As I’m sure many of you know, it’s difficult to launch new websites, manage the old ones and come up with new ideas to improve a site all while holding down a full time job. I personally work as a game tester at Microsoft (living the dream huh?), and have to commute to work for 3 hours a day round trip. I know just how tough it is to balance a full time work schedule, a marriage and find time to work on my websites. I will be making the move to full time web publisher eventually, but I haven’t figured out a time table for it yet.

For those of us that still hold down full time jobs while running forums or websites on the side you may ask yourself all the time, “How can I find more time to work on my websites?” Well, I am going to give you a peak into how I get website work done and hopefully you’ll be able to learn something from me. As I write this post, I’m currently sitting at my work desk after arriving 50 minutes early. I used to come into work earlier back when I first started this job 9 months ago, but slowly started leaving later and later until I got to the point where I would be late to work if one section of my commute took longer than scheduled. So I’ve decided to start coming to work early again so I can spend all of that time working on my websites. If you work at an office, I’d highly recommend doing this, you’d be suprised by how much you can focus on your website work by coming in early when most of your co-workers are still asleep or driving to work. If you commute in high traffic areas, you may also receive the benefit of avoiding some traffic that would have otherwise kept you on the road longer, thus wasting more of your time. The key is to try and find times to work on your websites that complement the type of person you are. As an example, I’ve found that I’m moving towards more of a morning person now that I’m out of college and so I find that it isn’t that hard to get up extra early for work knowing that I can use that time to work on my websites.

Another way I’ve found success in getting website work done has been by writing lists of work I need to do on a site by site basis. After having a detailed list, it’s easy to pick out the items of most importance and start working from there. I also don’t let myself stop working on a task until it’s finished. I’ve found that it’s important to never stop in the middle of a task because I often spend a fair amount of time figuring out where I left off and what left to finish it, so I make sure to avoid starting a task that I can’t finish within my allotted work time.

How do you find the time to work on websites while holding down a full time job?

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In my previous post, I mentioned that I was going to look into the new Google Analytics site to try and come up with more detailed graphs and figures for my vBSEO case studies and I’m happy to say I just did that. The new Google Analytics has been out for a while, but I wanted to continue using the old version so that the graphs I posted would have the same look and follow the same formatting of my previous updates. This however will not be possible because on July 18th, 2007 it will be discontinued. Fortunately, the new version of Google Analytics is much better than the old one. It is packed full of more detailed information, statistics and an easy way to compare data from two different periods of time. I will go back and update the vBSEO case study posts with new graphs and more detailed information this weekend. My goal has always been to control as many variables as possible while trying to run a case study on vBSEO’s impact on increasing traffic for a forum.

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Use FavIcon’s on your websites and forums to improve the overall branding, color coordination and professionalism of your site’s. FavIcon’s are the little image displayed inside the URL bar in your web browser. They are also visible in favorite lists and tabbed windows. Adding a FavIcon catered towards your website or forum is simple. Create an image based off your site’s logo, color scheme or some other image with equal height and width dimensions then upload it at this site to create a FavIcon automatically. After uploading your image you’ll be able to see a preview and/or choose to save the FavIcon to your computer. After you’ve made one you like and saved it to your computer you should be able to open up the folder to view the favicon.ico file inside the folder. Now ftp into your site and upload the favicon.ico file to the root of your website and refresh your browser. You should now see the FavIcon inside the URL bar on the left hand side.

I previously had to use a photoshop plugin to do this, but after finding this site I have since saved a bunch of time. This is a quick way to further improve your website’s branding and professionalism without doing a lot of work. (And yes, I know this site does not have a FavIcon yet, although I will be changing my header image and adding a FavIcon really soon.)

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I finally finished work up on XboxLiveArcade.com, your one stop spot for XBLA game news, reviews and forums. To celebrate the launch of the site and encourage activity I’m running a contest to randomly give away five 1600 point marketplace point cards at the end of May to active members on the site.

Giveaway Details and Rules:

1. You must have at least 25 posts and 3 threads to qualify for the free cards that will be randomly given away. (You may not spam to achieve this.)

2. You can only have one account on the site (do not create multiple accounts in an attempt to increase your chances at winning. This can be tracked, so don’t try to circumvent the system).

3. At the end of May I’ll search our member database for those that qualify and the winners will be randomly selected and contacted via the private message system with the key card code for the 1600 Microsoft Points.

Do you think this giveaway will help to increase traffic? I do. It isn’t very hard to qualify for this competition and I’m sure we’ll have more than enough people participate on the site to make it worth it. I was going to put the post count requirement at only 10; however, In my experience I’ve learned that people post on video game based forums more frequently than in many other forum categories, so I put it at 25.

I know from experience that when it comes to forum competitions, don’t make the requirements to strict or people won’t even try to win. Often times it will possibly even have a negative affect on your attempts to increase forum traffic.

For example, I ran a $20 contest on AdobeChat.com to create a new video intro for GamingVidz.com and received only 1 entry. I know that $20 isn’t a lot of money but several people on GamingVidz expressed an interest in entering the contest and didn’t participate because I required people to have a certain number of posts on AdobeChat to enter. I believe this contest was doomed from the start, especially when I required people to join another forum just to participate in the contest on their home forum. What was I thinking? Quite simply, I wasn’t.

Take it from me: Don’t make forum contests overly complicated or difficult to have a chance to win. Your forum members will not think it’s worth their time, so they won’t participate and in the end it will be a waste of your time.

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