The Web Design Template – A Manual for Small Business Owners
The Web Design Template – A Manual for Small Business Owners by Ashwin Kumar
It is seemingly common knowledge that every business, be it large or small, must have a website to actively compete in today’s workplace. The internet has opened the consumer market to an international level, and even if a business is targeting only local customers, there is an expectation that a quality business must have a respectable homepage and site.
Many small business owners are intimidated by the assumed technicality and work associated with building a website, or they are disgusted by the going rates of traditional designers. Fortunately, the advent of the web design template has brought a fresh breeze into a field that was once stagnant, and almost secretive. Gone are the days when a business required a high-price designer to spend weeks or months creating a basic homepage and related links. Now business owners can create attractive, professional web sites for a fraction of the time and cost.
Finding the Right Web Design Template
A simple search on the internet yields literally millions of results for a Quality web design templates. Making the right choice can be almost overwhelming. There are certain guidelines to follow while shifting through results. A quality web design template will be easy to download from the internet. It should also be simple to open in and edit with popular editing software such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. The more user-friendly the web design template is, the more simplified the design process will be. Finally, once you have modified the template to your exact specifications, the file should be easy to upload and open in your browser.
In addition to the ease of use, it is important that the web design template reflect the nature of the business. Templates with animation or flashy logos might turn off potential customers if a business is more staid and traditional. If a company is in the entertainment industry, bold, colorful patterns would be more suitable.
Using a Template
Once the correct web design template is obtained, it should be saved or downloaded so that the template can be modified. Programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver make the editing process simple. In many cases, an individual need never even see the HTML coding behind the template; he may simply import texts and objects or use basics commands such as cut and paste to achieve the desired result. In addition, a quality web design template also comes with basic, or occasionally advanced, user-support on the originating website if the editing process proves to be more complicated than was originally assumed. A Web design templates can range from the simplest, user-friendly form to increasingly complex.
A business website is also expected to have quality content, i.e. writing and any other relevant images or logos. This material can usually be created in traditional programs or obtained from other sources and imported into the web design template. The overall process is not too far removed from inserting clip art into a word processing file. The final step would be to save the modified file and upload it onto server space reserved for the website.
Why Your Web Site need Uptime Monitoring to “Live”
Studies show that while many businesses are investing in expensive metrics packages, they neglect something as obvious as monitoring that their website is up and running. Reliably, 24-7. A web metrics package that is designed to give you intimate detail about your visitors habits is useless, if the underlying site is dead. Whether it’s a server problem, a web hosting SNAFU, a DNS foul up or a problem with billing. Dead websites don’t generate cash!
Our company is in the business of Click Fraud Detection, and every once in a while we get complaints from our clients that they are not getting any visitors to their site, but are getting charged by Google. Incredible as it may seem, sometimes their PPC cost is over 5 dollar/ Click. While click fraud does exist, and it may even be rampant—sometimes a much more mundane problem is to be blamed. Site downtime.
This seemingly easy to monitor problem sometimes cost our customers megabucks—the search engine charges our clients whether the page displays something, shows a hacked page, the infamous 404 redirect or nothing at all. These people are essentially paying 5 dollar/ click to have alienated customers.
Why would people disregard such an obvious issue. Part of it is the reliability statistics that their web hosting companies claim, that are meant to lull the site owner. It’s also because they don’t think it’s worth the 60-200 dollar/year/website for monitoring service of their website. They also don’t think they would benefit, because they don’t have access to E-mail all the time.
Lets break down these myths. The web hosting companies claims notwithstanding, even 99% reliability means that their site will be down around 88 hours every year. That is, or should be unacceptable. For a reasonable traffic site, it should be constituted a disaster. Even if the site is only making money through CPM/CPC advertising, the lost opportunity is simply too big to ignore. Furthermore, the search engines drop ranks if the site doesn’t show up when they crawl. Site hacking is another unfortunate phenomenon and it happens more than most people expect. Given the other myriad of problems that could occur, this number could be a lot larger if not checked in time.
While saving a few dollars a month and spending major dollars on maintaining/promoting the site may sound like false economy there are some free options as well. Some established companies give away the site uptime service in order to attract customers for other businesses. As long as there are no strings attached, this is a great way to go. As an example, Sofizar(www.sofizar.com )gives away the site uptime service for free at http://www.24hourcontact.com.
Another factor to keep in mind is that some of these companies SMS you on your cell phone if your site ever goes down. So, you could be out bowling, skiing or even sleeping when you can get notified of the site downtime. While the SMS may wake you up, it should hopefully prevent sleepless nights. You should be able to specify an escalation schedule and go from there. It’s a feature worth looking for, when evaluating the uptime company.
A natural question to ask is, what if the site uptime company itself goes down? Who is minding the minder so to speak. Here, the reputation of the company is very important. You want to go with a company that has been in business for a few years and which can demonstrate that they have geographical redundancy. In other words, they have POP(Point of Presence) in at least 3 different continents and the servers can monitor each other as peers. Without this level of redundancy, we can have false alarms, or not report real alarms.
A point that many people overlook is that having your website up, is not enough. You need to be able to check contents on your website. If a website does get hacked, or if the page gets trashed, a ping to the website will still show it live, while human visitors will not benefit. Therefore, the service for uptime must use “content check” to see if the marker is present.
While site uptime alone is not going to make your site a roaring success, it is cheap ( or free ) insurance against mishaps, allowing you to focus on the goals of your site.
Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer working for Carlsbad, CA based web-metrics company Sofizar( http://www.sofizar.net ) . He is a member of the team developing a click fraud detection software, ZarTective. While not writing exposes on the darker side of the web, he plays with his cat Mano and watches Rocky Horror Picture Show for the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.
It Can Be Easy To Develop Your Own Website by Gerald Mason
Creating a website is not so much a feat, if we compare it to the education of other technical skills.
Most people tend to give up and pack their bags as soon as they hear the word “programming” and “technical”.
They think it`s too much of a hassle to actually learn a whole computer “language”. HTML, the most basic computer language in building websites, is actually pretty simple to understand, as long as we have the interest in learning new things.
What is HTML?
HTML is the acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language.
For learning purposes, just think of it as a language that the computer understands. For example, as humans, we were taught different languages; i.e. HTML as a language, is mostly and specifically used to create a website.
The web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, will then decipher and interpret the code or rather, language(HTML), and display it in a way we can understand it, just like in a basic webpage.
Coding.
Coding the HTML language might be a bit tough for some people, so we can actually purchase programmes, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, or even Microsoft Frontpage. These programmes are solely created to help individuals in designing professional webpages/websites.
Furthermore, one could also gain access to online web-builders, website builders that are inbuilt and can be directly controlled from the net. There are many different and specific builders online.
Books and magazines contain guides that can help in offering tutorials and ways to put up our own websites. Even online tutorials are credible, as in the modern world, information technology is the best and most cost efficient way in retaining knowledge, especially in this particular field.
So, you could start and build one right away. If you enjoy coding, it might even become a favourable past-time.
Essential Techniques For Profitable Associate Programs
Essential Techniques For Profitable Associate Programs by Mario R. Churchill
By creating your very own website, you will indeed own a piece of the vast cyberspace. While a website is a great venue where people from anywhere in the planet can view whatever you want to share to the world, it is also an undeniably powerful tool for marketing products and services. But a website alone does not guarantee success if you ever want to make huge amounts of money online; you will need the help of associate programs to turn your website into a steady source of considerable income.
By joining associate programs in the Internet, you take advantage of one of the most gainful money making formulas known online. The ever-increasing usage of the Internet for conducting ordinary day-to-day transactions is steadily tipping the scale of making profit in favor of online associate programs. Truly, associate programs have impressive characteristics that ordinary real-world home businesses do not possess.
First, associate programs do not necessitate a sizable sum of investment; in fact, the only thing you will need is a website. Second, joining associate programs entail relatively simple tasks in order for you to earn big income; you do not need to learn rocket science for you to make money. And last, associate programs allow you to earn good money at your own time and pace.
Indeed, profiting from associate programs may sound very uncomplicated. However, there are a few points to think about if you want to bring in money through associate programs. Fundamentally, online associate programs are actually in the business of client referrals; where you earn only when visitors of your website buy the items that you promote on behalf of the affiliate company that sells the products and services. In this light, you must learn the essential techniques that will make your website grab Internet users' attention more effectively.
Choose Your Audience
By choosing the type of audience for whom you will have to create the website for, you will have the advantage of forecasting the kind of problems and issues you need to answer. When this happens, you will have an easier way of choosing the right products and services to promote via the associate programs you applied with your website. In essence, knowing the characteristics of your website visitors will lead you to what products and services to publicize. Niche marketing works for associate programs in the same way it does in real world business.
Focus On Things You Are Good At
The Internet has no boundaries. Hence, there is no surprise if thousands or millions of people want to make money through it. The sheer number of competitors can put an unknowing associate program marketer out of business. In this regard, it is imperative that you only construct websites that deal with the things you are good at or topics that you are greatly interested in.
After creating a website that engages in the things you are completely fascinated with, you can start looking for associate programs that have similar ideas as your website. By focusing on things of your interest, you will not only enjoy doing business, you will be a credible and masterful source of information about the products and services that your associate companies sell.
Be Aware Of What Is Popular
While it is highly recommended that your website deals with topics that you are interested, it is important that your website deals with popular subjects as well. The things you intensely know about may not be interesting for other people; this will leave you with zero website visitors and most probably zero profit. The whole point of associate programs is to have as many people as possible to take a tour of your website; with the hope that they click on the links to your associate program companies and that they eventually purchase the goods offered via the links. You just cannot afford to turn your visitors off by dwelling in topics only you can understand and know about.
Learn New Things Constantly
Never stop and be contented about the things you already know. Just like any other kind of business, an associate program is largely a numbers game. Therefore, you must always learn new things to broaden your knowledge base. The more things you know, the wider your horizon will be; hence, you will have more subjects, more websites, and more associate programs to promote.
Becoming A Super Affiliate In Internet Business by Randy Powell
Building a career in Affiliate marketing is probably the best chance that the average person will have at building a successful and profitable home business. Affiliate websites are all over the Internet and are very popular as a way to make money. This seems to be the trend of today. The Internet has leveled the playing field for those people wanting to build their own productive businesses at home.
Tens of millions of people put up their very first website online every year. With the speeding growth of e-commerce, there is huge money-making potential in selling products and services on the web. Internet business is giving hope to many people wanting and willing work hard toward wealth and success.
This is a great opportunity for affiliates. By simply getting good web hosting and setting up a functional site, you can be driving traffic to your site and making profits everyday. You must choose a niche that you are passionate about and be willing to place plenty of useful content on your site. Once you have lots of pages and content on your website, the search engines will begin to love you. Then you simply have to drive targeted traffic to you site. Anyone can become a successful affiliate in the niche markets.
There are a lot of niche markets that are not saturated and could become a real profitable income source for someone. Knowing which one to get into is more about how interested you are in that particular subject and if you want spend time giving it the attention it will need to get setup and producing. I suggest that you choose a subject that you are knowledgeable about and enjoy writing content and sales letters for.
Driving traffic to your website is the secret to online success. What I should have said is “targeted” traffic is the secret. You don’t want just anybody visiting your website. You want customers that are interested and wanting to buy. If your visitors are not buying anything then why do you want them to visit? The whole point is to SELL products and having un-interested visitors at your website is wasting your time. For instant, targeted traffic I like to use Pay Per Click. It sends traffic based on relevant keywords that you choose.
Affiliate market is a great way to make some good money online. There is a learning curve unless you already have some experience with it. This is where you cut your teeth and learn to get up after you fall. Just remember that to be successful in your home business venture means that you must be willing to work hard and treat your Internet business like a real business.
Randy Powell teaches how you can build a profitable business on the Internet. http://www.AffiliateMarketingWorld.NET
Setting Up An Affiliate Marketing System by Chairil Maxum
Affiliate programs will enable a business to generate a lot of traffic and therefore boost sales through promotion by third party sales or sites. It's also a cost effective way to advertise your products and services as you pay only for the efforts that actually turn into sales.
Setting up your own affiliate system can be either easy or overwhelming, all depending on how many affiliates you want to recruit, as well as your payment policy and the type of product that you are offering.
As for your affiliate systems, there are two options for your business - outsource the entire system or run your own affiliate system through your own web host. Each one boasts its own advantages as well as disadvantages.
If you have a small amount of affiliates, then you can run your own affiliate software. If you plan to recruit a large number of affiliates, then you will probably need to outsource. The reason for this, is because you'll find it easy to deal with a large number of sign ups, track payments, monitor clicks, etc.
Types of affiliates There are numerous types of affiliates out there to choose from. There's the pay per sale, there an individual is paid only if a sale is generated from the affiliate's link. It's the least attractive to people, unless the product is in high demand and the most profitable for business.
Another type is the pay per lead, where you pay only for traffic. With this type, the affiliate is paid only if a visitor is generated from the site of the affiliate. It's attractive to affiliates although costly to web site owners due to the possibility of non sale visits.
Considerations When setting up an affiliate, something to consider is whether or not you'll approve affiliates manually or automatically. It's normally recommended to start affiliate programs with your established customer sites then progress to new ones.
If you are dealing with pay per clicks, you may have to control the affiliates as the quality of visitors will be a huge factor when it comes to the generation of sales. By manually reviewing, you'll also be able to judge the website or individual affiliates to see if it's in the best interest of your company.
If you decide to use your own affiliate system, one of your biggest challenges will be how to pay affiliates a percentage of what you end up receiving from customers. To do this, you can rely on software such as Affiliate shop to help you track and manage commissions.
To learn more about my automated marketing system, check out my site at; http://www.NewAffiliateInternetMarketing.com for more tips on affiliate marketing. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box. You can also include your affiliate link when you sign up at my Affiliate Cash Secrets website. FREE REPORT reveals all.
How Earn Money From Untapped Affiliate Markets by Scott Bamboo
Affiliate marketing can be extremely lucrative as you know, but if you are a newbie who are starting to involve in earning online through affiliate program, you may find it's hard to find a suitable affiliate products to promote with, because most of them have been promoted heavily by many other affiliate marketers; hence if you are promoting the same affiliate products, you need to complete with these experience affiliate marketers.
So how can you find untapped and therefore potentially highly profitable products to promote as an affiliate?
If you are a new affiliate marketer, the best place to start searching for your products is at Clickbank, the leading retailer of digital products and the most popular affiliate networks where many affiliate marketers are making the fortune with it. You may wonder that Clickbank products are heavily promoted by many affiliate marketers, are you standing a chance to win in this affiliate market? The fact is Clickbank sell so many products, there are still some very profitable opportunities which are overlook by other affiliate marketers.
If you do some analysis, you will find that most affiliate marketers are naturally go to promote best selling products in each category and the most popular category which love by most affiliate marketers is internet marketing / make money products. This category is facing heavy competition between affiliate marketers, some good strategies are needed to win in the competition. If you not a good competitor and have a marketing budget constraint; then try to look for other less popular products, you will often find some hidden gems that haven't yet taken off for whatever reason. You can make a good profit with these products by promoting them on PPC (pay per click) search engines, email marketing, article marketing or through your website.
Beside that, the best way to profit from Clickbank products is you must get the first hand alert on any new product launch in Clickbank. And start to heavily promote it as soon as they come available. Getting a good and new product promoted in market before others do, can be extremely lucrative. There are specialist sites that will allow you to constantly scan for any new products that have just entered the marketplace.
Other than Clickbank, there are many other affiliate networks available in the internet that has hidden gems which you can discover and make your fortune from it. Do a search for "affiliate networks" and you will find thousands of affiliate networks where you can find many companies offer affiliate program. These networks present plenty of opportunities because from these lists, there will inevitably be some companies that are under-represented by affiliates, particularly on Google Adwords and other PPC search engines.
Furthermore, if you spend some time to look for companies outside the US which have their individual affiliate program, you will find a lot untapped affiliate markets for non-English speaking countries. These markets have far fewer competitors and may be a potential an absolute goldmine where you can earn a substantial profits from them. Your problem that you will be faced if you want to tap into these non-English speaking markets, you need to translate your sales page or website into a different languages; don't try to use any of translation software because they very rarely translate perfectly into the natural language. You can many freelance sites that provide translation service; use their service to translate your sales page or website into different language and start promoting your selected products to these countries.
In Summary
Affiliate marketing can be extremely lucrative and to be success in this business, you need to be creative search for untapped opportunities. The internet market is huge and there is always be good companies out there who need more affiliates in all kinds of different niches.
