Making a profit with website building depends on several factors, and there are some basic ways you can increase the profitability of your business. The first factor is time. While most people who hire someone for website building expect to pay a significant amount of money, they are not aware of the hours that will go into the project. Most people want to pay for the project as a whole, however, which means you can increase your profit margin by working faster and smarter.
Working Harder at Website Building
Find shortcuts wherever possible to make your website building business easier to manage. Use the simplest version of accounting and time-tracking software you can find to record the time you are working. Reduce or eliminate meetings with others who may be working on the site. Instead, learn to use messaging programs or email to carry on the bulk of conversations. Take courses or use books to improve your knowledge to help you work faster.
Judging Time when Building Websites
When you are just beginning your website building business, you may not have a clear idea of how long a project will take. In the beginning, it is common to find yourself underestimating the time you need to complete a project. By recording the time you spend on each phase, you can learn to judge better the time you will need. You also will know how to factor in “mistake” time just in case there is a problem.
Reducing Overhead for Website Building
Another way to make a basic website building business profitable is to reduce your overhead. The basic costs you will incur will be the cost of a computer and the software you need to complete the work on your project. By working from home or sharing office space with someone else, you should be able to cut down the money you need to keep your business operational. Fewer operational costs means higher profit for the projects you complete. Low overhead also allows you to consider pricing yourself just below your competitors to draw in bargain shoppers.
Working Long Hours in Website Building
Devoting yourself more than full-time to your work will be necessary for a profitable website building business in the beginning. You will need to bill as many hours as possible to get your business going. Remember, though, that in most cases, you will spend almost as much time marketing your company as you do working. That means that in the beginning, you should be working as much as possible on projects to bring in money and word-of-mouth business, and use evening and weekend hours to work on marketing yourself and finding new clients.
The keys to a profitable business in website building are to work hard and work often. While being your own boss is exciting, it does require dedication to make it work. Being committed to your business will help ensure your success. While working for yourself is fun, it does require discipline. If you keep that point in mind, then you are far more likely to find success with building websites for a growing group of clients.
Most websites have blogs these days, but many of the blogs serve little purpose. Some blogs are orphaned, sitting empty for months at a time while others simply offer little useful information. When you are making your website building plans, you should consider integrating a blog into the larger project.
Create a Blogging Plan
A good blog doesn’t just happen overnight. Successful bloggers have a plan behind their posting. Few professional bloggers simply wake up and start posting. Instead they use a calendar to mark what they will post then. The most consistent blogs have repeated weekly posts, such as a news round-up or interesting facts gathered about the blog topic. This kind of consistency is vital to your website building plan and should be thought out before committing to a blog.
Draw in Readers with Blog Networking
Blog networking means going to other blogs about similar topics and commenting. Those comments should be substantive and should include links back to your blog. While you want to draw people from your main site, you also want to include people moving from blogging to your website. Considering blogging as part of your website building planning means adding blogging tasks to your daily or weekly marketing efforts.
Update on a Schedule
The length of time it takes a blog to become “orphaned” really depends on how often you were posting before. Some blogs have multiple posts per day, so going two to three days without posting can make the blog look staid. If you typically post two to three times a week, which really is the minimum to keep your blog growing, then going more than a week without posting will make people think you have abandoned your blog.
The key when you are planning for your website building and marketing is not to commit to blogging more often than you can handle. It is always better to have a bonus post during the week than a conspicuously absent one. Start blogging with only a few posts and then add to it if the blog becomes a bigger part of your corporate marketing campaign.
Open Communication with Other Bloggers
An easy way to connect with other bloggers is to link to their sites with comments from yours. If you find an interesting post on your site, link to it with some comments or a spin-off article. Then go to the original blog and post a trackback link in the comments section. People will be able to link to your article, drawing in traffic.
Also consider a blog carnival or guest blogging in your website building plans. Guest blogging means you offer for free a posting for another blogger to put up. The blogger would reciprocate by posting a link to your blog. With a blog carnival, you would ask other bloggers all to post on the same topic on a certain day and then create a listing post with links to everyone. The blogs all gather traffic from cross-posting this way.
Blogging isn’t necessary to website building success, but a solid blog can add a new dimension to your website.
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