Here are some ideas for those checking out effective web design and marketing:
- Selling Something Direct? Use An Uncomplicated Means Of Purchase. An intermediary service like PayPal is perfectly effective to start with. If you have just a few products, their HTML buttons are an effective way to test demand. When you make over $1000 a month, get your own merchant account.
- Be First With A New, Popular Good (or a smarter second). MySpace wasn't the first social networking site, but they did it better. They designed it to be viral. Members could compete to acquire 'friends', and everybody wants new pals, right? Users could put anything they wanted online, even if it looked cr*ppy. Censorship was minimal. Result: Huge popularity, without needing the search engines.
- Put At Least 500 Words Of Paragraphed Text In. If your internet pages have the same header, footer, left side-bar, right side-bar, and only a sliver of text in the middle, you might suffer a duplicate content penalty. You can get a freelance to write 500 mediocre words for $10, or 500 words of marketing copy for a good deal more.
- Use A Popular, Inexpensive Web Host. Here are some winnowing criteria: Google PageRank of at least 5. Send them an email or two. See how long it takes to get a response. They ought to have a discussion board (another indication of popularity and customer support). Lots of features offered (MySQL databases, Cpanel, Fantastico). Recent positive reviews in webmaster discussion boards. Offers Linux servers (Windows costs more, and offers less). Fee per month can be as little as $10, and still have all the features above.
- Have More Than One Web Host. Have more than one net hosting account if you have a lot of web sites. Spread the websites out over different accounts. That way, if one net host goes 'splat', it will be a minor annoyance instead of a twelve-hour slog putting twenty websites back online. You can install the resource-intensive stuff on the good, expensive host, and the less important websites on the $5 p.m. hosts. You can then, using SSH and FTP, backup one site on-server and FTP it to another account directly. This can save a lot of time. It's also much quicker than downloading a backup to your PC and re-uploading it somewhere else. Have you got a 2MB broadband connection? The 2MB is the theoretical _download_ speed. Ever try _uploading_ a fat file? A lot slower, isn't it?
- Submit Articles To Article Directories. What you need is a service or a software that will do this for you automatically. Submission by hand is soul-destroying. Ask in web marketer forums about the best softwares and services.
- Useful Freeware: 1. NVU Web Editor. This is a pretty good freeware web page editor. 2. GIMP Image Editor. This is a good image and photo manipulation package. 3. OpenOffice, an alternative to the Microsoft office suite. This can save you thousands if you need to buy multiple licences. 4. SimplyMepis. This a Linux operating system package. Like Damn Small Linux, it can be operated from a CD; useful in emergencies.
- Post In Popular Discussion Boards And Blogs, if they'll let you use straight hyperlinks in your signature. This is a short-term measure if you want to get back-links. It's a long-term method if you want to sell to discussion board members.
I hope these few handy tips will be of some use to you in getting useful web design and marketing done efficiently.
- Selling Something Direct? Use An Uncomplicated Means Of Purchase. An intermediary service like PayPal is perfectly effective to start with. If you have just a few products, their HTML buttons are an effective way to test demand. When you make over $1000 a month, get your own merchant account.
- Be First With A New, Popular Good (or a smarter second). MySpace wasn't the first social networking site, but they did it better. They designed it to be viral. Members could compete to acquire 'friends', and everybody wants new pals, right? Users could put anything they wanted online, even if it looked cr*ppy. Censorship was minimal. Result: Huge popularity, without needing the search engines.
- Put At Least 500 Words Of Paragraphed Text In. If your internet pages have the same header, footer, left side-bar, right side-bar, and only a sliver of text in the middle, you might suffer a duplicate content penalty. You can get a freelance to write 500 mediocre words for $10, or 500 words of marketing copy for a good deal more.
- Use A Popular, Inexpensive Web Host. Here are some winnowing criteria: Google PageRank of at least 5. Send them an email or two. See how long it takes to get a response. They ought to have a discussion board (another indication of popularity and customer support). Lots of features offered (MySQL databases, Cpanel, Fantastico). Recent positive reviews in webmaster discussion boards. Offers Linux servers (Windows costs more, and offers less). Fee per month can be as little as $10, and still have all the features above.
- Have More Than One Web Host. Have more than one net hosting account if you have a lot of web sites. Spread the websites out over different accounts. That way, if one net host goes 'splat', it will be a minor annoyance instead of a twelve-hour slog putting twenty websites back online. You can install the resource-intensive stuff on the good, expensive host, and the less important websites on the $5 p.m. hosts. You can then, using SSH and FTP, backup one site on-server and FTP it to another account directly. This can save a lot of time. It's also much quicker than downloading a backup to your PC and re-uploading it somewhere else. Have you got a 2MB broadband connection? The 2MB is the theoretical _download_ speed. Ever try _uploading_ a fat file? A lot slower, isn't it?
- Submit Articles To Article Directories. What you need is a service or a software that will do this for you automatically. Submission by hand is soul-destroying. Ask in web marketer forums about the best softwares and services.
- Useful Freeware: 1. NVU Web Editor. This is a pretty good freeware web page editor. 2. GIMP Image Editor. This is a good image and photo manipulation package. 3. OpenOffice, an alternative to the Microsoft office suite. This can save you thousands if you need to buy multiple licences. 4. SimplyMepis. This a Linux operating system package. Like Damn Small Linux, it can be operated from a CD; useful in emergencies.
- Post In Popular Discussion Boards And Blogs, if they'll let you use straight hyperlinks in your signature. This is a short-term measure if you want to get back-links. It's a long-term method if you want to sell to discussion board members.
I hope these few handy tips will be of some use to you in getting useful web design and marketing done efficiently.
About the Author:
Nicky Svengali is an author for web site designer and UK adverse credit loans web sites in London, UK.
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