10. Page Rank Prediction Tool – I am not a big fan or believer in page rank, but that is why I have this in the #10 slot. Many webmasters (especially those newer to the business) are concerned with page rank, thus a Prediction Tool offered by Rusty Brick is very popular. This tool will show you the current page rank for the URL you submit along with making a prediction as to what it will be when the next page rank update takes place. Another like tool that also shows your pagerank by Google datacenter will shed a bit more light and you can see all of the fun fluctuations during an actual Google PR update.

For the New Webmaster: You might be wondering what Page rank is all about, in simple terms it is an indication of a site’s authority or trust in the eyes of Google. PageRank isn’t just an indication of how many Web pages point to your page, it’s an indication of how important those sites that point to your page are too. Here is Google’s definition:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Page Rank used to be much more respected, but people quickly learned how to “game” page rank and it went downhill from there. It got to the point where PR6, PR7, and PR8 links were being sold for big bucks even though they were “junk sites”.

9. Website Speed Tester – I know personally how much the load time of a website impacts the success of that website, and I have seen on more than one occassion where I have moved a site of mine previously under a high load to a new server with a lighter load and search engine rankings improve along with traffic. Here is a quote from a Guest Contributor on this blog, “The server was provisioned a few hours after I ordered it, and after about 2 weeks of testing, I moved my site last weekend. It’s only been a few days, but I’ve already noticed an increase in traffic, page views, and ad revenue. What does that mean? Simple: Slow Servers = Less Traffic, or more importantly, Faster Servers = More Money“. It is true that search engines and end users DO NOT like slow loading sites. A tool that I have found helpful in determining how fast my site loads is offered by iWeb.

If you find that your site loads slowly, there are a variety of things that you need to do to take action. The first two things I always recommend are checking the size AND number of graphics (images) on your pages. You should always have the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes specified and you should never bog your pages down with numerous graphics, especially those that aren’t compressed and take forever to load. The second things you should consider is your hosting platform. Are you on a shared plan, taking the inexpensive route, where you can be on a server with dozens or even hundreds of other sites? The cost to upgrade to a better hosting solution is likely going to have a big ROI longterm. Don’t be hesitant to fork over the dollars now, when ultimately you are costing yourself money by waiting.

8. Web Design Color Scheme Library – I don’t know about you, but color schemes I like tend to be far from what most people like. That is why I am extrmely grateful that Color Schemer put together a color scheme gallery where there are pages and pages of awesome color combinations to use in a new site design. They are rated, easy to browse through, and downloadable when you find the scheme you like.If it wasn’t for a tool like this (or the fact that I outsource all of my design work) I would end up with a site looking like this! Instead of pure ugliness, my latest design piece (this blog) was built around the color scheme similar to this one.

7. Keyword Typo Generator – If you do anything in the PPC arena, whether pushing your own products / services or as an affiliate marketer, there are numerous reasons why keywords typos are important to your PPC campaign. This is one of two tools that Aaron Wall offers through SEOBook.com that I have in my top 10 list today. If you aren’t marketing for typo terms you are leaving money on the table. This is a whole other angle on the meaning of “long tail” and can really separate you from your competition depending on the niche you are in. The Typo Generator tool is quick and very easy to use, and you can basically pull your results, upload them into your PPC engine of choice, set your bids and go.

6. Backlink Monitor – For the longest time I would manually monitor the number of backlinks to my sites by using the good ole link: examplesite.com search in Google. As my network grew this became a tedious task that grew old rather quickly. This brings me to a very new Earners Forum Tool that both the backlinks and indexed pages in Google for an unlimied number of sites (Google API key needed). You can add your entire network of sites individually or through a bulk upload (whether it be 3 or 3,000) in to this tool and it will keep track of this data for you. All youwill do is login to the system, click update, and BAM! the data is updated and viewable in a very clean format. If you can imagine how difficult and time consuming it would be to manually monitor backlinks across 50 sites on a weekly basis, versus using this tool which would allow you in less than 1 minute to check your backlinks daily if you desired to do so. This is another must use!

5. Site Validator Tool – This is a well known tool to most web developers and even though I don’t dabble in the design / coding personally I know the value of a tool like this. Basically, W3C has developed this validator tool that will analyze your site and check Web documents in formats like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. This fantastic tool will show you line by line in your code what needs to be corrected. As you are going through and making changes to correct the errors, continue to come back to the tool and recheck things to see your progress. Also, if you outsource your coding work, you can use this tool to see if the coding work provided is within the normal standards or not. You need your site’s code to be as clean as possible, SO CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF!

4. SEO Firefox Plugin – I am no SEO expert, but I know a good tool when I see one. This is a tool that I have been using for many months now, and I really do like it. It has allowed me to look closely at my competition for specific keywords and see why they might be outranking me or why I am outranking them. It lends much towards showing clearly why the search engine considers the site to be an authority. This nifty webmaster tool allows you get to pick and choose which data you want to see about each search result including: Page Rank, Age, Yahoo Backlinks, Yahoo .EDU Links, Alexa Ranking, Technorati Ran, del.icio.us Bookmarks, and so much more. See the options menu for yourself here:

The SEO for Firefox plugin brings in so much useful marketing data to make it easy to get a clearer picture of the competition in your market, all from within the search results. This is one of my MUST HAVE plugins for Firefox!

3. Keyword Suggestion Tool – This is a brand new release and a must see. With the recent decline in usefulness of the Overture Keyowrd Suggestion Tool, WordTracker has hit the market with a free version of their keyword suggestion tool which shows the top 100 results, pulling in data results based on the marketshare of Dogpile and Metacrawler. This is a newly released tool that will certainly be a great benefit to many webmasters looking to do keyword research. It also gives a bit of a differnt picture since it using Dogpile and Metacrawler data versus Overture or Google. If you are still a fan of the Overture system, OvtKeywords.com will be a fun find for you with some cool ajax functionality and added Overture search features.

After I perform a search for “webmaster tools”, I get the results (up to 100) displayed in this fashion:

2. Search Engine Rankings Tracker – Due to the fact I am no SEO, I don’t spend very much time monitoring my rankings for top keywords on various sites in my network. The time I do spend recently was cut down to no time! Earners Forum came out with a tool that will allow you to track keyword rankings by site, showing graphs and trends of how the keyword is moving up or down in the search engines. With this tool you can literally add thousands of keyword / site combinations and track them with ease. The interface and layout are pleasing to the eyes and very easy to read. The data this tool provides can save many webmasters hours of manual labor.

1. A Free Blog – There are a couple of reasons this made my #1 slot overall. First, I feel like every webmaster should have a blog. Whether it is more of a personal blog for fun or something you plan to use to promote your business and even make money, I think you need to be doing it. Secondly, what Blogger and WordPress have done for the blogging industry is absolutely HUGE. These other tools are awesome and will save you time, headaches, and money, BUT the free blogging system these two big players are offering completely rock.

Wordpress is where my blogging all got started and here are some beginning steps to getting started with your new blog. You should first read about the many features of Wordpress (along with their jargon) so you know what you are getting before you begin. When you have a good understanding of the software’s abilities you need to determine if you want to host the blog yourself on your own domain or just use their free service at WordPress.com. Whatever you choose to do, you can then follow along using their support material to get your blog online so you can begin writing!

So, there you have it, my Top 10 Free Webmaster Tools list offering up to date tools for your webmastering needs. I certainly hope this has been a help to you and I wish you happy webmastering!

Here’s how it works (and why it’s different than Google Analytics), according to the developer:

With Crazy Egg, we are tracking the exact x,y coordinate of a click as well as form fields, submit buttons and other javascript on-click events. Google’s Site Overlay doesn’t track these things. We are also trying to display analytics data visually, through our overlay and heatmap to make it easier for everyone to learn and react to where their visitors are clicking.

I put it on my list of things to try, but I didn’t get around to that until yesterday. Boy, do I wish I did it sooner…

Things I like:

- There is a free version that gives you ample visits (5,000) to play with to see if it’s right for you.

- The plans are pretty cheap – we are doing the $19 per month plan with 25,000 visits tracked. (You do not need to track every visitor. After a certain number of responses, you will notice that the heatmap does not change substantially.)

- You can block specific IPs so the results are cleaner. It will also email people you would like blocked and give them a link to click to opt-out their IP.

- I love that there is just enough information presented, but not too much that it’s hard to make sense of it. It’s very possible to get too much information in stats programs and then not use any of it properly.

Things I don’t like:

- The reporting can be painfully slow to load. It hasn’t affected out load times, but when I go to view the results, I get frustrated at the speed of their website. (And at times it is down for maintenance.)

- Our drop down menus were NOT tracked – which is frustrating because that should be a main place to leave the homepage, but I don’t know how many people actually use it. (More on that below.)

Here are some things to keep in mind when you are interpreting your heatmap:

- Don’t be sad if most of your page is blank. This records CLICKS and not what people are actually reading. If only it could track time before clicks and user sessions, then I would be happy.

- This is NOT the only tool you should be using to try and improve user experience and maximize revenue – this is only thing in your arsenal. Make sure to compare results to your tracking software (Analytics offers some fairly in-depth results on lots of different variables.). Also consider user feedback (which is easy to get on a forum). And finally, if you are really interested, you could always perform some sort of eye tracking testing. (You have to be really hardcore for that one!)

- When you look at the hottest areas, keep in mind that these areas are exactly what your user most wants on your site. They actively pursued what was on the other side of that link. In the world of two second attention spans and millions of sites competing for our attention, *actually* clicking something is a huge deal and should be taken seriously!

- While you do know who is clicking what, you DON’T know why other stuff isn’t being clicked. You will have to use your best judgment on those links. If something isn’t being clicked that you feel is important, it’s time to make some changes and test again. You WILL be able to see if those changes improve the click-throughs on that link once you test again.

Here are the results from our first test at our laptop forum:

As you can see in the upper right corner, just below the logo, there are no clicks on the “Laptop Discussions” menu (only the Discussons and Photos links have menus in them). That drop down menu takes you straight to the forums and is probably the most-used area on the page (as confirmed by Google Analytics’ site overlay). Because no click is required to open the menu, no clicks are registered. This is a major letdown, but there is more to see on the page, so I press on…

My best observations:

- First, there are lots of improvements that can be made based on these results. We will make changes in the coming week or two and then test again. I will post the results when we do.

- I am surprised at how many visitors go straight to the forum search box located just below the banner. That was added after we launched the new design, and it’s the most-clicked item besides the log in boxes. Clearly, searching the forums right when they arrive is important to our visitors. I think that we should make sure that this forum search box is obvious – perhaps moving it to a more prominent position. How many visitors *don’t* see that box and leave when they don’t quickly find what they are looking for? The only way to know that is to tweak and then test again.

- In the same vein, I know that our search is not that great. It’s a weakness of vBulletin. Once you hit a certain post count (we are over 2,000,000 now), the search just doesn’t work that well. It concerns me to think that so many visitors try to search and probably don’t get the best results. This has worried me for some time, but this reminds me that we need to make sure there isn’t a way to improve the searching experience so we don’t loose visitors with short attention spans and the inability to dig in the forums for information.

- We added the three boxes at the top of the page with this redesign. They were put there to create ‘buckets’ to sort our visitors into. The idea is to satisfy the main needs of our users right when they get to the site. We know that our visitors (those who need navigational help – this doesn’t apply to regulars) are researching, shopping, or just looking for a forum about laptops. From this heatmap, that was clearly a good idea because they are being used. There are no clicks on the Community box, I presume, because the Notebook Discussions menu is used. I can’t be sure of this unless we come up with a way to track that menu. With these results, I know that these boxes are serving a purpose, so the next step is to test and tweak the laptop research and laptop shopping pages on the other side of those boxes. I know that there is a ton of room for improvement on both of these pages, so I look forward to doing a baseline test and then tweaking further. I wish Crazy Egg tracked user session lengths… that would be so perfect.

- It’s worth noting that a large chunk of visitors are already registered and immediately log in. So what does this mean? Do we need more fresh blood? (40% are returning visitors each day – that seems like a perfectly suitable percentage for a forum.) Or does this mean that we are simply losing a lot of people who never click? (And we need more data to come to that conclusion – Analytics would be a good tool as it shows session lengths.)

- The final main observation is that people want to see the notebook reviews. Of course, I knew this already, but the heatmap confirms the importance of this feature to our visitors. We recently rewrote the whole laptop review database to make it more useful and easier to add to, but we haven’t started really promoting it to get reviews. A competitor actually pays $50-$60 per review. That isn’t a playing field I want to be on, so I plan to get creative. Don’t get me wrong, members do submit reviews, but there is a lot of room for improvement (is that a theme here? ). This is actually one thing I would love to tackle at the Elite Retreat next week. There is a marketing angle we are missing here. I would bet we aren’t vocal enough about the fact that we want reviews. I bet we could make it easier to submit them. I bet that we could create a top-notch review database that people really want to be a part of – we just haven’t really gone there yet. Stay tuned on this one. (But the pressure is on seeing this heatmap!)

One thing that I should mention is that there are two other views of these same results on the Crazy Egg Dashboard: a list view that shows actual click numbers, and an overlay view that shows pluses and minuses that expand and contract to show clicks and their percentages. I find the heatmap the easiest to interpret, but I do toggle back and forth for more specific information.

I feel like this post is a bit self-absorbed since it’s all about how to make my forum better, but anything said here applies to you all as well. We *all* could stand to make some improvements, so apply some of these ideas to your site. As you are making adjustments, keep in mind that small changes make big differences, so try not to change a bunch of things at a time. Change one or two things and then test for results. If you don’t get the desired reaction, try again. And remember: your changes could end up creating negative experiences for your users, so carefully watch what you do. If you are really ambitious, you can create two versions of your page and test both concurrently.

I am getting ready to go to the Elite Retreat on Sunday, and this tool will surely help me better prepare me for the conference. I have already identified areas that need critical attention, and this is just the beginning. If you start testing and tweaking with Crazy Egg, please just be very conscious of your users and their needs. Please don’t go nutty changing your whole site around. And when you get results, please share them with us!

Happy Testing and Tweaking!

UPDATE: CrazyEgg has generously offered all ForumTrends readers a free upgrade to 10,000 visits per month plus live reporting. As I said in my post, this is an ample amount of visits to test and tweak your site to make a real impact. To take them up on their offer, simply email info@crazyegg.com and tell them that you are a ForumTrends.com reader and you would like to use their free offer. This is a great deal – I hope it helps you improve your forum!

by Laua Alter, NoteBook Forums

* 20,000 Members by Jan 1, 2007
* 32 New Members/day
* 2 New Tutorials a Week
* 5 New Code Snippets a Week
* 5 New Resources a Week
* 1,000,000 Page Views/mo
* 300,000 Unique Visitors/mo
* 400 Posts/day

Now, to look at where I am today:

* 19,000 Members (On track for 20k)
* 79 New Members/day
* 4 New Tutorials a Week
* 8 New Code Snippets a Week
* 1 New Resources a Week
* 550,000 Page Views/mo (The way I measured page views changed)
* 300,000 Unique Visitors/mo
* 250 Posts/day

Out of 8 goals, I was able to meet 6. The areas I still need to work on are member submitted content, posts per day, and page views. So what should my goals be for 2007? Here’s what I’m shooting for:

* 75,000 Members by Jan 1, 2008
* 150 New Members/day
* 8 New Tutorials a Week
* 12 New Code Snippets a Week
* 5 New Resources a Week
* 800,000 Page Views/mo
* 500,000 Unique Visitors/mo
* 400 Posts/day

Now to develop a plan to reach those goals, I’ll share my plan with you at a later date, but I’d like to see what your goals are for 2007.

by Chris Kenworthy @ Ackfoo.com

We have a very active Off Topic section. It had been more active previously, but we didn’t properly manage the tight groups that formed there, and when things go out of hand, one group left entirely. We are better off now, but it illustrates how serious members take issues that develop in their relationship with the forum management. For a long time, there has been a sentiment that our Moderators have problems with ‘power tripping.’ Often, this comes about because not everyone is familiar with all the details of every situation, but that explanation doesn’t always diffuse problems in a forum setting. Generally, this is a simple problem of communication. In an effort to address these issues, we decided to try something that we hadn’t done before, but we had seen in a similar format on other sites.

We have created a new usergroup at NotebookForums.com – Trusted Members. As written by my Director:

TM’s will be responsible for communicating more directly with us staffers from what is really going on around the site from the member level. They are much more in tune with what is going on than many of us staffers will ever be given how much time we spend on the backend of operations and we hope to harness that influence to better communicate many of the initiatives we are working on going forward.

They will also be our first line of defense against many of the darker elements that can show themselves from time to time to do nothing but cause trouble.

TM’s cannot edit posts or ban anyone so there can never be the accusations of ‘Power Tripping’, yet they have a direct line to any of the mods and admins of the forum and will be listened to very closely as they unfold their assessment of the goings on around the site and what actions they feel are justified.

You can read more of the thread here as well as member reactions.

We nominated 5 core TMs from across the entire forum and tasked them with coming up with 5 more. We, the Admin and Moderators, are not interfering at all with this process. They have a private forum where they can discuss issues, complain, alert us to problems, etc. They all have our direct contact info in case of emergency. They can also move posts to other sections so they can help keep the board organized, but they have no other moderation abilities.

It’s been a few days since the program started and so far the response has been really great! Member responses have been a mix of, “It’s about time!” to “Great, we have Rent-a-Cops now…” So far, their private forum has been buzzing with posts about ideas for the site, the best way to nominate new TMs, and how best to define their role. They have been very enthusiastic and are eager to help improve the site.

One other nice thing is that this TM group is ripe for picking new Mods.

I know that not every forum is in a place where this type of usergroup is needed, but keep in mind that forums thrive on volunteer staff. Forums are generally crawling with people eager to help out in any way they can, but not everyone has the time it takes to be a moderator. We all need to take a step back at times to make sure we are making the most effective usage of our volunteer resources. It’s one of the great parts of being a forum Admin! How many static sites have visitors ready and willing to help on a daily basis?

But above all, make sure to thank and respect all of your staff. It’s so amazing to see so many people come together for one cause – a cause that you have spent countless hours creating. Without our members, we would be nothing.

The only reason I am able to have the number of forums I currently run is due to the team of volunteer moderators that are around me. While I know that forums require more time and dedication than other sites, I really enjoy running them and feel they have great value when successful. I have recently sold several forums and have seen the sell price hit 2-3 years revenue each time as a minimum. I feel that since I felt a need to sell a few forums, that I am playing with my comfortable number of forums that I can realistically run. If that is the case then the number is going to be around 5-7 for me. I have owned more, and that is the time when I feel I should sell one or two to lessen the load.

What are your thoughts?

The advantages of having a portal in addition to your forum are huge. It doesn’t make a difference if your forum is one day old and without members or 2 years old with 25,000 members.

The benefits are as follows:

• It provides you with a platform to build content your users will enjoy
• It will get you in to more CPM networks
• CPC ads perform better on “content” pages, so it will increase earnings
• Can be a great help in the SEO game when targetting certain keywords with the content
• It shows the community you are working to “improve” their user experience
• It separates you from the forum only crowd and provides an increased perceived value

This is a short list, but I think there are even more reasons that you could think of as to how this will benefit your community, your earnings, and the overall health of your site. If you are serious about building something “special”, then don’t wait. Get your portal in the works now!

Dear YOURUSERNAME,

Thanks for registering at FORUM NAME! We are glad you have chosen to be a part of our community and we hope you enjoy your stay.

All the best,
THEIR NAME

While this looks nice and professional at first glance, remember there is always room for improvement. Why not add a few lines with links to important forums, hot topics, or other interesting features of your forum beneath the nice welcome? The idea is that you want new registerants to become ACTIVE, so help them out and prod them in the right direction!

by Chris Kenworthy @ Ackfoo.com

User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.

Nielsen gives some examples of participation inequality in social networks, review sites, blogs, etc. But he gives some good ideas for how to overcome, or at least reduce, participation inequality:

• Make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop. For example, Netflix lets users rate movies by clicking a star rating, which is much easier than writing a natural-language review.
• Make participation a side effect. Even better, let users participate with zero effort by making their contributions a side effect of something else they’re doing. For example, Amazon’s “people who bought this book, bought these other books” recommendations are a side effect of people buying books. You don’t have to do anything special to have your book preferences entered into the system. Will Hill coined the term read wear for this type of effect: the simple activity of reading (or using) something will “wear” it down and thus leave its marks — just like a cookbook will automatically fall open to the recipe you prepare the most.
• Edit, don’t create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch. Editing a template is more enticing and has a gentler learning curve than facing the horror of a blank page. In avatar-based systems like Second Life, for example, most users modify standard-issue avatars rather than create their own.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants. Rewarding people for contributing will help motivate users who have lives outside the Internet, and thus will broaden your participant base. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles. But don’t give too much to the most active participants, or you’ll simply encourage them to dominate the system even more.
• Promote quality contributors. If you display all contributions equally, then people who post only when they have something important to say will be drowned out by the torrent of material from the hyperactive 1%. Instead, give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who’ve proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.

Out of this list, my favorite is “Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants.” There are so many things we can do for our users as forum owners. From reputation systems, to “kudos” like I use at dreamincode.net, to free giveaways. Even things as simple as member badges or titles can encourage users to contribute and participate.

You can read the entire article here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

by Chris Kenworthy @ Ackfoo.com

• Magazine Subscription Related to Forum Topic (Usually less than $25 for a year)
• Gift Certificate Related to Forum Topic/Location
• Personalized Promo Gifts (Pens, Key-Chain, Desk Toys, etc.)
• Personalized Chocolates (Hershey Gifts)
• Custom T-Shirts (If you order more than you need, these make great contest prizes too!)
• Visa Gift Cards (Minimum of $25+Fee)
• Custom Label Wine/Beer
• Premium Subscriptions to Related Sites (Especially if your mods write content for you)

Those are just a few ideas. I’m doing something pretty unique this year for my team at dream.in.code, but I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag here With any of these gifts, it’s always good to include a hand-written card to say “Thank You for all the hard work and time you spend. I, and our members, really appreciate it!”.

Please share your ideas, or interesting gifts you have received from an employer or someone you volunteered for.

by Chris Kenworthy @ Ackfoo.com

Okay, so how does this apply to forum owners? While Internet forums are not nearly as hot as video sharing websites, we should still take away a few lessons from those who have been bought before us. Now, before you decide to stop reading because your beloved forum isn’t for sale, understand that I know you are attached to your site (we all have some level of attachment), but if some big company came along and offered you a whole heap of money for your site, I think you might reconsider that stance. But the key is that if you aren’t ready for that offer, it won’t happen. With a little bit of foresight, you could avoid a whole lot of heartache later.

We all need to run our forums like they are for sale on the open market. Why? Because everything is for sale and there are plenty of shoppers out there with money to spend. How you run your site before the sale will determine what caliber of buyer (and what price tag) you can expect. And I am not only talking about traffic stats and Adsense screen shots.

Treat Your Records – Traffic and Otherwise – Like GOLD. What is it, exactly, that you own? Your online real estate is totally virtual. It could go -poof- into thin air in the blink of an eye. So, too, could your traffic stats, financial records, and other virtual data. Do you back up your website? You should be backing up everything, all the time.

In that same vein, make SURE you have a long trail of traffic stats. I don’t care about just the last three months of a two year-old site! I care about the last two years. And don’t use the, “I changed servers, so I lost my stats” crap. You can still keep that data. To me that says poor planning, and if you are that bad at something so simple, it leaves me to wonder what else you may have missed in running your business.

Does Your Bookkeeping Hold Up? How many forum owners treat their forum like a business? Whether that means hiring a virtual assistant to do your books, or simply using a program like QuickBooks to do it yourself – it needs to be done. We are very fortunate that keeping financial records for a website is generally very, very simple. But simply having that record is HUGE. Take the time NOW to make sure that you get what you deserve in the event of a potential future sale. This isn’t something to try and backtrack on later. A business with good books will sell far more easily than one with shoddy record keeping. (Oh, and you should keep good books anyway, but that’s another post. )

Get Everything in Writing. Do you have special arrangements in place with other sites or vendors? Do you swap banner space with any other sites? Do you get a discount on advertising on any other sites? Anything that you have arranged with any other website or business should be in writing. If it isn’t now, write something up and make it official. As a buyer, would you think twice about the future of these relationships as the new owner? You sure would.

Make sure that you are not currently harboring any of these buyer red flags. If you are, deal with them NOW and not later:

- Poor traffic stats history
- Poor advertising management
- Poor bookkeeping (incomplete, improperly kept, etc.)
- Undocumented business relationships
- Undocumented systems and procedures (Could someone run your business if you died tomorrow? If not, it’s time to start writing down what you do.)

For anyone that is reading this thinking it might not apply to them since Google, Microsoft, or some other massive entity won’t be buying a basket weaving hobby forum anytime soon, this kind of preparation can have just as large of an impact on businesses with much smaller price tags. I saw a site for sale recently in the gaming niche that had a ton of potential. Great idea, good programming, good name. Unfortunately, the owner had a server crash and had lost some members and all traffic stats. The site was up for sale with no actual traffic or financial information. I doubt it sold for the $1,000 starting bid, but if he had proof of the stats he claimed he had prior to the crash, he would have gotten at least 5 times more than what he was asking. It’s a good lesson to learn. Your site is only as good as what you can present at the time of sale.

So starting today, keep your records squeaky clean and run your site like it was actively for sale. You never know when that offer will come along that you can’t refuse, and with proper planning, the deal may actually come to fruition.