Different Types of Web Hosting

If you are one of the many that are new to the Internet world you do not fully understand what web hosting is or what it does. When you are a visitor and you visit a site, each page of that site that you are looking at is actually considered a file that someone has actually created. The website is generally made up of several pages and can include up to thousands of pages depending on the size of the site you are looking at. Each and every one of these files is located on a web server which allows you to view them.
If you are planning to create a website yourself, you will need to find a server that will allow you to store your files so that the world can access your website.  These people who provide their servers for your use are called web hosts. When you are looking for these web hosts you will find that a number of them offer different varieties of web hosting services. The main ones of these are shared hosting and dedicated hosting, co-location hosting, and reseller hosting.
The shared hosting aspect basically consists of several different sites sharing space on one main server. Depending on the host that you are using these sites can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousands sites on one server. The web hosts are generally equipped to handle this many people because of the use of high powered servers. But at times these sites will become overloaded and it can result in slower load time on your sites. Customers will leave your site if they feel it is not loading fast enough. This will result in lost visitors and revenue.
Dedicated hosting consists on one single server that the web host company sets up for just one site. The site then usually has the choice to host other sites from their server as well as modify their software configurations. Using this type of hosting offers you the benefit of being able to handle loads of traffic at any given time as well as more bandwidth that you will have available.
With Co-location you will actually allow you to own your server hardware but it is still housed with the web host provider data center. By using this method you will have full control over the server and will also benefit from the 24/7 monitoring and maintenance that the web host offers.
Reseller hosting allows the web hosting provider to offer storage to a third party at a discounted rate. These customers will then turn around and resell this storage to their customers. A lot of the smaller web hosting company’s practices this method as a way of making extra money on their sites.
Now that you know the different servers you just need to choose the one that is right for you.

Houston Museum of Natural Science Went Viral

The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) was one chosen to showcase the world-famous Exhibition for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. HMNS quickly realized that while the exhibit was expected to generate a great deal of interest, it didn’t have a lot of appeal for their core audience.  The success of the exhibition, therefore, would rest in how it was marketed.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science quickly called in Spur Digital to help reach the targeted demographic audience and generate interest in the Exhibit. HMNS was, also, hoping to acquire new patrons and members to further their future revenue.

Spur digital worked with HMNS to identify the target market for the campaign and developed an integrated online media plan to reach those audiences. The campaign featured an online contest that was marketed through targeted online media outlets including relevant Web sites, Search Engines and third party E-mail lists. Viral marketing was an important component of the campaign, so Spur developed an innovative strategy to get people to refer their friends.

Spur identified the target audience as males 18 to 34 years old who were fans of action and fantasy films, frequent video game players and movie renters, tech-savvy who generally didn’t hang out at museums. Based on this information, Spur chose search engine advertisements that would accompany specific search words, dedicated e-mail advertisements, sponsored e-mail advertisements, banner ads on web sites targeted toward the desired audience, and e-mails to the HMNS list.

Did it work?  You bet!  The results were excellent. The impact of the viral marketing effort was astounding – over 23% of registrants came originated from the Tell-A-Friend feature. The direct marketing efforts yielded impressive results as well. In total, the 12 week, locally-targeted online campaign yielded more than 2 million targeted impressions, 40,000 unique visits, almost 12,000 and 6,000 invitations sent by friends at a cost per action of less than $3.00. These contributed to the record attendance of almost 100,000 over 3 months.

Websites as Storefronts

A customer walks into the store, browses through products and shelves, picks up items, inspects, considers the prices, chooses a product and takes it to the cash register to pay. Now if you want to sell your products online, then your site must be enabled for e-commerce, where you must have the following features:

You need to provide plenty of content and product description like sizes, dimensions, colors and comparisons with other similar products. It must allow the customer to choose a product, get a clear pricing and shipping costs on the product, complete the transaction and get an order number, and/or invoice confirmation via email. Allow your customer to choose a shipping method.
You must tell the customer if the item is in stock or delivered against order. Ideally, you should have an email contact or live help if the customer has a question. Most importantly you must respond immediately! If you want to provide your own live chat and help desk services on your website, specialized softwares are available for purchase.
Be sure your customer service links are large and clearly marked, so your client does not have to dig around to find information.
Provide an ‘about us’ section or a section about your policies. If you have privacy statements and customer satisfaction policies, your customer will feel better about shopping in your store.
You probably want to have customer quotes and references on the storefront page, as well, to let your prospective client know that others are happy with your service.
Provide an FAQ with information about your return-back policies, guarantees, shipping prices and insurance charges if any.
If you are so inclined, you can offer a print catalogue if the customer prefers to order one from your storefront and shop in the privacy of their homes.
Do not annoy your customers by presenting products that are marked ‘sold’ or pages that say ‘under construction’ or ‘coming soon’.
Do add new content frequently, so your returning customers will not be bored by seeing the same products they saw four months ago.
If your site has got a date tag or has current references, be careful to change these references frequently so you don’t give the perception that nobody is attending or reading your site.

How Much Money Will I earn Through Adsense?

If you’re looking at Google’s AdSense program you’re surely asking yourself how much you could make from such a program, and you probably think you can’t make as much as you can from traditional advertising schemes.

Google, of course, keeps a great deal of secrecy regarding how much AdWords advertisers pay per each click directed to their site and the same applies for how much AdSense banner holders make from their websites.

While there’s nothing official, rumors circulate around the Internet concerning the amount of cash a website can earn by using AdSense. And many people (illegally) disclose how much they have been making with AdSense. There are stories of people raising over one thousand dollars per month using AdSense.

There are also stories of people exceeding $100,000.00 per month but it’s a bit hard to believe such stories. The truth to the matter is that if you have a small website and you just want it to support itself, and don’t wish to reach your pocket for its maintenance costs you can probably do this with AdSense.

AdSense is also very good for people who host a lot of pages. Even if the said pages don’t generate a lot of traffic individually, every click counts and you can earn up with a lot of money by doing this. And that just goes to prove that sometimes quantity matters nearly as much as quality.

There’s no telling how much money you’re going to make by using Google’s AdSense but you can sort of tell for yourself, before actually starting, by taking a few things into consideration.

First, is the amount of visits you get every day. While there’s no way to estimate precisely on this, you can generally make a safe assumption that if you have a lot of clicks per day you’ll be making good money.

Also, this depends on what exactly your site is about. If your site is about anything popular (music, sex, whatever) you’re bound to get a lot of banner clicks. These have a coefficient associated with them, called the CTR (click through ratio).

Basically, what it translates to is that if a large proportion of your site’s visitors click the ads you’ll be making more money. And the best way to do this is to have some popular content in your site, ensuring the links direct users towards popular items as well.

Then of course, there’s the position and number of ads on your website. While you don’t want to overdo it, having many links will undoubtedly generate more income for you as a webmaster. Do not however believe, that if you just add a lot of ads in an important portion of your site, visitors could always just skip them (and be assured that many do just that).

There’s something between an art and a science to positioning your ads. People generally look in certain places and never look in others, and knowing this a website author and/or webmaster can do a great deal of things to increase his earnings with AdSense.

All in all, the amount of money you make with AdSense depends on many factors. But if you have a site with interesting contents and/or many pages, and if you see a constantly large amount of traffic every day, you can bet you’ll be making a lot of money with AdSense.

Even if you aren’t in the above categories, AdSense is still worth using because there’s very little hassle in setting it up, and many times it can help financially support the site, whilst being a nice bonus to get through the post at the end of the month.

.Is Network Marketing Easy??…

NWM requires 3 main ingredients….time, effort, and yes – money. Time is just a matter of redirecting your habits. Not easy but doable. Time directly impacts your efficiency. Effort is entirely controllable…

I personally believe we do a dis-service to the industry and ourselves if we openly state…or even allude…that NWM is easy. It’s not. Nor is any business….WAH or brick & mortar. Anyone who does say different is not being wholly truthful. I find that to be a shame.

NWM requires 3 main ingredients….time, effort, and yes – money. Time is just a matter of redirecting your habits. Not easy but doable. Time directly impacts your efficiency. Effort is entirely controllable by the individual….and directly impacts your effectiveness. Money is self limiting and directly affects both efficiency and effectiveness. An individual must find the best combination of the three that works for them. Someone else can’t tell you what that combination is….but can help you find it (for example a good sponsor).

The new mlmer faces a daunting task…and competition…when it comes to “advertising”. Finding that “best combination” of time, effort, and money is a growth experience. Rarely will it just appear… education (self and provided) plus mentoring (if available) are important factors and hopefully a fact of life. However, “advertising” is not impossible.

In my mind advertising is just whatever method you choose to “reach” people. It might be the traditional newspaper or ezine ad or the simple greeting and sharing with a friend. How you “advertise” or “share” can take many forms.

There are free and inexpensive methods that do work. It’s a matter of finding those that work for you.

For example:

1. Writing and submitting ezine articles is an excellent method. It requires time & effort…but no money. The benefits include increased link popularity for the url used in your sig box (important for search engine ranking), branding, and reach (you can “reach” more with an article than an ezine ad). Plus it’s viral. Often your article is archived by publishers and directories…..available well after it was originally offered. Plus publishers and web masters will often “pick up” your article…again well after you originally submitted it.

2. Business cards are always a good method…and more inexpensive than one realizes. You can even make your own. Just pass them out like candy….stores, church, ball games, local events, restaurants (leave 1 with your bill), businesses you frequent, networking meetings, local Chamber Of Commerce. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

3. Flyers, posters, post cards, brochures, etc. can also be done very inexpensively. You can make your own on your PC or purchase custom or ready made templates from numerous online providers. You could even strike up a joint venture with a local community provider. They print it for you and include their “advert” somewhere…you distribute. You both win, you pay less, and maybe influence that partner to be involved in your business.

4. Web decals on your vehicle(s) is another inexpensive method. I have one on each of our family cars (back window) with a short “catch line” and my url. Cost was ~ $40 each but the visibility is priceless.

5. Newspaper/magazine ads can be found that aren’t going to cost an arm and a leg. Local publications are a good place to start. http://nationwidenewspapers.com is an excellent source. For some of my services I’ve found College student newspapers and alumni magazines to be good performers.

These are just a few examples.

Of course there are the traditional ezine ads, leads programs, Forum participation (sig line – branding reputation), search engines, “3 foot rule”, etc. Most of these will cost you money…all will cost you time & effort.

The key I believe is in being creative and sticking to what best fits your time, effort, money combination. It is and should be a personal choice. If the dollar “cost” doesn’t give you the dollar “value” you hope for….keep looking. But don’t EVER give up.

Plus…diversify. Use multiple methods. Why limit yourself to just “one path”?

Should we just sponsor those willing to waste $1,000’s advertising? Heck no!! We should sponsor anyone interested and teach them how to advertise in a manner best suited for them. Don’t mislead them with false expectations or pressure them into uncomfortable actions. Lead them to solutions which best fit their expectations & abilities (time, effort, money).

John Milton Fogg’s answer to the question is priceless……”It is simple, but it isn’t easy.”

Captures it pretty well I’d say. That’s the message. It’s not hard to understand…should/is fun…..but does take some effort.

Sending any message to prospects that denies effort is involved or necessary….misleads folks into becoming part of the “failed or quit” statistics.

It leads to false expectations.

They start to think they can sit on the couch with beer & potatoe chips watching Oprah on TV all day….and the money will roll in by itself.

Lays, Coronas, and Dr. Phil aren’t going to build your business.

YOU are.

In my mind (OK…my opinion)….that’s the core of any message they should receive.

If you really care…that’s what you’ll tell them.

Be honest….

What do YOU think????

What is  a Web Crawler and how to Make it Love your website

It is the SEs that will ultimately work for in terms of bringing your internet site to the notice of the potential buyers. Hence it’s much better to know how these SEs really act and how they present data to the customer starting from a search.
There are fundamentally two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.
SEs use crawlers or occasionally called to index sites. When you submit your site pages to a SE by filling out their required submission page, the SE spider will index your entire web site. A ‘crawler’ is an automatic computer program that is used by the SE system. Crawler visits a site, study the content of the actual web site, the web site`s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site points to. The crawler then generates all that information and sends it back to a main central hub, where all of the information is indexed systematically. It will inspect each website`s link you’ve on your site and index all of those web sites as well. Some crawlers will only index a certain number of pages on your web site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages in start, increase the size of your site and the number of gradually over time!

The crawler will periodically come back to the web site to check for whatever information that has been changed or added. The frequency with which this occurs is decided by the moderators of the search engines crawlers.

A crawler is virtually like a Bible where it carries the table of contents, the real articles and the links and acknowledgments for all the sites it comes up during its hunting, and it might index up to million pages each day.

When you expect a SE to find and index information, it’s really searching through the index which it has created earlier and not really exploring the Web. Different SEs produce different rankings to same web pages for the same given keyword and the reason for this to happen is because not every search engine uses the same kind of algorithm as other search through the index.

Among the things that a SE algorithm scans for is the absolute frequency and placement of keywords on a website`s page, but it may also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. And so the algorithms examine the method that pages link to other pages in the WebPages. By looking into how pages link to one another, a search engine can more accurately decide what a page is all about, and if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original webpage.

Making Money from Selling Advertising Space

If you would observe the company that delivers the daily paper to your doorstep for a business case study, you will come to learn that the newspaper publisher hires reporters, writers and other important staff to create the contents and deliver the papers to their readers.

In addition to the above mention, the publisher has to invest regularly in heavy duty machinery and tons of papers in printing tons of newspapers on a daily basis.

And in order to ensure that the newspapers are delivered on time, the publisher appoints agents at every part of the covered territory.

So, how does the newspaper company make money? It is obvious that selling a copy of the papers at less than a dollar would not even be able to even fund the operations.

The answer? Selling advertising spaces! You have definitely seen lots of advertisements in the newspaper. The publisher simply sells advertising space in the papers to advertisers who want to leverage their advertising efforts on the paper’s high readership.

On the same analogy, you can make money the exact way from your newsletter: simply by selling advertising space to prospective advertisers!

If your mailing list size exceeds 1,000 (5,000 is recommended) subscribers and beyond, you can start selling advertising space for say, $10.00 per sponsor ad.

In this manner, you turn every issue you send out to your subscribers into a profit-pulling device. And since there is virtually no end to the stream of advertisers as products, services and businesses are cropping every single day in every industry imaginable, so are your money making opportunities.

7 Successful methods To Increase Your Website Traffic Starting Yesterday

In order to help you in getting a lot of traffic for your site, here are some seven proven methods to increase your web traffic.

1) Paid Advertising through PPC

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great number of promoting systems that are really genuinely popular and ensures great hits. Although with this successful method to increase your hits would cost some investing money. While a few of you would shy away from spending your hard earned  income to increase traffic, it is essential to do in modern times to do so because Google Adwords and Yahoo is the top proven method to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this SE advertisement techniques have harvested advantages for a lot of companies around the globe. Lots of internet site feature these advertisement system and a lot of others have signed up to take advantage of the benefits. Don’t be left behind. Every penny spent in advertisement is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange Reciprocal Links with relevant site the smart way.

With interchanging links with another web site, both of you will profit by the efforts to enhance your web site`s hits. When one web site features some other web sites link, they could offer each other with the hits one web site gets. The efforts are twice beneficial as it would seem like both of you are doing work to get more traffic. The more links traded with several web sites the more hits could be expected.

3) Smart use of Viral Marketing

Viral marketing lets you to spread the word about your company and merchandise without any costs at all. This is a marketing technique that could be very sneaky; you are able to attach your company’s name, merchandise or link to a specific media such as a laughable video, entertaining game, or and informative and  interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this formula, people get infected with the creative thinking and amusement of the medium that they’ll pass it on to a lot of people.

4) Look to write your content along Long Tail Keywords:

Search engines search for certain keywords that they’d present in their results page. In doing so, having the correct keyword and keyword phrase is a very high necessity in ranking high in SE results. You may write your own articles or you could hire someone professional to do it for you can get a lots of SEO writers for your work, search it on Google.

5) Submit Articles where ever you can that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to web sites that would comprise the same matter that your site deals in. E.g. If you sell auto parts write press releases and articles on cars and various auto parts. Attach your web site`s description and products at the end of the article also your link with anchor text pointing to your site.

6) Do Forum marketing as much as you can.

Capture a market and help other people to show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good base for your web site, people will start trusting you and your web site and will distribute to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly step-up because they know that you are able to supply what they actually need.

7) Last but not the least, Offer free newsletters to your readers.

If a lot of people know what you’re about and your existence is distributed with many other people, you’ll find a loyal traffic that can offer you with more traffic by testimonials. If you really help your customers or visitors they themselves would be pushed to help you with more and more traffic.

Must Have Features for Your Web Site

Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the  information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.

Understanding Your Target Customer
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

Does your website give enough contact information?
When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.

Which One is More Important – Product or Mailing List?

If you would ask this question, “Which one is more important – the mailing list or the product?” any savvy marketer would answer you, “The mailing list”.

Principally, any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand or your business if you would like to call it.

If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.

And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint Venture with product owners in return of commissions, recurring or not.

Most of the biggest success web businesses on the Internet today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine example is Friendster.com.

Friendster.com, in the nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential friends from around the world through a free membership access.

While Friendster.com does not make money from the number of members who join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and partnering with other big time merchants and businesses, owing to the established number of members Friendster.com has recruited.

This business is perfect example that demonstrates why every business should establish a need or demand before the product itself, and why you should do the same, whether you run a friends site or not.