Ideas for the Creative Webmaster

Ideas, It's what people are always searching for. Here is a list of some great ideas.

 

These ideas cover a lot of territory. So browse through them and see if something clicks for you. They are ideas for webmasters, traffic generation, getting content, creating content and just about everything else to do with having and owning a website. For the most part the one tenet I preach is that your website has to be about something you really love so keep this in mind.

Love Watching movies? Think you have a good opinion about them? This can be a tough nut to crack because there are lots of movie reviews available but you can carve out a niche if you have a very specific subject that you focus on. Like fantasy movies? Cult films? Disney films? Pick a genre and stick to it. Sign up for netflix and for ten bucks a month you can get and review a heck of a lot of movies. You are going to spend the money anyway. Why not monetize it.

Same thing applies for books - Pick a genre and start writing reviews about the books in that genre. The funny thing about this is that after a while people are going to start sending you books for free so you can review them. It happens to me all the time.

Get free artwork for your site - You have a website which is a tool and if you need artwork, banners, graphics you can find artists who are willing to do this in exchange for links, write-ups, reviews and other stuff about them on your website. Offer an about the artist section. It really works. I bartered for a nice banner for one of my websites here: The Fantasy Guide The banner on this site was created by a professional graphic artist and in a situation like this everybody wins. Surf forums, google groups, yahoo groups for artist communities you can post to.

Need a decent website for free? Use blogger.com. It's a great way to start out. And you can share in the revenue from the site. As you get trafffic you can upgrade to 5 bucks a month to have the ads removed. And it is really easy to use.

Get people to contribute to your site - This is rather easy because we now live in a youtube and blogger generation where self expression is everything. Post messages to forums and user groups looking for writing, artwork, opinions, or anything else that will go with the theme of your website. People love seeing their work on the web. You will probably get blitzed by people with stuff.

Get well written and targeted articles on your website - Browse through the articles . You can put as many as 25 articles on your site for free. This really works well and I am always suprised by how much traffic these articles generate for me - particularly because I write a lot of articles too and these articles I get do quite well in comparison to mine.

Everything you do is either an article, a video, or a tutorial - This is really true ! You just have to be aware of the fact. And these articles and tutorials are great content for your website. If you are skeptical about this just check out my video on how to crack an egg one handed. This is valuable to people One handed egg cracking

Everything you do is either an article, a video, or a tutorial in a different way. You can look at things in different ways and one simple idea can generate offshoots of ideas. For an example of this take a look at my video on cracking an egg for left handers Left handed egg cracking

Like to play video games? Same rule applies. Write about the video game, post interesting stuff about it. Join a guild and volunteer to run the forum or message board. Give tips and hints. Write a guide! Everything you do and learn in that virtual world is valuable to other people.

Use Social Bookmarking sites to keep track of all the stuff you create on the web. People love these bookmarking services and if you keyword things well you will be surprised at the traffic they will generate. People very strongly seek out things they are interested in.

To get more links out there - Create several free blogs like on yahoo, blogger, and myspace and write about your stuff, your subject and make sure you link back to your website.

Don't be afraid to ask - The social pressure of asking is quite large but you will be surprised by how well you are recieved if you just ask people for help, writing, art, advice, direction or anything else. People like to help!

Ping your blog - If you have a blog you really have to ping it! This is easy to do and it notifies a lot of websites that you have a new blogpost.

Don't be afraid to experiment and try something wild! This is how you get attention to your site and your subject. No harm done in being zany!

Misspelling work well sometimes - It is all about getting noticed and many people notice misspellings. Thing about using them a bit and see what happens.

Write a book. It can be a how to, a guide, a novel, fiction, fantasy, a picture book, a childrens book, short stories or anything else you want it to be. It is your book.

Create a library of links - Spend some time collecting up links in your subject and post them to your website. This is a very valuable resource for other people and you probably have hundreds of liks already bookmarked. List them with comments. People are hungry to find things on the web and you have done a lot of research, use it! I have a collection of science fiction and fantasy links that tops 1,000 url's and people really like it. It generates a fair amount of traffic. Think about and pay attention to the variety of your subject. What I mean is that if you have a website about classical guitar shouldn't you also write some stuff about the famous guitarists? I have a nice site devoted to classical guitar but it focuses on playing. I ventured into writing some stuff about Andres Segovia (who was a classical guitarist) and my traffic increased nicely.

Lets look at classical guitar as an example website - What can you do for content? Here is a quick list:

  • Find youtube videos for your site
  • write articles about playing, or about players
  • give tips on playing
  • give a list of interesting links like tutorials, clubs etc.
  • Find free stuff on the web for guitarists
  • Offer recommendations on books, guitars, and videos
  • get articles from article directories
  • Put up a forum or bulletin board for people to post messages
  • Create polls where people vote on their favorite guitarists/works
  • Actually play some guitar and record it then post it to the site
  • What are the fringes we could cover? Write about the history of the classical guitar, write about how to make a classical guitar? How to string it? Spanish guitar? concerts this year?
  • Create a newsletter so you can update people on whats happening
  • Offer to exchange links with other webmasters
  • Make videos of you playing and post to youtube

Write for other sites - There are lots of sites out there related to your site. Offer to write articles for them. They are always hungry for content.

Advertise in the Real world - Put a sign on the top of your car the same way they do with pizza delivery cars. Or create a bumper sticker. Make business cards, put a sign on your house. Create posters and post them around town. don't neglect the fact that people see these things then go home and log in.

Post to forums - Write interesting comments and posts in forums that are related to your topic and include your website link in the post or in your signature block.

Have a digital camera? Take some pictures related to your subject and post them to flickr or other similar sites. Be sure to include information and link to your site.

Have a digital movie camera? Make a movie, or tutorial on how to do something within your realm and post it to youtube.

Give away something free on your site - It's amazing how many people will find your site because there is something free! It could be an ebook, bookmark, clipart or almost anything else.

Create something that other people will use on their website and put a link to your website in it. Something like this takes some skill and thought but it could be something like a counter, a web template, a wordpress template.

Create a newsfeed for your site so other people can get your site updates without having to come back to your site. If they get the newsfeed they will come back to your site though for more information about what turns up in the feed.

Start a Podcast about your subject - There are people out there who just love to listen to podcasts and will be very interested in hearing what you have to say



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