As webmasters, we constantly like to improve our websites; offer more features, upgrade to web2.0 design, put new content and improve the current ones. When do we say enough? When do we stop improving the site itself and start marketing it? These improvements cost money and there has to be a justification for it.

I believe for smaller websites (50k uniques/month or less) money well spent on marketing can bring much more revenue than the same amount spent on improving the features of the website. This is not to be mistaken for not investing on the website itself.

We need to set certain standards for our websites and make sure they are improved to such standards. We should not spent $1000 on marketing a website when the website doesn’t even have a unique design.

We have see many websites out there that look beautiful and work great but have little traffic and users. We also have seen many MFA (made for Adsense) sites with very bad designs that make large amounts of money.

Improve your site to a presentable level and start marketing. Make sure to market your websites to the type of visitors that it targets and can keep. If you have a Forex blog for Forex beginners market it on smaller finance forums and not on popular investing blogs or forums. Your money will be a waste as your website can not keep those visitors. It works the other way around too. If your website provides sophisticated advice, beginners wont be able to keep up so don’t market to them (even though it probably costs less).

The point that I hope you learn from this post is this:

If you own a website that is of a level 4 (out of 10) quality, it is perfectly fine. Invest money to market that website to level 4 visitors instead of improve the website to level 8. Once the website reaches level 8 you still need to spent money in marketing it before seeing true investment return - and level 8 marketing costs a lot more than level 4 marketing. So first market the level 4 website. Improve your earning from the site. Then invest on improving the quality of the website to level 5 or 6 and so on.

This way you won’t run out of cash when needing to market the website. If you do, you just might have to sell the website for much less than it is truely worth and we never want that.

I put this system together less than 6 month ago. It has everything I need for running my online business and more. I put my workstation as I live by myself. I spent most of my day behind my computer desk and if I use one of the rooms as work room I wouldn’t be using the rest of my house most of the day.

The laptops that you see on the desk have been mainly for academic use, however I do use them for my work. I have a color printer/scanner/copier, and a wireless laser printer located in my room.

Needless to say that my PC is connected to the PlaayStation3 and therefore to the TV as well :).

The dual monitor workstation has actually made me much more productive and is not just for the looks.

I wrote an open letter to John Millliron of Circuit City about 20 days ago concerning the poor customer service I had received on my Camera protection plan bought at Circuit City. A

A gentleman named Justin Brian from Circuit City executive office called me couple days after that regarding the matter. After talking to him for about 10 minutes on the phone and hearing the exact same excuses as Circuit City previous employees, I was fed up with their attitude and told him I want my camera back the way it was and I was done with Circuit City. Keep in mind I had given them my camera about a month prior to talking to him.

He then told me that if I don’t receive my camera in 2 weeks he will give me a new camera. Well, today was 17 days after that phone conversation and I still have not got my camera back. I called him this morning to ask him to live up to his promise and give me a new camera (of equivalent value to my previous one - nothing too crazy).  He didn’t answer his phone. Could hours after someone called me from Circuit City and told me that my camera has been repaired and will be shipped to the Circuit City store I dropped it off at.

So after 45 days I receive a phone call telling me my camera will be mailed back to the Circuit City store (not even my own address). It will be probably another week before I actually see my camera. Once more thy didn’t live to their promises. If two weeks had passed and I hadn’t received my camera I should have got a new camera, but instead they tell me to wait another week to get the repaired one.

My message to Circuit City: You Suck. Not only I will never shop there again, I will make sure no one that I know shops there. You cause nothing but headache, your customer service personnel are incompetent and rude, and your prices are no different than Best Buy.

Sometimes we need to jump start our forums buy paying forum posters to post some threads and replies. It is usually hard to find good forum posters for particular niches. Here are some tips that I have learned when looking for forum posters:

Don’t Use Mass Forum Posting Services

There are services out there (on DP and elsewhere) that offer mass forum postings. They usually have 10 or so forum posters on their payroll and will send them to post on your forum. They are usually not trained in your niche and will not produce quality posts for you.

Find 10 Good Individuals

Post a thread on DP or elsewhere mentioning that you are looking for forum poster in your particular niche and you are willing to pay certain amount/post. Other members will reply and you can always choose the ones that you think are qualified to post. This way you get much better quality posts and know every forum poster by person.

Be Willing To Pay Well

The amount of pay per post would be different for different niches. A movie forum pay/post should cost much less than a cancer forum pay/post. But If you want quality posts you should be willing to pay for it. Usually $0.25/post is a good average. I have paid as low as $0.10/post and as high as $1.00/post before.

Continue The Service Until Forum Is Popular

Have the forum posters post in your forum until it becomes popular with natural posters. If you buy the posting service for a week from 10 different people each posting 50 posts, you have more content by the end of the week. However after those 7 days the forum will go back to being dead and new natural members will not be generated. So hire 5 to 10 posters and have them post for at least a month.

In one my previous posts I talked about what a Limited Liability Company (LLC) is. I shortly touched on the advantages that an LLC offers for an entrepreneur. In this post I will examine the advantages of a Limited Liability Company for particularly an Internet Entrepreneur.

Limited Liability Companies are the most popular form of business structure chosen by internet entrepreneurs. It would have to be an exceptional case to start an internet company around a website or service as something other than an LLC. However some companies might change their structure to a S-Corporation in order to be able to go public.

Limited Liability

The LLC provides limited liability for its members meaning that the owner’s (member’s) assets outside the company are protected given that the company goes bankrupt, gets sued, or is in debt.

Pass-Through Taxation

When working for a large company (ex. formed as a C Corp) as an employee, you almost always pay taxes on your income. Your employer also pays tax on the companies earning. This is called double taxation. In an LLC you can file all your income taxes through the company on the same tax forms as your personal tax and you only have to count that income once.

So LLC protects you from being double taxed.

Simple Record Keeping

We, webmasters, tend not to keep any records - especially in hard copy format. In an LLC, unlike C Corps, you don’t need to hold annual meetings, and publish many reports. However, you do need to keep enough records to fill your tax forms and be able to defend them later.

Deductibles Expenses

At the end of each year you have to deduct your expenses from your earnings and pay taxes on them. You can deduct your own salary, and business expenses. Since you would be the owner you might be able to deduct your work related travel expenses (Blog Expo trip), cell phone bills (if you use it to give support), etc from your earning.