Today I decided I to create a list of critical skills web site publishers use. When I first got into this industry, I struggled with a few things, but for the most part it wasn’t too bad. In retrospect, I’ve realised that I already had extensive experience with many of the software applications as well as skills I’ve developed over my entire life (art & design, writing.) Because of this, I spent 90% of my time focusing on advertising, search engine optimization, and promotion. This has really started to pay off in a big way.

Not all publishers have nor need these skills. The truth is, its often better to focus on what you do best, and pay someone else to do the rest thanks to cheap outsourcing.

-HTML & CSS
-Software: Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, any FTP program
-Design - most importantly, understand eye movement
-Writing
-Search Engine Optimization
-PHP & MySQL
-Direct Marketing & Conversions - important if you sell complimentary products through your sites
-cPanel or your host’s control panel interface
-Basic Legal Issues - copyright law, contracts (did you read & understand the Adsense TOS?)

There are other things that fall into catagories above. One example, link building, is an important skill but I consider it part of SEO. If I’ve missed anything in this list (I’m sure of it) please feel free to add it to the comments.

If you are having trouble bringing traffic to your new website (or old one) here are two great posts by Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com. Its well worth your time to read these completely and understand them (in other words, don’t skim)

How Do I Get Bloggers Attention?
How to Create a Giant…

The more I read Aaron’s blog, the more convinced I am that he “gets it.” As both a blogger and a professional developer I can tell you these two articles are gold. Some of those internet companies struggling to be the next MySpace or Weblogs Inc should spend their time looking for experts like him instead of trying to win more venture capital millions.

Here is an interesting thing I found this morning: Dingr.com (babelfish link.) It looks like a Japanese version of Digg. New business plan: clone popular English sites in foreign languages.

Here is how not to name your website — www.paydotcom.com

Good luck with word of mouth, how many people do you think will end up at pay.com instead? This company might think their name is “pay dot com” but their name is actually “pay dot com dot com.” Too bad, because it looks like they’ve got a pretty good idea.

I could be wrong here, and they might do great in the same way del.icio.us has. But that would certainly be an exception to the rules.

From Chris Beasly’s blog on Sitepoint.

On the phone last night it was explained to me that this is more or less an Adsense clone, meaning third party sponsored links, not Amazon links. It is known that Amazon currently get’s sponsored links for their own sites from Google, but apparently they wish to take out the middleman and break out on their own.

I wonder what percentage of Google’s ads are served up over at Amazon? I don’t think Google’s stock is going back up anytime soon.

I was taking a look at the websites of two popular men’s magazines this morning — FHM and Maxim.

Both Maxim’s and FHM’s website look pretty nice. They might even win some design awards.

Does their magazine’s success mean they have great websites? No. If you were to try to make your website look like theirs, here is one thing you can expect to happen (unless you are the owner of a large, already established magazine.)

1. Little to no search engine traffic. The heavy flash content is un-indexable. These guys get search engine traffic because they rank for keywords for the name of their already popular magazines. I would be suprised if they were getting a significant level of traffic for any other keywords.

2. Visitor confusion. Sometimes confusion means people will stick around your site a while. It also means they might leave immediately.

Here is an example of a site you want to be like: AskMen.com.

Think I’m wrong? Lets ask Alexa:
Maxim: 2,146
FHM: 5,580
AskMen.com: 897

Alexa certainly isn’t a holy grail for determining how much traffic a site is getting, however, lets take into account something else: AskMen.com is a website, not a print magazine. It has no newstand coverage and you aren’t going to see it laying on your friends coffee table. AskMen.com’s website alone got them to the top.

“Newbies” often make the big mistake of equating a fancy website with online success. Don’t fall into this trap. It will save you a lot of money in the short term, and make you even more in the long run.

Straight from Yahoo — Here is another wakeup call for web developers who may be neglecting the international market:

Just five years ago mainland buyers accounted for 1% of global sales of luxury handbags, shoes, jewelry, perfume, and the like. Today the Chinese are the third-biggest high-end buyers on earth, with more than 12% of world sales, Goldman, Sachs & Co. reckons. Within a decade, China will likely leapfrog Japan and the U.S. to become the top luxury market, predicts Goldman analyst Jacques-Franck Dossin.

Which begs the question, how much longer until Weblogs Inc/AOL rolls out a Chinese version of Luxist? (they already have Chinese versions of Autoblog & Engadget)

Here is another thing I notice people obsessing about on forums — CPM. According to blogger & developer Shoemoney you should be paying attention to IPU — income per unique.

So for instance if you have a site that is bringing in 8,000.00 a day and you are getting 65,000.00 uniqes a day that is around 8 cents per uniq user. That is pretty good. I have sites that range 2-9cents per uniq depending on the niche. If you are not making ATLEAST 2 cents per uniq then you need to look at some alternatives or perhaps you are just not trying to make money with your website.

Whats so much better about IPU? What happens when you run a niche forum and your average visitor generates 15 pageviews? You get a CPM that looks like garbage compared to your content site where the average pageviews per visitor are 3. But, by calculating IPU you might actually be making more money per unique. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how to increase your revenues off of that information.

Ever notice that obsession with directory listings website development forum users have? (sitepoint, digitalpoint) What is amusing is that, until recently, I’ve heard little to no mention of Wikipedia. Imagine that, a website people actually read, use, and follow links from (An Alexa rank of 31! Oh, and you can enter your link and have it instantly added to the page — no login needed.

Unlike most directories, Wikipedia sends real traffic. There are two reasons for this. First, many of Wikipedia’s entries have been getting high rankings in the search engines. Second, anyone can copy Wikipedia’s content (given that they follow the proper rules.) This means that your link will show up on hundreds of other pages around the internet. It hasn’t made me rich, but I’ve had scraper sites send me valuable traffic thanks to a Wikipedia link or two.

Things aren’t quite as easy as they sound. The novice Wikipedia user may not be aware that all changes are logged — IP included. Wikipedia’s active users and editors are very viligant. In fact, Wikipedia editors recently caught Congressional staffers making over 1,000 edits — including one calling another US Senator a “douche-bag.”

This attention to detail is probably why Wikipedia is nearly as accurate as The Encyclopedia Britannica. Expect your link to go under the microscope.

I’ll admit, even I got in trouble with Wikipedia a while ago. I wasn’t as careful as I should have been and I ended up getting a warning. A suggestion: if you add a link and it gets deleted, don’t re-add it again.

Wikipedia’s open nature at first appears to leave it open to exploitation. While spammy links may go unoticed in the lesser-used of Wikipedia’s 945,000 english entries don’t expect spam to last in popular entries. If you want your link to stick around it better be pretty damn relevent.