Website Imperatives and Solutions

When you take a look at the most visited sites on the internet, what hits you in the face? Change, growth, new content. In a sense, a search engine is the perfect web site. By it's very nature, it grows and changes continuously and moment by moment adds new content. But, most of us are never going to build a Yahoo or a Google. The competition at that level is horrific.

But the lesson is there to be read. You could build a great site with terrific content never seen before and do very well - for a while. But the imperatives that control our success or failure revolve around growth, change and new content. An obvious solution is to continually provide new content for your sites. Basically this means writing or constructing new pages, preferably with unique content.

There are, certainly, several easy ways to get content for your site. The first is to use other people's articles. Nearly all of us who do write and publish articles want people to pick them up and use them - with live links to our sites, naturally. Despite a lot of mindless babble about a duplicate content penalty, article syndication is alive and working as well as ever. Just don't scrape a site and replicate it.

Another source is RSS. Most feeds are meant to be syndicated (but not all so you do need to check Terms of Use) and they provide updated content. Other sources include content in the in the public domain.

Like all easy solutions, there are a couple of drawbacks. Other people's articles may not be focused as well as you'd like to your site content and goals. And they don't help your site's link popularity. Along with growth, change and content, incoming links are a critical success factor.

Using RSS feeds or other search-based content can raise copyright issues, irritate some feed or site owners, and may be even more poorly focused to your site's content than articles. If you use RSS feeds, almost inevitably you'll see content on your site that is absolutely irrelevant.

Public domain materials are extremely useful as content sources - if you can find matches to your site content. Assuming that you can, then you will need to convert the material into pages or into a form useable on your web pages. This can be time-consuming, but it may be easier than writing your own content.

Ghost writers are yet another alternative. Here you trade time for money. But this can be a tricky process. Some are not really fluent in English and you may need to do some rewriting. Also, you may need to double-check and make sure that the articles provided are actually original and not nearly identical to existing copyrighted material. Some ghost writers seem to work by finding a site with a related theme and then pretty much copy material from that site with minimal changes. Not a good idea for you to post that as your own.

Another source would be sites offering private label products. Many of those products can be mined for excellent targeted site content. Some products sold with Master resale rights also allow you to use the materials as site content. In this last case, you need to be certain exactly what you can and can't do under the specific rights package. Sometimes you can alter the materials, sometimes you can't.

Private label products with you having full rights, including the right to alter them and put your own name on them as author can be one of the easiest ways to meet all of the imperatives. With rights to an informative, new and interesting book on a niche topic, you can rework it a little, maybe add some nice graphics, generate a PDF and sell it.

Or you could generate that PDF and also generate pages for your site from the book. Give the PDF away in exchange for signing up to your list. Extract tips and ideas from the book and put together 2 or 5 or more articles based on the book. Publish and distribute the articles to generate links to your site and help brand yourself as an expert.

From one private label product you can generate a lot of new real estate for your site, add a viral product that you can use to build your lists, and through articles generate incoming links and do some useful branding.

It really doesn't get any easier than that. It takes some time and effort, but nothing like the effort of writing 5 or 10 articles from scratch, building 30 or 50 or 150 web pages, and writing your own viral book for list-building.

What about the other people who belong to the same private label site? Isn't everybody going to have duplicate content? In the real world, 90 percent of the people with access to a product will do nothing at all or the absolute minimum. Very few will mine the product, produce articles, produce web pages, or produce a nicely modified PDF. And of those that do, each will follow their own unique path. The chance of near identical content is pretty low. The PDFs produced may be more similar, but consider how many people make serious money with resale rights selling identical material.

There's a lot of room out there. Even within the most competitive niches, a thoughtful, patient marketer who pays attention to the imperatives and works smart, can make a living few would complain about. But there are also less competitive niches where the same marketer could become the dominant force. The materials are out there to get you going. Use them and work smart.

None of this is rocket science. The first, and ultimate, imperative is take action. Too many will fail, because they never even really began. Start today.

Copyright 2005 Richard Keir

Richard writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and professional presentations and eCommerce related matters. For more information on eCommerce sites and eCommerce site building - http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.com - and http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.co m/articles for more eCommerce articles.

---

7 Ways to Gain a Professional Online Reputation

A professional online reputation is essential to the flourishing of... Read More

So You Want To Have A Website

So you want to have a website. You have gone... Read More

Make Your Communication Come Alive

Design and layout can make your communication come alive and... Read More

Newsletter Management Using PHP w/o mySQL for Beginners

Let's begin by setting some limits. If you're like me,... Read More

Should You Design Your Own Website?

If you're anything like most small business owners, you probably... Read More

5 Sure Fire Ways To Send Visitors Away For Good

So your traffic is going through the roof yeah? It's... Read More

How To Get Profits From Your 404 Page Not Found File

"'Page Not Found' on this Server. Check the URL and... Read More

How to Make Your Own Website For Free

If you like the Internet and surfing through the billions... Read More

Creating Dynamic Website Content with PHP - MySQL

Fresh website content for your visitors can be of real... Read More

Pick Up Your Own Domain Name

Think up a name and check if yourname.com is available.... Read More

Ten Major Tips to Develop a Multilingual Web Site to Work

If you are living in a country that its native... Read More

Why You Need a Website

You hear a great deal about the Internet these days... Read More

Revealing the Firefox Secret Used by Top Web Developers and Power-Browsers

Profiles are one of the best kept secrets around regarding... Read More

Learn What 98% of Targeted Visitors Do On Your Website

Getting a Targeted Visitor to a website is a waste... Read More

Five Essential Questions to Answer Before Creating Your First (or second...or third) Website

Right after the thought, "I need a website," people usually... Read More

Web Coach Tip: What You Should Know About DIY Web Sites

Recently, a friend asked "What's the deal with those DIY... Read More

Up The Sandbox!

Go to any internet marketing forum you want these days... Read More

Web Designer? You Dont Need No Stinkin Web Designer!

RIVERSIDE, CA August 4, 2004 ?- "Historically, small business owners... Read More

Website Imperatives and Solutions

When you take a look at the most visited sites... Read More

Getting One-way Inbound Links: the 5 Major Strategies

With search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links,... Read More

Benefits Of An Accessible Website: Part 2 - The Business Case

The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) states that service providers must... Read More

10 Tips For A Successful Website

Have you ever thought the secret behind the success of... Read More

Web Content Strategy 101

Your content is what gets you in search engines, speaks... Read More

Developing A Login System With PHP And MySQL

Most interactive websites nowadays would require a user to log... Read More

Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP

Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP People often... Read More

Do You Need a Web Database?

Does My Web Site Require A Web Database?If your web... Read More

Growing Your Meetings In CyberSpace

As increasing numbers of people search for information on the... Read More

Websites: You Get What You Pay For!

So you finally decided to invest in a web presence... Read More

Why Do I Need A Web Site?

Even though the Internet has been around for a long... Read More

Improve Web Sales Figures Forever And Ever Amen!

"How do I improve web site sales figures?" The CEO... Read More

Selling Your Site: Outsource or Homemade?

To the starting internet entrepreneur, there is nothing more discouraging... Read More

12 Tips To Great Websites

Why do some sites succeed while the vast majority of... Read More

Tips to Protect Your Downloads or Products

1. Upload robots.txt file in to your root directory and... Read More