I was surfing the web the other day and came across a website called cubestat.com and was intrigued by the concept. You enter your URL and it calculates your website stats; most of which comes from other reliable sources but it also calculates the estimated monetary value of your website as well as your potential daily Ad revenues. These figures are only estimations and by no means indicates the true value of your website; but it did strike a point of interest for me regarding how we as designers can increase our website net worth; after all we are business people too.

Just for kicks I've entered Twitter's URL:

According to cubestat.com, Twitter ‘s net worth is around 2.5 million dollars and can command $3500 per day in Ad revenues. That might be small potatoes for some design companies but could be a great supplemental income for your design business... that brings me to my next point.

I'm sure we all know that it's better to have multiple streams of income as opposed to just one. As designers most times our only income comes from the work we do for our clients. We build our business website with the portfolio as front and center and hope to get enough clients interested to keep us employed for the long term. What if that client or clients decide to go with someone else. Do you have a plan to keep your income consistent? Or are you solely depending on your client base to support your business? HERE'S AN IDEA: Build your website as a business with a multiple source of income philosophy and create the kind of traffic that will not only woo new clients for your creative work but also spark the interest of advertisers.

Now the real question is not how much Is your website worth but rather what are the steps needed to increase your website net worth? There are many factors that will help to increase your website net worth but I would like to focus on the ones that I think are the most important. PageRank, Backlinks, and Web Traffic. Here is the short version:

• Web traffic comes from visitors interested in your product or service,
  
• Great content (blogging) helps visitors find your product or service,
  
• Backlinks come from having great content,
  
• PageRank comes from having lots of backlinks.

Let Me Explain:

The list might be a little overwhelming at first glance but is easier than it looks for one reason. You only have to control your product and/or service and your content; well at least initially. We'll get into more advance internet marketing techniques in future articles.

Start with creating your design portfolio and website, simultaneously start your blog if you haven't already ( I recommend that your blog be the center of your design business, for reasons I've outlined in the Top 15 Most Effective Marketing Techniques For Designers) Focus on your area of expertise and start developing your blog voice. I've written a pretty informative article about blogging, titled:  15 Things Super Successful Bloggers Do All The Time. which will assist in getting you started. 

Once your blog is up; and you've manage to start bringing traffic to your website, other websites and fellow bloggers are going to start linking to you (if you're content is link worthy, of course) giving your articles and pages more authority on the web. With more authority comes a better search engine position when someone is searching for what you do.

Once you're showing up on Google's and Yahoo's front pages for a few choice keywords , generating more web traffic is inevitable causing an increase of your page rank, hence increasing your website net worth(a website net worth is directly related to its visitors and pageviews which is directly related to more advertising dollars)

This process can take some time but is worth getting started immediately. Once you've started you'll gain the necessary information and experience necessary to grow a successful multi-source income design business.

I would like to know your thoughts on showing Ads on your business website for additional income?

 

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