Technically speaking, launching a new web service is relatively easy compared with the incredibly hard task of getting people to actually use it.
Why are people so hard to draw to your web services?
There are a variety of reasons why getting total strangers to use your still nascent web service is the digital equivalent of moving a mountain but the following come to mind…
…and countless more reasons we could add but here’s the thing, if you’re going to succeed with your new web service, you can’t even think about these things.
You actually need to focus on getting over these hurdles but that’s easier said than done as the first days, weeks or months of launching a new web service can be very hard on your self-esteem when very few people use it (compared to what you had initially envisioned).
So, you ask, are there any magic tricks to get people to use your web services?
Yes, if you’re insanely rich, you can buy your way into more mindshare with a pay-per-click campaign or a banner ad run on a complementary web site. Perhaps a banner exchange with other web developers could work well but that’s harder to do as all sites aren’t always “equal” for that kind of trade.
You may also resort to mailing lists, either bulk or fine tuned but the later take a lot of time to compile so that can be a frustrating experience.
Another path is to just add quality —and unique— content until the search engines eventually pick up your web service and make it visible to people looking for resources like the one you offer. That’s probably the surest shot among all because adding value to your web service makes it that much more appealing.
By building up your web service over time, you take it to the point where it can’t be ignored anymore because it’s completely unique and that much more useful to your target audience. That’s something anybody can but it takes both time and effort to produce a web service or destination that will be both sought and remembered.
The search engine optimization crowd will probably feel there’s not enough emphasis on “the power of search” but whatever web service you optimize, it needs a solid foundation to last at the top of seach engine results list. So SEO should come only when you web service is sufficiently mature to compete with the “Top 10″ of any market segment because that’s where most of most valuable clicks occur.
But it’s entirely true, the tech part is easy compared to turning strangers into members and freebie leechers into paying customers.
If you have other tip and tricks to get people to use your web services, please, share them with us all.
If you’re a web publisher or an online merchant and you happen to sell to people who like to pay for small products or services with their phone, their cellphone or even their credit card, you may benefit from micropayments.
The name says: the payments are small and meant to be easy to make, for the user.
For instance, a visitor might come to your MP3 song download service and wish to purchase a particular song for a few bucks so in the micropayment model, he can simply flip out his mobile phone, type an SMS to your site’s code (provided by the micropayment provider, like 123Ticket) and get a code back which, when entered in the web page grants access to the downloadable file for that song. It all happens in a matter of seconds.
Now, while countless customers may appreciate micropayments, they may not always be the right model to use.
As soon as your products of services cost over 12 or 15$US, you should refrain from using micropayments because they’re not meant for those. PayPal may be the solution of choice for amounts up to 10k$US but you can shop around for other payment providers who can be equally competitive.
When your potential customers want predictable and simple pricing, micropayments may end up wasting too much of a user’s mental time by creating many tiny, unpredictable transactions. When this happens, micropayments create both anxiety and confusion in the mind of your visitor. Because of this, you have to be careful not to choose the micropayment model lightly.
Wether you sell your offerings through regular payments or micropayments, you need to make sure that the value proposition is crystal clear so the visitor can decide to purchase (or not) without being anxious about the pricing.
Micropayments are evolving quickly as more people gain access to the web through mobile devices but the people are the ones who decide if a payment occurs, or not. As such, they’re the ones you need to think about when deciding which payment model to implement.
There used to be a time when forums were “it” and now, they’re barely getting any action, at all.
What happened?
I’ll tell you what happened: social networking.
Consider the following open source forum scripts, for PHP / MySQL:
…and many others.
These forums represent the finest codesets for forums and yet, even though web publishers release a steady stream of forums using these technologies, people don’t care, anymore.
The average web user is so caught up in social networking, immersive online gaming and shopping at ebay that saving time to exchange with other people within a forum has become awkward. In just a few years, web forums have gone from “top of the mountain” to “barely visible”.
Web publishers are the very first to notice this as it’s becoming virtually impossible to launch new forums unless sizaeble traffic can be diverted there for long periods of time while new posts are being artificially seeded daily, for several months. Other than that, even well thought up forums will wither and die, with one (1) member [the admin] and tens of “spam commenters” who registered with a “@mail.ru” email account but never confirmed their membership, past that.
Since open source or commercial forums seem incapable of integrating serious social networking features (and looks), people who used to post in forums will just drift away, towards other venues which center more of the action around them instead of around the community (or the “cause”).
People like to look at themselves in mirrors and social networking is akin to that.
Forums, however, focus on resolving issues, debating and sharing information instead of valuing, for instance, the name a particular individual gave to his new puppy (or some other mundane and generally worthless rant).
Without saying that forums always featured top-notch content, at least there was some kind of “moderator” oversight. That’s all but gone with social networks so even though people have an open mic to their world (and “the” world), they’re not always coming off as intelligent, interesting or engaging. In fact, most of the social networking going on is basically digital rubbish which fades fast, without anybody actually noticing it.
Is social networking, as a technological system and social phenomena, a sort of “dumbing down” process, for the web? I wouldn’t go that far because bright people are still online and kicking but overall, social networking tends to isolate people within their groups whereas forums provide large swaths of information to all members (and generally, all visitors).
Perhaps forums will bounce back and evolve into something even more powerful than social networks but for the time being, forums are losing the battle.
If you’re familiar with pay-per-click advertising, as a publisher, you already know part of your business model hangs on wether your visitors are interested enough by your Google AdSense ads to actually click on them.
And if they don’t, your revenue tanks through the floor… and you have no fun!
It’s deceptively simple.
So simple that some publishers have tried wild tricks to get their visitors to click on their ads but if and when Google notices the scheme they find it to be contrary to their TOS, they’ll rightfully pull the plug and the publisher will have no more revenue generating ads to accompany their content.
Therefore, a savvy publisher has to think up a way to present unique, useful and engaging content for free in the remote hope that some visitors will be, at that precise moment, looking to know more about the issue at hand and be willing to spend eye-time on the ad zones… and then, eventually click on one of them.
Whew!
It sounds straightforward enough but a “normal” website can get around 1 or 2% clickthroughs on the total numbe of their page views so that means that for 1k “valid” page views, only 10 or 20 clicks might occur — hardly enough to pay the rent or mortgage. It might help pay the groceries once a month but that’s it.
Are a few hundred dollar really worth all the exposure given to all those advertisers? Do the handful of monthly clicks really compensate for the tens of thousands of “views” those advertisers got? Some publishers think it’s worth it but many other think it’s time to move on to a more serious source of revenue.
There was a time, in 2007 and 2008, when the pay-per-click model was bringing enough money for a publisher to make ends meet but that time seems to be over as the economy isn’t picking up like it should and to make things even worse, the visitors don’t even bother to click the PPC ads, anymore.
Even the advertisers may feel this is isn’t working out to good for them so that might explain that their short “pitch lines” are getting ever more agressive which, in turn, might turn off even more visitors from clicking. Talk about a bad streak, from start to finish.
So Google AdSense and others need to figure out a way to make pay-per-click ads attractive again, for visitors.
Part of the solution might reside in providing more control to the publishers such as transparent ads and more options for ad feeds so all ads don’t look the same anymore. Also, a better cooperation between Google and its publishers might do wonders. The official AdSense blog is a nice touch but it’s hardly as good as a human being taking the time to help publishers who really need it. The current support structure is somewhat complicated and might lead to publisher frustration.
In other words, the current system is working but it’s a far cry from what publishers need to live so things have to change to make sure that it’s not just Google that can have a little more pocket change, at the end of the month.
Dear Visitor,
With over 20 year of hands-on experience in computer sciences, over 10 years as a web developer and domain name expert, I've learned a few things about how to make serious money, online.
In this blog, you'll see how you too can multiply your revenue with a rock-solid, reliable and easy to implement web services reseller storefront.
Having your own online store makes sense.
Thanks for taking the time to envision a richer, happier you.
