When I post on here, I usually post about whatever webmaster-related topic happens to be on my mind. If you want me to address a certain topic, please suggest it. If you have a question or want to know my thoughts on a certain webmaster-related issue, please tell me. Feel free to comment on this post with your requests.
by Scott Hughes
Working online or in the IT field involves dealing with technical jargon. Luckily, you can find an IT glossary for business managers at http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/ which you can use for free.
On the glossary, you can find extensive definitions and explanations of phrases you may encounter while doing business online. For example, you can find entries for technical phrases such as “Enterprise Application Integration” and “Dedicated Hosting.” The glossary offers the information in a direct and understandable manner.
I recommend bookmarking the glossary, so that you can use it as a reference if you encounter any unfamiliar terminology during your online endeavors.
Great Ways To Add Content To Your Website
by Scott Hughes
The success of a webmaster’s internet business depends on traffic as much as anything else. The best way to get lots of people on your site, and to get them to stay, is to have interesting content. Content is to websites as printed words are to books. A wordless book won’t make many sales, and content-lacking website won’t get many visitors.
Specific content is what brings in search engine traffic. Search engines love content-packed websites with a clearly focused subject. Additionally, advertisers want their advertisements placed next to relevant content. For example, the way to get fishing-related advertisers to advertise on your website is to have fishing-related content on your website.
Unfortunately, producing quality content can be rather difficult. Luckily, the following tips should help you pack your website with content:
1. Publish Articles
Publishing articles is a great way to increase the traffic to your site, increase the value of your advertising space, increase your search engine ranking, and please your viewers. Articles don’t need to be long. In fact, the shorter your articles are is probably the better, because internet readers read quickly and don’t like to waste any time. Also, long articles may lose their focus, making it harder for advertisers and search engines to target your subject. The best way to publish articles is either to write them yourself or hire a ghostwriter. Don’t assume writing them yourself is the best option; If you’re either busy or not good at writing it is probably wiser to hire a ghostwriter. Ghostwriters and copywriters usually write articles for around $15 - $30 dollars each.
2. Start a Blog
A blog, short for web log, is a public journal updated daily. With a blog, you can tell your visitors anything they may want to know. You can give them links to other sites or articles. You can give them news about the subject of your site or about your site itself. The great thing about blogs is that they are easy to start, because you will be adding the content bit-by-bit, rather than in huge bulks. Both search engines and surfers love fresh content. A blog not only never gets old, but also it’s always fresh as can be.
3. Start a Forum or Message Board
An online forum or message board is a place where surfers can talk about a particular subject. On a forum or message board members can start the threads themselves, and the other members can respond. The great thing about a forum or message board is that the content writes and publishes itself. Although there is some maintenance involved, a message board or forum is probably the least time-consuming way to add relevant content to your site. Another great thing about a message board is that people viewing it will continuously return to follow discussions in progress.
There are many ways to add content to your website, but generally these three are the best and most prominent. Content is the key to getting and retaining traffic, and traffic is the key to raising website profits.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his website, Web Business Resource, at http://www.webbizresource.com/.
You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
by Scott Hughes
Make a good website layout by keeping it simple.
Many webmasters seem to think that flashiness, complexity, and uniqueness make a good website. They couldn’t be more wrong. The key to designing a good website is simplicity.
The customers want simplicity:
Customers and surfers do NOT surf websites to see webmasters flex their ability at making flashy sites. Customers and surfers search the web to find information, products, & services. These surfers want convenience, speed and quality. They do not want to be bothered with pointless showoffs. Keep the layout simple so the customers can find what they’re looking for. Keep the delivery simple and direct, or else your customers will get it elsewhere.
The search engines want simplicity:
I’ve often seen webmasters who have websites filled with animations, videos, audio, and flash. Perhaps these methods can be used sparingly to increase the quality of the surfers’ experiences, but search engines can’t read movies, audio, and other multimedia. For example, if a webmaster builds a site in only Flash, that site will probably never receive traffic from search engines. You not only will waste your customers’ time with too much showiness, but you’ll lose traffic.
Web Browsers want simplicity:
Another huge downfall to using complex programming, showiness, and multimedia is browser incompatibility. Many customers with older browsers, higher security, or slower connections cannot watch or hear animations, audio, and video. Even out of the customers with compatible browsers, many will not wait for your multimedia to load. As a webmaster, you’re greatest fear should be the browser back button. A slow loading page due to complex flashiness is a great way to cause surfers to click that back button.
Although in moderation a special object such as a complex program, audio file or video may make surfers experience a little better, generally it causes more harm than good. Make your site a little snazzy, but keep most of the site focused on the actual point of your website.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his website, Web Business Resource, at http://www.webbizresource.com/.
You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
The Importance of Providing an e-Service
by Scott Hughes
The internet offers web-based entrepreneurs great ways to create income, such as affiliate marketing, banner-advertising, and pay-per-click advertising. The online business-person must remember that the income method is only one part of business. One must also supply an actual service.
You can’t just join an affiliate program and expect to make money. You can’t just put an ad banner up on a website and expect to make money. That would be about as effective as having TV commercials without a TV show.
Not only do you need a way to earn income from your web traffic, emails, etc., but you also need to provide a service for your customers, viewers, and/or audience. Without providing a service, you won’t have any customers to whom you can advertise!
Assuming you have a website, the best service to provide is information. Not just any information, but provide specific quality information, about a particular subject such as fishing, cars, dating advice, etcetera. There are also other forms of content for websites other than information, such as games, quizzes, chat-rooms, forums.
Even if you don’t have a website, you still need to provide a service. If you’re an affiliate marketer without a website, there are still many methods to partner your affiliate link with a service, such as product reviews, ezines, ebooks, etcetera. An ebook, namely a free ebook, is a great way to provide a service and increase affiliate sales. Write a simple ebook about something relevant to what you market, and then scatter your affiliate links throughout the ebook.
No matter what service you choose to provide, quality is just as important as quantity. Even if you have all sorts of services and information to offer, customers won’t bother with it if it’s low-quality.
Unfortunately, there are many scammers who may claim that there are ways of making money online with little or no work. These are scams. As we all know, money doesn’t grow on trees. If you want to earn money, you have to provide a service or product in return. Remember, the only free lunch is found in a mouse trap. Whenever your proposed with a business opportunity, ask yourself what service you’ll be providing. If you aren’t providing much of a service, then you won’t be making much money.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his website, Web Business Resource, at http://www.webbizresource.com/.
You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
The Superficiality Of Internet Business
by Scott Hughes
I’ve heard many people say, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Despite that old cliché, business is inherently superficial. Appearances count more importantly than anything. In fact, any confidence man can tell you that in business it is no exaggeration to say appearances are everything.
Offline, you always see successful business-people that are clean, well-groomed, and well-dressed, usually in suits and ties. These successful business-people ensure to keep good posture and a kind, trustworthy expression. You never see successful business-people who look scruffy & shambled that wear old dirty clothes. Customers judge a business and a business-person by their superficial appearance.
On the internet this is even more the case. On the internet customers only have your impersonal website to judge you, and they can do that judging in a matter of seconds.
Here’s some tips for increasing your aesthetic appeal on the web:
1. The first and foremost feature a viewer of your website will judge your business on is page loading. A page that loads slowly or is offline will instantly ruin your potential customer’s opinion. Many times, a potential customer won’t have the patience to wait for a long page load; the surfer will close your slow-loading website and never return. A page that fails to load is even worse. What reason could a surfer have to come back to a website that they never even saw in the first? None, the surfer won’t come back. Make sure your page loads quickly by working with a quality web-host and keeping the file-sizes of your website to a minimum.
2. The layout of a website is the online equivalent of a business-person’s dress, clothing, and hygiene. Surfers won’t do business with a sloppy website that’s full of errors. Demonstrate your professionalism to your potential customers by designing a sleek and attractive website that doesn’t have errors.
3. Order your own domain-name (e.g. www.yourdomain.com), make it simple and memorable. Don’t put your website up on a free or cheap host, especially one without your own domain-name. Firstly, people won’t be able to remember your website’s address if it’s just some folder on someone else’s website (e.g. www.someotherdomain.com/freewebsites/yoursite/). More importantly, potential customers will assume that you and your business are cheap and unprofessional too.4. Display contact information on your website. Give potential customers a phone number and/or mailing address where they can reach you or your business. Would you do business with a business-person who didn’t give you their full name, phone number, address, business-card, etc.? Of course not. Similarly, a website without contact information seems sleazy.
4. Have responsive customer service. Not only do your customers need to be able to contact you or your business. They need to receive prompt, attentive, and polite responses. Especially since the internet has many old websites collecting dust, it is imperative that you show your customers that your internet business is full-functioning and well-managed. In addition to fast, your responses must be polite, answer any questions, and solve any problems, so that your customers continue to hold your internet business in high-esteem.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his website, Web Business Resource, at http://www.webbizresource.com/.
You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
6 Website Design Tips For Novices
by Scott Hughes
So, you learned HTML and now your ready to design your website. Well, as an experienced web designer let me share some tips.
1. Use CSS (cascading style sheets). If you do not know CSS, learn it. CSS allows you to keep the formatting of your site (e.g. the color or size of a piece of text) on a separate single page - a CSS document. Thus, with CSS you can change the formatting of a common-element by simply updating one piece of code on one page, rather then updating all the pages of your site. For example, if you want to change the back-ground color of your website, you could just change your one CSS sheet and your entire website’s background color would change. Another great aspect of CSS is that you can use it to set the default properties of HTML tags. This can be used to counter browser compatibility problem - that different browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) use different default settings.
2. Test your website in all browsers. Just because your website displays a certain way in one browser, doesn’t mean it will display that way in another browser. You should check that your website displays properly in all of the major following browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Netscape, and Opera.
3. Use open source software and freeware, if you want to create a dynamic website. Even if you know dynamic languages (such as JavaScript, PHP, and CGI) well enough to create your own software and features, you do not want to do that if you are a beginner. There’s no reason to create your own dynamic scripts (e.g. shopping carts, chat-rooms, etc.), if you can find full-functioning customizable freeware. A great benefit of this method is that the customization options will separate the code that changes your website’s look and feel from the functioning code. If you design the code yourself, you’ll be tempted to mix the look and feel with the functioning aspects. So, if later you want to update the look and feel, you’ll have to dig through the long software scripts. If you’re going to be using freeware or any other code that you didn’t design yourself, you should still be familiar with that language.
4. Don’t use free or cheap web-hosting. Okay, this isn’t necessarily a design tip. However, hosting is related to design. Free hosts may scatter your website with annoying ads. So, you won’t be able to load your site as is. Also, free and cheap hosts often don’t support dynamic websites. Unless you’re website is supposed to be a joke, don’t use a free host.
5. Don’t write your email address on your website. If you have a phone number or mailing address that your customers can use to reach you or your business, publish that on your website. Website’s with a phone number or mailing address appear much more reliable and honest than websites without contact information. However, don’t publish your email address, because spammers will use web-crawlers will to pick it up. Instead, design a form on your website that customers can use to send messages or questions without giving your email address.
6. Take it slow. Unfortunately, the only way to become an expert designer is through experience, but your business can’t afford sloppy pages. Don’t attempt to design complex and dynamic websites without the ability. If you try to design a code, but find it hard and the code begins to come out sloppy, don’t hesitate to just throw it out. It’s better to have a simple, sleek, and functional website, than to have a complex, sloppy, dysfunctional website.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his website, Web Business Resource at http://www.webbizresource.com/. You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
Do I need To Do Business On The Internet?
by Scott Hughes
My clients often ask me, “Do I need to do business on the Internet?”
They want me to compare and contrast online business with offline business. I usually just give them the bluntest response: The phrase ‘business on the Internet’ is redundant. Like breathing the little bit of air left at the top of a sinking car, the remaining offline businesses are just trying to last as long as possible in the new ever-changing technological world. Like the dinosaurs, offline entrepreneurship is an artifact of history.
The question is not “Do I need to do business on the Internet?” The question is “Do I need to do business?” If you need to do business, than you have no choice but to do it on the Internet.
You need not fear the Internet. Many people new to the Internet business seem nervous or even afraid at the thought of doing business online. Many people hesitate to move their business to or start their business on the Internet. However, they should fear offline business! One can find opportunity, new developments, and emerging markets all over the Internet. The offline market dries up more and more everyday. It is not the desk and computer that business-people should avoid. It is the “brick-and-mortar” store that is dangerous and failure-ridden.
The Internet is the Wall Street of the 21st century.
The great thing about this new Wall Street is the empowerment it gives to the little guys and to the beginners. The questions of a beginner (or an expert for that matter) are always one Google search away. With an email account a new entrepreneur can instantly talk to anyone anywhere in the world. Even better, with a website a new entrepreneur can do business with anyone anywhere in the world. In the comfort of one’s own home or local office, one can fiber-optically connect to people, businesses, and information in an instant.
No longer is this form of business capability monopolized by high-rollers with private jet planes and satellite picture phones.
Such efficient and available access to the Internet brings opportunity - opportunity not just for the few, but rather freedom of opportunity for everyone. To those who worship meritocracy, the Internet truly is the messiah.
So, if you plan on doing business, you have to do it on the Internet, but that’s not a bad thing; that’s a great thing.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his Web Business Resource blog at http://www.webbizresource.com/.
You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep the “About The Author” footer.
The Basics Of Starting An Ezine
by Scott Hughes
Most experienced web professionals cannot think of a worse way to market an online business than with spam emails, or anything that seems like spam emails. Spam earns a business a bad reputation, the risk of getting black-listing, and pissed off customers… nothing more. There is a way to get your business links into the email boxes of potential customers without self-destructive spam. That method is publishing an ezine, an electronic newsletter or electronic magazine, sent out via email.
As an internet business owner, having your own ezine gives you the promotional benefits of email marketing without the drawbacks of spam-like email ads. By sending out an ezine, you regularly remind old customers and potential customers of your business, by providing them with a complementary service. You not only retain your respectability with your market, but also increase it. A long list of interested potential customers happily receive a free magazine/newsletter from you. Talk about win-win.
In addition to the amount of benefits an ezine entails, starting one is rather easy.
First, you decide your ezine’s subject (e.g. sports, news, or etc.). Obviously, you should choose a subject that relates to your online business. For example, if you have a website selling fishing equipment, you can make an ezine about fishing.
The second step is to create an opt-in option on your website. If people register at your site or purchase something, a great place to put an opt-in option is on the registration or check-out page. Otherwise, the best place to add an area where a customer can sign-up is on your website’s homepage or a common-element (i.e. a part of your website that’s on every page of your site, usually a header, footer, or sidebar). You should not need to create a separate sign-up page, because you only need the customer’s’ email, and perhaps a name.
The third step is to begin writing your ezines. Unless you have a staff of writers, you probably will have to get some of the articles for your ezine from third-party sources. In most circumstances, you can just get free articles from a multitude of online repositories (e.g. ezinearticles.com). Your ezine doesn’t need to be long, just a few articles per issue. Remember to include any news with regarding your business and a link back to your website. (For more tips about ezine writing, please visit http://webbizresource.com/?cat=9 .)
Done right, ezine publishing offers internet business owners a great way to honestly market and promote their website.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his Web Business Resource blog at http://www.webbizresource.com/. You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
Scams, Schemes, Gimmicks, and Cons
by Scott Hughes
Unfortunately, one of the realities of internet business is the scam, schemes gimmicks, and cons. Of course, scams, schemes, and such have been around long before the internet, but just like the internet has increased and facilitated genuine business, the internet has also helped black-hat confidence men spread their dirty scams and schemes.
Most of the schemes fall under the categories of ponzi, pyramid, or MLM (multi-level-marketing). A ponzi scheme is a scheme in which “members” join by paying a fee, told that they will receive an income without working, but the income is paid by giving them a portion of other members fees. Many people are familiar with a pyramid scheme or MLM. Both are flawed business models, in which “sponsors” are paid commissions off the sales of other people they recruit into the scheme, both directly and indirectly. Most pyramid schemes and MLM don’t even really sell a product; Instead they just sell “start-up” packages. The inherent flaw of the pyramid scheme is that it continuously needs exponentially more sellers to sponsor. Eventually, the pyramid collapses, leaving all but the few con men at the top broke.
One thing I always recommend against is using any program that claims you can make easy money online fast with a small fee. There’s a lot of scams out there that say you can make money taking surveys, entering data, stuffing envelopes, or etc. They don’t work. They’re just scams and schemes. Basically, if it sounds to good to be true, it is. If you’ll make so much money with these programs, why do they need the small fee beforehand? Couldn’t they just take the fee out of your pay? They can’t take the fee out of your pay, because you’re never going to get any.
Remember, the only free lunch is found in a mouse trap.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his Web Business Resource blog at http://www.webbizresource.com/. You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
Web Design - Outsource or not?
by Scott Hughes
Online businesses vary in almost every way possible - from who they serve to how they make revenue. However, one basic similarity connects all internet businesses: websites. If you don’t have a website, you’re not doing business on the internet. An online entrepreneur must choose between designing a website himself or herself, or hiring a professional web designer.
Studying the latter option first, professional web designers vary in many aspects, most notably style, ability, size, experience and price. If you plan on hiring a professional web designer, you want to ask the designer for examples of his or her work and for references. You don’t want to just review the web designers past work without also consulting references, because no matter how good, stylish, or well-coded the designer’s work is, how do you know the websites were made according to the directions of the customers? You also want to consult more than one designer, so that you can compare and contrast the work of different designers. By researching the references and past work of designers, you’ll know their respective abilities, styles, and experiences. Never just take a designers word that he/she works “very well” and has “a lot of experience”.
Once you’ve researched some designers’ styles, abilities, and experience, there are two other important things to check: price and size. For price, more may actually be better. Your website’s appearance and functionality will determine the success of your online business. Saving a few bucks on web design often will cost you in the long run, perhaps terminally. So, when choosing a web designer, avoid cheapness. However, size works the opposite, less is better. You want a unique, customized site that’s built & designed according to your directions. A large impersonal designer-company mass-produces generic websites, and isn’t interested in meeting the special needs of individual single-sales. Going to a large web design company for a quality site is like going to McDonalds for a quality hamburger. All you’ll get is a generic flavor-less product.
An expensive professional designer is needed to outsource, so I recommend that online entrepreneurs build and design their own websites. Even if you know nothing about designing websites, it’s probably better to learn to design websites rather than outsource the design of your website. An entrepreneur’s time is very valuable, but, in the long run, the cost of learning is lower than the cost of outsourcing. By building and designing your own website yourself, you can change, update, and add to your website anytime without rehiring a web designer. Wise people say that it’s better to teach a man to fish, than give him a fish. Well similarly, it is better to teach yourself to fish, than to buy a fish… especially when fish are websites.
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his Web Business Resource blog at http://www.webbizresource.com/. You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.
“In over 3 years, I have yet to encounter ONE targeted visitor package that ever worked. There are numerous companies online selling you ‘10,000 Visitors’ for a price. Specifically, where are these visitors from, Neptune? Could they be any more vague? ‘Targeted visitors’ means they might speak or read English. That’s not saying a lot these days. They have not indicated an interest in what you are doing. There is software that enables many of these companies to show ‘hits’ by appearing to show your website over and over.”
-Tiffany Sutton of TheWorkPlaceSucks.com
You can’t buy quality traffic.
by Scott Hughes
Anyone even slightly involved in the web promotion industry has heard of these traffic packages - basically, you pay a company X amount of money and they send Y amount of visitors to your site. These packages don’t work, unless your goal is to get ripped off. Web promotion just isn’t something that can effectively be outsourced, because of the unverifiability of the quality of the hits received.
These “traffic-generation” and “promotion-package” businesses don’t specialize in hit quality. These businesses specialize in creating the appearance of promotion and targeted traffic. These companies are professionals at making it look like they’ve sent you loads of targeted traffic on paper, and that’s all. You can’t blame these businesses. They’re interested in making sales for themselves. They don’t care about the success of your business. They don’t care about the success of your website.
You, in contrast, who are interested in the reputation and success of your business can produce quality traffic. With the right methods and effort, you can successfully promote your website or internet business without using black-hat methods or rip-off traffic generators.
Let me shortly outline a few methods:
Networking:
Business networking has been around long before the internet, but the advent of the internet has incalculably multiplied not only the power of networking, but also the ability of small business-people to network. Nowadays, an online business-person can sit-down at home in their pajamas and instantly network with like-minded business-people or clients from the other side of the earth. Networking can lead to great self-promotion, both direct and indirect. For example, a DVD salesman might tell someone in his/her network about a DVD sale on the new X-men movie; then that person may tell his X-Men fan club, which could lead to a large increase in sales of that DVD. Many websites exist to facilitate networking, such as MySpace, Ryze, and DirectMatches.
Article Submission:
Despite its effectiveness, many webmasters and internet business-people don’t know about this method. It’s simple really: just write a short article, around a few hundred words. Insert keywords relating to your business. Add a footer or resource box with a sentence or two of information about you and/or your business with links. Also, in the resource box, write that you give permission for the article to be reprinted so long as the resource box and links stay included and intact. (Look at the bottom of this article for an example.) You can then publish your article, by placing it on your website and/or submitting it to article-directories.
Search Engine Traffic:
Probably the most effective self-generation of web traffic is search engines. If your site is ranked highly on search engines for the relevant keywords, then your customers will find you. Search engines look for content-rich websites with a focused subject. Also, search engines rank websites by the number of websites that link to them, called link popularity. Increasing the rank of your site on search engines is called search engine optimization (or SEO).
Use methods such as these to self-generate traffic and promotion for your website, rather then getting ripped off by offers for “traffic-packages”, “hit-generators”, et cetera.
For more information on web promotion, view the web promotion category at WebBizResource.com here: http://webbizresource.com/?cat=5
About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his Web-Resource blog at http://www.webbizresource.com/. You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.