Examine Your Site’s Focus

It’s hard to adequately stress the importance of focus and purpose on your website. Since you are reading the Top One Report, we’re going to assume that you have a website, or lots of websites, or are at the very least planning to have a website. We look at a lot of sites here at InfoMedia in our work with entrepreneurs like you. Many times we have opened a site from a customer or associate who is complaining that they are not succeeding online, only to stare at the screen, mouth agape, asking, “What is this?”

Sure, the site may have perfectly placed AdSense following our tips, be using a great WordPress template, and it may even have some nice design elements, but if it still takes the user 20 minutes to figure out what is going on, we have a serious problem.

In the rush to get online and make money fast, many people skip over taking the time to determine their focus and plan. Don’t let it intimidate you; this should really only be a five-minute process. There is one main question you should always ask yourself before you set up a site:

1. Why am I doing this?

If your first answer is to make money, that’s okay! We all want to make money. However, if your only purpose in setting up a site is to make money, your visitors are going to know. Do you regularly visit and interact on sites where you feel that all they want is your money? We don’t either. Make sure you have a genuine motive and are offering visitors something other than the opportunity to buy your products.

We find the most successful answers to this question fall into three categories:

1. I want to share my knowledge for profit.

2. I want to promote x.

3. I want to brand myself, my business, etc.

Once you place yourself in one of these categories, each answer will prompt a certain set of actions and dictate how you should proceed to monetize your efforts.

Sharing Knowledge for Profit

If you plan to profit by sharing your knowledge, chances are you are planning on creating revenue by advertising, possibly supplemented by information products, or possibly even affiliate revenue through products you enjoy or use. This is a great plan! But, you should also know that you need to build trust and rapport to motivate your readers. And to build trust, you will need content!

Therefore, if your goal is to earn through sharing knowledge, when someone visits your site for the first time, their impression should be: “Wow! There is a lot of content and knowledge on this site!” The best way to instill the feeling that there is a lot of content is to have a lot of content, and to make that content visible and accessible.

If your site is content-based, it is also important to note that oversaturation of ads and promotions will drive people away. It is frustrating when you can’t find the content underneath all the ads. Remember: Content is the cake, ads are the icing. Use accordingly!

Product Promotion

If you have built a site to promote a product, physical or digital, your site should be all about your product! We have often followed links to interesting-sounding ebooks only to land on a sales page with ads on it. Something you should particularly pay attention to if you are using AdSense is that those ads will often be for a competitor’s product! You wouldn’t willingly sell your competitor’s goods next to yours in real life, would you? Put some thought into who, what kind, and what is being advertised on your site. It’s important.

Branding

Those of you whose purpose falls into the third category of site focus are most likely understand the value in letting people get to know you or your business. So it should come as no surprise that our advice here is to keep all that focus on you! Ads or promotions for you or your company’s products and services are excellent, but a site designed for branding should be all about you, so be mindful that any advertising should keep its focus on you or your business.

Staying focused with anything on the Web can be a challenge, but selecting and adhering to a set site focus will help you succeed and be profitable. By choosing to focus in, you will be ensuring your site’s prosperity and success!

Action Steps

– Ask yourself why you want a website in the first place.

– Determine which category your answer falls into.

– Make sure that every aspect of your site is focused on its purpose.

– Remove elements that compete with or contradict your focus.

– Get ready to have a profitable website!