Whats does it take to be a great webmaster?

I’ve always liked building websites but there’s one thing I didn’t realise when I started and it’s that you need a variety of skills in order to be successful at it. I suppose many people look at web-design from a purely technical point of view, but there’s much more to it than that.

To most people the main factor of any design is if it looks good, but there’s much more to a template than that. Web usability has come a long way since the 90s and now people realise that the structure and layout of a site has a big effect on how much money it can make. Something as simple as your menu placement can affect sales.

While you no longer need to be a complete nerd to build a website you still do need some technical knowledge. There are many platforms like WordPress and Joomla that allow you to create an entire site without programming knowledge but you still need to understand the questions that the setup asks.

I would have to say that marketing is probably the most important skill that any webmaster will have to learn, and it’s probably the hardest to master too. You could have the greatest site in the world but unless you know how to get other webmasters to talk about it then you’re going to struggle to get noticed.

This factor doesn’t get talked about too much but being able to persevere with your site is so important, especially at the start when you’re not getting any traffic. In the real world businesses don’t become successful overnight and the internet is no different.

Choosing what your site is going to be about may seem simple but so many webmasters forget to think about the competition in the market before they dive in. I would say the biggest factor in the success of any site is who you have to compete with in order to be No1.

So those are my tips for becoming a great webmaster, I hope they help no matter what type of website you want to create.

Please check out my webmaster blog where I talk about different ways to make money as a web-designer/webmaster.