Interactive Web Success

If you think that you can make it today on the internet just by a lot of hard work, then you are only half way correct. Today it takes a lot of hard work to maintain, add and create websites that are ready for traffic. Not only that but the exact phrasing and keywords must be adequate and placed in the correct spot for exposure. Try a free PPC software today and find out how you can start making money instantly when this software directs you to some of the tricks that will make your site explode with heavy traffic.

Regardless of what kind of business you have, you have to know a little bit about the internet to make your internet site successful. Regardless if you happen to be a lone photographer or even a used car salesman, knowing the internet can make your business excel on line. And the great thing is that you do not even have to sell your own product to make the money on line. Having a great website that produces great traffic is the first step. After that and a little help with free PPC software you could be on your way to making real money through your own products plus that of companies advertising on your space.

Internet Explorer, created by microsoft has been the most
popular web browser for many years. But the gap is shrinking
with the release of Mozilla Firefox, by an open source community.

At the last count it is said that there are 64 million firefox
users on the internet. Growing in massive numbers by the day.

So, the issue with browser compatibility is at its highest
importance. The way browsers are constructed, they can show a
webpage slightly differently.

For instance, the IFRAME tag shows perfectly in Internet
Explorer but does not show in Firefox. This is only one of many
instances of none browser compatibility.

Therefore, webmasters should be making sure their web page is
viewable in both internet explorer and firefox equally. If it
doesnt, then they risk loosing a large percentage of web users.
There is nothing worse than surfing a web site and not being
able to see it properly in a particular browser.

The solution for webmasters is to make all their pages XHTML
transitional. Web sites that validate to this, have a higher
chance of being viewed correctly in all major browsers.

XHTML is the next generation web language, and is said to
replace HTML eventually. XHTML was released in January 2000.

XHTML is not a difficult language to learn, it is basically
identical to HTML but the main difference is that tags in XHTML
always have an end tag.

For example, a IMG SRC tag in HTML has no end tag. In XHTML the
IMG SRC tag has the end tag of />

More information on learning XHTML can be found at
http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_intro.asp

Once you have constructed your XHTML web page then you can
validate it at http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_validate.asp

Further, to ensure near complete browser compatibility you can
validate any stylesheet here :
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

In my previous set article (Part One) I try to make it clear that building a web site is an investment in time and some money as well. In this article I will just try and lay out the fundamentals required when you go about thinking about building that professional web site. Remember this is not for the one-page web site or blog. This is for a scaled development where you would like to bring some information to the public or to sell some merchandise on the web.

Remember, places like Ebay are sometimes much better at selling a few articles or objects. If you want to sell 5 copies of one book then a web-site is not the way to go. However, if you want to sell or bring information that is updated and changed on a constant basis to the public then most definitely you need an internet web site presence.

I am also not going to discuss hypothetical situations in these articles. I will try and involve you in my own real life frustration and experience. This is not trying to hype my web site. The details of my web sites and blogs are in my author signature anyway. However, using a real “live” and real “life” example may bring home to you the problems you will face.

To just bear in mind that I did personally act as a CTO (Chef Technological Officer) for many years at three highly successful technology companies. But it is one hell of a different ball game when you have to almost everything for yourself. So here we go.

The Cookbook:

1. Web Server - Two choices here: Linux or Windows (and it does make a difference)And what else will my provider offer me?
2. The Software YOU will use to design your site - Major choices are usually FrontPage or Dreamweaver and fanatics exist about either. There are many other great FREE choices as well.
3. The knowledge you have of HTML (and soon of course I will mention PHP and ASP two competing technologies (by the way PHP rocks!)
4. The Content which in this case does not only mean text. The content meaning images, text, internal links, navigation, menu structure.
5. What you want to accomplish? - On one web site I want to sell Real Estate. On another web site I want to show off my writing publications. Yet on another one, believe it or not I run Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is geared to articles about places in every country in the world and travel. (You cannot publish articles about sports there for instance.) Each one of these sites has a different PURPOSE. Each one has a different agenda. Each one is a place where one may go and visit for different reasons. In other words the Clientele is NOT the same. So they have to be geared totally differently.
6. Next on your list (or perhaps first) is who is my clientele? Who do I want to attract? Not HOW (yet) but WHO!
7. Time you have to build it and spend nurturing it. There is NO SUCH THING ON THE WEB as “if you build they will come.” Forget it. Don’t even entertain that dream. You will be building your site and nurturing it like it is a new-born baby, and it will frustrate you like a 14 year old daughter about to go out on her first date. Be wary and don’t underestimate here. You need TIME to build and run a web site.

That is the basic cookbook. Soon we will be adding a whole slew of chapters to it. Soon we will be explaining all those nutty terms that drive us crazy. But for now, for this part that is the information you need to consider. In my next article I will explain and try and educate just how important the answers to these questions are down the road. Thinking ahead and long term will save an incredible amount of money and frustration down the road.

Ted W. Gross owns Virgin Earth, a real estate brokerage firm in Jerusalem, Israel. Virgin Earth represents residential and commercial real estate all over Israel. Virgin Earth also maintains an RSS Feed on its current properties. Virgin Earth maintains a sister site Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is designed to accept articles about any country or place in the world. We gladly accept articles about travel and places and countries. But only on those subjects please. Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works.

The Internet has made it possible for us to bring our products
and services to so many people. Ten years ago, business
opportunities are introduced and handled only through word of
mouth, what is considered as the most powerful form of
advertising.

Today, we can bring our prospective clients on-the-spot audio
and video presentations as well as full explanations of our
business programs. With online ordering, customers can simply
shop at their very own online stores.

And these are all made possible by thousands of Turnkey Internet
businesses available online.

A Turnkey refers to a system that is equipped with everything
that is needed for it to function; ready to be put into
immediate use. Similar to the ignition of an automobile, the
user only turns a key to start using the product. All the
business tools, research, and design is supplied, installed, and
usually managed by one vendor.

With the numerous turnkey business opportunities existing today
(along with the new ones surfacing every day), careful attention
should be given on deciding which one is right for you.

One of the secrets of a successful turnkey Internet business is
to have a complete range of services that are all based on the
idea to have an online business up and running fast and easy.
Some of these features are:

Hosting package deals (usually in years) Free Domain name
Business ideas and concepts Software Designs by Professional
designing groups Business consultations Client only private
forums Marketing packages and Support Resell Rights on Software
Resell Rights on E-books Resell Rights on Scripts Professional
Website Templates Large Profit Affiliate Programs Business Plans
and Information Guides Private Reseller Membership area Web
Hosting

Aside from the system being complete, it should also be
automated; that is, the business virtually runs in itself. For
Store-type sites, for example, the shopping cart should be
able to track the users shopping session. Likewise, the system
should also allow for multiple forms of payment (such as
credit/debit cards, eGold, eCheck, or Paypal). A good turnkey
Internet business should also be able to cater to all levels of
business owners: the e-commerce beginners and advanced users
alike.

Moreover, to succeed with the Turnkey business opportunity of
your choice, you may want to make use of a powerful, risk-free
marketing tool called Affiliate Programs. Here, other companies
are in charge of holding the inventory and taking orders from
customers; you just focus on the marketing and nothing else.

There are many advantages of conducting advertising and
promotion (especially “how-to” information) on the Internet.
Some of them are listed below:

This form of business has very low start-up costs. You can
reproduce your products at no costs. Some products, especially
software packages, offer no shipping costs on the part of the
customers, as they are downloadable. There is no need to
maintain inventory just one copy of the product will do! You
can do the operations of the business at your own pace (be it
full-time or part-time). You can manage the business anywhere
(at the office, even at your own home). It offers high profits
at low risks.

The three fundamentals of affiliate sales and marketing program
are the following:

The number of visitors. Automated systems that are filled with
sales messages promoting your links have the aim to pull
people towards you, as opposed to other strategies that push
the products or services to people. The key is to create
appealing headlines and effective testimonials that catch the
attention of people and force them to pay attention.

>From visitors to customers. Offer products that are easy to sell
and that people are buying. You may want to ask possible
customers if they would buy a particular product, and how much
they are willing to pay for it.

A strong follow-up system. One sale most likely leads to
another. A strong follow-up system could allow you to generate
repeat business, with each product creating a desire for more.

While it is true that the Turnkey Internet business could make
you thousands of dollars a month with your computer, it still is
not the way to make much money. The secret to a successful
enterprise is to build a business that not only fits your budget
and your marketing area, but also based on your skills, personal
preferences, and interests.

For starters, she will tell you that once upon a long time ago, she had a checking account, a debit card, and all that, when she opened her online purchasing account. But she closed her checking account, and online purchasing account let her remain a member anyway. Even so, she is sure that it is still free to get one of these online purchasing accounts.

Anyway, she had an online purchasing account to begin with. And nothing was happening on it, they keep sending her reminders to get her account verified with a credit card. But even though
she hasn’t verified her account with a credit card, they have still left her account open.

Then she won a dollar from Group Lotto not too long ago. A dollar just appeared into her account just like magic!

Now, she had been enrolling into free survey sites, and lottery sites, trying to win money, anything! Still is. Also started checking out the ” magical” ways to bring about money. She stumbled into a holograhic creation series, a really cool website, which in turn led her to abother website that provided videos, and ebooks, on how to build a website. The tools to build coupled with the encouraging concepts she felt unstoppable, and wants to spread the wealth! Very interesting, very encouraging, if nothing else. And she feels you just got to check it out.

Anyways, she got to thinking more positive, and it provided her with a link to some cool videos on how to make a website, with step by step instructions and everything. All for FREE!! So she just kept all this positive thinking up, and got invited to make $10 in 30 minutes from a survey site. She completed the entry and submitted it right away. At first, there was no reply, she waited for like a week. But then all of a sudden… there was $10 right there in my online purchasing account! She verified it, and went straight to the suggested domain registrar and registered her own website. She couldn’t believe it.

It
took a while, trying to get her order right, because she could only get the standard package, but hey, it’s a site, and it’s registered, and they hosted it for her too,(ad-supported, of course). But what can one expect, for free.

Well, that’s how she did it, and if one wants to know any specifics, like, which survey site she earned the money from, or which site compelled her to think more positively, or the exact site that taught her how to build a website, one will have to visit the author’s website. Good Luck to you, and here’s to your success!

Author: Cheryl Hammer

A good place to start is INTERNET PROFIT MENTOR
Get free ebooks, and videos, and an ecourse!
Go to http://www.internetprofitmentor.com

After working with web design companies, agencies and firms, I have found the following 7 steps will lead you to a much happier and fruitful relationship with your next web designer:

1. Never shop on price.

   Whilst you don’t always get what you pay for. You almost never get what you expect if you aren’t willing to pay properly for it.

2. Pay careful attention to the portfolio of the website designer.

   What they have done is a good indication of what you will get. In addition, look at the web designer’s own website. Avoid web design companies that still use flash introductions on their own website.

3. Give a small project first.

   If you plan to spend a lot of money with the company, try giving them a small project first. If their service and quality of product is what you expect, they will deliver on their promises and you can move onto bigger things with that company. If they don’t deliver, then you haven’t wasted huge sums of money.

4. ALWAYS define exactly what you need before the project begins.

   Like it or not, a project plan with specifications is going to save a lot of trouble later on, both for you and the design company. The specifications do not have to be four hundred pages long, but they should define any important features that could otherwise be ambiguous.

5. Meet the team

   Have a conversation with the project manager and make sure that you get to speck to the whole team that will be working on the site, or at least meet them. A good project manager should be able to convey your requirements to the team properly, but good project managers are uncommon. You’ll be safer if you can have a chat to everyone involved in one meeting. Getting everyone to take notes and thus ensuring that the team as a whole has an understanding of what you are trying to accomplish; straight from the horses mouth.

6. Ask for references and/or testimonials.

   This may or may not be possible depending on the web design company. But if they are more than willing to let you speak to other clients, then more than likely their previous clients like them, which is a good sign.

7. Due diligence.

   The level of due diligence that you perform on the company should of course be kept in check with the size of the job you intend to have them do for you. If you are getting them to do a $250 online greeting card, getting 10 references, having 4 prior meetings and asking for a 100 page specification is likely going to cause you to be tossed aside in favour of a client that is worth the trouble.

   On the other hand, if you are having them build the next major shopping portal for you group of 185 country-wide chain of stores and plan to have it intergrate with the services of several large companies, be absolutely sure the web design company knows what they are doing and has experience doing it. You don’t want a company that is learning the ropes by using you as a guinea pig.

I hope that armed with this information you will be able to make an informed choice on which web design company, agency or firm you will use on your next project.

Nicholas Edwards is co-founder of web-design.articles-reports.com. The site is dedicated to building better web design through understanding. For more articles on web design go to web-design.articles-reports.com.

What is an affiliate program? I’ve been bombarded with this
question from Internet business newbies since I got myself
involved in this very interesting but challenging online
business.

Many years ago, ever since we started manufacturing products for
sale in the offline physical world, we had been having sales
agents representing different manufacturers to help the latter
to expand their markets. The agents conclude sales without
carrying inventory, handling payments, signing contracts,
sorting, packing and shipping of the products. Their main focus
had been to make the sale by getting the orders from the
prospects and existing customers, which were then processed by
the manufacturers or merchants.

In the Internet online world we have affiliates instead of
agents. Affiliates are highly targeted pay-for-performance sales
agents.

There are also some forms of Internet advertising that rewards
the affiliates for driving traffic to the advertiser i.e. the
manufacturers or the affiliate program owners. The advertiser
pays the affiliates to place a link on their website, and the
affiliate sends traffic to the advertiser in return. In other
words, it’s about the affiliates receiving commissions for
helping in making the sales.

The most common reward is pay-for-sale, where the merchant pays
the affiliates who referred the paying customers.

Affiliates are being considered as a complementary but very
important sales channel although the merchants themselves
continue to get their own direct traffic in making their own
sales.

The affiliates do not have to suffer from the occasional
sleepless nights worrying about the processing of orders,
packing and shipping etc because this are being taken care of by
the merchants who usually have an effective tracking system to
determine which affiliates drive which orders to them starting
with the so-called affiliate links. These are the links that the
affiliates put on their websites, newsletters, ezines or emails.

How does an affiliate link look like? You may ask. The most
common affiliate link is embedded in the linking URL. For
example, if you see a link like
“http://www.abcmerchant.com/?xxxx=3456″, you can be quite sure
that the affiliate with the ID (identification) 3456 will
receive money from ABC Merchant when someone places his order
after clicking that link.

Other affiliate links are more complex and encrypted with some
sites having their links masked so that the prospects won’t be
able to detect that the URL they’re clicking is an affiliate
link.

An excellent example of an affiliate program is that of
Amazon.com who happens to have one of the oldest affiliate
programs in the Internet. Other possible affiliate programs are
as follows:

1) “Pay per click” - the merchant pays the affiliates for the
driving the traffic and the resulted orders to them.

2) “Pay per lead” - the merchant pays the affiliates for
directing the prospects to register their interest with a
possibility of making the sales later.

3) “Pay per subscription” - if the merchant has a recurring
revenue from the customer’s repeated orders, the affiliates will
benefit accordingly.

Why bother about Affiliate Marketing at all then?

The following are some of the reasons why Internet marketers the
world over swear by the affiliate marketing as a form of their
Internet advertisement and strategy:

1. Low budget Many are hesitant to venture into any home based
businesses because of the lack of fund or the unwillingness to
part with money due to uncertainties. In affiliate marketing,
you don’t have to invest a lot financially to start pulling in
profits.

2. No inventories There is no need to keep and manage an
inventory as this would be taken care of by the merchant.

3. Passive income through leverage One could copy what the truly
wealthy people are doing (or rather not doing). They earn their
income through various leverage strategies which allow them to
make money while they’re sleeping, meddling with hobbies, or
having vacation in far away places such as the beautiful beaches
in Hawaii or Malaysia.

Unlike a paid job, affiliates could just drive traffic to the
merchants’ websites without having to sweat after having
provided them your ad copy and links.

4. Minimal risk The main reason for most successful Internet
marketer’s extensive use of affiliate marketing is the low-risk
nature of the program. This is especially attractive to those
with low budget for advertising

5. Globalisation With affiliate marketing, you are dealing with
an unending global market place. All you have to do is study,
research and select a niche product or service and prepare all
the necessary marketing tools for your affiliates to direct
traffic from just about anywhere around the world to your
website.

6. Getting paid while you sleep This system allows you to
“recruit” thousands of “salesmen” who are willing to work for
you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The best part is the fact
that they’re willing to do so for nothing! This is a system that
allows you to switch your business to “Autopilot” mode so that
you could continue to earn money whether you’re awake, asleep or
holidaying in Bangkok or Penang. It is a system that allows you
to work from home or some places 10,000 km or more away from
home.

Having said this, it must be stated that not all affiliate
programs are successful. Many affiliate program owners fail
because of their lack of the necessary investment, for instance,
the merchant needs to invest in an effective tracking system,
which is usually an outsourced affiliate network or an in-house
affiliate software system. Another factor to consider is having
sufficient human resources to recruit, manage, and motivate the
affiliates with the right technical support and remuneration.
Without a good support system in place, the affiliates will not
stay long enough to produce the desired results.

Most online businesses use affiliate marketing strategy to sell
their products which could include physical products, software
or e-books. Service industry can also benefit from an affiliate
program via a pay-per-lead program.

Before a merchant could establish an affiliate strategy, he
should consider many factors among them are the answers to the
following questions:

1) What are the benefits to the affiliates? What commission rate
should be offered to affiliates to attract them and motivate
them?

2) What are the competitors doing? Are there any innovative
strategies that could produce product differentiation? 3) What
pay-for-performance model should be adopted?

4) How to manage the affiliates and motivate them?

5) How are the affiliates paid using the latest technology
without affecting their moral due, for instance, to delayed
payment of their commission?

6) What affiliate software tracking systems are available and
which is the best for the purpose? A well designed affiliate
program could bring very explosive positive results to the
affiliate program owners’ business and the stream of income for
the affiliates themselves.

An affiliate strategy done right can increase online sales
tremendously. There are well over 30 affiliate software packages
to choose from. There are also more than 200 features in
affiliate software and network offerings.

With all these possibilities, no wonder many success stories of
the Internet businesses today are the results of suitable
application of affiliate programs. Indeed, most online
businesses could not survive today without effective affiliate
programs.

There is nothing really specific that will make a site good. A website, as I mentioned before, is about expressing your ‘personality’. This is what makes a site interesting, because everyone has a unique personality.

If you are designing your website yourself, I suggest you learn some HTML before starting. I used HTML editor and didn’t know the first thing about it. It has been a bit of struggle but there are some great tutorials online. Go here to learn everything you need to know about HTML.

If you are designing your site, HTML is the only code you should use.

A few other things to keep in mind when creating a website:

It must load fast. Otherwise, people will lose patience and click to another site. Anything over 10 seconds is way too long.

It should have a great headline and a great opening sentence. You have 10 seconds to get a person’s attention. Make sure you begin your site with the biggest, most compelling benefit you have to offer your visitors.

Keep them excited about your opportunity! I’m not talking hype here but give them visual images of what their future could be like if they join your opportunity. Every line should focus on what your prospect will gain by signing up with you.

It must be easy to read. Don’t crowd your site with too much info or make it hard for a person to navigate. Be consistent in your color, layout and design.

Be careful when using colored text or backgrounds. Again, it must be easy to read.

You don’t want any distractions from your message. This means no links on your front page to drive your visitors away, and no animations to distract them.

Ask for the sale! Create a sense of urgency by giving them a reason to join now!

Suggest “Bookmarking” your site.

Find a good hosting company. Your web host is the one who will present your website to the world. First impressions are everything! If a visitor clicks on your site and it’s down, or takes forever to load because of your host, what are the chances that they’ll ever come back? Slim to none! If you need help, I’ve mentioned a few good hosting companies in the resources section. You can also check with some of your teammates and see which ones they have had success with.

Know where your traffic is coming from, where they’re going on your site and how long they are staying. This will help you monitor your site’s effectiveness.

Constantly update your site with new material. Give your visitors a reason to come back! Keep your current information up-to-date and relevant to your target market.

Make sure you have a way to collect email addresses. This is the one thing your website MUST have. Most people will not sign up from their first visit and might never come back. You would have wasted your advertising dollars on them. But - if you have their email address - you can continue to contact them and develop a relationship over time. The percentage of people who sign up after repeated exposures to your offer is much higher! This is one of the most successful ways to create sales.

Stay focused on the main reason you created the website in the first place. Every aspect of your site should lead to your main goal, which is to have them join your team and become successful in Network Marketing!

By: Anne Ahira
Editor The BEST Affiliate Newsletter
http://www.thebestaffiliate.com