Your Web Pro Blog

Allow me to offer you a realistic alternative to all the feel-good resolutions floating around.  Exercising is a great idea, but sounds like a lot of work.  Eating right is fine too, but not so tasty.  If you planned to quit smoking go ahead with that – but otherwise, read on for a resolution you can stick to.

Most of you know by now that having a great website takes a fair amount of time and a dedication to updates, maintenance, and planning.  I encourage you to set a plan this year to keep your website up to date.  Here is my plan to help you.

No, no… this is not the sales pitch part.  I am leaving that out… for now.  I spent some time toward the end of 2009 putting ideas together to help you have a more useful website.  This is all simple stuff – and some of it you can do without paying me.  Each month I am rolling out two articles based around helping you have a more useful website.  Some will be instructive, others informative, but all will be chock full of grammatical errors.

Additionally, I am rolling out a few new services that will help you do better.  These will involve you paying me – but that’s OK.  Each month you will see a monthly special that will help you.  In this, hosting and maintenance plans are getting tweaked.  Don’t worry, you are not loosing any services.  You are gaining more services to add value to the maintenance plan you already have.

Finally, each month you will see a Maintenance Tip that will be something small to help keep your website in shape.
We all know that by the 4th of July the diet will be forgotten and the gym access card will be lost.  Keeping your website in shape will be so much easier.  I hope you will find the coming information useful.

To a great website and much success in 2010!

The YWP weekly newsletter has been running right at a year in some form or another, so it is time for a change. One of the things we are looking at is going to a biweekly release with more content. Other ideas are floating around, but the most important input is from YOU. Since this is geared to help you run a better website, tell us:

What can a free email newsletter provide to help you?

What type of things would you like to see?

Would you be interested in events going on with other YWP clients?

Let us know so this tool can serve you best. Comment on the blog, facebook, or reply via email.

Performance based contests allow people to boost their chance of winning by doing more. Good ways to run this is on the number of comments or posts to a discussion thread or the number of referrals from one website to another. Performance based contests can be themed in fun ways around races and sports. It you are trying to generate some buzz through your existing client base, this is the way to do it.

If you are a monthly maintenance or hosting client of YWP, then tracking the number of clicks from a specific website is easy to do. Pick a month and promote your content. When the month wraps up, we will report on the referring websites among your other stats information. If you run a SuperStats period during your content, we can tell you by the day who is leading. That would help you generate more excitement if you have an engaged audience.

Other ideas for performance based contests are by the number of comments or posts from a certain user. Most of the major forum packages will let you view these numbers easily, but otherwise you will just have to count. Using something like this on a social networking site like Facebook can be more successful than your own website if your clients are engaged with Facebook.

Performance contests can be a fun way to bring excitement to your brand, but, like most things, the traffic will fade after the contest unless you seek ways to hold onto them.

Comment Here : http://yourwebpro.biz/blog/?p=359

We have been using a Live Chat system on the YWP site for months so let’s test it this week with a giveaway. For all users who use the Live Chat system this week for any reason: support, work orders, ideas, questions, bordom, etc. you will get a chance to win a SuperStats month when it is officially launched. It is simple to use, just go to http://www.yourwebpro.biz and click the Live Chat button at the bottom of any page.

What happened on the last contest? Well…. it flopped. I posted a few comments, and feeling like a loser as the only one, I bought myself a domain. Part of an ongoing project, I bought http://www.ywplabs.com to run things like the Live Chat server, SuperStats instances, etc. What? You wanted that free .com? Since I don’t want to feel like a looser, lets go for another week. Go to the blog and comment on any story for a chance to win a free .com for a year.

Comment Here : http://yourwebpro.biz/blog/?p=357

Visiting Angels of Lubbock is dedicated to providing the best in home, in facility, and transportation services to the elderly residents in and around Lubbock. Their services range from simple pickups and dropoffs for medical appointments all the way to full-time in home care by experienced and qualified professionals.

Your Web Pro was contracted to redesign their old website to give it a fresh look and fix some of the unfunctional pieces from the old site. The original site was built on the Joomla CMS, but it was really overkill for a site like this. When opted to aviod a content system to make the site simple and clean. YWP also added a few things to help grow the site’s usage including a company blog.

Check it out: http://www.visitingangelslubbock.com

So what do you think?

24 “O Sovereign LORD, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do?

More Than Business is about us working for a greater purpose. Business is more than just making money, and life is more than just business. For more information, contact me or visit http://www.needhim.org

2 All a man’s ways seem right to him,
but the LORD weighs the heart

More Than Business is about us working for a greater purpose. Business is more than just making money, and life is more than just business. For more information, contact me or visit http://www.needhim.org

Last week we rolled out the first version of our Website Estimator that will allow visitors at http://www.yourwebpro.biz to get a rough idea on the cost of a project. The goal with this is to help answer one of the top questions we get, but to do it in a free and comfortable way for users. In typical Internet fashion, we are assuming you are on the website first to answer questions and get information. While we still want phone calls, this will help people who would not otherwise call or ask the question.

Obviously this has pros and cons like anything else. Some people just don’t want to spend money on a website so this helps give them a realistic idea before wasting their time. Others think the project is going to cost way too much so this helps show them how affordable websites are.

Check it out: http://www.yourwebpro.biz

So what do you think? Will this help or hurt? Share your opinions.

For the first contest in this series we are giving away a .com name for one year to one lucky person. To have a chance to win this one, post a comment to any story on the YWP blog (http://www.yourwebpro.biz/blog) this week. We will add your name to the drawing, and announce the winner next week.

Note: You may have to register with the blog to comment. That helps prevent spam.

Contests as drawings are run by asking people to do something to enter the contest then drawing one of their names at random. These are unique in that everyone has an equal chance to win. With contests like this prizes can range in size from small to large, depending on your budget.

YWP recently ran a contest like this to boost our Facebook Fans. We drew one of the names from everyone who became a fan in a given time and gave that person a free website. Facebook was chosen because of the massive engagement rates shown by those fans. Generally, a fan or friend on Facebook will not just read what you post, but comment and contribute to it.

Other things to use for a drawing are mailing list subscriptions, comments to posts, and discussion topics. The idea is to encourage people to start following your company. You will know that the people who join up are interested in receiving the prize, so it should be a product you offer regularly. From there you could contact those people about the service that they tried to win, just don’t be obnoxious about it.

Depending on what you produce and what your budget is, the prize could be large or small. We gave away a free three page website or the equivalent credit thereof toward a new project. The winner was Visiting Angels of Lubbock – http://www.visitingangelslubbock.com. The others who became fans were all contacted with a thank you note, but we did not try to sell them anything.

So what can you give away to generate some buzz about your brand? A free t-shirt like the Chris Gougler Band (http://www.chrisgougler.com) has done? Think about the value of adding a number of people to your followers list with little cost to you, then start a contest. These are super easy and affordable.