You haven’t had as many posts from me lately. This is because I have been busy working on my latest project to build another website. This time I’m getting paid for it though! Stupidly, it never occurred to me that I could use my website building skills to my benefit. It turns out that it is the perfect job for me to do from home, at any hours to fit around my little girl. What’s more, it works really well with my other favourite ways to earn online – website testing and, more recently, web search evaluation. Each one gives me skills to be better at the other two. They work together as a perfect little trio!I’m quite pleased to have had this revelation. Especially as there are only a few more weeks to go before I return to work. I am only going back part time, so I’m relieved to have the extra income streams established. There are still other things I would like to try, but for now I want to focus on creating my new business in website building. I have discovered a new passion for it, and there are always more things I can learn. I love that!

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How do the 3 things work together?

Benefiting from my website testing experience

With website testing, I am giving my feedback as a user for new website and webpage designs. The questions help me to find out things that need improving. I can take this knowledge and apply it to the websites I build myself. If I can understand where I struggle to find how to navigate around a page, I can make sure other people don’t struggle with the sites that I build.

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Using my web search evaluation skills

What about web search evaluation? Well, a successful website needs to appeal to the search engines, especially Google, if people are going to come across it organically (i.e. via the search engine, not by referral). How do the search engines know which websites and webpages are good? They can automatically detect your keywords, the length of your sentences and the tone of your content’s language. If parts of your site are broken, or stuffed with adverts, this will be detected. Your site’s popularity, visitor counts, and how long visitors stay on your site will be monitored too.

Search engines still need real people to help

Despite all the clever automatic detection, the search engines still want real people to check if websites and webpages are good. They also want to know how well the weblinks they give out as results match up to what a person searched for. This is where web search evaluation comes in.

As a rater, I have been given a set of guidelines which tells me what makes a good website, and what doesn’t. I know what a good quality page should feature on it. I can reassure visitors that the website they are looking at is trustworthy and safe. This is all really useful knowledge to have when it comes to building new websites.

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Putting it all together

So the skills I have obtained from website testing and web search evaluation are proving to be invaluable when it comes to knowing what makes a great website. I’m also finding that having these 3 avenues available mean that I’m able to work efficiently. This is really important since I only have small snippets of time to work each day when my baby is sleeping or happily playing by herself.

Web search evaluation is something I can pick up for a few minutes at a time. That makes it really easy to slot into my day any time I get near my laptop. I need to do website testing in a quiet place with no interruptions. I therefore wait until my daughter has just started a nap before I look for tests. UserTesting continues to be my most successful source for tests and I usually get at least 1 a day (paying $10). As soon as I finish the test, or if there are none available, I have some quality time where I can concentrate on building sections of the new website.

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Thank you for reading!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about what I feel is a perfect trio of website work. This is what I will be sticking with for the next few weeks alongside my part time office job. I’ll keep you posted with how I get on!

You may need to register as being self-employed: in undertaking additional paid work through the online earning activities described in this blog, you will need to register as self-employed with HMRC if you earn more than £1,000 in the tax year (6 April 2018 - 5 April 2019) and fill out a self assessment tax return. Details of how to do this can be found here. If you are not from the UK please check with your relevant government about how to register and pay tax as a self employed person.

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