Hitech Solutions

Making Money From Your Website

June 21, 2009

The past couple of posts have been too academic in that basically, they discussed what a return on your investment on a website is and how to measure it properly. In this post, I am going to list up multiple ways to make money form your website either as a part time blogger or a full time professional blogger in your niche. The list is in no way exhaustive. There are many more ways to make money from your website than listed below. However, it is just a starter to give you hints on how you can really start making money.

Advertising on your blog or website
You know what your niche is and what topic(s) you are interested in. You have to write lots of posts on various aspects of that topic. Although, there is no official bottom line of the number of posts after which potential customers and sponsors will start noticing you, generally speaking, you will have written around 20 or 30 blog posts before you can start seeing some light. It is the time when you can expect some related companies contacting you for advertising opportunities on your relevant pages or you may start asking them to do so.

Sponsorships
Affiliated programs
Paid reviews
Freelancing opportunities
Writing Assignments
Blogging consulting
Consulting Opportunities in Your niche
Speaking Engagements

Can you thing of any other ways to make money from your blogging? Plesse sed your feedback in the comments area.

Posted by Maqsood Ahmed under Website ROI | Comments (0)

Local Search in Japan

June 9, 2009

Recently, there has been a lot of debate about local search and its related topics among the SEO community.  Everybody seems to want to talk about it. The truth of the matter is that local search is indeed, the centerpiece of all the search we, the consumers perform on the Internet day in and day out.

The purpose of this blog is to provide timely and relevant informtion about Japanese search industry to the SEO community and small businesses in Japan and around the world.  So, please stay tuned as we are going to roll out lot of interesting stuff about local search in Japan  in the coming weeks and months.

Posted by Maqsood Ahmed under Uncategorized | Comments (0)

What is website ROI anyway?

June 7, 2009

The return on investment (ROI) of a web site is the ratio of money gained or lost on your website verses the amount of money you have spent on the website project in whatever way you did.

Measuring the ROI of a Web site

The ROI of a web site can be measured in a number of ways and for a number of factors. A very abstract description of the factors involved in the ROI of a website are as follows.

• Investment on the website

The question to ask here is where it is that you are spending money. In case of a website, following factors could be counted as the money spent on

• Your search engine marketing initiatives including pay per click campaigns etc.
• search engine optimization efforts whether they be in-house or outsourced
• Direct marketing
• web site development costs
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate Programs
• or any other investment you have made to promote your website in one way or the other

• Return from your website

The outputs or outcomes of your investments on the website project could be as follows.

• Conversion
• Revenue generation
• leads
• Customer satisfaction
• Problem resolution rate etc.

Once you have calculated both the investment and outcomes of your website, you can calculate the ROI of your website by divding the outcomes by the investment. Calculating the ROI seems to be a simple task. However, the hardest part in the equation is to help your customers identify the outcome they want to see by investing on their web properties. Once that part is determined, it will be an easy shot to calculate the costs involved on the project.

Improving ROI

There could be so many ways of improving the ROI of a website. However, the first and foremost important step in this regard is to gather data of the visitors who visit your website.

Posted by Maqsood Ahmed under Website ROI | Comments (0)

Managing your website for a great ROI

June 7, 2009

Few things needed to think hard before you really design your website are as follows.

Determine Goals & Expectations

What do want your website to do for you? The reasons could be many as.:

• Get leads for your business
• Generate revenue for the company
• Enhance the branding image of your company
• Provide information to the interested audience

Determine Your Target Audience

You do not create website for your self. Rather, you always have some purpose behind creating it. You create it so that others can view and take the actions you want them to take. For you to be able to fulfill your target users of the website, you have to understand exactly what objectives they want to accomplish by visiting and using your site, what kind of people they are and how they make decisions you want them regarding the website.

Posted by Maqsood Ahmed under Uncategorized | Comments (4)

Which is the first to take- Conversion or SEO?

June 7, 2009

For several years now, businesses have been focusing on SEO and PPC campaigns to improve traffic on their websites and achieve top rankings. The sole purpose of SEO and PPC budgets has been to get as many clicks as possible. This is not a bad goal in its own right. However, recently, marketers have shifted their attention and their budgets towards improving the conversion aspects of their websites.

What happens once a visitor has clicked on your website? What if she leaves your website immediately because she could not find what she was looking on your website or, the navigation was too bad, or the design was too bad or the there was no call to action button and on and on.

Optimizing your website for improved conversion rates is a worthy goal aiming to understand what your customers want and, actaully help them get what they want. The best course of action for marketers to spend their ever shrinking budgets wisely is to clean up the house before they invite guests. So, you understand now what you need to do first after you get your next marketing budget aopproved by your boss.

There are two phases of website ROI. Pre-click and post-click. Both SEO and PPC involve improving the visibility of website while conversion optimization entails the overall customer experience- the way customers actually interact with different aspects of your website. Marketers need to prioritize which effort needs to be taken first.

Posted by Maqsood Ahmed under Uncategorized | Comments (0)