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Job description: webmaster
A brain surgeon was conversing with a
famous writer at a party. "When I retire,
I'd like to become a writer," he
told her. "That's interesting," she responded.
"When I retire, I'd like to
become a brain surgeon." Running a website isn't
exactly brain surgery, but
like writing professionally, neither is it as easy as
many people think it
is. But as with writing, it looks easy. "It must be nice to
work at home and
make money online," they say. "Can you show me how?"
How do we as webmasters
answer that question?
Getting started as a webmaster
To begin, we
can try to quell any misconceptions that people may have. No,
we do not lie
around watching TV all day while the money pours in. The skills
needed to
derive income online take more than a few hours to develop. And
while we
enjoy what we do, it's work. It takes time, sometimes a lot of time.
Running
a revenue-generating website is part (or in some cases, all) of
running a
business. Talking about business specifics can help people
understand what's
involved. When friends and relatives ask us to show them
how to make money
online, we can ask them what products or services they
plan to offer. Have
they researched the market to see if there is enough
demand for their idea?
Do they even have an idea? Have they found a niche?
Have they written up a
business plan and looked into the costs of the products
or services they
want to provide, a business license, insurance, and other
business expenses?
They need to know all that in addition to being able to run
a website. Not
that we want to discourage people, but we don't want them to
waste their
time getting into something that they aren't prepared for. Or
perhaps they
already have a bricks-and-mortar business and want to start
offering their
services online as well. On to the website itself. No night school
course or
diploma fully prepares people for running an online business. Most
or all of
us are self-taught to a great degree, learning from our mistakes and
picking
up valuable knowledge from website articles and forums. We all
started at
the beginning, and we had some success before we knew
everything that we
needed to know. We still don't know everything. But
learning does take time
and effort. What does an aspiring webmaster need to
know to get started? How
to choose, register, and protect a domain name
What do look for when
choosing a web host for specific needs
Web design standards and
principles, HTML, CSS, perhaps some
programming languages (but a website
builder or template may be adequate
for a starter website)
How to
choose and set up a shopping cart
What to look for in a merchant account
and payment gateway (PayPal or
PayQuake are probably fine for starting
out)
Search engine optimization: finding the right keywords and knowing
how and
where to use them, getting inbound links, avoiding techniques that
could get
sites banned from search engines
How to write online copy
that works for both an online audience and for search
engine
bots
Web-specific advertising and marketing techniques
As
the webmaster world turns
"Ah, once I do all that, the money will flow to
me," people may say. It might
start coming in with all of the above in
place. But will it keep coming? Not if the
competition continues adding
content and inbound links and we do nothing.
That's why we're putting time
into acquiring more inbound links and promoting
our site instead of lying
around watching TV as people might imagine. We're
analyzing our website
statistics to see what we can learn about our visitors
and how we can make
our site work better for them. We're keeping up on
what's new in SEO, web
development, and our field of business. We're looking
for ways to try to
stay ahead of the competition. And, of course, we're
responding to inquiries
and selling the products or providing the services that
we offer at our
website. Customer service is just as important online as it is
with
face-to-face contact. We're still serving real people. Online, people
sometimes expect immediate responses, which makes taking a day off less of
an option. We may be communicating with people whose native language
isn't the same as ours, which can create communication difficulties. While
most people are polite, some use the anonymity of online contact to be rude
in
ways they wouldn't think of behaving in front of us. And if they feel
that our
service isn't good enough, they may share their unhappiness in
online forums.
Working from home and being our own boss has its benefits. We
can work at
our own pace and take time to do what we need to do in our
personal lives, If
we want, we can turn on the TV in the middle of the day
to watch our favorite
soap ¡ª but we probably make up for the time later,
when 9-to-5ers are
relaxing after their day of work. 9-to-5 jobs have their
benefits too. Employees
have job descriptions, they know what's expected of
them, and most can leave
work when the clock says that it's time to go home.
It's easier to persevere
when you know that the boss is evaluating your
work. Working on our own, we
have to find that perseverance within ourselves
and keep working on bringing
visitors to our website if we want to have an
income. Not everyone has that
drive to continue pushing themselves to work
when they're on their own. The
cycle of starting
Should we help our
friends and relatives who want to earn money online?
Perhaps the biggest
help we can offer them is to paint a realistic picture of
webmaster work and
to get them thinking about their business ideas and
preparation. We can all
remember what it was like to start out, and we
somehow made it without
knowing everything that we know now. If people
have done their research and
are ready to jump in without expecting us to do
the work for them, and if we
give them some help, we're continuing the cycle
of support that many of us
also received as beginning webmasters.
About the
Author:
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for
href="http://www.websitesource.com"
target="_blank">
http://www.websitesource.com and
href="http://www.lowpricedomains.com"
target="_blank">
http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the
href="http://www.websitesource.com" target="_blank">website hosting
industry.
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