to make – we know. But a website won’t succeed unless it has visitors. And it’s content that attracts motivated visitors.
After all, a website doesn’t have a shop window, or a prime site in the local shopping mall. In the mall, it’s easy for stores to pull in customers. You take your kids in there and before you know it, you’re dragged into a toy store, a candy shop, a computer games store…
On the Web, you can’t press your nose to the shop window, or handle the goods. There’s no such thing as passer-by traffic.• Understand what people want on the Web
Successful websites use high-value information and advice to pull in their customers.
Think about it. When you surf the net, you search for information, for solutions to whatever was on your mind at that moment. You want cloth diapers, a new stroller, an online kids’ game? You’re looking to book a vacation, bake a cake, sort out your house once and for all? For each need or wish, you search the Internet for the answer, for the information you want.
And information is what our sites provide. We build them around tightly focused themes, and then we pack them with in-demand CONTENT. You can learn to do this, too, and do it in a way that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN like, so they give you a higher search ranking, and make your theme-based site easier to find. That way, when any one of the millions of surfers out there taps a few words in to a search box… presto! Up comes your site.
Here’s a page from Erin’s site, www.home-organize-it.com, at top position on Google!
And here is the page itself…
We can’t tell you how delighted we are when our pages start to score well, and we can see that they are getting lots of visitors. It makes all our hours of patient
work, fitted in around everything else we do, totally worthwhile.
• Choose a topic for your site
So far, so good. But of course, before you can start building content, you have to choose a topic for your site.How do you do that?
Ask yourself: What do I know about?
And please, don’t say “Nothing”. It simply isn’t true! We truly sympathise, because we used to feel that way too. If you’re in the midst of child-rearing, or have been out of the employment market for a while, it can feel like you don’t know about anything, except how to lull a baby to sleep, or handle toddler meltdown. But stick with us. You know more than you think you do. Naturally, as a mom you know an enormous amount about kids. So you could build a site around any one of hundreds of parenting or child-orientated topics, and find a big audience on the Internet.
But don’t worry – you don’t have to be “Mom” on your website – unless you want to focus on that role. There are many, many other possibilities.I’m very passionate about the crockpot. In my mind there are very few pieces of machinery that can produce a home-cooked meal with such a hands-off approach. I also knew that there were moms who worked outside the home who could use some help, and people who just plain don’t like to cook. That’s where my site came from, out of a need I had and solved… then taking what I have learned to show others. CJ
• List the optionsGrab a pen and paper. It’s list-time!
What do you like to talk about? To read about? To do, in any precious spare time you have? What was it you loved to do, before you had kids, and would be thrilled to rediscover? What are your hobbies? What do you do when you want to relax, or have fun, or stretch yourself, or have fun with the family? Write those things down.
What do you do, every day, that other people might like to know about? We’ve talked about childcare, but maybe there are other things. Do you have a great recipe collection? An enviable garden? A family of lovable wolf-hounds?
Do you have a skill – hairdressing, book-keeping, jewelry-making? Maybe you already have a small business you’d like to take online? What’s your passion – vintage dresses, tropical fish, chocolate cakes?
Are there any areas, anywhere in your life, where you have gathered knowledge, maybe without even noticing, that other people would like to share? When we brainstormed, we realised we had lots of hard-won knowledge, that others would value. And, you know what? So do you.
Several months prior to purchasing my SBI! site, I came to the realization that I had lost control of my family’s finances. It was through my own experiences and a lot of reading and research that I learned how to get back on track. This is how I got involved in finding money-saving tips, learning to budget properly, and managing debt. I already knew that there were lots of families and individuals making the same mistakes I had. I felt I had valuable information to offer that could maybe help others with the same problems. Cheryl
Is your list getting longer? Write down everything for now. Don’t discard any idea.• Look for a niche that works
You’ll use this list as the basis for choosing your site topic. Now, it may be that you know at once that there’s only one subject you’d want to build your site around. If that’s you, then your next step will be to identify a niche within that topic, where your site can succeed.
Or it may be that you’ll research several of the subjects on your list – and then choose something totally different! It’s a gradual and exciting process. The main goal is to end up with a topic you really love. That way, working on your site will never be a chore.
Once you have a list of topics, it’ll be time to do some research to identify a niche within one of your topics, where you could build a successful website.It’s all about demand and supply. Your site must focus on information that enough people are looking for. If no one’s interested in your topic, you won’t get enough traffic. And no traffic means no income. So, your topic must have good demand.
The other consideration is the amount of competition around your topic on the Web, or the supply. You need to know how many other sites are showing up in search engine results for your topic.
A topic that will work needs to have a high demand, and a low supply.How do you find out?
There is a variety of tools available on the Internet to help you do this research, but they all make it rather laborious. You’re a WAHM, and WAHMs don’t have time for all that! We use the tools that come as part of the Site Build It! package, and provide us with everything we need to work out which is the best concept to use for our sites.
Don’t worry. It’s not as hard as it sounds. You can do it at your own pace, and if you get stuck, there’s plenty of help. You won’t be on your own.Excited? You should be! It is exciting – we are still thrilled by every little bit of progress we make on our sites.
So now, let’s move on to the all-important topic of TRAFFIC. We’ve established that