Whether you have a webmaster or you do your website yourself, you’ll be well-served by knowing your way around the back end of your website. Ignorance of some basic features of your own website could cost you a ton of money every year. In fact, the five skills I’m talking about today could be worth over $8000 in lost profit.
To be clear, a lot of webmasters rock at what they do, and your business will grow the less of the on-going maintenance of your site you do (as long as you’re using that extra time performing your highest value business activities). But too many times you can be left in a lurch if you push these particular things away.
Skill #1: Creating Professional Email Addresses
Cost of not knowing: $25 or more plus a weaker reputation among your prospects
Many hosting companies like to charge extra for email addresses. For example, as of today, GoDaddy charges $2.59/month for having up to 5 email addresses.
If you use a free email service, then you are advertising Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc., on your business cards instead of your business.
I’m a big fan of Gmail, but you should know how to set up your own email forwarders and/or accounts.
Skill #2: Redirecting Traffic
Cost of not knowing: $100 or more per month
Sites go down. Pages change names. Recommendations go out of favor. Partners change their affiliate systems. All these are the biggest reasons why you should know how to create redirects.
Imagine a scenario where you want to promote your favorite autoresponder. So you post your affiliate link everywhere you can: social media, forums, blog posts, guest blog posts, inside PDF reports, in the middle of YouTube videos, etc.
And 6 months from now that autoresponder system makes a change (or worse yet, goes out of business). Changes could include: pricing, new rules, worse delivery, etc. Or they change the way their affiliate links work.
In essence, every single link you’ve ever posted is now either dead or goes somewhere you don’t want new readers to go.
If you used a redirect then you could quickly change where visitors go instead of to a dead end.
Skill #3: Basic Uploading And Managing Of Files & Pages
Cost of not knowing: Potentially $500/month or more in lost business
Having your site hacked is a major pain, and you’ll likely want a professional (or your hosting service) to do a major security audit if it ever happens.
But in the short term, if you discover something’s wrong, you can usually identify a problem file in your website’s File Manager and delete or rename it and restore functionality.
In other situations, you may have a sales page that has typos, a wrong price, or a broken image – all of which could significantly decrease the results you get from that page.
And finally, you may sell an ebook, video, or audio program that customers want to be able to download. If you’re only using WordPress, and you have a limitation on the size of your uploads, you would have difficulty delivering on what you sell.
But if you know how to use your website’s File Manager, your just a couple clicks away from ensuring your customers’ experience is a good one.
Skill #4: Creating And Using FTP Accounts
Cost of not knowing: $1000/month or more in lost business
FTP is the way you upload and manage files on a larger scale than your site’s file manager. And if you ever outsource your web design and site infrastructure to a webmaster you could be vulnerable to a serious problem.
Again, many webmasters rock and run their business with integrity. But I’ve heard too many horror stories where the webmasters become unresponsive or even malicious.
When you know how to set up and manage FTP accounts, you can control what your team member has access to. If something goes wrong you can quickly remove access.
The big mistake most people make is giving a temporary team member their root username and password for their website. In moments, that info could change and you could be locked out of your own site!
Skill #5: Hosting More Than One Domain On The Same Account
Cost of not knowing: $5-$10/month for each extra domain
Multiple products, coaching programs, top-level redirects, advertising tracking – these are just a few reasons why you’ll want to have more than one domain name for your business. And while you don’t need to have 400 or so, you’ll likely have at least 10 domains in your portfolio. Many webmasters and hosting companies will charge you to host each one separately (even if they are actually hosting them on the same server).
Instead, when you know how to use the Add-on Domain feature of your website, you’ll pay just one hosting fee per month (usually $10/month or less)!
Kevin Lampard
p.s. One question I often get is what web hosting company do I recommend? If you’re just getting started, or you have less than 5 websites, then you’ll be well-served by Hostgator. Oh, and you can use the coupon code Feb35 and save at least 35% on your invoice! But hurry the offer is only open until the end of February 2013.
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