Something I often say, “If you don’t have a business plan for your website, you don’t have a website.” Something I have been saying all of 2010, “Make your site do something.”

Yesterday one of my coworkers sent me a link to a comic titled “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell“. I’m sure many of you have seen it, but if not, it’s about how a site owner hires a webmaster to redesign their site. The webmaster does a great job, the client loves it, but then pecks away at it, slowly turning it into a Frankenstein of a website, just the way it looked when it started. Continue reading »

 

Recently asked on how much it costs to build a 75 page website on what I will call Subject A, I thought this might be a good time to explain a way to calculate this. Possibly even, on how not to calculate this.

I get this question repeatedly, “How much does it cost to build a basic website?” My answer? It’s $10 plus my hourly rate if you want anything extra on the site. Example of $10 website without extras. Anyone want one? Continue reading »

 

It hasn’t been a month since I posted Turning the Weakest Link Into a Winner, but I can’t stand it anymore. Besides I accomplished my goal. My goal was to get my total page view count to surpass my industries benchmark for page views, and I had one month to do it. See how you can use Google Analytics to find those numbers. I also had set a personal goal of total page views in thirty days which I accomplished as well. I’m done trying to get more page views, at least for now. Continue reading »

 

twitterhangingIs Twitter disappearing soon? I seriously doubt it, though they have yet to come up with a solid business plan. This post title is not far from reality though, and when you burn through 50 million like they have at Twitter with still nothing to show for it, doom is not far away. The reason for this post is not about how Twitter is hanging on by a thread, but how your site could be hanging on by a thread.

You Got To Have A Plan

One of the first questions I ask a client when building them a new site is “Why do you want a website?”

Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams of  Twitter apparently came up with the idea in a brainstorming session. They were looking for a new product idea they could develop. They did it, but what they forgot to develop was a plan on how to use it, aka make money from it. To me it seems simple for Twitter. Let everyone use it for free, and charge users that are more demanding to the system. An example of that would be to charge users with more than a certain amount of followers, or charge for users that tweet over a certain amount of times. Continue reading »