You’ve heard that success duplicates success, but, this isn’t always a good business strategy. For example,  eBay is by far the very best online auction site despite the inflated fees and frequent user complaints. The fact of the matter is that eBay is highly successful in what it does and since it was launched in the late 90’s nothing has come close to topping it. Monopoly? Yes. Duplicatable? In a word, no. Take Microsoft as another example. They are highly successful in the computer software and online business collaboration industries. Monopoly? For the most part. Duplicatable? Considering that the only company in their field to come close to them ever is Google, I would say no. Sure Google has it’s own search engine Monopoly, but, Microsoft remains the undisputed leader of PC operating systems worldwide. The point I am trying to make is that in order to attempt to follow in the footsteps of such business giants, one must be prepared to deviate from the path from time to time.

You can’t just create a better operating system. You have to convince consumers to buy it. You can’t just create a better eBay or Google, you have to drive traffic to it. In the end your product or service can be twice as good as your competitors, but, if you don’t win the wallets of consumers you have gained nothing. Take Google for example. When Google launched in 1999, AOL, Yahoo, Excite, MSN, and Ask Jeeves were dominating the search engine market. Google wanted in, but, instead of trying to create a better search engine, they first created a better more convenient search experience. Instead of competing with the other big name search engines, they simply made the choice simple for consumers. Should somebody search on Yahoo or MSN? Will Jeeves really serve up what you are craving? The solution came from a third party search engine called Google by allowing web users to search ALL of the major search engines at the same time, bringing back a simple page with results from each. Google didn’t reinvent the wheel to turn business towards them. Instead they made the wheel easier to use and in turn, once heads were turned and they were in the spotlight, they went on to essentially reinvent the “search engine wheel”.

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I use a lot of different commercial scripts and will most likely end up using even more in the coming years. Part of staying ahead of the competition means using better scripts than them. If that means hiring a coder to design custom code for you then that’s fine. If it means you buy a script such as vBulletin, InvisionProBoard, etc, that also works. The one thing that always gets me though is when people are so adamant about displaying the script author copyright information on the bottom of their site.

First of all, people will still know what your site is running even if you remove the copyright. Even if they don’t know right away all they have to do is go to any webmaster forum and ask “What is this site running?” and they will have their answer. There are a few cases when copyright removal works out, but, that’s only when 90% or more of the look of the script is changed. If you are going to just buy a script and use the template that comes with it then why bother paying an additional fee to remove the copyright?

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If you have been a webmaster or web admin for a while now, you most likely have had your ups and downs. One question to ask yourself if you find yourself tearing out your hair with one of your sites is are you just a dedicated admin or a desperate one? If you push and push and push but don’t get anything back, it’s hard to remain dedicated very long without becoming desperate. I believe a good way to put this is “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”.

Think about it. If you have one site that you want to see take off, and you put all your time and effort into that site but with no results, are you really making the best use of your time? If you spent less time on your sites that don’t produce at the moment, and more time on continued development and maintenance of the sites that are working for you, you will have a much better shot at achieving success.

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Ok so this is a few days old but I didn’t get around to posting it until now. Plus it’s Memorial Day so I didn’t want to do a too in-depth post. Anyway, if you haven’t heard, Feedburner was just recently purchased by Google for $100 Million. I view this as a very solid move on Google’s part because Feedburner is at the top of the Web 2.0 world right now. Other related services such as Technorati, BumpZee, etc are all things that a blog owner should not be without. Along with Google Analytics and Feedburner traffic stats you can easily keep track of pretty much anything on your blog.

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Chat rooms have always been popular. They aren’t nearly as popular as they were in the mid to late 90’s, but even so chat rooms are always a crowd pleaser. I recently added chat to some of my websites and I have to say that I definitely think chat rooms are a good thing to add. There are a few pros and cons, however, that you should be aware of before adding a chat room.

First and foremost, chat rooms do not result in added content to your site. Unlike forums or blogs, chat conversations are not generally accessible by gusts and visitors after the window is closed. In fact, chats are almost always only visible from the time a visitor enters the chat room. It’s not a very good way to build content, but, people love chatting and by adding a chat room you can give your users yet another way to network and become a community.

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Following along with yesterday’s blog, today I’ll talk about things that you SHOULD do on a day to day basis in order to stay focused.

1. Set Goals: Whether you run a blog, a forum, a news site, a service, or really any type of online business, you are in it to make money. How much you make and how soon you make it are up to you. How motivated are you? Are you a goal setter? When you work for yourself it’s easy to have a main goal in mind, but often times it’s easier to reach that goal if you break it down. If you have a blog then decided in advance how often you will update it. If you have forums, set a goal of how many posts you will make per day, and how active you will be. Participating in your own websites is often times the key to growth. If the admin leaves then the rest will follow. Set strict goals and be very adamant about reaching them.

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If you are like me, you aren’t necessarily always using your time in the best way you could. Running an internet business can easily turn into running an internet business while watching movie clips, listening to new music, chatting, etc. The internet truly has become something that has been able to capture the interest of almost anybody who knows how to use a computer. We are constantly bombarded with possible distractions while we “work”, and soon working can turn into “pretending to work”.

A while back when I was considering selling off a majority of my online ventures I decided to have a heart to heart talk with myself. It was time to decide what my job title actually was going to be and how many hours a day I was going to work. If you approach your online business casually, you will have a hobby. If you approach it as a career, you’ll have a paycheck. Here are some things that you may need to consider while you work at your computer.

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How can you optimize your site to work best for you and your visitors when you don’t keep track of where they are coming from, what they are looking for, where they are having trouble, and why they are on your site in the first place? I’ve become obsessed with keeping careful stats on any site that I care about. I want to know what people are searching for to find my site as well as what they are doing when they arrive.

One tool that is still very underused is Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s detailed, and it keeps Google informed of your traffic as well. Now you might be super private about who you want seeing your visitor stats, but, why worry about Google? Each visit to your site calls a script from Google and stores data about that individual’s visit. If anything you should add this to your site just so Google is aware that your site is getting traffic. After all, the more traffic you get, the more search engine spiders Google will send. Why not help them out by giving them a heads up?

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When starting a new website a lot of webmasters will research a niche that will result in some decent money earned from ad sales and advertising in general. One thing I believe strongly is that you should never start a site about something that you do not have a passion for. If you are in it ONLY for the money then you will burn out much quicker than if you are having fun with what you are doing. For example, medical and lawyer related websites make a lot of money. Do I run any websites that cover such topics? Negative. Instead I have websites relating to topics that interest me. You don’t have to be 100% interested in the topic you are covering, but you should know enough that you can enjoy running your site on a day to day basis.

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Almost as “timeless” as the Mac vs. PC question is that of subdomains vs. subfolders. What are the pros and cons of each and why will some people benefit more from one over the other? It all depends on the current search engine trends. Right off the bat, the obvious difference is in the appearance of your urls. To those unfamiliar with the terms, a subdomain will appear as sub.domain.com, and a subfolder will look like domain.com/subfolder. Some people make their choice strictly based on appearance, but, others take into consideration many factors.

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