An Experiment of a Webmaster

I am not a patient person. I tend to be very impromptu person on top of that, which makes for some interesting times. When I really want something I am borderline obsessive about it. Take web site creation for example. I am constantly researching new methods for traffic generation and promotion. When I can’t get instant gratification I normally freak out and the value of whatever I was doing goes down in my mind.

Unfortunately this means for SEO too. I know that traffic takes a while to build, but I am a stat watcher I don’t just mean this site either, since it just started and expecting it to have traffic would be crazy. I have a site thats fairly well established, its been around for few years now. I constantly use google analytics to figure out where my users are coming from and how I can direct them at my sites registration.

A few of my other sites, that I have started since leaving my previous employment and working on the internet exclusively, are the culprits for me. I think that if I spend HOURS and HOURS doing promotional work, that I should show up in google fairly quickly and the tidal wave of hungry ad clicking consumers will swamp my servers to the point that I have to upgrade to keep up with the demand. Now, sweeping away the confetting, back to reality. All the promotional work won’t show up for months because it takes the search engines a while to notice just how many people show me love. The sites that link to me need to be indexed before I’ll get the credit for it.

This patience problem often leads me to things like adwords. The pay per click system of adwords is great if you can accurately measure the worth of a visitor. Another site of mine its fairly simple to measure the worth of a visit since I exhaustively track conversion rates and my goals have a dollar value. A site that just gives out information is tougher. A new site without established click rates or affiliate conversion numbers has a hard time establishing the value for that visitor. Unfortunately thats just the way it is though.

At least with the search engines I don’t expect to have any serious control, so my lack of patience is mitigated by a lack of control. The worst times for me is when I have an influence on what is making me wait. My family and friends are usually driven crazy by me when I want to get something done because I plow forward until I have results I am happy with.

When I write articles is one example. I can sit down and write a quality article in no time flat and be ready for more immediately. Its hard for me to grasp the concept that not everyone wants to be as gungho about things as me. Its probably the reason I just prefer to do everything myself rather than rely on other people

A friend and I were talking about my need to do everything myself last friday at a bar downtown. And yes, I am the guy who will sit in the middle of an irish pub on friday drinking and talking about my plans for internet grandeur. The talk led back to macroeconomics, which I do remember attending the start of in school, but I only remember the first 5 minutes and then the end of class bell. The jist of the conversation, minus slurring of speach, was that of specialization. I may be a good jack of all trades, but my key points are my creative business sense and my programming. I need to focus on my strong points and let others who are strong in areas I lack, fill in for me.

I see the wisdom in that, but its like nails on the chalkboard to me. I have decided to do somethings to make it easier on me though. Rather than focusing on all the little details I need to get done, I should just focus on what I’m good at and plow through on that. By the time my weak points start to really show, I should be able to put a value on the time I would use to do those things and just outsource them to one of the happy webmasters on the other side of the planet. I see link and article submission going that route, and I’ve been looking up references on places to do it. I think once I see the results of it, I’ll realize it was worth it.

So, moral of the story. No need to be patient, just don’t focus on one thing. If you run out of things to do and have to be patient, just create something else to do