| MARK CRAWLEY'S |
ONLINESOLDIER.COM |
| Webmaster Basics and Essays | Design and Content | Webhosting | Making Money | Web Promotion | Links |
What is a Webmaster?
| To Some a
webmaster is just someone that designs html, tinkers with
page layouts and creates websites that are
"pretty" without creating the text which is at
the heart of the site. This is a web designer and not
what a webmaster is meant to be in the purest sense of
the word. A webmaster unlike his offline bretheren who
work as reporters or editors is responsible for all
aspects of knowledge and skill necessary to make things
work. A webmaster in the truest sense is a one man army
of sorts splitting his time between promotion, revenue
generating strategies, content creation, and designing
the layout of a site itself. The internet itself is perhaps the printing press for the next 10,000 years. It has become the ultimate tool that individuals have on this planet to wield influence, gather people, and cultivate interest in any manner of topic. Along the way profit can be made if one goes about it in the correct fashion, has enough will power, and enough knowledge. From 1999 to the present year online ad rates have gone down down more than 80%. Advertising online is even harder to sell than ever even at this reduced rates and yet many site's remain. This is due to the determination of webmasters and the never give up attitude which is at the heart of all succesful sites that wield influence online. While content sites like Mrshowbiz, Roughcut, and others give up and wipe all of their content from the internet the small individually run websites remain. Websites run by one person or a small team are the internet's future and perhaps even its present. While the internet has some large sites with large staffs, these are few and far between. People use search engines which divide the attentions of internet users among multitudes of small sites each serving a separate distinct niche. Each of these niche sites has a webmaster who either runs his site for fun, tries to break even, or tries to eek out a living. To break even or even eek out some element of a reasonable lifestyle the modern webmaster is as much an affiliate marketer as he is a content creator. The modern webmaster in the purest of forms is one of the most well rounded individuals that communication has ever known. He is a creator. He is an architect of data organization. He is even a diplomat and a salesman. While offline media creates content which it then advertises via in your face distribution methods the webmaster creates content that people actually search for and want in particular. The web is more focused than the offline world and so too are its webmasters. |
| To assist the lone webmaster in his quest online he
has adnetworks, affiliate programs, traffic trading with
other sites, and search engines all of which can be
utilized as tools. Rather this type of ad or that is
effective is something a webmaster considers. Webmasters
have every problem of offline media multiplied to a
higher level. While offline stores have credit card fraud
via stolen credit cards, it is even more troublesome
online and affects the revenue one can earn from
affiliate programs. While offline stores have return
policies, online stores have chargebacks. If a person
just tells his credit card company he didn't buy
something online usually his word over a merchants will
be taken anyday. This results in transaction reversals
and reduced commissions for websites on affiliate sales.
Everything a webmaster earns is tied to performance on
some level and this is not generally true of the offline
world. While some people may skip Television commercials
to do other things offline in the online world some
people install adblockers to make the chance of a website
earning ad revenue drop to zero. In spite of the problems and difficulties of running a modern site, webmasters remain. To be succesful as a "webmaster" you will have to master a niche or series of niches, learn how to design webpages, learn how to promote online, and how to monetize through multiple revenue methods. You will run into decisions as to how much advertising is acceptable to your audience and of what type. Along the way one becomes a businessman of sorts meeting a need even if it is just to fullfill the notion that "content is meant to be free." The internet differs from offline media in its scale of economics but not in its scale of influence. One can rest assured that the future Titans of Media will arise from the online sector. As the internet embraces the written word one can also rest assured that this millenium's Aristotle's and Socrates' will emerge from among the scattered words of webmasters who have yet to be fully known. Legacy for all time is captured forever on the webpages of the internet; many written only by a webmaster with a dream. |