Progress on this web site, so far, has been great. For the past 9 months I have slaved to find a niche (as that is presumably what will help drive traffic to my blog). I thought I had found a good one in providing Blogger.com Help, and for the most part, I have. Lately however, I’m beginning to second guess myself and start to consider how I can open things up more to attract even more readers.
I think once the ‘official’ help series on blogger that I am currently writing is complete, I will then take on other blogging platforms. Even that still seems pretty limiting. I think what I need to do is just open things up to every blog platform, every web site.
I’m pretty much doing that to some extent already, however all my marketing has evolved around the Blogger platform. That’s what I think I need to work on. I’ve proved to myself that I can do this without spending inordinate amounts of time and perform things rather quickly on systems foreign to me.
The Blogger series has been good to me, like I said. I’m ranked on the first page for several blogger.com related terms, many thanks to Adam for pointing that out to me. Yeah, I wasn’t even watching and POOF! magically I have keywords popping up on the first page of Google. I told you I still have much to learn about being social and getting stuff out there. I’ve been hiding in the corner coding for waaay toooo looong.
Free Professional Web Development Services
Here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about creating a few pages that will express my desire and ability to help anyone with their web site and blog. I could charge for services, but really want I want is recognition on my clients sites in the form of a link back to me and clients helping to spread the word. I might also add in a way for visitors, clients, friends and family to provide a donation to me. The idea being, if I have helped you and you want to say thanks, you can do so with a link back to me from your site, a promotional post, and/or a donation to my piggy bank.
How would I actually charge for services though? I mean, I would love to be able to help people for free, but reality says I would be stretched thin given enough promotion and (hopefully) a large demand for services like this. I already juggle 2 projects and a full time day job to make ends meet, so I need to be cognizant of my time when I make these types of commitments right?
So charging for services could be broken down like this:
- No fee - My favorite, and I’m sure everyone else’s too. If I can write a post to satisfy a clients need, why then would I need to charge? I’ve gained a post that has helped someone (hopefully) and will continue to be there to help anyone else in the future. No reason to charge when I can post it, right? I’m not greedy, at least I try not to be.
- Link Love – Surely this could be something the client does because they are gracious and kind, but when should I ask that this be my compensation? I guess for things that take a little bit of time or involve my time outside of my normal routine, but still only take a few extra minutes of my time.
- Donations – I’ve been eye-spying a donation widget the past few days and thinking about adding it to my blog here. However, I was also thinking that I could simply pop-up a PayPal donation button as well and perhaps save a few pennies on each donation. I would probably ask that if I need to dig into the guts of your template or site, and mess around in there for any amount of time over 10 minutes, perhaps a donation of $1 on up would be in order.
- Retainer – I’ve worked a few retainers and quite honestly, it’s the best way to go for getting things done. The client would pay in advance for a certain amount of hours of my time per month. If they don’t use all the time they purchased, it rolls over to next month. If we are close to going over the hours for the month, I alert the client, and if work is to continue, they simply pay for another month. This causes me to establish the client as a Quickbooks customer and perform several accounting dance moves, but it works out well for both client and myself.
So, for smaller one-off type projects that help fellow bloggers and web site owners, where the work can be done fairly quickly by myself, I wouldn’t charge a thing. I might ask for a link back to me though, we’d still be in the ‘free’ zone. Donations would always be available for people generous enough to consider helping me out financially, but I would hope it is for something I actually earned.
This isn’t the end-story to this. I’m building a few pages to properly state all these things and a few more. Until they pop up, what are your thoughts about all this? Would you pay a few dollars donation to get stuff done on your blog or web site that you couldn’t do yourself? And if you were able to be instructed how to do it yourself, would you take advantage of that?
You might also enjoy these related posts
- BlogSpot Blog – Free Web Development Tools Doing any level of web development means having a variety of tools that aid your efforts. I have a collection of tools that I’ve either downloaded or paid for...
- Web site analysis services There are so many things you need to keep in mind when it comes to building a website, and building it is only the first step! After you build...
- 10 Questions For Your Web Developer Before Starting That Web Development Project You need to question your web developer before starting that development project. Before you hire someone to build your web site, before you lay down any cash or outline...
- Web Site Monitoring – Monitor Your Web Site for Free Web site monitoring is an important part of operating a web site, and it allows you to know when your site is down. Fortunately, it’s easy to set up...
Wayne John is a web developer in Southern California that shares his 25+ years of programming and web development experience freely and happily to anyone willing to learn. He also loathes speaking in the third person. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you 
@Karen – My my my, I have slipped on commenting back to you Karen. I’m cleaning up my emails and ran across your comment again. Thanks for always being there Karen!
Im all about free! I think it’s a great idea and could generate a great deal of traffic for your blog, and frankly I suspect these things are very easy for you and you enjoy it! I will be looking forward to what comes!
@Adam – Thanks for the assist already my friend! I’ll see if I can id some keywords to try to target, if you have suggestions I’ll take em!
@RE Ausetkmt – I get that a lot about my name, even more in real life as you might imagine.
I really don’t have a way to throw up random links yet as I don’t have a blog roll. I try to encourage commenting and referrals and will create posts that refer others to your site in a better way (IMO) than just a link on the sidebar. Let’s talk about that some more, perhaps I need to create a Blogroll…
As for your sites, it seems you have a passion for reggae music, which I enjoy quite a bit too. You are also on WordPress, which I am not terribly familiar with yet, but let’s see what you are thinking about and we can go from there. If I don’t feel comfortable, I know someone who is that can help you make changes.
Thanks for swinging by, I dropped my card on one of you sites. Cheers!
ooooo Wayne,
I’m glad I read your post in the entrecard forum .
at first I chuckled at the john wayne thing; thinking
you were blogging from the great ranch in the sky.
but to find out that you are actually doing such nice
things. wow what a bonus.
I’d love to link to you if you’d like to link to me, since
I have a couple of sick wordpress sites, that could really
use some backside assistance. don’t know why the entrecard
wizard can’t read my cards, and I want so badly to have them
in the proper place.
it’s a long ugly story and if you’re up for a challenge
and a new friend, just feel free to drop on by my profile anytime.
Thanks again and Nice to meet you
~RE
http://badgals-radio.com/
http://recycledfrockery.com/
http://foundationsound.co.uk/
and others
We will have to get you ranking for some really competitive words next to increase the traffic. Going after the long tail words is a great start.
Suite J, it probably doesn’t matter if you have a niche because your site looks rockin! I think I just find it a little awkward to promote myself like this because 1, I ain’t no salesman, and 2 I’m never going to be. So taking this step here was huge for me.
The handshake page is a good idea, I’ll need to give that some consideration.
Thanks for dropping a comment or two! And yes, totally understood.
Cheers!
I meant “affiliate links” to those products that you could recommend afterwards in case you thought I meant for you to provide them the services/products.
What’s up Wayne? I don’t really have a niche over at “my house” either, but I’m fine with it. lol I stay within a broad boundary anyway. I like helping people out too, so I probably will keep posting any thing I know or learn that might help the like-minded crew that comes over. I just like to network through my “own blog”, and worry about money with other projects. Not saying I would never add an affiliate link or two. lol
What you could try is a “handshake page” at the end, one that “recommends” a bunch of services and/or products they may need now that their site is rolling. Article marketing software, hosting, or other stuff. Just an idea, depends who your clients are and what type of work you’re doing for them.
Sounds good though. The answer will come just because you genuinely want to help people. It usually just happens that way.
Cheers!
Jay
@Top CD Rates – I’ve been trying to get the attention of the authors of Commentluv to allow me to write a version for my blog. I’m using BlogEngine, and a few things are different than WordPress that I’m trying to bridge the gap on.
Deep linking was removed for a few reasons, that’s why you only see the domain and not the sub folders. Sorry. You can always include the link directly in the comments. Just don’t end it with a period (.) either. That will much things up.
I have a few bugs to clean up obviously. It will be a bit before I take on WordPress, but I have every intention to do so eventually! Cheers!
Question, why was the last part of my URL cut off in the above comment. There should have been a /top-cd-rates . On this one I added /top-cd-rates/ .
Do you only allow top-level linking?
I know Garry (and many others) also use a CommentLuv plugin that links to the most recent Blog Post.
I could see both the link and donation option being worthwhile. Especially for folks on a shoe-string budget. I could also see people willing to pay for services. I use Wordpress though.
BTW, Garry Conn sent me. LOL
@Demeur – This doesn’t change a thing about my drilling into Blogger.com. I think I could do as many as 50 lessons maybe more with all that is left to do.
There are no ads on the Views on Life blog, so I have not covered adding AdSense to the blog yet. This site, in case there is confusion is not on the Blogger system.
The Google AdSense ads are the only thing I get paid per click on. The 125 squares and the ‘review me’ I get paid after signup or registration. The entrecard is promotional to help increase visibility and traffic.
As for going over this on Blogger, I’ve added a new post in my drafts to work on. I’ll get that out for ya!
You never did tell us how the advertising on blogger works. Do you get paid for each click on an ad or when a customer actually makes a purchase? I’ve clicked on a few only to get a message say the server was down.
A CD would work if is wasn’t for the fact that blogger changes so often. The other problem is getting traffic to your site so they would want to buy the info. Got any other hobbies to draw traffic?