One of the most common things I see in help forums and even on comments in my blog are people requesting, “I need help. Please come and take a couple minutes to look at my website.”
Years ago, I use to do free website reviews, and it was fun. I use to take a good amount of time looking through blogs and giving them a quick review that sometimes ranged between 600 to 2000 words. I use to even publish those website reviews in a blog post. In fact, I was a part of several website review communities, where we critiqued and rated each others websites. Again, it was fun at the time, and somewhat helpful.
However, it wasn’t good enough advice for anyone to really push forward, and if done today, it would’ve not done. It merely pissed some website owners off if you called them out on their coding and design skills, or lack of.
I call these “surface” website reviews, or website critique. I find using the words “website critique” seems much more informal.
Why I Stopped Answering “Please Look At My Website” Requests
It was fun, sometimes created drama, but I remember that many times, even if looking at the surface, it worked because I invested time into doing the critiques. Some of the things I looked at were how fast the site loaded, the design, organization of navigation, how easy it was to surf the website, and then, the content.
The basics of web design and SEO have always gone hand-in-hand. It makes sense that if a person can’t surf your website, then you can’t get them do to what you want. Google works the same way. If Google can’t adequately crawl your website, then how do you expect Google to properly list your website in the search results?
Offering a 5 minute or 30 minute website review or website critique is impossible. I’ve seen people try it, and guess what? Not only does the person offering the website review go over 5 minutes or 30 minutes, their report, whether in text form, or via screencast, goes beyond that time. AND still, they only cover surface issue. They don’t cover things that people need to know about like your search engine results, the code itself, analytics, your calls to action, and about your focus keywords. There’s a lot of things to go into reviewing a website. A glance won’t help.
All of this is time taken away from making a living. That’s what happened to me, and my reviews were a lot longer than 5 minutes of time.
If you’re doing this, I’m not saying you should stop doing it too. When you’re new or if you have a team, and have the time, sure, go for it. However, if you and your family are barely making rent or missing meals, you probably shouldn’t be doing this.
This is a post on why I stopped, and giving the reality of why a surface type review probably won’t fix the deeper issues. I also want to get you to think about how you spend your time online helping others, and what you can do to turn that critique into a possible small or large job. The biggest issues I had, was that I wanted to help so many people, and I was a “starving artist” at the time. I couldn’t do the critiques, as I had to think about how I would pay rent or put food on the table for my kid.
You should think about how to market it so others can learn from it, as well as bring in business. For example, since I’m no longer the “starving artist”, I’ve been mulling around the thought about bring back the website critique, post the review on the website, and allow people to pay to get further information into any possible problems. It’s just an idea, but you’re certainly welcome to take that idea and do whatever you wish for it to. 😉
There’s a lot of new website owners looking for help. Pick and choose when you have time to look at other’s website. Don’t feel pressured if someone tells you that they need you to look at a website because it’s an emergency. If it’s an emergency, they will seek out someone and pay them, or they will eventually have to wait for a response, especially if the request came from a public forum or social network thread. Don’t feel guilty if you have to refuse to do a critique, or tell people you may have to take a look some other time.
If you like helping people, do you help others other by looking at their websites and offering a critique? If so, how much time are you spending on the website critique?
Very understandable decision. Reviewing a website surely takes time. Like that quote says “If it was easy, everyone would do it.” Similarly, if it was easy to review a website, everyone would know how to build a successful website. Great post, Nile.
Hey.,You don’t wanna make anything as you said at title.. Because each and every visit makes users to come back like a spirit you made on them using me too.
I am beginning to echo this same sentiment! I am on a ton of WordPress/LinkedIn Help Groups and I find that I am devoting a LOT of time to posters’ innocent requests of “could someone help me find out why my colors won’t work; why my slider is wonky; why my titles are off . . . yada yada yada.” It made me feel good to altruistically help others with the little bit of knowledge that I have.
But then, I started thinking about the fact that I was spending so much time DONATING my services, that people felt no obligation to pay/support professional developers/designers when they get all the free help they need in these groups. AND, I AM a starving artist and need to take care of myself first and become viable enough to pay MY bills and develop my OWN website.
So, I have really dialed back the free help that I dole out on these sites. I think it is counter-productive to the trade to get people accustomed to begging for free help, rather than paying someone for their expertise in web development. Kind of worse than working on spec, in my opinion.
Glad to know that I was not the only naive person to “help themselves to the poor house.” Thanks Nile.
Hi Brenda! Yeah, it’s so tempting to help. It can become addicting. lol
Hopefully scaling back on helping will help bring you out of the starving artist phase too.
Good thinking!!! But i can’t stop answering this kind of request.. Poor me 🙁
Occasionally I provide free website reviews for people in groups that I’m a part of. I’ve actually really been enjoying helping others.
I was thinking about giving website reviews on my own site, but have been leaning more towards not doing it. For me, it’s something that I’m fine doing on my free time. However, I’m not sure it’s something I’m ready to include as a part of my services.
Hi Nile,
Just like you said, there is nothing wrong in helping out others who need your expertise if you have the time to do that, but if doing so is eating up a substantial amount of time that could have been invested into something more financially rewarding then it becomes a bit of a problem that needs to be addressed.
In the past I have rendered such assistance to friends and even to people I only knew online but of recent it seems I don’t have that much time to do such again but if I do have the time to help, I won’t think twice about it because it’s fun and interest helping others no matter how little it might be. Nice write-up, I sure enjoyed reading it. Thanks
I completely agree with you Nile, I have been donating my services for a long time, it will be good to stop reviews for a short time and experiment the productivity rates.
Thanks
Great advice as usual Nile!
An initial helping hand up is one thing,
but a continual hand out, is a whole other ball game!
And it happens far too often, in practically
any industry!
The soup kitchen marketing approach, is recipe for staying broke
and constantly frustrated!
Hi Nile Flores
You are right, if you are a blogger who is supporting his family or if you are the only person who is living his own life through internet business. you should keep time framework in mind as the waste of time in someone else website without any fee mean you are wasting a majority of time.
Fantastic post, Nile. I’ve been struggling with productive use of time and this is a huge factor. Those asking for help NEVER stop asking it seems. I couldn’t quite put my finger on my problem and appreciate your putting words to this sentiment. By the way, would you have a look at my site. I’m having some issues. LOL JK
lol, Brooke! I see what you did.
Nile,
I can’t agree more! Your time is extremely valuable and people should not be taking advantage of it – even if it is innocent.
You’re a professional and deserve to be paid for your time and effort.
This is an awesome post and a great wake up call for many of us!
Really good post. Its like you start something for someone’s help and in return you get nothing. People start taking you granted. They want everything free of cost on an urgent basis. I will never do such thing.