Welcome to Day 2 of the 31 Day Internet Marketing Makeover (#31DIMM for short)!
Yesterday, your job was to SIGN UP! (If you haven’t done that already, there are instructions on the bottom of this post on how to do so).
Today, we actually get to work revamping and remodeling your business.
(I was going to call this “Extreme Makeover: Internet Marketing Edition” but didn’t want to run into copyright problems! But when you follow the steps released each day, you’ll end up ready to jump into 2010 head first, with a new outlook, passion and enthusiasm for your business).
DAY 02 OBJECTIVE
To get a complete snapshot of each and every one of your internet marketing endeavors, how well they’re doing, and where they need improvement.
To understand what you need to do to clear out the crap, the time wasters and money-suckers, you’ve got to know your inventory, how much each site makes, how much each site costs, and what you need to do to complete work on a site.
DAY 02 ASSIGNMENT: TAKE INVENTORY
Get together all your domains and their stats.
To help, I’ve made a spreadsheet for you, you can access it in Google Docs by clicking here. Make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account and choose “Make a Copy” from the “File” menu to add it to your Google Docs account. Then you can fill it out and edit it as you’d like.
Here’s a peek at the spreadsheet:
For each domain you own, fill out a row as follows:
- Domain Name: Simple enough – enter your domain name!
- Active (Y/N): Is the site up and running? Mark “Y” for “Yes” and “N” for “No.”
- Analytics (Y/N): Does the site have Google Analytics installed and tracking your traffic?
- Lead Gen (Y/N): Are you collecting email addresses at the site?
- Traffic (Monthly): Enter in the number of visitors you site gets per month
- Backlinks: Enter in the number of backlinks your site has pointing to it
- Main KW Position: Where is your site ranking in Google for it’s main keyword phrase?
- Income (Monthly): How much does your site earn, from product and affiliate sales, advertising, etc. per month?
- Cost (Monthly): How much does it cost to keep the site per month? This includes hosting and domain renewal!
- Hours to Complete: Assuming you know the site isn’t finished (you need to get it’s rank up, implement a lead gen strategy, add more content, etc.), how long do you think it will take you to complete that work? Be generous, remember things usually take longer than we anticipate!
This is a fair amount of information to gather, and I don’t want you to be overwhelmed.
Today we’re not judging the sites, we’re just compiling data so we can make informed and realistic decisions. Tomorrow we’ll cull the herd, and in following 29 days make over the promising sites that remain.
ABOUT THE 31 DAY INTERNET MARKETING MAKEOVER
You will also want to keep up-to-date with 31 Day IM Makeover happenings through the following channels:
Facebook: Become a fan on Facebook and you’ll get notification when a new post is up
RSS: Subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed to have new posts delivered to your feedreader
The official Twitter hashtag for the 31 Day Internet Marketing Makeover is #31DIMM (yes, I know it reads “31 Dim” but that’s kinda funny, right?). You can find other participants by searching Twitter for the hashtag.
Join using the form above and look in your inbox tomorrow for the next step in your Internet Marketing Makeover!
And use the social icons below to share this Makeover post on your preferred social network:
Related posts:
- Turn Your Niche Website Into a Real BusinessThis entry is part 2 of 23 in the series...
- Internet Marketing Makeover Week 1 RecapThis entry is part 2 of 23 in the series...
- Internet Marketing Makeover Week 2 RecapThis entry is part 2 of 23 in the series...
- Tracking & Optimizing Visitor ProfitablityThis entry is part 2 of 23 in the series...
- Internet Marketing Makeover Week 3 RecapThis entry is part 2 of 23 in the series...
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This is a great way to think about things — in terms of domains and a few metrics. This will take me some time today — 100+ domains. Yikes. I’ll get it done.
This is such perfect timing for me as I am in the middle of 2009 planning.
Thanks! I can’t think of a better time of year to start to get my act together and focus in. 2010 needs to be the year I meet my own profit expectations.
Looking forward to the month.
WOW, this is exactly what I need to do. The template helps – thanks!
Michelle – by “visitors” do you mean absolute unique visitors, or just visitors? – and you don’t mean pageviews, right?
Thanks!
David (one of your crowd mountaineers! – think “raising penguins”…
That’s a great idea. Will jump on it..haven’t been really monitoring my sites so far.
Michelle – How do I find out on which page my website appears for my chosen keywords?
Farhad – try semrush.com. Choose US tab on the top, enter your domain, and hit search. The results will show most likely your top 5 keywords for the domain, their positions in Google, and some other data. Hope this helps.
This is great. I need to get focused in 2010. Can’t wait to see what comes next.
Thanks, Michelle. I have been thinking I need to do this and you make it so clear.
Hi Michelle – really useful, but tell me, how/where can I find out which back links are pointing to my site? (I’m a newbie, OK?)
Hi Caroline – the easiest way to find links pointing to your site is to go to Google and type in – link: yourdomain.com. The results will show all the links Google found pointing to your site. The same can be done going to Yahoo, and msn.com. The number of links will vary for each search engine, although Google numbers are usually considered to be more correct. Have fun!
Thank you for that Drago – bit of a give-away being a newbie. Only just built the website and on steep learning curve:)
Keep up the good work, Caroline. You’ll learn a great deal of right stuff from Michelle.
Oh! I might need 5 days to complete this step. HELP!
This is a great start! I like the approach as this can be used to really organize and do a quarterly review. Thanks Michelle!!
This is painful. Why?
1. I’d forgotten how many domains I owned
2. I wasn’t expecting to be so poorly ranked for the domains I was actively working
Oh Michelle, I’m ashamed to say that every one of your points on the list applied to me…too many sites, too little time. Thanks for posting this, I am definitely going to follow along.
Ray
Michelle, you make things so easy and you even made a spreadsheet, how cool is that? Anyway, thanks!
Ditto Rafael! But this is an excellent exercise. I am looking forward to getting a lot out this 31DIM!
I am only on the 2nd day of 31Day.. and already I hate it. It keeps revealing how little I knew building most of my websites and how much time I spent doing things that have no value. It also tells me how far I have to go.
As always Michelle gives the goods on getting & staying on track and succeeding in online ventures!
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