Anxious over competitors

[wizs]

Hey everyone I thought I would post my message at Webmaster World because the members seem more intelligent than other forums! :)

I am the webmaster of a popular niche site, the number 1 site of its kind for well over 6 years. I have faced intensive competition in the past and beat them, and almost enjoyed it. (I was obviously younger then, in my late teens).

Now I am a bit older, I don't seem to find myself thriving off competition anymore. It makes me anxious and I have many thoughts at once, rather than a clear thought process. This is due to the anxiety!

So I wondered if anyone else had cyberspace fears like this? It's tough at the top, somebody always want to knock you off! Any words of wisdom, reassurance and advice wouldn't go amiss! Thanks guys, hope this gives you something new to chew on!

[Eradicator]

I feel for yer!

[edited by: phranque at 6:04 am (utc) on Nov. 6, 2008]
[edit reason] hosting discussion [/edit]

[GaryK]

I've got two sites at #1 in a competitive niche for ten years. I don't think there's any other way to stay there without constantly analyzing how people are finding the sites, who's linking to the sites, what competitors are doing and if they're successful at it, changing my sites to incorporate the successful things competitors are doing, and even more important, trying to come up with new things on my own to keep ahead of my competitors. You simply have to enjoy doing this otherwise it might not be for you anymore. One thing that you have to do is use whatever tools exist to make your job easier. Webmaster Tools from Google can be a huge help. I just spent an hour this afternoon looking at links to one of my sites to see what people were saying about it. Also looking at the keywords being used to search for my sites and adding new content to rank better for the keywords I wasn't ranking well for. Again, you have to enjoy doing this otherwise it seems like an impossible task instead of a challenge. Hope this helps a little bit. I'd like to see what others have to say too.

[edited by: GaryK at 12:10 am (utc) on Nov. 6, 2008]

[caribguy]

Sometimes it's very useful to take a short break from looking at your competitors, say between one to three months. It will free up your time to rethink why you're doing this, what parts of your site are useful and what could be improved, which new technologies could bring benefits to your visitors, how visitors find your site and what they would like to see more of... Analyze your sources of income to see which ones are most beneficial to you and ditch the ones that are not.

Also, try to get an overview of what you want from your site/work/personal life in the long term - where do you want the site to be in 12 months, or 3 years from now. What big steps will you need to take to get there? Can you get more organized and map this out, in order not to stress so much about reacting to your competition?

Then, after a good while, analyze your competitors one by one and write down each of their strengths and weaknesses - their sites, traffic numbers, types of visitors, resources - how much money / staff do they have, and figure out where they'll be going to be 1-3 years from now.

Maybe there's an up-and-comer in your market with a lot of drive but without much traffic/revenue? Look at developing a partnership with them.

In six years you'll find yourself answering these types of Q's on WebmasterWorld :)