Web development, design, and site optimization

For the past 2 months I have been working within the Custom Web Design industry, getting my first tastes of dealing directly with end customers in getting their custom designed online presence. Wow, what a roller coaster ride! But that is a post for another day.

There are many elements to getting a website online. Basically though you can break things down into 3 stages. This is what you can expect when working with my company and likely many others out there.

1. Comp/Mock-up stage: This is where we play with various ideas taken form the customer input and our own and come up with a Photoshop-made mock-up. Depending on the complexity, turn-around time on this is anywhere between 1 and 2 days.

2. Content gathering and site build: This is where we move ahead on an approved comp and build the website. We also look to the client to feed us as much content as possible. The site build takes anywhere from 5-7 business days. Getting content takes anywhere from hours to months :).

3. Site publish and ongoing maintenance: The website is published live with no less than 75% of the content. The site is then only requiring random maintenance on a monthly basis, content changes mostly. Clients can contact us pretty frequently on a monthly basis, any changes that are requested will be applied within 1 to 3 business days depending on complexity and how much is already on our plate.

My target for all my clients from start to finish is 30 to 45 days for the entire build cycle. That is from our first call to the site being online.

A non ecommerce website will costs you $785.00 up front and then $99.00 per month. Ecommerce cost you $985.00 up front and then $195.00 monthly. The monthly fee on both packages takes care of your website, hosting, domain name, privacy protection, and up to 10 email accounts.

Service is all about providing a convenience to someone. A good service will make both the client and the seller happy. A service doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel. In most cases it just needs to fulfill a need that the client has.

I choose to pay someone to cut my lawn, not because I can’t do it myself, but because I rather spend that time with my still less than 1 year old son. I am happy, the guy who takes my money is happy.

A common question I get as a blogger is about setting up a Wordpress blog. Again and again I answer it. Well this week it dawned on me that maybe I could and should make a few dollars off of this. I know how to setup Wordpress, others don’t and don’t want to even bother learning how to. So its a win-win situation.

If you are interested in getting setup with your own blog without all the hassle, visit:

SetupMyBlog.dropthemike.com

You don’t have to be real technical these days to get started on creating a pretty elaborate Web project. I say web project because I am trying to be as broad as possible. I am talking about creating a blog, a website, a community portal, a classified listings page, an ecommerce site, etc., etc. You don’t have to do a thing these days to install some of the more popular Open Source web scripts that exist. All you have to do is login to your Web Hosting Control Panel, find and launch Fantastico, and click on the scripts you want it to automatically install for you.

Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications to a website. Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel such as cPanel. Fantastico’s web site claims that they are installed on ten thousand servers, with a million users worldwide, which would make it the leading product of its type.

No need for you to configure databases, just worry about setting the admin usernames and passwords. Easy stuff.

Now if your web hosting company does not provide you with Fantastico, shame on them. Most hosts these days make it a standard part of their offering. Netenberg.com, the company behind Fantastico, lists the following as official partners of theirs. Though there are many more providers who, though don’t have a direct partnership, do provide Fatastico.

For a complete listing of the web scripts Fantastico is currently offering click here.

In running a blog you need to continually benchmark yourself. Whether you use one or many methods of doing so is not important as long as you are consistent with the tools that you use. Myself, I use AWStats, Google Analytics, and Alexa.com. Oh and recently I also added to the mix WebsiteGrader.com although this is more of a consolidation of things like Google Rank and Alexa rank just to name a few.

As of this post, my rank on Alexa is: 693,06262

That places dropthemike.com in the top 2.17 % of all websites.

What other useful information does Alexa provide me?

How about where my users are from:

Being Canadian I am surprised that Canada is listed only as the third most popular source country for visiting my site. I can also see my traffic rank within specific countries. Apparently Dropthemike.com is big in Tanzania :)

When I first got into blogging, like many I stumbled across the blog of the famous John Chow. Famous for being a supposedly wealthy blogger as a result of his blog (s). At the time I did find some use in a number of his post. Some rubbed me the wrong way and left me thinking he must be bogus and just full of himself.

While I don’t question the fact that he has made blogging a main source of his income, I do question just how much he says he makes. But that is not the point of my post today. At the end of the day I do have some respect for the work he has done.

I visited his blog again for the first time in months and came across one of his latest post. This post reminded me of why I stayed away in the first place, he seems to push one “scam” after another. Sprinkled in between these scams he has some good post though, which is unfortunate, because I have and will continue to miss them due to hating to weed through the crap.

In his post he is essentially pushing a $400.00 “Traffic Secrets” course. Obviously he is getting some sort of bounty off this. The whole this looks like a sham.

I posted the following comment to the article.

“Looks like more BS to me. They will not get my hard earned cash. I don’t get how these types of programs actually have an legs or get any traction. The site looks like a scam, it looks like all the other scam sites.

Like with anything else, work hard, be patient and persistent, and you will eventually see results. It won’t be overnight like some will make you believe is possible. But in the long run it will be worth it and you will likely have a better understanding of both yourself and the running of your website.”

I checked today to see how much John Chow fanboy reactions I got. To my suprise I got none, in fact i saw other comments that more or less echoed what I said.

Read the entire post here: http://www.johnchow.com/the-next-level-with-traffic-secrets-20/