Is it Too Late to Build a Successful Website?
The Internet is full of business opportunities which keep attracting people looking to establishing their own online businesses. Who wouldn’t like to make a living working comfortably out of their bedroom or, even better, become an Internet millionaire? But, despite so many stories of success, is it still possible to build a successful website when there is such huge market saturation? One that attracts hundreds or thousands of readers and provides its creator with something more than just a supplementary income?
The statistics don’t lie – Internet is huge
With almost 3.3 billion people actively using the web, almost half of the entire population has access to the World Wide Web. According to Internet Live Stats, there are over 1 billion websites; some of them are blogs which receive 2.7 million new blog posts every day. Social media is huge with 1.55 billion people being active on Facebook making it the third most popular site, behind Google (2.9 billion searches daily) and YouTube. People are shopping, socializing and actively looking for products and information. But, while there are a lot of consumers to buy from you, The Internet is a highly competitive place. Is there still a place for your site, on that huge yet abundant market? Hundreds of success stories and thousands of businesses thriving as well as Internet marketers making a living online can’t be wrong. But while millions try, only a small percentage are successful. What can you do to improve your chances of success? Make sure your website becomes a success.
What Makes a Successful Website?
The question should not be whether it’s too late to build a successful website – as it’s never too late to create a successful business, even if it’s harder than it used to be. The proper question is “what makes a successful site?” What are the most important things one should pay attention to, in order to distinguish their site from the thousands of competitors? There are a few basics that everyone can follow to increase the chances of success.
1. Choose the right niche
Choosing a good niche doesn’t mean you should think of something no one else has ever thought of, as that’s almost impossible. Think of it this way – what is the thing that you know a lot about? Unless you are building an informative type of website and can outsource content creation, building a website on the topic about which you have no idea is going to take you ages, and you will most likely give up half way.
Secondly, if you choose an overly competitive niche, such as insurance or most health topics, it’s going to be tough. Unless of course, you have an unusual marketing plan, because it’s highly unlikely you’ll rank for good keywords in the highly competitive niches anytime soon. On the other hand, the most crowded niches are usually the most profitable ones if you can get into them.
2. Make a good plan
What is your website going to be about? Do you plan on building an authority website in a niche of your choice or do you want to create a SaaS (software as service) type site or an e-commerce site? Whatever it is, just like any other online or offline business you need to plan your actions. How are you going to promote your site? Do you have resources, knowledge and time/money (or both) to work on it? How are you going to distinguish yourself from thousands of other sites? And, how are you going to profit from it? Will you be selling products, leads, building a list and marketing to it later? Set a goal and divide it into smaller, easy to achieve chunks.
3. See what your competitors are doing
This one can be a bit frightening. Many people dread the thought of ‘analyzing competitors’ simply because they are scared of failure, so they keep putting off the moment when they have to face reality and see who they are going to be competing with. Of course, you don’t have to create a second Facebook, but it’s good to learn from your competition. If only the hundreds of thousands of aspiring bloggers did a thorough analysis of competition, looked at how they market their sites, what ideas they utilize to attract the crowds and how they make money with them, many more people would experience a tremendous success online. While the online space may seem crowded, and all niches seem to be occupied, there’s a good side of this situation – you can analyze and learn from the mistakes of others.
4. Brand your site
What is the audience of your website? Is it a local audience in your country or are you going to target the international market? Keep in mind that while buying a local domain .tld may be much easier, many people regard .com domains as much more valuable and attractive branding-wise.The only problem? With over 123.78 million registered .com domains, it’s very hard to find something unique. Of course, the domain is not the only way in which you can brand your online business, but it’s a very important factor people take a look at when they think of doing business with you. Similarly, the look of your site and overall user experience can be a part of your site’s brand – so make sure its design fits your branding concept.
Again, this is where you can use the fact that you are “not the first one”. While innovation is a good thing, never cease checking on your competitors – what are they doing when it comes to branding? Look for ideas from different sources and try to mix them together, it’s a very good way of coming up with unique ideas.
5. Make it fast to load
Even the best branding and the best looks won’t help you if your users don’t see them. That’s why you should take care to ensure a good loading speed for your site. While an average eCommerce site takes between 7.12 – 7.5 seconds to load (depending on the web browser), a single second delay can result in 7% drop in conversion rate. What’s more, if your site loads for 3 seconds or longer, get ready to lose 40% of potential users before they even see your site! To increase the speed of your site, make sure you host it on a fast server, with bandwidth and resources which leave some room for site activity spikes. You can check out our ranking of web hosting providers to find one that’s right for you. The platform which you created your site on (WordPress, Weebly, or maybe coded from scratch) can also influence your site’s speed significantly. Test your website using online testing services and see what you can improve to make your website load faster.
6. Make sure your website is mobile
While not everyone will love your site, it’s good to make it accessible for those who potentially could do that. That’s why you should remember to make your site mobile friendly. Another important thing to keep in mind is that Google penalizes heavily websites which aren’t mobile friendly, and, to be honest, it’s actually right in doing so. There are now more mobile Internet users than desktop users, while in countries such as the United States, the statistics show 2/3rds of all Internet users browse their favorite sites using mobile devices.
7. Build a genuine relationship with your readers
Unless your website is going to be a static affiliate website generating passive income, it’s worth investing some time in building a genuine bond with your readers. Make sure people can contact you easily, and be open on feedback and any hints that they can give you – don’t be rude towards people who openly criticize your site as they can sometimes save you thousands of dollars. If their suggestions turn out to be very helpful, don’t forget to help them.
Never forget to answer readers in the comments and stay active on social media of your choice. Collect email addresses of your readers from day one but don’t spam them – rather, build a genuine relationship and openly help them. Although some people believe a Facebook fan page is more than enough, you don’t actually own Facebook fans. Owning an email list gives you much more control and marketing opportunities.
8. Stay focused and become the master of your craft
Don’t let initial failures discourage you. Don’t jump from one idea to another, stick to one site and build from there – even if you fail with your first site, in the end, you’ll actually learn a lot of valuable skills working on it. Have a step by step plan and do what has to be done, never leave it for later. Keep as much control over your website as you can to make sure you know what’s going on. Be productive and always ask yourself one question – would I be proud of what I’m doing right now if I saw myself twenty years from now? It’s very easy to lose focus when working online, especially now that the attention span of most people has dramatically shortened, mostly due to increase in new, attention-demanding technologies.
9. Ask others for help
Competition analysis is a very helpful thing that can show you a lot about the business that you are thinking about. But what’s even better is to ask for help from your competitors or the people you admire when it comes to online business. Remember that unless you ask, you will never know what the outcome would have been so it’s always better to take that risk. Even if no one answers you initially, try to offer them an incentive for helping you (if you ask top bloggers for help, they can be very hesitant to help you or even completely ignore you in the first place). On the other hand, if you present the idea of helping you as an opportunity, you will receive a lot of great feedback and help.
10. Secure your website and keep innovating
Did you know that there are about 37,000 websites hacked every day? Even the best plan and execution of it can be wasted if your site gets hacked. That’s why it’s highly important to keep your website secured at all times, especially if you operate a website that collects and stores personal details of other people. Stay up-to-date with latest security trends. Don’t let your hard work get stolen by others.
11. Treat your site as a business
When it comes to the success of an online website, your attitude plays a very important role. While you may read comments of thousands of people who are involved in affiliate marketing online, only a small percentage of them are serious about the marketing efforts and treat their website as a real business. Because that’s what your website really is – your way of earning money and making ends meet (preferably even starting your own company based on your site). Of course, it all comes down to your dedication and how much you are willing to sacrifice in order to achieve great success.
12. Never give up
Establishing a successful website is not an easy task. Your first projects may fail. On the other hand, if you follow the already successful ones, have a good game-plan and stick to what you want to achieve, there’s nothing that can stop you – thousands of successful people have already proven, that the biggest enemy of success is the lack of self-belief and related to that, the lack of action. Have a goal, a big goal and keep it to yourself. Don’t talk about it, but rather do it and then show it to people. This relieves a lot of pressure and allows you to focus on what’s really important – genuine, hard work.
According to a survey among successful affiliate marketers done by finchsells.com almost 20% of affiliate marketers surveyed earn less than $20,000 per year. On the other hand, the median is much more optimistic and translates into $221/day to $328/day ($80k up to $120k per year respectively). There were a few answers of those who claimed to earn between $800,000 to 1,000,000 as well as those who earned 1,000,000 up to 2,000,000 and those who earned above two million (in profit).
While it’s hard to say whether these results are genuine or fake, it’s just a small part of all the monetization methods available and with thousands of niche ideas around on which you can base your website, hitting the jackpot doesn’t seem impossible. It will, of course, require a lot of commitment, hard work and a bit of luck – but if others did it, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be able to achieve online success.
Competition also has its bright side – it got customers used to shopping online, and gives a lot of ideas and lessons from which you can learn and emulate. Hence, it may now actually be a much better time to set up a business than it was just a few years ago.
