I have been making web sites since 1997; I originally made a web site on some free space from my ISP to promote my band, Active Loop Zone.
In 1999 I made the first web site in the UK that took payment by direct debit and inadvertently made Simon Burgess (of British Insurance fame) a millionaire.
I didn't know what niche marketing was in those days, but by a complete fluke, I had helped Simon exploit his niche of insurance, which is mortgage payment protection insurance.
In 2000 I suggested that he release an affiliate scheme to get more sales whilst cannily building back links at the same time.
Again, Simon's income doubled within a few weeks.
The site I originally designed for Simon, was fairly simple and I charged him £1,500.
Clearly things had to change...
After making an old friend a millionaire twice over, I decided that I should really work on developing my own income, so I had a good hard look at my portfolio of web sites.
I discovered that my web site about motorhome hire was by far the most profitable.
The problem here was that I didn't have a motorhome business; I was just generating leads and being paid to do so.
Consequently the owner of the business always had the need to change his prices, descriptions and so on.
The web site was designed with Macromedia Dreamweaver so the obvious answer was to use Macromedia Contribute to allow the client to control the content.
This just doesn't work, making any changes to a Dreamweaver template locks the files and 'locks him out', unless you manually go back in and 'check in' all the files.
Also, pages that I have carefully optimized for certain keyphrases can easily get messed up by the client being brutal with the editing process.
I won't even begin to talk about spelling and grammar mistakes, but the last thing you need is your well crafted words being littered with mistakes and sentences that just don't read right.
So what do I do now? Well I use Wordpress to make blogs, usually with a Semiologic theme.
I host them myself and claim them with Technorati.
If the client wants to alter or add content, I set them up as an 'author' and make sure that the pages I have made that are pulling the traffic belong to me and cannot be changed by the client.
Many people think of a blog as just an online diary, but when you combine Wordpress with Semiologic and a few extra plugins, you really have a complete database driven content management system that search engines just don't want to ignore.
In 1999 I made the first web site in the UK that took payment by direct debit and inadvertently made Simon Burgess (of British Insurance fame) a millionaire.
I didn't know what niche marketing was in those days, but by a complete fluke, I had helped Simon exploit his niche of insurance, which is mortgage payment protection insurance.
In 2000 I suggested that he release an affiliate scheme to get more sales whilst cannily building back links at the same time.
Again, Simon's income doubled within a few weeks.
The site I originally designed for Simon, was fairly simple and I charged him £1,500.
Clearly things had to change...
After making an old friend a millionaire twice over, I decided that I should really work on developing my own income, so I had a good hard look at my portfolio of web sites.
I discovered that my web site about motorhome hire was by far the most profitable.
The problem here was that I didn't have a motorhome business; I was just generating leads and being paid to do so.
Consequently the owner of the business always had the need to change his prices, descriptions and so on.
The web site was designed with Macromedia Dreamweaver so the obvious answer was to use Macromedia Contribute to allow the client to control the content.
This just doesn't work, making any changes to a Dreamweaver template locks the files and 'locks him out', unless you manually go back in and 'check in' all the files.
Also, pages that I have carefully optimized for certain keyphrases can easily get messed up by the client being brutal with the editing process.
I won't even begin to talk about spelling and grammar mistakes, but the last thing you need is your well crafted words being littered with mistakes and sentences that just don't read right.
So what do I do now? Well I use Wordpress to make blogs, usually with a Semiologic theme.
I host them myself and claim them with Technorati.
If the client wants to alter or add content, I set them up as an 'author' and make sure that the pages I have made that are pulling the traffic belong to me and cannot be changed by the client.
Many people think of a blog as just an online diary, but when you combine Wordpress with Semiologic and a few extra plugins, you really have a complete database driven content management system that search engines just don't want to ignore.
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