As the owner of a website, you have the responsibility for ensuring that the health of your website is the best it can be. There is a good business advantage to this, and there is an added business bonus that I will cover later.

Is Your Web Business Fit For Purpose?

I have written at length about the importance of producing your website in accordance with a good websites business template founded on a clear Internet business purpose. You need that to develop a healthy web business, but you also need to check that it is being produced in a fit and proper way.

I use an add-in for the Firefox browser called SEO Doctor. It takes seconds to install, and gives you vital health information about every web page you visit, including your own, and your competitors.

How you handle your own website depends how involved you are in the technical aspects. If you are a small business owner who does everything, then read my technical website health article, and watch for more articles about the specific points covered by the SEO Doctor tool. If you have employees or suppliers who handle this, then send them to that article.

Whether you do it yourself, or employ others, you need to set standards for the health of your website. Must every page be 100%, or is that too expensive to achieve for small benefits in search engine traffic? Will you apply different standards to more important pages? Will you assign someone to monitor daily, weekly or monthly? Note that there is no site-wide reporting in this tool, so you might need to research other monitoring services or software.

How Strong Is Your Competition?

SEO Doctor can help you analyze your competitors strengths and weaknesses in two important phases of your web business cycle.

During planning stages, look for high-ranking websites with a low health index. The numbers are only an indication, but could reveal some easy targets. Health index numbers should not sway you in your opinions about the overall quality of your competition, but they are one more factor to consider as you decide if, or where, you can be better than the rest.

During the monitoring stages, as well as looking at your own performance, consider the health of your competition. Are they also improving their website health in a bid to attract a better share of search traffic? Do not be complacent if you are stronger than your competitors – you are now their target. Keep improving your website health, never forgetting that this is no measure of your real strength.

Real strength, and true web business health, comes from content that is better than all others. It must be readable, attractively presented, easy to navigate, and cleverly marketed. Just ensure that website page health problems do not detract from your overall web business health.

If you need more help on this, please use the web business health forum.

But sometimes you just want to get on with it.

So here is a quick guide to setting up a web business from scratch, which I am writing as I do it for a new project.

Web Business Purpose

My purpose is to set up a site to provide opportunities for people who are currently working from home, or want to be.
My project will support existing sites of mine or my clients, offering paid work to anyone who wants to write about all manner of topics. This exciting new venture will also help people produce and market their own websites in a friendly environment.

I have a list of types of people who I want to attract, and types of service that we will offer. This is part of a clear vision about the purpose of my web business. You will need a similar vision, and list of market areas to target, before you can continue to plan and develop your own online business.

Web Business Rewards

In this article, I’m not describing the full rewards process for my entire business, but this part is relevant to anyone considering an information based web business that will generate revenue from advertising. It is also relevant to existing businesses as a replacement for some or all of an existing AdWords, or similar, campaign.

We start with some likely target markets. I’m going to keep this very simple, and decide between work at home, or work from home. Instinct tells me that the first will be best, but let’s check the numbers.

I’m now going to extract some broad demand and cost numbers from AdWords, and feed them into an Excel spreadsheet. The process will work with most spreadsheet software, including free Google Docs and Open Office. My Freeche tool will take some of the repetitive work out of the process, but it is not yet complete enough for general use. I’m sorry that the Freeche site is down, but if you sign up for updates in the form top-right, I’ll let you know when it is back online.

I’ll be back in an hour or so to give you some numbers.

[1 Hour 15 minutes later] I’ll write about what I’ve just done in the last hour soon, but here are the numbers:

The significant points are:

• Never trust my instincts.
• There is a significant, relevant, market that contains neither at or from in the keywords. Perhaps that is where you should start your research if you fancy a slice of $25k per month.

Web Business Objectives

I’m just going to keep this simple, and plan for Adsense revenue. Usually, you would look at other revenue streams from related products and services. You can often add these later, but for the perfect plan, you should investigate them first, so that you can structure your site to drive traffic to the most profitable sections.

Web Business Strategy

You may have read my opinions on KEI and other pointless rubbish elsewhere. I am going to keep my strategy planning simple and just focus on demand. There is an argument for planning around profitability, but I will go for traffic domination first, and focus on profitability afterwards. In either event, the process for producing the all important strategic site blueprint is similar. For profitability categorization instead of demand categorization, just add a column that factors in your expected profit and use that instead of demand.

As I explained in my previous article about Internet business strategy, you now need to put aside the Rewards plan, and start again with an analysis of phrase or exact demand.

My Business Websites Templates pages in the Strategy section will explain this process in more detail.

Web Business Production

After 8 hours work on my website template, I should be ready for the WordPress Installation. However, as I will explain in a separate article, web business templates should not be rushed, and there are some outstanding issues that need to be cleared up before I can truly say I’m ready to start the Production phase.

Web Business Reap

It is not worth thinking about reaping rewards until the site has 50 to 60 pages, and is getting traffic. Clearly, if your Objectives include Rewards in the form of inquiries or sales, then the appropriate forms should be amongst the first in your production sequence. If you are familiar with AdSense, or other advertising revenue schemes, then include the appropriate codes if you can do so quickly, but do not waste time on this until your traffic has started flowing. Everyone has different points where traffic becomes relevant to generating income.

Please do not do what some charlatans suggest, and build your site, promote it as a non-commercial site, then add revenue generating pages once you’ve got into non-commercial directories. It is wrong by any standards, and will do you harm in the long run. Any short term benefit you may get from such a scheme will be lost many times over when your reputation is tainted.

Web Business Appreciate

Do not waste time trying to run any Appreciation processes until you have sufficient returns to measure. This means something like 50 inquiries per month from a single landing page, or 50 clicks per month on an AdSense revenue page.

I know that I’ve said a “web business in hours, not months,” but the Appreciate phase is longer term. You can certainly start generating revenue in hours, and so you have a business. However, you need a few months page production and promotion before the revenue is significant enough to appreciate.

Web Business Warnings

• If it is your first project, better to take it a little slower.
• The topic I’ve used is pretty well saturated, so maybe you should think a little longer than I did about doing something different. My key phrases are OK for the basis of a blog post such as this, but a real web business takes a little more thought and ingenuity. Be shrewd.

Your Web Business In Hours

There you have it, a web business that is (almost) ready to go with just a long day’s work. Depending on the scope of the business model, it is possible to do it in a few hours. This time, especially as my project involves more than just an information web business, it will take a little longer. It will still be up and running long before it would take with some tools I have used in the past. It will also be more successful, but I’ll let you judge that when I launch it next month.

Please sign up for my free update service to stay informed about new processes and advice to help you plan and manage your web business. If this article raises any issues with you, or you simply want to share some of your own experiences, please join the discussion at General Web Business Management Questions.

Broad match searching will match Internet Business to Web Business, which may seem obvious, but it also brings other benefits. Broad match search results include synonyms and related terms that add richness to the site. If nothing else, it saves us a few trips to the thesaurus.

At the Strategy stage, this gives us a problem. Do we create categories for web business, Internet business or both? If we revealed 4,000 topics in our potential Rewards assessment, do we categorize all of them and produce thousands of content and indexing pages?

No we don’t!

We reassess the market by choosing the best section of it, and we analyze the latest demand for those key search terms. Then we group similar topics into sections, and create our strategic website blueprint. I will explain the exact procedure in the Strategy section.

First, I need to finalize my review into the merits of [exact match] vs “phrase match” search. Exact match gives us a very accurate demand profile to help determine what is worth writing about. In a large project, this is a good starting point as it gives us the best numbers to start with. However, in smaller projects, it can leave us short on potential content topics.

I will assess the best cutoff points this week, and present a step-by-step procedure for creating your website blueprint. Never forget that this phase gets us started with some expected numbers, and there is no real right or wrong way. It is most important to get the site running as soon as possible, because later we will generate our own actual statistics to drive future development.

As long as you can prepare logical groups of associated topics, it does not matter too much which search type you base your categories on. In my experience, exact match searching will be fastest to get started on, as the number of topics is small. Broad match is best suited to small niches, but be prepared to ignore or delete many topics on the list. Phrase match seems best for most projects.

As I said, I will report back soon with clearer guidelines on how to build your blueprint. In the meantime, if you want to discuss any issues, or ask questions, please join the debate at Discuss Strategies For Web Business.

What if you had a really simple business model that was based on targeting a competitor or following the steps to success of a market leader?

I certainly would not recommend this as a first project. You really need to build some experience and success following the right procedures before venturing “off-piste.”

Since I have that experience, I’m tempted to try it myself. One of my projects replaces and extends a well known marketing company that encourages newbies to build their own business sites. All their pages are clearly targeted to specific search phrases, though I’m worried that the site structure will prove to be poor.

I’ve got time to think about this, and assess the risks, because I’m far too busy on other new projects to start another new site. However, the demand for my Freeche traffic generating tools is building, so I may have no choice. On second thoughts, there is never any excuse for basing your web business on an inferior product.

Copying something successful has some attraction. As I focus on markets where there is lots of confusion, myths, and misinformation, I cannot think of a good example. If you’d like to challenge me to assess a site that you have in your sights, please raise it in the Websites Business Forum.

Purpose, Rewards, and Objectives are all vital for a truly successful web business. However, you can often do those for a group of businesses, but you cannot take shortcuts with strategy. Every web business must have its strategy. Every website must have it’s blueprint.

The blueprint lists all key search phrases that are relevant to your chosen market areas. It structures those key-phrases into groups that reflect each market area you have included in your web business Purpose. It is the vital template that nobody in the websites business can do without.

My use of the word ‘template’ should not be confused with the WordPress templates that control how content is displayed on the page. Traditional use of a template is to guide the production process, ensuring accurate results that comply with the design. That is exactly what you are building during the strategy phase, so call it a blueprint, a template or a strategic plan. Whatever you call it, you cannot start producing a website without one.

The only time you can get away without one is if you are building a network of web businesses, and one site is simply summarizing or supporting other sites in the network. In that case, your site structure should be based on the existing sites, so you certainly cannot manage without a strategic site template somewhere. In fact, that support site is not a web business in it’s own right – unless your Objective is to earn you own money by supporting or summarizing other successful, well-structured sites.

In this section, I cover many different web business models. I cover the details of each model in the Objectives section, but most rely on attracting referred traffic from search engines or other links.

Before you think this is another Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process, it is not. It is part of Visitor Experience Optimization (VEO). The first part, in fact, since you cannot optimize the visitor experience until you have some visitors. The cheapest way to attract them is to attract natural search. The only way to retain them as loyal, returning customers and prospects is to maintain a site structure that lets them know what your business is about and encourages them to bring you revenue.

If you have a large budget, you can quickly get a clear picture of what visitors are currently searching for by advertising online and analyzing the results. Unfortunately, this is very expensive, and it means your early content has no structure, or one you merely guessed at.

As a priority, I explain the requirements for natural search referrals and productive network links. I’ll keep adding articles to the list for procedures that are relevant to other business models. If you have a pressing need for information on something I have not covered yet, please let me know, as I always prioritize with reference to specific requests from my visitors.

1. Websites Business Template: Strategic Targets
2. Websites Business Template: Demand Assessment
3. Websites Business Template: Strategic Structure
4. Websites Business Template: Review & Refinement
5. Websites Business Template: Timescale & Targets (optional)

My free update service can tell you when I add more pages to this series. Keep in-touch by subscribing on the form above.

Do you have questions about Web Business Strategies? Please discuss any issues or questions about pre-production website planning at Discuss Strategies For Web Business. For other questions about web business management, please use the appropriate discussion page.

Using top quality web servers from established hosting companies, I ensure that the time and effort you’ve invested in your web business isn’t wasted with poor delivery and excess downtime.

More than that, I help you Appreciate your business by reporting progress on important performance indicators.

My prices on this page are for a managed website that enables you to focus on the business management issues that I cover on this site. In principle, I manage all the technical aspects of your website that I explain on shrewdies.net. So if you are looking for a cheaper solution, check out my Web Hosting Prices on that site, and learn the technical aspects yourself (or subcontract them).

When I supply you with a managed hosting for your website, I assume that you have completed the planning stages of your business, and developed your web business blueprint. I will then setup and structure your site enabling you to add content in a way that allows you to reap the rewards that you have planned for. The site will also include all the analysis tools you need to appreciate those rewards, and grow your web business.

My prices are for web business aimed at UK, USA, or global English speaking markets. I can supply technical, and general business management services for other markets, but you will need to supply local market knowledge.

Standard Internet Business Service

WordPress and integrated Q2A installation with a mutually agreed theme, appropriate plugins, configuration to match web business blueprint (including categories and tags), and recommended ‘admin’ pages (About, Privacy Policy, Contact Form, etc).
Ongoing annual services:

• Domain name registration fees (.com, .co.uk, .net or .org – others are available if required)
• Monthly software upgrades, if required
• Monthly management report including blueprint review, site performance, link analysis, content analysis, and optional key indicator progress.

Standard sites are suitable for approximately 1 million visitors per year, depending on content. Heavy resource sites may require upgrades, which I will determine during planning stages, and review as part of management reporting. Lower resource options are listed below.

Small Site Internet Business Service

For sites with less than 60 pages, and no web business growth strategy.

As Standard Package above, except software upgrades and management reports are quarterly.

Dormant Site Internet Business Service

For sites with no development plans.

As Standard Package above, except software upgrade and management report are once per year only.

Please note that these packages assume that you have a website blueprint describing all the topics you will include in your business, analyzed by important business categories. I describe how to create these plans in the Strategy section of this website. If you do not have time to create this yourself, please see my Internet Business Strategy Prices.

I developed my accounting, computing and marketing skills in a wide range of industries. I understand business, and I understand how to make a website work for your business as a revenue stream instead of reducing profits as a cost center.

Through my PROSPRA process, I engage those skills in any, or all, of the phases of your web business project:

Purpose

If you do not have a clear purpose, you do not have a clear web business. Let me help you identify the key factors that will drive your business and build your mission statement.

Rewards

Not sure how much you can make? Let me help you forecast expected rewards by analyzing the potential for the resources you have available.

Objectives

You may know the rewards you expect, but how will you realize them? Zappa lists 41 different web business models. As well as understanding those, you might also need to see how they fit with your offline business. Let me help you compare different options for online activities.

Strategy

Do you need more than my standard package for defining your site blueprint? Let me help you develop the structure for your website that will ensure you stay focused when you produce your site.

Production

Are you too busy to write the content and promote your pages? Let me help you produce the pages and market your business.

Reap

Can you handle the inquiries or manage your online store? Let me help you make sure that the rewards you planned become reality.

Appreciate

Not sure where you can improve? Let me help you analyze your results and grow your web business.

Internet Business Consultancy Service Provider

I know that all businesses are different, and my standard packages may not fit with your goals and aspirations. I supplement my website management packages with personal consultancy to match your situation. I can help you with any of the phases of starting a web business, or turning round one that is not performing to expectations.

My prices below include additional work on planning, content building, performance analysis, or website maintenance that is not covered in my standard package. Please note that if additional maintenance is minor, such as an extra plugin, or changing a few lines of the theme, then I will try to include this without extra charge, as part of the routine upgrade included in the plan.

Remote Support

Remote support is work carried out at my premises or other location to suit me. Time is charged for all activities related to your support work, including telephone & email time.

Day Rate

Up to 10 hours

Hourly Rate

Work is logged in 15 minute intervals, and charged monthly in arrears rounded up to nearest hour.

Contract Rate

You can prepay as many hours as you like (minimum 4 hours), to be called off in 15 minute intervals.

Local Support

Local support is work carried out at your premises or other location to suit you. Expenses and traveling time charges may apply.

Day Rate

Up to 10 hours

Half Day Rate

Up to 6 hours

Contract Rate

You can prepay as many days you like (minimum 3 days), to be called off in half day intervals.

My prices are subject to change without notice – i.e. I might not have updated the above to my current rates, but I will never increase my prices once agreed with you, unless we agree otherwise.

My pages on how to develop detailed strategies are a bit sparse, but I will be rectifying that shortly. I have been busy creating site plans for clients, and I’ll share the details soon. This is one management task that is difficult to pass to others, but I have developed methods that make it easy for you to direct, even if you do not want to do the detailed number-crunching.

In fact, I am introducing this as a web business service, as it seems many budding web business owners find it difficult to spare the time. This is particularly true when the purpose of the business is to promote and extend an existing off-line business.

To a certain extent, with an existing business, the early phases of identifying Purpose, clarifying expected Rewards, and setting Objectives are very straightforward. When I take on a project to plan and implement a website, I still try to formalize these phases in the development agreement, as they make very useful reference points for the detailed plan.

Two of my websites business projects are currently at the Strategy stage:

• Rejuvenating a vanity site to make it earn money for the business
• Improving traffic for an existing web business.

The first project started as a simple site transfer from Flash to WordPress. For this type of task it is important not to rush in and simply start transferring content. The client brief was to retain similar look and feel. If you are in that situation, it is OK to instruct your development team to work on graphics and other theme related issues. Do not start on content until you have the blueprint.

The second project follows an Appreciation exercise that has identified the need to refocus part of the business. Appreciation routines, especially on a daily and weekly basis, usually provide feedback to direct Production and Reap tasks. This is a six month review after identifying new Key Performance Indicators based on the most profitable activities. Though the details are different, as data is now generated from actuals, with so many changes, it pays to generate a new site blueprint. This ensures that opportunities related to the successful products and services are not missed.

I’ll write more on other management aspects of these projects later. One significant outcome of these projects is my realization that busy managers of existing businesses find it difficult to find the time to follow my procedures for generating a detailed strategy plan.

Therefore, I am extended the services offered by my websites business to include strategic site blueprint development. I have not finalized the prices just yet, but I will put the new details there very soon. To make sure you don’t miss them, please subscribe to the update service using the form above.

Do you have questions, opinions or experiences regarding topics in this Strategies In The Websites Business article? Please discuss any issues or questions about pre-production website planning at Discuss Strategies For Web Business. For other questions about web business management, please use the appropriate discussion page.

Whether you provide an online entertainment service, or want to attract traffic to your own venue, entertainment topics make great subjects for web businesses. There are opportunities to publish your own games or music, publicize your performances and events, or create lucrative membership or review websites.

Shrewdies understands the value added opportunities for your existing ‘bricks and mortar’ entertainment business. We also understand how you can build a web business that trades solely on line, makes money from promotions, or a combination of many revenue generating activities.

I will be adding more details of specific entertainment features soon. In the meantime, you can see some examples by searching the Internet for “Shrewdies Entertainment Website” or get in touch via my Contact Form or forum.

If you are unsure about the suitability of an entertainment website for you, please look at opportunities in other web business sectors. If entertainment sites are for you, then learn how to start, from low cost to zero cost, on my Web Business Prices page.