Real Estate Websites Avoiding The Embarrassment Of Broken Links
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Writen by Brandon Cornett
Your real estate website should be the epitome of professionalism.
Why? Because websites reflect their owners. So if a real estate website is sloppy and full of errors, readers will think the same of the agent behind the site. And who wants an error-prone agent helping them with something as important as buying or selling a home?
Take hyperlinks, for example. A website with broken links does not inspire confidence. It does not convey attention to detail, which is what people look for in a real estate agent.
The Reason for Broken Hyperlinks
Broken hyperlinks happen for several reasons: (A) The link points to a file that no longer exists. (B) The link points to a file that has moved. (C) The link is written incorrectly.
Regardless of why broken hyperlinks happen, you should make sure they don’t find their way into your real estate website. When you do find them, correct them immediately.
Broken links say a lot about a website, and none of it’s good. They say…
- This is an amateur, unprofessional site.
- This site is not managed by anyone. (Known as the “ghost-town effect”)
- The owner of this site has no attention to detail.
- The owner of this site does not care about the site.
Checking for Broken Hyperlinks
Obviously, you don’t want your visitors to think any of these things. So conduct a daily walk-through of your website — weekly at the least. Click on all the links (especially those that link to off-site information, as this information may have been moved without your knowledge). Make sure all images display properly.
A weekly review will only take you two or three minutes, depending on how large your website is. But no matter how long it takes, it’s essential.
How to Automate the Process
For a faster and more thorough approach, enter each of your web page URLs into the link checker at this site: www.validator.w3.org/checklink. It will perform an automated diagnostic check of the hyperlinks on every page.
Some of the errors the program returns will merely be recommendations. You can be the judge of that. But it’s a quick way to check links for basic functionality — especially on larger sites with a lot of links and pages.
* Copyright 2006, Brandon Cornett. You may republish this article in its entirety (and unaltered), provided you keep the hyperlinks active and include the byline and author’s note.
About the Author
Brandon Cornett wrote the book on real estate websites and web marketing. The Agent’s Guide to Websites & Web Marketing includes more than 50 pages of tips and strategies, helpful illustrations, and a comprehensive review of real estate websites from all over the web. Learn more about this exclusive guide by visiting: http://www.armingyourfarming.com/products.
Vgs Visitors Grow Your Sites
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Writen by Edward Charkow
I’m sure you have heard about Viral Marketing, but I bet you haven’t considered how powerful some of those same strategies can be when you change it from getting others to advertise for you to getting others to GROW your website.
Instead of trying to think about how to have your sites be Viral ? think about how you can have visitors “GROW” your website! If they can put in their own input and actually have some kind of result ? or a page of their own they will pass it along.
Even if they don’t pass it along, tell a friend, or do anything else they have added content to your website. That’s something we all like to have right?
To really get a concept like this going you should pick a topic that people are fanatical about. I don’t mean religion, politics, or any other potentially dangerous topic. I mean Sports, Hobbies, People, etc?
For my example of what you can do to get fanatics being fanatical on your site is http://www.golfwarz.com . This site isn’t horribly busy because it’s never been marketed. It’s an example of a product called SEOclickbank by Scriptmonthly that has been slightly modified (just changed a few form fields). It will let golfers complain about their clubs. Something that I am sure golfers do privately. It probably will never catch on with the older golfing community but for the younger golfers it will be fun.
It’s not a great example because most golfers really don’t want to spend time talking about how bad they are. They want to get better, not ‘brag’ about their shortcomings. If you can get the younger crowd posting in there ? a couple posts in a golfing related forum would probably get you some action ? the content they add will be search engine fodder. Juice that site up with a golfing tips newsletter, and some golf related affiliate products and you have a long term GROWING income stream. The best part is it’s hands free and you don’t have to add the content yourself.
This same concept can be modified to thousands of topics. You could make a site to let people talk about their bosses, their cats, anything.
I’ve given you a lot of ideas today. I hope you spend some time growing your network of websites and you start considering some of the virtual growth strategies I’ve mentioned here. Once you get a virtual growth site off the ground like this ? you can’t go wrong.
This article was written by Ed Charkow of http://www.Stmadeveloper.com.
Ed is the lead programmer for Stmadeveloper and has been making viral and virtual websites for his clients for years now.
How To Choose The Right Internet Marketing Service For Your Company
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Writen by Khemal Dole
If you need someone to help you with your online marketing campaigns and you can’t find someone within your own company for the job, then you may want to consider hiring an internet marketing service. You probably well know that it is important to have a web presence, and that to obtain that presence you need a solid online marketing plan. Maybe you don’t have the knowledge or expertise to do that on your own, and that is where internet marketing services come in. Hiring just ANY internet marketing service isn’t going to cut it. When it comes to seeking out internet marketing services for your company, here are some factors to consider.
Any internet marketing services you consider should have the expertise you are looking for. This fact may seem obvious, but too often small business owners make a marketing decision based solely on how big the company is or how fancy their letter head looks. You should make sure that for the specific goals you have in terms of internet marketing the company you choose is right. Have they got experience in the areas you are looking to get help in? Are they dedicated to one area? Do they have their own products?
Secondly, internet marketing services that you trust to work with your business should have a working knowledge of your company. And in order for them to have that, YOU should have it. That is right; you need to know where your company’s strengths and weaknesses lie. If you don’t know your own company then a hired service won’t either. The only way they will get to know your company is through you. So make sure you know your company intimately. Know where your company is positioned in the market and where you want it to be. Only then can you impart that knowledge onto someone else.
Thirdly, because anyone can throw up a website and claim they are one of the thousands of internet marketing services out there, you should check them out. “Google” them by typing their name at www.google.com. Read the reviews and see what they’ve been up to. Look for former or current customers you can talk to and ask for references if you can. Look for testimonials. This will ensure that you get a company that can truly help you with your company’s needs.
Having a web presence is important. What is more important than that is making sure your web presence is taken to the masses in the right manner. If you don’t know how to do that on your own, then it may be time to look for experts. Internet marketing services can help you get the exposure you need, but before you choose one make sure you know what you are looking for, that you understand your company’s needs, and that you check out your candidates. Once you do that you will have the marketing expertise that can take your company into the “big leagues”.
Khemal Dole owns and operates http://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely F*R*E*E service which helps many first-timers and even experts find their perfect Work At Home job. Visit http://www.PaychecksDirect.com right now and see for yourself why so many are flocking to his site.
Wise Words On Website Content
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Writen by Matt Jackson
Websites come and websites go; it’s a fact. It’s also a fact that websites which have exceptional website content don’t go very often. In order to win and retain business you need to be able to attract, keep and excite people’s attention but for many that isn’t always an achievable target. However without website content that can do this and do it quickly you are losing visitors and potential customers to your competition so if you can’t create the website content that will achieve this and more you should consider getting someone who can.
Website content for visitors.
In bygone times keyword cramming your website content was the order of the day; it got you ranked high on search engines affording you plenty of hits to your website but in due course people realised that the visitors they were winning weren’t actually taking advantage of the offers on site or clicking the affiliate links. Search engines also cottoned on pretty quickly to the art of keyword cramming and eventually devised a cunning plot that penalises you for the excessive use of keywords within your website content. This article uses a keyword density of just over 6% for the keywords ‘website content’ and that is just about right. You need to get the balance just right; not making readers obviously aware of the over existence of the term website content but including it often enough that it will get you brownie points with search engines.
Website content for search engines.
Search engines don’t employ millions of people to trawl through the millions of websites and then judge how good the content is, instead they use robots or spiders that will crawl your website and measure the use of your keywords in order to ascertain the relevancy and usefulness of your website content. If they find it has too high a percentage they judge you to be a keyword crammer and you will be penalised. If it’s too low they determine (rightly or wrongly) that your website content isn’t relevant to potential visitors. Again you get penalised. You have to get the balance just right.
Website content that sells your product.
Your website visitors are your potential customers and they should be treated as such, but the average online shopper is very different in temperament to the high street shopper. They want to see useful content surrounding your products and they want to see it on a relevant topic. The latest and most common way to do this is through the use of a number of articles; these articles serve a couple of very useful purposes that we will discuss in a minute.
You should use website content that informs, excites and compels people to purchase your product and it should do so quickly. The average website visitor will give you 3 or 4 seconds before they decide whether to read on. If you can hook them within those few seconds then they become very strong leads; you know they are interested in what you have to say. That gives you the first sentence, possibly two to get your message across.
Don’t forget that it can take up to four times as long to read off a computer screen as it can on paper so your website content should be restricted to a minimum of 300 words on a informative page to 1000 words on a page. Any less and you may struggle giving them anything useful but more than this and they’ll stop reading. The optimum word count is between 500 and 700 words.
Articles that give value to your website content.
Used well a number of article pages on your site will serve as keyword specific website content pages and also to give your visitors even more information. If you have 50 keywords you want to use you could use 1 article for each keyword. This article would then act as a separate page of website content that will rank on the search engines for that one keyword. Each well written article that your visitors read will move them one step closer to purchasing your product so use them well.
A final word on website content.
The final thing to remember about website content is that it HAS to be unique. Copied or plagiarised website content will see you heavily penalised by the search engines and where a few dollars may have got you high up in the rankings with very well written website content, using stale copied website content will see you plummet to the bottom end of the search results.
About The Author
Matt Jackson www.webwisewords.com is the website of a professional freelance writer who specialises in writing exceptional quality, 100% original website content at more than reasonable rates. Having already written website content and online articles for thousands of sites www.webwisewords.com will give you a free quote and even throw a keyword density analysis and proofread of your existing website content into the bargain (just for requesting a quote!).
The Dos And Donts Of Launching A Small Business Website
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Writen by Adil Wali
Launching a new small business website is often a long and painstaking process. And for most small businesses, the endeavor rarely ends in success. The terrain is mapped with freelancers, firms, and consultants that don’t offer the same services and most certainly don’t charge the same prices. Projects are often riddled with unclear expectations, missed deadlines, and ridiculous hourly rates. What’s worse is that many developers have the audacity to ask for even more money halfway through the project. Even after all of the hard work is complete, most companies don’t even see a return on investment.
If you haven’t been there, you probably know someone who has. IT outsourcing and procurement is often times so traumatizing that many of us vow never to deal with it again. But the whole process need not be so difficult and fruitless. The purpose of this article is to aid you in launching a successful website with minimal pain and effort. Who knows, if you play your cards right, it may even be within budget and on time!
The Don’ts
Don’t spend too much on web hosting. If you are a small business that is just beginning to define your online presence, you don’t need a whole lot! You most certainly don’t need 10,000MB (10GB) of web space and 100,000MB (100GB) of bandwidth each month. So don’t pay for it! You might be thinking, “Well, if it’s relatively cheap and I may need it in the future, why don’t I just spring for it now?” That kind of reasoning paves the road to overspending. Besides, web hosts making such offers are hoping that you won’t really use the massive set of features. Expert web developers and power users will use that kind of space and bandwidth, however, and the end result is a bogged down and slow web host. Go with something economical and reliable; it’s probably even faster.
Don’t mold your website to a pre-defined package. Although your local newspaper advertisement for development of a “5-page website with logo design for only $995″ may be tempting, don’t fall for it. Any company that sells you pre-set web site packages (or charges based on the number of pages) has the wrong idea. Web development should be a custom-fitting job. Your website is a business tool, and should be developed to exact specifications that enable it to complement the rest of your business. If you compromise your website’s functionality, you compromise its ability to help you make money.
Don’t start the project until you are fully prepared. The easiest way to ruin a web development project is to get started before you are ready. Everything does not need to be in perfect order when you are shopping around for development; however, once you select a developer and begin work, being unprepared will only slow your project down greatly and drive up costs. Avoid this by purchasing your domain and web hosting, writing out all content, and deciding on the general layout you desire, all before the project begins.
Don’t compare apples to oranges. Not all web developers are created equal, so it is unfruitful and unwise to compare them on a single benchmark (such as price). While some “full-service” firms will create your website, upload it to your domain, and maintain the site to make sure it’s up-to-date, others will simply e-mail you a folder full of files and expect you to know what to do from there. Similarly, some firms will revise the finished product over and over until you’re satisfied while others believe you are paying them for one draft of work and no more. Be mindful of these differences and understand what is built into the different prices of each provider.
Don’t focus too much on eye-candy. Remember what your website is for. Unless you are the exception to the rule, the purpose of your site is either to a) give information about your product/service or company, b) allow users to buy directly from the site or c) both. In all cases, the site must be easy to understand, navigate, and operate. If your site is so new-age and graphic intensive that users have no idea how to get around it, or worse?it takes too long to load, you’ve defeated the purpose of its creation.
The Do’s
Do have a marketing budget for your website. Launching a website without a marketing plan usually always results in a zero return-on-investment. Why? Because there are millions of sites on the internet, and if you don’t market your site, no one will come. Unlike a typical brick-and-mortar establishment that benefits from exposure to passersby, your website will not be seen by anyone until you tell people that it exists. Take advantage of the fact that your website can reach more potential customers than a small storefront ever could. Set aside marketing funds at the onset of your project.
Do prepare a timeline for the project. Many developers work virtually, that is, directly through the internet such that you may never meet them in person. This style of work is very different than the conventional, and the lack of face-to-face contact makes it easy for both parties to simply forget about the project as time goes on. Ensure that your project won’t stagnate. Prepare a solid timeline with clear milestones, expectations, and deadlines so that it is easy for both you and the developer to stay on target.
Do provide feedback in a timely and detailed manner. Although you are paying a design firm for its creativity, remember that ultimately what you say goes. You must be sensitive of the fact that development is a step-by-step, layer-by-layer process. If you don’t respond with feedback immediately, developers will have already completed other layers of the site before your feedback reaches them. This means that they must not only re-work the layer in question, but also the following layers. Some developers have been “burned” so many times in this manner that they will wait patiently for your feedback before they go on to the next layer of work. This means that development comes to a screeching halt until they hear back from you. They may get so fed up that they take on another client while they wait, leaving you at 2nd priority.
Do research developers before setting a budget. There are two reasons to do your homework before you decide on a budget. First, setting a budget without understanding a particular industry is simply nonsensical. You must know the price ranges of development and also what type of service to expect within each range. Second, a small business website, unlike a typical personal expense, is an investment. The goal of launching the site should be to aid the company in making more money. If the site won’t make money, don’t create it! If you limit your budget at $1000 without understanding the investment or industry, you may get an excellent site in that price range that makes no money. You would be better off if you do your homework, however, and find that spending more will likely yield a return. For example, you might spend $4000 on a site that actually makes you and additional $20,000 annually.
Do plan to keep your site up-to-date. One of the biggest advantages to having a website is that you can quickly and easily update information. Nothing sends a more powerful message to a potential customer than a website that hasn’t been updated for several months, or even years! You are telling people that the business is defunct or unpopular. Make it a point to update your site frequently, even if you don’t have much to say. It will let your customers know that things are going well and that your company takes an active interest in keeping them informed.
Although the above Dos and Don’ts are definitely not comprehensive, they are a good set of guiding principles for any individual or small business owner looking to create an online presence. No set of rules if foolproof, however, and there are always exceptions. My suggestion would be to always err on the side of caution. Many of the cliché statements we’ve all heard will come in handy: there is no such thing as a free lunch, and, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask questions to people who know more than you. In fact, feel free to contact me if you ever get into a jam: [email protected]. Good luck!
About the author: Adil Wali is Chief Operating Officer of SteeZo Media, a company founded in 1999 that focuses on consulting small and medium sized businesses in their efforts to create or revamp an on-line presence. Under Adil’s leadership, the company shifted away from broad-based IT consulting to a more specific focus on matching clients with the most capable and cost effective developers. SteeZo Media also manages web development projects on behalf of clients.
Company information: SteeZo Media, Inc. 1809 McAdam Rd. Darien, IL 60561. 1-888-8STEEZO. http://www.steezo.com
Make Your Artist Website Sell
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Writen by Josse Ford
Summary
Here’s the scoop on what you must know when designing a website to showcase your art, impress galleries, and win over collectors. Learn how to avoid the mistakes most emerging artists make when creating their online portfolio.
1. You need an artists website
Any artist who can classify themselves as either “emerging” or “mid- career” will definitely benefit from having their own website to promote their work. At this stage of your career it is important to be able to have a place where anyone in the world can easily access and view your work.
2. Know who you are trying to impress
Are you trying to engage a Soho gallery to sell your $20,000 paintings or sell $5 prints to children in Korea? That Soho gallery might not be impressed when they see your online-store selling prints and art cards ? but on the other hand, you could make a very handsome living if you really knew how to market those art cards
3. Make your website fit with your overall art marketing strategy
A website is most effective when it is part of a larger overall marketing strategy for your art. This includes mailings, lots of in-person gallery visits and presentations, regular (physical) showings of your work, and developing relationships with the art world. An effectively planned website can greatly compliment and simplify your other marketing efforts.
4. There is a real market for art on the internet
The internet is quickly becoming an accepted place to showcase your art to collectors and arts professionals. They might still want to see your work in person before they buy, but the fact remains: they saw it first on your website! Having an online art presence is very important at this time.
5. Have your own website and a website portfolio service
A website portfolio service (e.g. www.absolutearts.com or www.art-exchange.com is like an online slide registry. For a fee you can upload images of your work together with a bio, artist statement, and resume. They have many visitors and are a convenient way to make your work accessible to potential clients. The down side is that they don’t display your work well, and there is little flexibility in how the art is showcased.
Your own website, on the other hand will require more work to promote, but you’ll be able to present the work in the most beautiful way. Remember the times you’ve been taken into the dimmer room in a commercial gallery? How that art which looked fairly good on the main gallery wall suddenly became something you had to take home? That’s how a good artist’s website should showcase your work.
We recommend both options ? they are a perfect compliment.
6. Have a website that collectors and art professionals will enjoy
Here are some common elements which most dealers and galleries would agree on for your website design:
- Keep the site simple and elegant with the focus on the art itself and don’t overpower the art with a site that looks too busy
- Avoid advertising such as banner adds or sidebar adds. If you must have them, put them in a separate “resource” section
- Avoid complex effects like flash movies. In the time it takes to play your exotic entry page, your visitor may have moved on.
- Include your bio, artist statement, resume, contact information, gallery(s) of your work, contact information, and a pricelist.
7. Showcase your work beautifully
You need to have visual design skills to create a beautiful artist website. Here are some points to get you started:
- Most Important: Use high-quality, professionally-photographed images. Excellence in, excellence out!
- Keep the website simple and elegant with the focus on the art.
- Create multiple galleries to compliment the work ? just as a good physical gallery would do.
- Choose colors that compliment (not overpower) the work. Think of the colors you would use in a physical gallery to showcase your work ? neutral colors like crème, white, gray, and good safe choices.
- Think “minimalist” not “busy” for the layout.
- Keep your copy (text) brief. Let the art speak for itself!
8. Bring collectors and galleries to your website
Its no use having that stunning website sitting in hyperspace. Make it work for you! Here are the ways to bring quality visitors:
Search Engines: If your website has been well optimized for search engines, a search on your name or your style of art should bring up your website in the first few pages of results.
Letters of Introduction: A letter of introduction sent to a gallery or dealer is a very effective way to bring a qualified visitor to your website. Better still is to include a brochure or postcard of your work with the letter.
Advertising online or in magazines: For example, if your art is minimalist and modern in style, a banner add on an interior design website focused on the same minimalist ethic could draw a lot of traffic to your site.
9. You need to be able to sell your work on the internet.
But there are many ways to do it. More important than anything is that you have clear and up-to-date contact information on your website. If a buyer likes your work enough to bring out their checkbook, they will normally be happy to call you to close the sale.
It’s also handy to be able to sell directly from your website, especially if you sell lower-cost reproductions. There are simple and cost-effective ways to do this.
10. Think again before designing your own website
Have you really added up the total cost? Here are some questions to consider before you start designing:
- Do you have visual design skills/training?
- Can you wait several months for the site to be ready?
- Can you afford to give up a month or more of your valuable artist time?
- Do you have all the computer software and the relatively-new computer needed to build a high-quality website?
- Are you fully trained in your design software?
Can you answer “Yes” to all of the above? If so, you might think about doing it yourself. Otherwise, hire a designer!
11. Choose your website-designer thoughtfully
The most important thing here is to remember what you are trying to create ? a beautiful online gallery space to elegantly show your beautiful work ? this is very different from building a high-volume website selling printer ink cartridges and paper rolls!
Look for the ability to design a space to present your work. One way to do this is to find artist websites that you like and then contact the artist to get the name of their designer.
12. Know what you should pay
Artist’s website development prices range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. Typically, bigger design firms have larger overheads and will be significantly more expensive. On the other hand, Joe down the street can probably build you a website for $200 ? but you probably don’t want that website!
At Beautiful Artist Websites we have packages ranging from $700 to $2000 for simple elegant artists websites with different levels of functionality. We can also develop fully customized sites to your specifications with prices based on requirements.
© Josse Ford and Daniel Tardent. Josse Ford and Daniel Tardent are the founders of Beautiful Artist Websites. We design cost-effective artist websites that showcase and sell your work to arts professionals. Visit our articles page for effective art marketing tips and sign up for our free report: 6 Steps to Easy Online Art Sales.
How Disabled Users Access The Internet
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Writen by Trenton Moss
In 1995 a new era of accessibility for disabled people began. The Disability Discrimination Act was passed, stating that:
“It is unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public.”
A website is regarded as a service and the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) and DRC (Disability Rights Commission) have been quick to apply pressure on to organisations to push this law into practice. Indeed, the DRC has now published its formal investigation into 1000 websites (http://www.drc-gb.org/publicationsandreports/2.pdf).
So, how do disabled people access the Internet? There are a number of different ways depending on their particular disability:
Blind users
Internet users who have no sight at all utilize a screen reader, which reads the content of the web page, or rather the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code of the page, back to them. These machines sift through the HTML code and the technology deciphers what needs to be read aloud and what should be ignored. IBM’s screen reader can be downloaded for a free 30-day trial at http://www-3.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/hpr.html. Once you have downloaded it, go to your website, turn your monitor off, and try to navigate your website.
Partial/poor sight
To take full advantage of the Internet, users with partial or poor sight need to be able to enlarge the text on web pages. To verify that your website allows them to achieve this on Internet Explorer, go to View > Font size > Largest. If your site is accessible to this group of users then the size of the text throughout the page will increase. Users with poor vision can also use a screen magnifier. You can download a free screen magnifier at http://www.magnifiers.org/links/Download_Software/Screen_Magnifiers/ and see for yourself.
Colour blindness
It is estimated that one in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of colour blindness (http://www.iee.org/Policy/Areas/Health/cvdintro.cfm). You can check how Internet users with different strains of colour blindness are viewing your website at http://www.tesspub.com/colours.html.
Deaf users
Deaf users are able to access the Internet in much the same way as able-bodied people with one key exception ? audio content. If it is a key function of your website for people to be able to hear a message, then be sure to provide written transcripts.
Keyboard/voice only users
Some of your site users do not have access to a mouse when browsing the Internet. Try putting yourself in their position by navigating your website using only tab, shift-tab, and the return keys.
Other users
Other people who may access your website that have disadvantages include:
- Epileptic users who must always be careful to avoid seeing flickering between 2 and 55 Hz
- Web users from outside your industry who may not understand industry jargon or acronyms
- Web users whose first language is not English and who may not be able to comprehend complicated language
To really put yourself in the position of one of these web users try out the DRC’s inaccessible website demonstration at www.drc-gb.org/open4all/newsroom/website6.asp.
About The Author
This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy (Webcredible – http://www.webcredible.co.uk) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.
Increase Hits To Help Increase Your Business
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Writen by Gil Tabasa
In this day and age most businesses consider having their own website; from informational based to the most advanced and complex e-commerce site. For the large enterprise, this become a vital part of their day to day operation, their web site embeds complex applications that exchanges critical information between their partners and clients. Web services are sometime employed in order to simplify their transactions and easily exchange critical information across their suppliers, clients and partners.
Small businesses however face a different situation, majority of them don’t really utilize their web site’s full potential, and they become satisfied with just having a dot-com after their business name, important factor are then ignored and become enslaved by their own contentment.
Time constraints and financial consideration are among the reasons
Major small business owners find it difficult to upgrade or enhance their website and place useful tools and simple applications that would help visitors or guess feel more comfortable using it. Study shows that 80% of them don’t want to do it because of financial issue, 20% however, didn’t want to spend time to revisit and look at what’s lacking on their site. The cost of hostings, domain registrations and setup-fees has probably just gone to waste because many of them looked at it as totally marketing cost, when in fact it is also an investment that needed a return.
A website if managed properly would bring additional revenue for the business. How is this so? If you know how to unlock the obvious money maker capability of your website then its not only going to help you get more clients and make them happy, but would also give you extra revenue on the side.
It’s all about the hits
Can you imagine if your site is doing 100,000 hits per month or more because you exerted enough effort to enhance and polish your website? Yes, its all about the hits, opportunities arise when you have this kind of visitors or guests every month. Why? – Simple, marketing, advertising and revenue. That’s right, this is where it comes down to, by having hundred thousand hits a month, it’s a piece of cake to approach certain advertisers and make extra revenue on the side and increase potential leads for your business.
Increasing the Hits will allow you to minimize the cost of advertising expense by doing them online as well as all your promotions thereby increasing your revenue. Happy customers and impressed prospects can bring leads to your business and increase sales.
So how can you really increase the number of visitors? Or hits? By applying some of the strategies below that you may feel mostly fit for your business.
When you’re done polishing your site, don’t fail to take note of the changes by using website traffic analyzers or counters. You can sign up and download them for FREE or pay for it as part of your hosting service.
Results can vary depending on how well you implement the above, but there are plenty of books and articles out there that discuss this subject, I recommend you check them out to increase your knowledge in this area because its important that you use your website as a tool not only to interact with your clients and prospects but increase your business as well.
Guil Tabasa is a consultant for Altertek Solutions; he has been in the consulting business for more than 7 years now. He has helped small and medium businesses add value to their business that directly contributes to their revenue.
I Want to Make Money Online. How Do I Get Started?
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I Want to Make Money Online,How Do I Get Started?
You have taken the first step by making the positive decision to become an online entrepreneur. There is a lot of work ahead just as there is in developing any business, although, a lot of this can be out sourced and it is worth it because the rewards can be tremendous when an online business is successful.
Hopefully this article will give you a framework for what needs to be done to make money online and get your internet business up and running. But, one thing that I want to stress from the outset is that a real internet business is not some get rich quick scheme and it will take time before you see a real return on your investment. If you are not a patient person then this is probably not the best business model for you to follow, but if you are patient then there is the potential to make lots of money.
Getting a business started online requires some of the same business principles that need to be adopted in a traditional business for it to be successful.
1. A niche Market of People that require a product or service.
2. A Product or service That Fills Their Need
3. An outlet Where They Can Find the Product or Service (Your Website)
4. A Way of Letting That Market Know You Have The Product
5. An Offer
6. A Way to Deliver the Product
7. A Way For Your To Get Paid.
Let’s go through these one by one:
1. A Market of People Interested In Buying Something.
You could have the best product or idea in the world, but if nobody in the marketplace has a need for it right now then it will be very difficult for you to make money from a website and your online business will probably fail without a significant marketing budget. You don’t want to have to create interest in your product. That is an uphill battle as people don’t really like to be sold to or convinced of anything. You want to simply want to find the customers who are already looking for a product or a solution and be there for them at the right place and the right time.
One of the most difficult things for most people who want to set up an online business is to think of a money making idea for their business, or to identify the market that they want to focus on. Or some people go to the opposite end of the spectrum and decide that they want to offer to much and almost find themselves in a position where they are competing with the likes of Amazon (not a good idea)! To find the best market you need to look at several factors: What is popular? What are people buying these days? Do any of those things stick out as a market you might want to be involved in? Once you have identified some markets that interest you, try to think of new product that you could introduce and sell on-line or alternative look for other peoples products to sell on their behalf (this is known as affiliate marketing). Golf is a popular sport with millions of people and has a high search demand on the internet. Can you see yourself selling a downloadable guide to a better gold swing? Have you battled and beaten depression or any other emotional problem? Could you see yourself giving an online instructional course on how others can do the same? Weight loss is always popular, can you see yourself selling a guide to that? Baby toys are also popular, can you see yourself selling those? Think of things you, your friends and family already need, enjoy and pay money for. These may give you idea for your first website niche which will help you to make money online.
Think about what you can do to help people fulfill their needs and wants. Use a research tool like Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery, or recruit a specialist to help you identify what people are actually interested in and are currently searching for in large numbers on the internet. Finally, type the main keywords that relate to that product into Google and check out the competition. Don’t worry if you find some, it’s actually better to have some competition because it helps to confirm that there is a market for your proposed offering. Once you’ve found a market that meets all these criteria you’ve found a healthy market where you can make money with your website.
2. Find a Product That Fills the Need.
Just because you need a product to sell doesn’t necessarily mean that you must create one. Some people make a good living selling other people’s products on the internet and earning a percentage of the sale. You can promote other peoples’ information products and receive high commissions from a website called Clickbank.com or you can find a good drop shipper and sell almost any physical product you can imagine and they will dispatch it for you, this means that you do not need to hold any stock.
Of course, you will always have more unique business opportunities with your own product. Here’s one easy way to create an information product in no time at all.
Take a look at Yahoo Answers and see if you can find questions that people are asking over and over again. Is there some particular piece of information that the market really needs right now and it isn’t being supplied? Maybe it’s for example, how to get gum out of your hair, or how to make money from foreclosures. Either of these subjects could become the basis for an information product like an ebook, which people can buy and download from your website. You can write it yourself if you know the answer or you could source it and have someone write the book for you. Convert the document to PDF and you’ve got an information product that the market potential needs. Later you can learn how to convert your written content into an audio or video product that people will pay even higher prices for.
3. Make Money from a Website.
It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult to make money online without a website. If you don’t know how to code Html and build a search engine friendly website then you can hire someone like High Impact who does to build one for you. Having a website means you’ll need to go out and purchase a domain name and hosting as well.
What should be on your website?
If you are selling physical products be sure to prominently feature pictures of your products. The pictures often sell themselves and improve the sales conversion significantly. If it’s an information product you’re selling you will want to get yourself some slick sales copy. This means text on your site that get’s the visitor in the buying mood. A sales letter is the tool of choice to encourage your web visitors to click on the “Buy Now” button. You can find sales letter templates online for a descent price to get you started. A promotional video might be even more effective if used in conjunction with the sales letter, if it looks and sounds professional it can encourage people to spend more time on your website and potentially by your product if demonstrated well .
4. A Way of Letting That Market Know You Have The Product
This is science of getting visitors (traffic) to your website. There are many ways to do this, but the trick is not to be overwhelmed with all the different ways. You can try and learn them yourself, however, for your new venture it is probably best to work with an expert and learn from them. The main ways to gain website traffic are: Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Advertizing, Blogging/Pinging or Joint Ventures. There are many ebooks and articles like this one available online that can teach you these skills and many of them are free. Seek them out and start reading, learning and applying.
5. An Offer
You’ll need to develop a clear offer that you will make to your web visitors. This simply means developing a clear way to describe what your product is and how much it will cost your web visitor to buy it. See what kind of pricing strategy your competition is using and make yours better, with an improved price point, more features, added value or special offers.
6. A Way For you To Deliver the Product
This will depend on whether your product is digital or physical and also whether you are promoting your own product or if you are an affiliate marketer. Drop shipping is one method that can take the headache of delivery out of your hands. If you are selling digital products (downloadable video or ebook) you can simply configure your Paypal account to send the customer to a custom page where the product is available for download. To prevent buyers who haven’t paid from finding your download page you might consider using a product called DL Guard or changing the name of the download file frequently.
7. A Way For Your To Get Paid.
Paypal is a wonderful way for you to get paid especially when selling digital or physical products. Upgrade to a “Merchant’s Account” so that your customers can pay without having a Paypal account of their own. You will need to create a “Buy Now” Button for whatever product you’re selling.
Finally, being able to make money online requires dedication, it takes some people years to perfect, others a lot less. The most important thing to remember is to get started, ever day that goes past is a potentially lost sale! This article only includes the basic building blocks and if you want to get started quickly and effectively then don’t waste time and start working with a professional who has the knowledge that you don’t. If you don’t have the budget to work with a professional then keep taking action, learning and tweaking your methods until your internet business works. If you get stuck then contact us for assistance, if not, then good luck and much success!
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How to make money on the internet
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With the advent of university top-up fees, student life doesn’t come cheap for today’s overworked undergraduates. But the power of the internet offers up a number of ingenious ways to generate some extra beer money from the comfort of your own home. Here are ten of the best.
1. Social networking
It might seem like nothing more than a pipe dream but making money as you trawl through profiles of friends, prospective and ex boyfriends and girlfriends is actually a reality. Yuwie, an upstart social networking enterprise, offers to pay its users as they increase the page impressions of their public profiles, upload photos to share and refer others to join in the fun. All of this is achieved by a proportionate payment structure that sees around half of the website’s advertising revenue – its chief source of income – distributed directly to its user base.
Admittedly it’s still early days but with around half a million registrations to date and no shortage of testimonials, Yuwie looks like the real deal.
2. Blogging
There are two ways to make cash through blogging: either by earning commission from advertising banners placed alongside a blog of your own or by engaging in the (slightly dubious) practice of “sponsored” blogging. An array of third party tools is available in the case of the former option; Google’s AdSense remains one of the more popular solutions. Just establish yourself a decent blog, configure the ads and see what happens. Sponsored blogging on the other hand is an altogether more calculated affair, with specialists such as Blogitive and PayPerPost providing a platform through which companies essentially contract bloggers to post favourable content about their products in exchange for cash. Unethical, granted, though nonetheless undoubtedly fruitful for those subtle enough to get away with it.
3. Message boards
Every message board – both small-time niche operation and gargantuan general interest community alike – relies on posts from its members in order to sustain user interest. Newly-created forums are particularly dependent on regular contributions in order to encourage conversations and attract the registration of new members. This, of course, is where you come in. In exchange for a nominal fee of anywhere between £0.01 and £0.10 per post, message board administrators frequently advertise externally for “ringers” to sign up to their endeavours and get the ball rolling. Popular recruiting grounds include webmaster-talk and Digital Point.
4. Stock photography
If you’ve a keen eye for an impressive frame, or even just some half-decent camera kit at your disposal, selling pictures to any one of the plethora of stock photography agencies scattered across the web represents a sure-fire method of generating an income online. The likes of iStockPhoto and Fotolia offer budding photographers the incentive of earning potentially significant sums for their snaps on a per-download basis in exchange for their other royalty payment rights. Predictably, the most sought-after depictions are of a fairly mundane nature – think three-quarter view angles of pretty women dressed in suits – though equally inevitable is the high demand in some quarters for photographs of an altogether more risqué nature…
5. Surveys
As inglorious a means of making money online as you’re ever likely to find, completing market research surveys for cash is time-consuming, invasive and very, very dull. It also happens to be very effective. Opportunities in this field are virtually endless too, with literally thousands of research groups vying for your time and attention. Perhaps the most well known of these is YouGov, whose methodology involves obtaining responses from an invited group of internet users at prices ranging from £0.50 to £2.00 per survey completed. Registration is free and relatively painless, though if you are planning on going down this route, you would do well to create another email account solely for the purpose of survey completion – your personal details are going to be getting bandied around an awful lot.
6. Games
Believe it or not, it is possible to make money simply by playing computer games. Second Life, one of a range of so-called massively multi-player online games, allows users to both buy in-game currency called Linden dollars (a name derived from its creator, Linden Labs) and later exchange any amount amassed within the game back into real-world funds. Ailin Graef made the headlines in 2006 having claimed that her in-game avatar, Anshe Chung, had generated enough resources to allow her to be classified as a millionaire in reality. Other prospects include Moola, which claims to pay players over five million pounds for the straightforward task of winning thirty of its games in a row. Perhaps tellingly, the grand prize is yet to be claimed.
7. Freelancing
If you have a talent – be it for writing, graphic design or even programming – online freelancing will allow you to exploit it for a handsome profit. Services such as Elance and oDesk advertise outsourced remote working opportunities on behalf of thousands of companies and allow members to sign up to assignments according to their desired criteria. Naturally, there’s a catch – said services also take a cut of up to 15 per cent of your potential earnings. Depending on your skills and availability though, there is a lot of money to be made in this fashion, with the fastest-growing fields – like document translation – paying the best rates.
8. Poker
Likely the most controversial inclusion in this list, the online poker world is awash with sob stories of empty wallets and broken dreams from people of all walks of life who just didn’t know when to quit. If you feel like having a go at making some big bucks through gambling, extreme caution is urged. Quite apart from the fact that players need a fair degree of skill in the game to get anywhere, starting small is crucial – only bet what you can afford to lose with a smile. If you are skilled – and lucky – the potential rewards are vast, with some players regularly earning in excess of £1,000 per day. But, remember, the pitfalls are even greater. Texas Hold ‘Em is by far the most popular variant of the game – get some free practice via MSN Games.
9. Selling
A method as old as the internet itself, hawking wares through virtual auctions and shops provides a quick income boost for many students, enabling unwanted Christmas to be disposed of with ease. The obvious starting points are eBay and Amazon Marketplace , though classifieds websites such as Ad Trader are proving increasingly popular. Those of you looking to secure revenue on a more long-term basis will need to source in-demand products and be able to sell them at a mark-up on the price that you yourself paid. One example is “vintage” clothing – cheap clothes with retro appeal are available in abundance at charity shops and can easily be sold to other fashionable students online at a higher price.
10. Doing something crazy
Most truly spectacular success stories of making money online don’t involve any of the aforementioned routes at all. Instead, they showcase brazen opportunism that flies in the face of all logic and reason. Take Alex Tew’s MillionDollarHomepage from 2005 for instance – a website set up with the sole intention of selling pixels at one US dollar apiece to advertisers in order to fund its proprietor’s university degree. On paper it was a ludicrous concept – of course it was – but a 21 year-old Tew soon found himself a certified millionaire. So too did the founders of Doggles, an internet business devoted to selling goggles… for dogs. The point is that, just as in the “real” world, originality paired with good business acumen may potentially reap far greater rewards than any supposedly tried-and-true method of generating cash that you might care to mention. So be creative.
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