Guest Post written by Jeremy Steele. Jeremy has been blogging at Nusuni Dot Com for about a year and often writes about SEO and blogging, as well as the occasional productivity tip.
Everything is about success these days. Everyone wants to have a nice job, build the perfect house, and maybe even start a blog and become famous because of it. All of those things require you to be successful.
Being a Webmaster is no different. Webmasters are leaders, and as such they must be able to do their work, plan everything out, achieve their goals, and help other Webmasters. They have to be successful every day to be successful in their career.
So, how can that be done? Here are 5 tips to help you become a successful Webmaster:
- Shut Up And Do It! Have you ever met someone who often talks about wanting to do something, but they never seem to do it? Are you one of those people? I know I am at times. Before the summer I talked about trying to increase my blog’s traffic and readership two fold. I kept telling myself I wanted to do it until I realized, “Wow, I need to shut up and just do it!†If you often talk about introducing a new website feature or maybe a new theme but you never seem to do it, just shut up and do it! Ranting about it isn’t going to get you anywhere.
- Accept The Fact It’ll Take Hard Work And A Long Time. Success doesn’t come easy. One of the biggest problems people face with trying to be successful is most of them don’t want to spend hours and hours doing something now so they are successful later. They want to get rich now, they want to get that new car now, etc. Well, it doesn’t work like that. Very few people are lucky enough to have quick success; most of us have to spend hours, days and weeks working our hands to the bones. I know I’m not the only blogger/Webmaster/programmer who regularly stays up till the next day working on some new project.
- Be Optimistic. If you get set back a couple of days in a row, don’t let that get you down. Back in August my blog’s search traffic disappeared. It was literally gone for a good portion of the month. Despite that, I kept on working and working. And you know what? Traffic is now at record levels, the overall growth of the blog is doing great, and the search traffic is back. Pessimism gets you nowhere, optimism is the best choice.
- Plan Ahead And Set Goals. Planning can be the difference between failure and success. While you don’t necessarily have to plan every little thing, it greatly helps to create a set of big goals you want to achieve and keep working until all goals are met. I’ve found it especially helpful to create an overall plan, as well as a temporary/seasonal plan (for example, the plan to double Nusuni Dot Com’s traffic and the number of subscribers during the summer.) Make your goals hard, but achievable - don’t set impossible ones like “become a millionaire in 1 monthâ€.
- Use Feedback To Your Advantage. Feedback is by far one of the most important things that you will ever come across. While you may think your site or blog is perfect, someone else may have a problem with it. Even if the feedback is extremely critical of you, use it to improve your site. Remember, the people who visit your website or blog are the best judges of your work, not you.
An Extra Tip. Here’s a bit of an extra tip: Don’t constantly check your stats. Believe me, doing so doesn’t give you an advantage; all it does is waste time. Once or twice per day is more than enough. Plus checking your stats all the time can cause you to become a bit depressed on low traffic days. Then again, I doubt anyone will follow this tip if they get front-paged on Digg.
In a nutshell, don’t keep ranting about doing something like introducing a new theme or feature – get off your butt and start planning it and doing it, be optimistic even if you are facing an uphill battle, and listen to the feedback and comments about your site.
