5 Important Rules in Website Design

5 Important Rules in Website Design
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Indian Government sanctions prosecution of Google, Facebook, Twitter for objectionable content

New Delhi: The government has sanctioned the prosecution of executives from companies like Google and Facebook for objectionable content posted online.

Yesterday, the Delhi High Court warned that like China, India can shut down these sites. 21 internet companies are in legal trouble. Charges against them will include “promoting enemity between groups” and “deliberate malicious acts intended to outrage.” Since some of the charges requested in court are non-bailable, the government had to indicate whether it agreed with the need for the websites to stand trial.

A Delhi court has also asked the government to issue summons to more than 10 companies who have said they are head-quartered abroad, like Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo. The executives of all 21 companies have been ordered to appear in court on March 13. They may face criminal charges.

Google and Facebook have appealed against the lower court’s proceedings in the Delhi High Court, which will consider the matter on Monday.

Internet companies say they cannot develop a method to monitor defamatory or obscene material that’s been posted on their sites. “No human interference is possible, and moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents. Billions of people across the globe post their articles on the website.” That met with an angry response from the Delhi High Court yesterday, which said, “You just have a stringent check. Otherwise, like China, we may pass orders banning all such web sites.”

The case centres on a petition filed in December by a journalist named Vinay Rai, who referred to obscene depictions online of Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed, and various Hindu deities. In response, a Delhi magistrate summoned the executives of 21 companies and suggested they face trial for criminal conspiracy. The magistrate had said, “It appears from a bare perusal of the documents that the accused, in connivance with each other and other unknown persons, are selling, publicly exhibiting and have put into circulation obscene, lascivious content”.

Speaking to NDTV today, Mr Rai said, “It was this court that had considered this issue important. This court had sent summons to the concerned parties. Our hope for justice continues.” Explaining why he took companies like Facebook and Google to court, he added, “I have spoken to all religious leaders in this case and even all political party leaders. I asked them if they considered the content we have as valid. They said, ‘you can cast aspersions on leaders personally but such comments on leaders in public can cause riots’. Why should we allow this?”

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Free 3D Ebook & Box cover generator

Just finished coding this tool:

 

http://www.websitedays.com/plug_Free3DEbookBoxCoverMaker.html
Generates 3D Ebook covers and 3D Box covers for free!
It can generate ebook and box covers in 3 sizes, different colors, with shadow, and is pretty easy to use.
You can use the covers in your ebooks, on sales letters for your reports etc.
Enjoy!

 

Your Words Are Your Own Product?

If you’ve never come up with any ebooks or digital products on your own but you’ve been writing articles and posting in forums, then you’re in for a big surprise.

You won’t believe that you already have your own digital product in hand.

You’d probably think that your own product has to be an ebook, a piece of software or some sort.

That is normal.

Though you can’t actually hold a digital product, the image of a book that appears on a website seems appealing and real enough to imagine that it’s a tangible, physical product – when an ebook is really a simple PDF or executable file.

That’s why creating an ebook can sometimes be a logical way to own a digital product.

But, you’ve been missing the point.

Like I said in the opening paragraph, if you have been writing articles and posting in forums, you definitely already have your own product in hand.

Take writing articles for example.

You can write a 500 to 600-word article about a topic and then leave an affiliate link to the website you’re promoting in the author byline.

Since there’s no article can be written exactly the same by two different authors, unless you plagiarize word for word, your article is your own unique product – in this case, a marketing product on its own.

What you need to do next is market your article as if you’re marketing an ebook or other digital product and make sure that there are as many people as possible read your article.

How do you market your own articles?

One way to do it is by submitting your articles to hundreds of article directories and thousands of ezine publishers.

If you want a quick result, and get your article listed in major search engines in as little as one day, pay for the article submission service or use article submitter software. You’ll get a wider distribution in a short period of time this way.

What if you don’t write an article, but have been actively posting in forums?

Well, use bits and pieces of the postings and turn them into articles.

For example, post a question like “how do you get top ranking in search engine?”

Then, when you get enough responses, compile the answers and write an article based on the information you have. Next, give a catchy headline for the article such as “Top 7 Sure-fire Ways to Achieve Top Search Engine Ranking in Less Than a Week.”

Include a short promotion about you in the author byline and Presto! You’ve got an article. You’ve got your own product.

Of course, you don’t normally create an image of article cover (like ebook normally has ebook cover), and lose the feeling of a ‘real’ product, but you can always turn a few of your articles into a short report. And guess what? Lots of people create images for their reports. You can do the same too.

Now, can you easily create a 500-word article?

How fast can you write a 500-word article?

Can you write more than one 500-word article?

Think about it. I’ve just created a product of my own and you’re done reading it in less then 3 minutes.

Is this article a great product? You’ll be the judge, but what’s more important is that I’ve already successfully marketed “my own product” to you.

Haven’t I?

Why The Internet Is Creating Millionaires Daily

There are millionaires created daily via the Internet. How are they doing it? If they can, can you?

One of the secrets these millionaires believe in is setting your goals high. The more one earns the more confidence he has that he can earn double that amount or even triple.

The secret to building mailing lists of over a million people, millions of hits on your website and marketing high end products are the three events that are making Internet millionaires.

It doesn’t hurt to come up with a unique idea, like software to create instant communication access to board members and company officials.

Brainstorming and interacting with ordinary people who have already made their millions is a great way to pick their brains, find out how they started and what they did to keep going.

The Internet has the possibility to reach millions of potential customers and making you a millionaire.

Just a few steps could help you start making the money you’ve only dreamed of.

1. Decide what niche you are going to market to and create a website. Give something away FREE. Right, free, but require them to sign on to your list to receive it.

2. Respond quickly when a visitor signs up.

3. Send the new subscriber some new quality information. Promote a product of your own or an affiliates.

4. Promote your website and continue to add subscribers to your list.

5. Create a newsletter that goes out every week. Remember this is going to your niche market so be sure to include quality information and earn the trust of your visitor list.

6. Offer them a sales pitch, you don’t have to every week, but don’t be afraid to sell something!

Using these six simple steps, you too can make millions on the Internet. Find your market niche and start your marketing campaign today.

Why Dated Content And Dead Links Will Punish Your Site

Along with the Internet boom came the massive proliferation of websites. Since many websites are made not just for private use but to make money as well, websites find themselves having to compete with other websites of the same category when it comes to reaching and keeping their target audience.

SEO and Factors Affecting Page Rank

In order to reach their target audience websites find that they have to rely on search engines to list their site among the top results of specific search strings. This is because of the fact that it is impossible for Internet users to memorize each and every website they need to and are interested in visiting due to the unbelievably large number of websites dealing with almost all kinds of information and offering all kinds of services and goods out there. Most Internet users doing research are found to not type websites’ URLs directly but instead usually click on the top results that their preferred search engine gives. Because of this fact, websites who wish to be noticed by a large audience actually has to be noticed by search engines first.

To get noticed by search engines, web designers use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. SEO is the method used to increase a website’s ranking in search engine results listings. Using SEO websites have a greater chance of getting noticed by search engines and thus get noticed by their target audience. Each search engine has their way of ranking websites but has at least several common ranking factors. The importance of the factors, however, varies for each search engine and some of the factors themselves are unconfirmed by search engine engineers. Although there are many factors that do affect a websites ranking in search engine results only two very important factors will be discussed in this article – content and links.

Despite the unknowns SEO experts agree on most of the factors and their importance. According to SEO experts the 10 most important factors that can influence a web document’s rank at the major search engines, namely Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves, for a particular term or phrase are the following:

• Title Tag
• Anchor Text of Links
• Keyword Use in Document Text
• Accessibility of Document
• Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages
• Primary Subject Matter of Site
• External Links to Linking Pages
• Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
• Global Link Popularity of Site
• Keyword Spamming

Importance of Links in Page Rank

As shown on the list above links rank among the top factors that affect a web document’s rank. As a matter of fact it was listed five times. Links, however, can affect a page rank both positively and negatively. Both internal and external links can affect a websites ranking. However, if many of the links on the website are dead links or links that lead to 404 pages then instead of being an asset those links actually create a negative effect. The quality of links found on a page is therefore very important. They should have relevant anchor texts to point visitors to more information they need and should lead to relevant pages as well. Dead links is considered to be undesirable and will subtract from page rank.

Importance of Links to Visitor Retention

Links do not only affect the websites page rank but will affect visitor retention as well. Dead links is a sure turn off to visitors. Visitors who click on links expect to go to an existing page with relevant information. If there are dead links on your website visitors might conclude that the site is updated that frequently and that the site is not of good quality. If this happens they will automatically try other websites that they feel caters to their needs and is less irritating.

It is also true that links to relevant sites might affect visitor retention for the worse since visitors might opt to stay with the relevant site. However, good anchor texts leading to relevant sites are still important. Remember that if your website really is a quality website although your links may increase the traffic to other sites visitors would still stay with your site and keep on coming back. Aside from that, visitors might perceive your website as a good starting point in their online activity and thus keep on coming back because of your links.

Importance of Content

As mentioned earlier, although you might have no dead links and your links may all be relevant, your website can still suffer if it is not a quality site or a site with quality content. Quality content means relevant and fresh content delivered regularly. Dated content is almost always a website killer. Visitors often go on the net to look for relevant and timely content, unless they are doing research in history or some other well established facts. However, being such a dynamic community, more often than not it is the new trends, new information, new products, new discoveries, and everything else new, that people who go on the net look for. Although the content of the website might be interesting and well written, visitors will not opt to go back more than twice or thrice if they see that the content is not updated periodically. After all what is the use of reading the same article over and over. Some websites even have last updated dates dated more than three years back. As soon as visitors see that date they will know that the content is dated and will most probably never visit the site again.

The Deadly Combination

Dated content and dead links should never ever be taken for granted if you want your website to be a success. A website with either of the two will be penalized enough by visitors who opt to never come back or by search engines that will rank the website a little lower. But a website with a combination of dated content and dead links is sure to be relegated to the end of search engine results listings. And if people ever do visit the website with such a low ranking, they are bound to never return to visit the site again.

What is Reverse DNS?

Reverse DNS (Domain Name System) lookup, also known by the acronym (rDNS), is the process by which someone can look up a host name given a particular IP address. Reverse DNS is also known in some places as reverse resolving. It is the opposite of DNS lookup, by which someone looks up an IP address given a particular host name.

Why use Reverse DNS?

A reverse DNS lookup is usually performed for troubleshooting purposes. Commonly, tools like a traceroute or a ping will do a reverse DNS lookup to determine the flow of traffic from one point to another. Another common place for reverse DNS lookup is when accessing a person’s email. Many modern email providers will do reverse DNS lookups to determine if an email was sent from a known spam address. Finally, reverse DNS can be used to make sure that there is a proper relationship between the owner of a server and the owner of a domain name. This technique, known as Forward Confirmed reverse DNS (FCrDNS) is used to put a stop to phishing sites and spammers.

What is IPv4 Reverse DNS lookup?

IPv4 Reverse DNS is a type of reverse DNS that uses a reverse IN-ADDR entry with the special domain “in-addr.arpa”. The IP address represented in the in-addr.arpa domain is written in reverse order to the usual way that the IP address is written. For example, if a person was performing a reverse domain lookup for an address such as 192.168.1.1, he would do the lookup using 1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.

What is IPv6 Reverse DNS lookup?

IPv6 Reverse DNS lookup is a type of reverse DNS that uses the special domain ip6.arpa. Unlike IPv4 Reverse DNS lookup, IPv6 Reverse DNS lookup does not use the standard IP address style of looking up host names. Instead, it uses a sequence of nibbles, or four bit aggregations, in reverse order with each number separated by a period. For example, if a person was performing a reverse domain lookup for an address such as 2001:0db8:0:0:0:0:1428:57ab he would do the lookup using b.a.7.5.8.2.4.1.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa.

What happens when there are multiple host names assigned to one IP address?

A reverse DNS lookup will be able to determine all of the host names associated with a particular IP address, though this practice is sometimes frowned upon. Many cheap web hosting plans will offer shared virtual hosts where many sites share space on the same IP address. Although this does not affect the validity of the information returned by a reverse DNS lookup, it can lead to problems with other services.

How To Increase Website Traffic With Newsletters

There are many marketing solutions out there for your website, but the best way to increase website traffic quickly is writing a newsletter. Writing a weekly newsletter would be ideal but is not required. If you write an article for newsletters from time to time you will notice the increased website traffic. The best thing about writing a newsletter is that it is free marketing that will increase your website traffic.

All that you need in order to write a newsletter is an idea, some writing skills, and someone interested in publishing the newsletter. If you’re concerned on where you actually market your website throughout the newsletter, it mainly comes from the resource box. The resource box allows you to write a small amount of information about yourself and/or your site and then a link to your site. The resource box is the key part to increase website traffic.

Writing a well written resource box is crucial to help increase website traffic. If you have a poorly written resource box, you will have trouble generating more traffic. There are a few ways you can improve your resource box to assure yourself of increased website traffic. The first thing you will want to do is include your website link in the resource box. This free marketing strategy gives people the option to click on your link through your resource box, thus increasing your website traffic.

Make sure to not use any affiliate links in your resource box. Affiliate links are long and tend to turn people off as oppose to increasing website traffic. If you really want to include an affiliate link, create a page on your site that is a _javascript redirecting to your affiliate site link. This will allow you to keep the URL as short as possible and help you increase website traffic.

Trial and error tends to be the best method for anything in the internet marketing business. Try several different resource boxes and determine which one help increase website traffic the best. This will allow you to find the right resource box so that you can stick with it for newsletters, articles, and even blog entries.

Publishing your article in one newsletter will not give you the results you may hope for. In order to increase your website traffic without publishing every week you have to find multiple newsletters to publish one article. Searching for multiple newsletters to publish your article is by far the most important part of the plan. If you can find 10-15 newsletters to publish your article you will see steadily increased website traffic.

Writing an article for several newsletters is one of the best marketing strategies to increase website traffic quickly. If you place a resource box on the bottom and find several newsletters willing to publish your article, you will see increased website traffic after a short time. So get out there and begin researching to find the right newsletters.

How To Fully Automate Your Website So You Don’t Waste Time Working

So you don’t have a way of managing all of the customer responses coming through your inbox? I can relate, please let me share a personal story.

When I first started my online business, I didn’t know what an autoresponder was, and I was intimidated by setting one up on my site. I simply had an HTML form set up that would send e-mail address of people that wanted my newsletter straight to my inbox. I can only imagine the amount of money that I was leaving on the table. I had no way of responding back to my potential customers. When I saw a newsletter signup come into my inbox, I would copy and paste a reply back to them.

The times have changed. Not only is the above situation not acceptable, but there’s no way you can effectively grow your business without an autoresponder.

After all, since you now have your website set up to sell your e-book, you are going to need a way to handle the various types of correspondence being sent to you from potential customers.

Autoresponders are an effective and economical innovation (software program) designed to “respond” to any messages a website receives. Thousands of online businesses use autoresponders to send a confirmation “thank you” notice when anyone registers with their email address on the site. Think of them as an answering machine for your website.

Using an autoresponder is a critical component to having a successful ebook business. Not only do you need to respond to messages and inquiries, you must implement an email sales campaign to promote your ebook. If you were to try to manage the emails yourself, the task will eventually become impractical and extremely time consuming. You could hire someone to answer them, but when your site is receiving several hundred hits a day with an average of 50% registering to receive more information; you would need to hire several people thus making the cost very prohibitive. In business, “time is money and money is time”, and online, and autoresponder is the only solution.

If you do not have an autoresponder, you will lose sales, and lots of them. If you are not using an auto email program to get these non-committals to return to your site, you will not be able to sell your ebook to them. It’s really as simple as that.

How does an autorepsonder work? By utilizing the information you input into the programs, the Autoresponder will automatically answer any email or sign-up your site receives. You can even program a variety of responses and how many times you want to send your customers an email; plus any sales receipts, download information and access, support problems – can all be effectively handled by an autoresponder. Obviously if there is a support situation, you or your webmaster will need to step in and fix the problem, but the autoresponder can easily let the customer know that someone will be emailing them soon to help.

Due to the nature of your business (e-book sales), you will need a variety of email autoresponses depending upon the situation. A typical list of responses for an e-book sales site might include some or all of the following:

1) Thank you response for visiting and signing up;
2) Free newsletter emailed to all sign-ups;
3) Special offer emails to entice purchase;
4) Purchase notification/invoice;
5) Thank you for purchasing;
6) Informing of your newest e-book;
7) Offer free course/bonus for signing up;
8) Notification of problems/complaints received from customers;
9) Notification of feedback received.

Basically the uses of the program are endless, in fact anything that you would want emailed to several customers can be handled through an autoresponder. And just like the almost limitless uses, there are a vast number of autoresponder companies vying to handle your e-business correspondence.
 
Many sites have free autoresponder programs available which handle minimal email tasks; however because you are trying to sell ebooks, you should look for a system or service that does not limit the capabilities of your emails. Make sure you get unlimited email size plus you will need the ability to send multiple emails to the same person over a period of time. Remember, the reason for sending several emails over a course of time is based on the fact that most customers (about 60% – 70%) do not purchase on their first visit. If they are interested in learning more about your ebook, they will sign up for more information. And this is when you use an autoresponder to send multiple targeted information emails to drive those reluctant customers back to your site for the purchase. You will also want to have the ability to track your emails to assess the effectiveness of such a campaign. We use aweber.com and getresponse.com is also a good solution.

The messages you will want to send will depend upon the reason for the need to respond. One way you can handle this by having multiple email addresses for your site. Here is a short list of email addresses you will need:
1) support@yoursite.com
2) Yourname@yoursite.com
3) Yourassistant@yoursite.com
4) sales@yoursite.com

If you need additional addresses, do not hesitate to set them up and use them; the more you categorize your customer’s emails, the better you, your webmaster and your autorepsonder program will work. The autoresponder will know the difference between newsletter sign-ups, customer logins, purchases, and so on. This is all configured in the program, as is sending notification emails for receipt of a customer’s inquiry at one of your listed email addresses. Again, you or your webmaster will manually have to answer any inquiries received at a site listed address. Unfortunately at this moment in time, autoresponders cannot read and answer emails. I would imagine that sometime in the not too distance future this will become a possibility. One can always hope!

Now you understand why autoresponders are an important if not critical ingredient in developing a productive, functioning, 24/7 e-book sales site. Using one will help increase your sales, drive those hesitant potential customers back to your site and take care of those everyday tasks associated with having a professional and courteous Internet business. Offering excellent customer service is a significant business building tool, especially for online businesses when a customer assesses you and your site faster than you realize.

How do you build an Affiliate web site?

First lets define affiliate web site – For our purpose, it is a web site that earns you money without physically selling something by using techniques such as Google adsense and other advertiser programmes.

Valid web sites.

I have heard it said that anyone can build a web site and this is true. Programmes like FrontPage are ideal for building affiliate web sites. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the web site builder gets carried away and attempts to put every whistle and bell into the site! Affiliate web sites should be clean valid code and not overly cluttered with eye candy. By default clean code equals faster loading pages and better search engine optimisation. Always try and code your sites to be valid web sites.

Using tables in your web site design

Tables have for a long time been the only way to position your content on your web page, however the introduction of CSS and particularly CSS2/3 allows the designer to build sites with out using tables! However the use of tables in web site design is still valid so go ahead and use them.

Page layout

There seems to be 2 types of affiliate web site design logics. On the one hand you have the work from home affiliate web master who is happy to have a sloppy looking site that just has ads bursting out all over the place and the other who still working from home builds a slightly sticky web site. The preference here is to build a sticky web site. Why? Well one its good manners! If you want some one to look at your web site, you have to give them a purpose to do so! Secondly, your user will take a while longer on your sticky site which increases the chance of them clicking on one of your ads which makes you money! And finally, a sticky web site with good content may even entice your viewer back for a second or third time. With a sloppy looking web site, the user will immediately see ads above the fold and will recognise the site as ‘spam’ type of site – a web site that lacks content and only there to get you to click on an ad. Which type of affiliate web site user are you.

Presentation

Design your affiliate web site to be attractive but not over bearing. The user is there for information. Whilst looking for that information on your web site, your design will attract them to your adverts Graphical use should be kept to a minimum and always use the alt tags to your advantage. Links should be in text format and providing a site map is said to help with SEO. How many pages you have is debatable but 20 to 50 pages would be the minimum starting point – note i said starting point! Your affiliate web site will need to grow in size so be prepared to add addition web pages to your web site, if you made a plan of your web site before starting out, you will understand the web site structure and ad additional pages quite easily.

Running your affiliate web site business from home

Work from home and make money from your affiliate web site, should not be taken literally! A work from home affiliate, can make money, but do not give up the day job. Currently we are testing various methods of how to make money from home using a web site. It is very early days but an income is being generated, don’t be fooled, the income has yet to reach a $ a day but I can tell you that you can build a web site and make money!

Getting Your Site Indexed Before You Launch

I’ve noticed that most SEO articles focus on what to do after you launch your site. Those that do deal with preparing your site for launch usually discuss on-site SEO like keyword research and meta tags. What tends to be neglected is the advantage that you can gain by getting your site indexed before you launch. With a little planning and a few hours of work it’s easy to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN before your site goes live.

The key to getting your site indexed in the big three is getting links pointing to it from sites that are already indexed. When the search bots crawl those sites they will inevitably find the link to your site and your site will be added to their index. Follow these five steps a month before you launch and you’ll be a step ahead of the game.

1. Register your domain name. You’d be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to do this. The sooner you register your domain, the sooner you can get some quality links pointing to it and get it indexed.

2. Put up a home page. Make a “coming soon” page with your logo, information about your site, and expected launch date. You can also add a form for people to sign up for email updates about your site. This starts building your email marketing list before you even launch.

3. Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner. Put up a blog at yoursite.com/blog. It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account at feedburner.com/. Under ‘Publicize’ in your account make sure to sign up for ‘Ping Shot’. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.

4. Write a few articles and submit to directories.  Regardless of what your site is about, there is certainly a topic relating to your site that you could write an article about. For example, if your site is going to sell fitness equipment, you could write an article about how to build a home-gym. Or if you are going to rate and review new cars, you could write an article about how to shop for a new car.  After you’ve written and proofread your articles, submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles (ezinearticles.com/) and iSnare (isnare.com/). Be sure to include a description of your new site and a link back to it in the resource box. Again, this should result in a few links to your site.

5. Get a link from an indexed site. Steps 3 and 4 should result in some links from indexed sites which should then ensure your site to be indexed. But it can’t hurt to get a few more on your own to be certain. When I launched my last site, I linked to it from my personal blog, which I knew was indexed. If you don’t have that option, you can ask someone with a blog or site related to yours to mention it. If you can’t find anyone willing to do it for free, you could offer them some free advertising on your site when you launch in exchange for the link.

Getting yourself indexed before you launch gives you a head start on your SEO and will allow your site to have a more immediate impact. Why wait until you launch? Get started a month early and you’ll reap the benefits when launch day rolls around.

6 Powerful VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2009 Using Google Adsense – Part 2

Okay, it’s now time for the next installment of… “6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2009 Using Google Adsense” series.

By now you should have a good idea of what Virtual Real Estate is and why it’s to your benefit that you start a network of your own VRE sites depending on the model you choose.

In the last installment of this series I covered “Article Directories”.

In this part of the VRE series I’m going to cover “Web Directories” in general and then give you some examples of what they might be and look like.

Sound good?

VRE Model #2. Web Directories.

An “Web Directory” is simply a directory on the World Wide Web that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Web Directory owners will often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion. Then human editors will review their submission and if accepted, will be added to their database.

The one thing about Web Directories is they are often used as part of a website marketing strategy for being indexed in the major search engines like Yahoo!, Google, MSN to name a few.

The main strategy behind someone submitting there website to a directory is that a new site needs to quickly build inbound links from reputable sources. In doing this they will get a higher ranking within search engine results under there target keywords depending on the PR(popularity ranking) of that directory or inbound link.

That’s the basic run-down of what an Web Directories purpose is and why they make a great VRE business model.

Web Directories can be and target anything you want them to. It’s your directory, so you make the decision as to what it is about.

As your directory grows, so will its traffic.

And if you have targeted affiliate programs strategically placed on your directory along side your Google Adsense code, you could be making a nice, steady income form your directory like many others are right now.

Now… as I said at the beginning of this article I would give you some examples of some Web Directories with Google Adsense so you see for yourself whether or not this is something you want to venture into.

So, with that said, here are 3 directories that I think will give you a good idea of what to expect:
Free Stuff Directory:
All Free Things – allfreethings.com/

eBook Directory:
Wisdom eBooks – wisdomebooks.com/

Software Directory:
Software5 – software5.com/

Now remember, your Online Directory can be about anything you want. Your in control.

These are just some examples of whats out.

Did you happen to see the Google Adsense ads?

BINGO!

Also, pay special attention to where those Google Adsense ads are positioned because this is KEY to getting a good CTR(Click Through Rate) with your Google Adsense ads.

Now, at this point, it’s up to you to make the decision on whether or not this is the type of VRE business model you want to use and start.

I recommend you surf around and see whats out there with your interests in mind. By doing that you will be able to get some good idea’s as to what to expect and more importantly, model your directory and/or VRE sites from.

Well, that’s it for now.

6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2009 Using Google Adsense – Part 1

VRE — better known as “Virtual Real Estate” is literally everywhere online.

That’s right. Everytime you do a search on whatever it is your searching for via the Internet you get a list of results. Within that list of results lye’s thousands, if not, millions of pages of Virtual Real Estate that is making someone out there on the WWW some handsome profits.

The question is… “what have you done in order to stake your Internet “VRE” claim so you too can enjoy some of that profit as well?”

If you haven’t started anything yet, that’s okay because I did a little research for you and came up with these “6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2009 Using Google Adsense” so you too can benefit like the many others out there online.

The first VRE business model I’d like to talk about are — Article Directories.
VRE Model #1. Articles Directories.

Article Directories are in my mind are probably one of the best VRE business models on the web simply because they offer your audience and publishers Multiple Channels of information on any topic.

And the facts are, people come online for information.

So, what do Article Directories contain?

That’s right… Information! … and lots of it.

The other great benefit to Article Directories is that you don’t have to write a single word if you don’t want to because the whole purpose of starting your Article Directory in the first place is to get other people(we also call them authors) to submit their content for your readers and/or publishers to read and use.

Now, the Rule Of Thumb is simple when it comes to growing your Article Directory and that is… the more authors you recruit, the more your Article Directory will grow, filling it full of targeted information for your readers to digest and for publishers to use on their websites.

It gets better, so keep reading.

Did you know that the more pages you have within your Article Directory means… the more search engine food you’ll have for the search engines to come and index into their database which will then be displayed within the search engines search results.

Remember in the beginning of this article when I was talking about the search engine results being full of Virtual Real Estate. This is where your Article Directories webpages(or your Virtual Real Estate) will be listed for web surfers find.

This also means that you’ll receive a lot of FREE targeted search engine traffic to your Article Directory as it grows giving your authors FREE targeted traffic to their sites and keeping them happy, and at the same time, will be building your VRE nest egg on the WWW
Are you starting to see the benefits to starting your own Article Directory on the Internet?

I hope so.

But don’t go anywhere just yet, I’m not finished.

There’s two more things I want to talk to you about before this part of the article series ends.

The first is RSS — better known as “Real Simple Syndication” and what RSS does is it allows you to syndicate your Article Directories content or just content in general through an RSS feed so that any reader and/or publisher who subscribes to a particular RSS feed within your Article Directory will receive ANY new updated content that is published… INSTANTLY!

The other benefit to a RSS feed is… lets say you have 1000 publishers subscribed to one of your RSS feeds and one of your authors submits a new article at your Article Directory, all those publishers who subscribed to that RSS feed will receive it once that RSS feed updates and when someone clicks on the link within that RSS feed to read the new article, guess where the visitor is sent to?

You guessed it, your Article Directory, with your Google Adsense ads(I’ll talk about that in a second) and whatever other related affiliate links you have on that webpage.

Now… for the BEST part, how-to make a $Profit$ with your Article directory.

I’m telling you, this is the easiest money you’ll ever make for simply supplying your viewers and the Internet(A.K.A. The Information Super Highway) with what it needs the most, Information!

How do you do it?

Heard of Google Adsense(as I mentioned just a minute ago), because if you haven’t, now you have.

What is Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is Googles affiliate program for publishers and how it works is it displays ads targeted towards the content on that particular webpage being viewed.

How do you get paid? Simple. Your reader just has to click on one of the ads within the Google Adsense ad box on that webpage and depending on what the topic is and keyword could pay some handsome commissions(usually between 35% to 50%).

And, guess what? You didn’t even have to do any selling OR follow-up.

Not bad and believe me those clicks add up Fast and by having the search engines returning frequently for regular indexing and having RSS feeds(remember, when someone clicks on the RSS feed link on someone elses website they get redirected back to yours with your Google Adsense ads on it and other affiliate links) for other publishers to use on their websites you’ll soon see your Google Adsense profits get Bigger and BIGGER!

Well, that’s it for now. So be sure to be on the look out for my next installment of the “6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2009 Using Google Adsense”.

4 Tips To Increase Your Blog Readership Fast!

Aside from being a fun hobby, what is the point of having a blog? The answer is to draw readers. Whether you are selling advertising, a product, or just your own set of ideas, you want as large a readership as possible with most blogs. So if that is the case, then it is important to know how to draw readers to your blog. There are a number of ways to increase the readership of your blog. Here are four tips that will help you to increase your blog readership that are easy to do and will definitely pay off for you.

First of all, to increase readership you would want to increase the number of pages each reader is seeing. You don’t want to be judged only on your last post, but rather on the whole of your work. To that end, try highlighting related posts within your blog. At the end of an article, highlight posts that may be of interest to those who like the current post. Most blog platforms are fitted with plug-ins that will help you with this, but if they are not, then go ahead and at least list the links to other pages manually. Another similar idea is to highlight the related posts within the content of your post. If you are talking about a subject you have discussed before, link off of one of the keywords into the past post that is related. This will also help a past post to maintain its freshness.

A second tip for increasing your blog readership is to think about doing a series. A series is a great way to keep a reader coming back again and again. In addition, if you are linking back, you can get readers looking at multiple posts even after you are done with the series. Be careful when doing a series, because you do not want to frustrate readers. However, if you have a topic you genuinely think you should handle over a period of time, then a series can really help your overall readership. If you are curious as to whether or not a series is working for your blog, then check posts. See if readers are posting through the series to see if they are following you. If they are, then your series is a success and you are only helping your blog readership.

Another way to increase readership is a little more “controversial” if you will. You can try putting excerpts on the front page of your blog from certain posts. Many people claim it is just a way to get more hits on your site. The truth is that extra hits are a little side benefit of it, but the real value is that it can make your site more engaging. By adding excerpts to the front page you can manage the front and keep it fresh while also teasing those who get that far into reading more than just your most recent blog post. This will encourage a prospective reader to explore your blog site a little more than they may have normally. Again, you want to be judged by the whole of your work, or at least by a larger piece of your work than just one post and this will do that. If your writing is up to par, then, you will see a rise in your readership.

Finally, if you really want to build and increase readership, you have to have good quality content. It should be useful, original, and interesting to your target audience as well as keeping them wanting more of the same. The more you raise the quality of your blog’s content, the more you will see your membership, readership, and page hits go up without even having to use any other “tricks.” People know what they like and they like quality for the most part. Giving the readers what they are after is probably the best way possible to increase your blog readership.

Having a blog can not only be fun, but if you are doing it right it can also be profitable. Either way, though, you want to maintain and increase a following, or readership. There are as many tips out there to increase blog readership as there are blogs, but to really get things going, consider using these four tips. Follow them and you will see your readership grow.

4 Tips To Build A Content Site With More Repeat Visitors

On the internet, content is known as “the king”. People visits a site not for the flashy graphics nor the wonderful website designs, but because of the information they learn from the website.

Having high quality content not just attract visitors, it also attracts search engines to visit your sites more and increase your search engine placements.  However, in order to get more traffic that can turn into money,  you’ll need repeat visitors who are eager to read your new update on your content site.

Therefore, your website should have rich, premium, informative content to capture repeat visitors and more search engine traffic.

Here are some simple tips that would help you build a content site that can attract more repeat visitors:

   – Make sure your website’s layout is simple and easy looking to the visitors’ eyes.  Don’t add too many flashy features in your webpage to disturb your visitors’s focus when they are reading on your content.

   – Always remember the most important part in your content is the headline and the first few paragraphs. Whether your reader will read on or not heavily depends on the attractiveness on these parts. Always try to capture their interests and give them what they want to know.

   – Update your website with fresh new content frequently. When your visitors revisit your site and find you have not add new content, they will visit elsewhere immediately. And if this situation goes on, they will not visit your site again. Besides, search engines love websites that update content frequently, and give them higher search rank.

   – You should consider to use blogs.  Blogs are very easy to set up and update.  Once you have entered your entries, all you have to do is to click a button to publish them. And blogs are getting indexed fast and easily in most search engines!

Content is king, and you can take benefit from it easily!

3 Ways to Gain Traffic to your Website.

You may all know about these methods in some way but let’s take a look at the 3 most reliable and efficient ways to boost traffic to your website in good time.

Being a web developer, I know how to build an attractive and functional website that is worth more than the price charged to the customer. If in my head it wasn’t adding value, I wouldn’t bother trying to sell it. I soon realised that building the website was only half of the challenge for my customers, and gaining traffic was the next. The three main ways that we’ll talk about are paying for traffic, sending an email to your mailing list (that itself takes time to build) and lastly to joint venture with another website owner. This means they send you traffic, and you split profits with them 50:50. You can use software to track the number of hits produced from their mailouts.

1. By buying traffic, you can target the people already looking for your product. The biggest player here is Google. I’m sure you know them well  For those new to this industry, whenever you run a google search, the listings that show up on the right hand side can be bought by anyone. You pay 5 cents and upwards for each click. You can have traffic showing up to your website 5 minutes after setting up a Google Adwords account. Other search engines also offer this ‘pay-per-click’ (PPC) service.
The next step after paying for traffic is to monitor results. You can track the number of hits from various sources to focus on those that are producing sales. Let’s say you had 4 different advertising sources producing a total in sales of $200 and you spent a total of $80. That’s a profit margin of 250%. If you were able to see that the $20 you spent with PPC advertiser A produced 0 dollars in sales and the same for advertiser B. Advertiser C brought in $20 in sales but advertiser D brought in a whopping $180 in sales. That’s 900% profit and you could then focus your advertising dollars on that source to maximise profit. Every type of advertising must have a tracking system with strong accuracy.

2. Emailing a list is the next method that becomes your greatest asset with time. There are no overheads and you can create a huge rush of sales everytime you send an email. In a previous article I mentioned that a signup should be between 10 and 33%. That is the percentage of visitors you can expect to sign up to a mailing list. By having autoresponders, you can attract these visitors back to your website again. There’s a good chance they’ll buy the second time around. If they leave, you can send them another email to ask them to return and make them keep returning until they eventually buy.

Knowing how often to send emails to your list is also important. The key here is to add value and send regular free content. Imbetween asking them to buy something, send something free that is of value. Generally, once a month is an appropriate time period between emails, or more often depending on your market. Some people send emails three times a day and it works for them but here’s what works for my mentor so that’s the best of my knowledge.

3. Joint Venture.

The strategy is simple, other websites send out emails and place strategic links on their website to attract visitors to your website. YUou only pay them for the sales produced from any clicks. Generally 50% of the profits is the best since it’s an equal share.

The key here is to make it as easy as possible for you JV partner. Create emails for them, banner ads and any other promotional material that will help them.

JV deals allow you to create a lot of traffic to your site in a short period of time and for you to build your mailing lists very quickly. You can receive JV support from all of the established companies in the field you wish to enter if you approach them correctly.

4 Cheaper Ways to Get Visitors to Your Website

This introduction to getting more traffic to your website without spending a lot of money is what any business on the internet strives towards and we will cover the basics, which will be followed by a more focused look at other ways to get traffic to your site in subsequent articles.

Anonymous to many there are a few ways of attracting visitors to your site that do not require risking a lot of cash. But consider the fact it’s not that simple and takes more work on your part.
So, if you prefer to work to get traffic to your website, instead of paying for it, then here are a few simple ways to accomplish that:

1. Submit to article directories is perhaps one of the most valuable ways of driving traffic to your website. By writing and submitting articles with a theme associated to your website, you are almost guaranteed of getting traffic to your website for an extended period of time. As long as your articles stays in the directories that you suggest to, people can find it and the odds of receiving traffic to your website is substantial.  Some of the submission sites where you can submit to are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, dime.com, articlecity.com and Marketingtooltime.com.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a procedure that you apply on your web site pages to rank higher in the search engines. Search engine optimization is not hard to learn and there are several software applications that do a good job of SEO.
Search engines first look at your meta tags to determine what your site is about. Here are a few key factors when preparing meta tags:

As you continue to read this article, pay special attention to how parts 1 and 2 relate to one another.

a) Your domain name should have your keyword in it.

b) Title tag for each page of your site should include your keyword.

c) Your keyword should be on the first paragraph of your page.

d) The image alt tags should include your keyword.

e) The directory and file names of each page of your site should also have your keyword.

3.Create a blog that links back to your website.
Blog Posts at Blogger.com are readily indexed by Google and other search engines. By updating your blog you are feeding the search engines. and each time you put new content out, the search engines will spot it and th spiders will come.
Putting your keywords in the content of your pages will help you rank higher in the search engines.
By placing a link in your blog back to your site the search engines will follow the link and your site will get indexed and updated more often .
Blogging is painless and it adds a lot of your web pages to the search engine index that and without these pages you will not be found on a keyword search,
There are several places to get unlimited blog accounts started with some that are hosted free such as Blogger.com, Another popular blog application is WordPress.com that is hosted on your website.

4. Posting in forums relevant to your theme will give you the opportunity to place your links, to your products and services in the signature line, so you will get visitors from the forum members and search engine, that follow your link.
Make sure the signatures you publish in forums are memorable to magnetize readers and make them click on your related link and come to your website.

These 4 marketing tactics are simple and cheaper ways of getting visitors to your website. By implementing the above strategies on a regular basis would warrant a flow of traffic not only for the brief term but also for the long haul.

What seems to be missing in your web page?

As the number of visitors to the World Wide Web soars exponentially, the number of web pages goes with the increase. Perhaps, you have been wondering why with the multitude of visitors that comes day in and day out your site has been left out. There can be lots of reason behind.

Having a catchy and engrossing web page is a big deal. This is because of the demanding nature of e-commerce services. Visitors stay and are loyal to a site that can give them all that they ask for – all that they need. As the owner of a web site, you have this responsibility to make your site updated, functional and ‘delicious’ to your probable visitors. Thus, you have to avoid the clichés and taboos and create the best web page you can have.

The flow of e-commerce services is getting faster and tougher. This will surely keep you thinking – what seems to be missing in my web page?

To keep you well abreast, here are some of the must have:

1. Good Layout and Design. Do not overuse images. Do not bore your visitors by plain texts. Layout and design must be catchy. Fonts must be readable, colors pleasant to the eyes and images attractive. Organization and function with a brush of art can make the visitors stay longer and satisfied.

2. Perfect Content. It must be interesting and engrossing. Something that is not tedious to read and understand. Content must also be original. Otherwise, you are exposing yourself to the intellectual property violation which is plagiarism. Another, be sure that the content is free from grammatical errors and incorrect spelling. Read, proofread and edit.

3. An air of your Personality. Your web page should share a part of your self – part of your personality. The moment a visitor enters your site, he must be able to grasp a bit of who you are or what kind of company or business you have. You can give biographical information, company information and all sorts that can further give your background and outlook.

4. Dive into its Depth. Web pages must not be superficial. It must have something beneath its facade. A good web page is worthy of exploration. Nonetheless, you need not make numerous pages. Try using hyperlinks and hot lists.

Make the most out of your web page. It will surely benefit you!

What should you do when designing a business card online

Designing a business card online is not any different from designing one offline. There are a lot of factors to consider to ensure that your business card will serve the purpose that it is intended in the first place.

When designing a business card online you should:

1. Try to design the business card yourself. Nothing like avoiding the charges you have to pay when hiring designers to do the job. Besides, you are your own boss. Nobody will tell or criticize you on what you want attained.

2. Use shadows on texts so that when you use light texts, it will be easier to see even though the background is also light. You would not want your readers squinting their eyes out just to see what is written in your cards.

3. Go for bulks. Did you know that having more quantities printed can save you a lot in printing costs? Many people do not know that by cutting on the amount of printing materials, they are paying more than they think they are. If you compute the overall value, you will see that you actually save more by printing more copies.

4. Opt for UV coating. UV coats for cards give them longer protection and color life. Business cards do not just serve as one day cards. For sure, you will want them to last longer so people will be able to use them for quite sometime.

5. Try out different business card design and layout. The design you want may not go with the image you have chosen. Try experimenting with various designs so you will get to see which one will look best combined together.

6. Convert to gray scale. This will give your cards a unique look that will differentiate it from other typical looking business cards. Gray scale tends to look good with color texts too. The colors are more emphasized.

7. Leave blanks. This provides simplicity – white space. This factor is especially needed if your business card is full of graphic and designs. By leaving some space, you give readers a chance to breathe from all that is being shown to them.

If you do not get the design you want, you are probably better off hiring experts to do the job for you. They can do this online too. All you have to do is approve the final draft and get them from a printer near you.

Creating a business card is made easy nowadays. All you have to do is think of something that is eye-catching enough.

Why Website Templates Are Worth It

Introduction

Website Templates  can be a life saver if you are just starting out in the world -wide -web. Templates can save you big money and time. It is common knowledge that “design houses” charge a minimum of 1k for a complete website filled with images and text. Again, this is the minimum they would charge and I would estimate that the average price of a website you will pay is approximately 2-3k. Why are you paying this much for a website?  Most of it is because you can’t build one yourself so the cost skyrockets for convenience.  Is there anything you can do to reduce this skyrocket effect? Yes you can! Website templates often get connected to cheap or bad design, but the point is somewhat valid since there are tons of low quality templates and what’s worse is that it’s being sold on many template websites.

Don’t Give Away Your Bank Account

How many times have you seen the same templates on different websites? Probably a lot so the solution is to find QUALITY templates from a company that keeps their products in-house. There is such a thing as affordable quality website templates, really there is. We define quality as a template with excellent interface design, navigation, color theory, and overall impact power.

The Power of Flash

A powerful website template should make a powerful positive statement.  Flash really makes an amazing impact in this process because it can encompass sound and animations. Flash can give you the wow factor that static html can supply. Corporate websites such as Adidas and Mercedes uses a fair amount of flash to deliver the message across. These guys know the power of Flash, so we should probably take a look into the reasoning of this.

High Impact Design

So the question, where can you find affordable website templates? Dreamlinestudio.com is the ticket if you’re looking for something that can create a high-impact impression and not break your bank account. Website templates also have the ability to be modified to your liking, so after you change out the graphics, color scheme or move around the navigation you essentially have your own creation.

Custom Design Vs Templates

There is absolutely room for both in this vast universe we call the web, and both options have its strengths and weakness. The bottom line is cost. Do you have a few grand to spend on a website? If you don’t, a quality template will probably be your best bet.  For approximately $100, you can purchase a very nice template and spend the rest on marketing and promotion.  With the vast amount of money you will be saving, you can hire somebody to modify your template the way you want it for perhaps $300. I don’t believe in cheap recycled templates, but I do recommend looking into high quality templates that can present you the way you should be presented. You truly have one shot to make a great impression,  don’t  ruin it with a cheap overproduced template.

The Choice Is Yours, Be Wise about It

The real reason for this article is a recent beef with several “design houses” over charging the average person looking for a nice website. I know people have to make money running a business, but there is something wrong about producing a bill that is thousands over what a website is worth. There will be talk about what a website is truly worth but I have been in the design business for several years and have worked in a corporate environment. I have personally seen where we would charge 10 times what a website is truly cost as far as manpower hours, and it made me sick to see that.

So Dreamlinestudio was invented to bridge that gap between quality and cost. I Think that we not only bridged that gap, we overlapped and paved a new road for better internet.

Advantages of an Online Site Builder

There are numerous choices when it comes to building web sites. One of the first choices you will have to make is whether to use an online or offline site builder.

Site Builders

Site builders can be divided into two categories, online and offline. An online site builder creates a web site with web forms over the Internet. With an online site builder, there is no need to install any special software. You only need an Internet browser.

An offline site builder is a program that you install on a computer from a disc or a download. This type of site builder requires that a site is first built on the computer with the software, then uploaded, often with a separate piece of software.

Location, Location, Location

A good online site builder has several advantages over an offline site builder. For starters, and online site builder is always there regardless of where you are accessing the Internet. You can easily work with it from home, the office or on the road. With an offline builder, you need to be on the Internet, have the builder software installed and usually have a separate FTP program installed. From this perspective, an online site builder is clearly the better choice.

Users – Get Off My Cloud

In selecting a builder, one should keep in mind the number of people who will be working on the site. If there are more than two, chaos can ensue with an offline builder. Building a site requires some tedious work. Nothing is more frustrating than uploading changes only to discover you were updating a version of the page that subsequently has been updated by others working on the site. Many a new cussword has been created in such instances.

An online site builder almost always allows for multiple users and, by definition, always contains the updated version of pages. This simple aspect limits confusion and helps avoid duplication of work. Admittedly, it cuts down on the creation of new cusswords, but we must all sacrifice something.

Other Advantages:

1. Online site builders often use databases to store web site information rather than separate files for every page. This makes web sites much more scalable in the long run and allows for different sorting techniques.

2. Good online site builders will also be backed-up on a daily basis, so your work is always double protected. Not all online site builders provide backups, so make sure the site builder you choose does.

3. Online site builders also generally offer a selection of templates to use that make it a lot easier to build sites.

Instead of having to create the entire site, many online site builders allow you to focus solely on the content of your site and do not require you to learn HTML.

Online site builder are usually easy to use, don’t require much computer experience, are portable and can save you time. Before you build a site, it is worth your time to consider your online site builder options.