Build Your Own Website Building System
In yesterday’s topic, I talked about levels of skills and learning and whatnot.
That was prompted by the fact that I created a “Master Key” system for building websites – be they authority sites, online courses, niche sites or whatever. There are steps you have to go through for every project. There are things you’ll need to take out or put in.
Essentially, I’ve created a template for myself which takes the brainwork out of it. If I have a new project idea, then I know how many blog posts I’ll need to write and what categories I’ll use. I know how many emails I’ll send on my email list. In addition, I’m currently assembling all the technical stuff like having my plugins in a folder and finally organising all the stock photos and documents on my computer.
The above are all things that trip me up when it comes to starting new projects. I’m not really a “little detail” person. I mean, you can browse around this site and see that – rushed posts, email list still non-existent, etc.- I get bored easily once I’ve solved the puzzle or got the big picture down. (Incidentally, this site is a complete failure according to the system I’ve developed over the past two days… I’d do practically everything differently if starting now.)
Now… I hope that some of you got a little nervous and checked to see your wallets were still there at the mention of the “Master Key System” line. It sounds horrendously salesy and something akin to something I wrote about in this article.
Relax guys and girls, I’m not selling anything.
In fact, I’m not ever going to sell the system I’m talking about for reasons I’ll discuss below. (Tangent incoming.)
Before then though, I’ll give you a brief overview of what I’m talking about so that you can design your own system.
Build Your Own Website Building System
When you start building websites, you’re going to be atrocious. You’re probably going to copy the first guy you see with a vaguely decent site. You’ll write on the same topics in the same voice, you’ll have the same theme and use the same sort of pictures.
It’s a process. You’ll get past it.
The biggest thing that you won’t do is work out that it’s not about the posts themselves. It’s not about the subject or the keywords or the SEO.
It’s about the bigger picture.
When you walk into McDonalds, you get your Big Mac (or box of 20 McNuggets,) and you think you understand how McDonalds works. Most of the massive multi-billion pound company occurs in places you can’t see though. It’s real estate deals, legal hoops, accounting nightmares and management programs.
A website or online business is less complicated by an order of magnitude, but the fact stands that the majority of the business that goes on is completely invisible to an onlooker.
When you start your first online store, you’ll be unaware of this. The backend will escape you. It’s only after that beginner period we talked about yesterday that you’ll understand how much you don’t know.
Then the work can begin.
Research Time: Website Building Systems
Your website building system should be designed with taking everything you learn about building websites (and their associated properties) and making all those elements into a checklist.
Things like:
- How to name sites
- What the product/service is
- What content you’ll need for the site (in specifics)
- Post categories
- Social media outlets
- Email list autoresponders
- Authority building projects
- Free stuff (people love free stuff)
If you browse the internet and have blogs/sites/services you use regularly, then chances are you already follow people who do these things well. It might be that you follow someone who does everything well, but most likely it’ll be a bit of this and a bit of that from different people.
Once you’ve gotten your beginner learning stage nailed down though, you’re going to want to turn all those research things into working systems.
You’ll know you’ve completed that when you can say, “Right… my subject is motivation for men. I’ll need to write one post a week and cover topics X, Y, Z. I’ll need a Twitter that posts X times a week, I’ll need to send out this email sequence blah blah blah… “
You get the picture. You need to get to the point where you’re building your own system, because it’s impossible to backwards engineer a process. Which brings me onto the tangent (which I wrote first.)
Tangent: Never Reveal Your Entire System
Two things occurred during my day today.
I’m sure you’ll all be excited to know is that this little blog has made it.
By “made it,” I mean I found one of the articles I’ve written for this site hastily rewritten for someone else’s copywriting site. I’m not being conceited; it’s practically (90%) the same article. The company has received an email about this, and I’m sure it’ll be taken down quickly.
Essentially, whenever you post anything online, there’s a chance that someone will take it and pass it off as there’s. (You should always chase this up… it’s naughty.)
The second thing is that I’ve come to the conclusion, having tried to work out the entirety of various sites’ operations, is that you cannot work out an entire operation online without accessing the bank-end of the website/social media properties. There’s just too much going on.
What this means is that if you put the two together, you’ll get a cast-iron law: Don’t reveal the entirety of your system to the world. A person can copy your articles online. I even know people who’ve sold books on Amazon only to have them ripped in their entirety and sold by someone else on Amazon. Some people even create an account in the original author’s name so they can outright steal the customers and money from them.
Crazy.
Back on point, people can steal, copy or “upgrade” whatever you do on the front-end. They can rip off material.
However, they can’t achieve your success if you build everything into a particular system. For instance, you might have a headline split-testing plugin (more on that in another article.) A person can copy-paste your article, but they can’t see the data (or other options) that you’re testing against.
You’d have to be very smart to effectively copy an email autoresponder sequence complete with timings, different opt-ins and so forth. Trust me, I’ve tried to reverse engineer some.
People who are trying to make a quick-scam buck aren’t going to go into the level of detail it requires to reverse engineer your entire operation.
That’s why you shouldn’t reveal it. Instead, give people a lot of value on the front-end and keep the inner workings of your business to yourself.
Final Thoughts
Most people have an online business goal: to make money as passively as possible.
The only way to do that is to navigate the overly complex world of online business, pull it down to its core parts and then first learn how they work, and second to learn how to recreate them.
The end result is building your own website building system where all the information you need is right in front of you before you start. A website building system which means you don’t have to worry six months down the line how to implement a mailing list or what it is you’re supposed to do with Twitter. (Trust me… I’m no expert there.)
The beauty of taking this approach is that all the data, knowledge and other good stuff is literally invaluable and invisible to naughty scammers. I don’t want to say it’s a unique selling point in itself because I’m always banging on about USPs…
But your own website building system/online business system is like having KFC’s secret recipe; once you’ve got a great secret recipe, there’s no stopping you and your system is a completely unique selling point.