Web Development Articles

Summer must be when many work at home Mom start to think that their business is a flop and begin to look for a new opportunity. This is fine if your business is truly a flop - but chances are, you just need to take a look at it from a fresh perspective.

It will always be easier to give a present business a fresh effort than to start all over.

Here are three very good reasons why:

Reason #1 - You will earn Respect. When you stick with something, you develop respect from others. When you flit from one opportunity to another you will be viewed with some sceptisism from others who will wonder how long you’ll last with the new business before changing again!

Reason #2 - You will earn Product Recognition. How many times do we have to read it? The business experts all say it takes two years to really get a business off the ground. So why do we give up so easily after just two months? When we keep grounded and keeping working the business we have, we begin to be recognized for our product. This is true locally and online. There are so many online WAHMs who when I see them, I think of their product.

"I am a writer, not a business-person. I don’t want to have anything at all to do with business," you might think. But how mistaken you can be. As a writer of two books, I discovered the amazing opportunities available to someone who has a website.

What are these opportunities? Here are just seven of them:

1. An online presence shows that you take your work very seriously and are prepared to market to the world!

2. One of the most useful things a website can do is that it can save you time and money for postage, envelopes, paper and photocopying. In today’s internet world, more and more publishers are willing to consider submissions using the internet.

3. The moment you have a website up, you have the amazing opportunity to publish your own articles. How may times I have heard people say, "I don’t mind not getting paid. I just wanted the publicity!" What better way to get free publicity than to publish articles on the internet?

4. This one is particularly for those who are interested in writing for publications online ? having your own website shows that you have the ‘know-how’, where the internet world is concerned.

Personal Computers, Servers Or ISP?

You need a server to host your site so that it can be viewed over the internet. This server can either be an Internet Service Provider or of your own. Most websites are hosted by an Internet Service Provider because they can provide powerful server hardware, high speed connections and reliable server support.

Most providers have very fast connections to the Internet such as a full T3 fiber-optic (45 Megabytes per second) connections which is about 1000 high speed (56 Kilobytes per second) modems combined.

For those who are looking to set up their own servers and host their own websites, a personal computer is often not powerful enough to do the job. As the name suggests, a personal computer can hardly handle multiple visitors to your website- servers are needed to handle these visitors simultaneously.

Getting Your Web Hosting

There are thousands of companies that offer web hosting for your website. Which to choose and what to look out for? With the multitude of features and terms in each hosting plan, it can be puzzling for those who are just starting out. The golden rule in choosing your website: Nothing beats reliable web hosting. Many web hosting plans offer more space, more benefits than others. The decision to your web hosting should be based on reliability. We have seen too many disappointed website owners who chose benefits and space over reliability.

You have only 10 seconds to impress your potential buyer.

Your Web site visitors don’t care about you. They care what you can do for them. Give them a reason to buy. If you haven’t reaped the sales you deserve apply these ten tips:

Part one of this article is available at http://www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles/article-56.shtml.

6. Make your layout clear, clean, and consistent.

An unorganized, unclear site tells people you didn’t do your homework by writing excellent copy to convince visitors to buy. If you don’t know how to do this, contact a copywriting coach or web writing coach. Take advantage of the smaller priced teleclasses. These professionals can show you how to write the best copy, and help you put in your personality rather than a “one size fits all” kind.

Organize each page in the same layout-such as left centered, right centered, or centered. Go to other Web sites and choose a design that resonates with you. Keep every page in the same format.

7. Use color on your Web pages that doesn’t jar your visitor.

Rosalind wants to share her inspirational poetry with a wider community. Alas, poor Rosalind lives in a remote town.

Jonathan is a graphics artist who settled in a mountain resort community after he left college. He would like to start a graphics business in this new location but office space in local buildings is far too expensive and his meager advertising budget wouldn’t attract enough customers to get started.

Merle was a secretary at a college for many years. She retired recently. She misses the interaction with students. And spends her time surfing the Internet. She has an idea for starting a business matching students with other students in her community who are looking to share housing. And thinks the Internet would be a perfect avenue to reach out to them and attract clients.

What do they have in common?

• They need to reach a wider audience.
• They have a product or service to sell.
• They have a talent to promote.
• Their funds are very limited.

If you can relate to a few of the above and answered “Yes” this sounds exactly like me!

Well, you need a website!

Website, website, website, everyone says you need one. But do you really? It all depends. It depends on your market, business objectives, and even your comfort level and if you are willing to step outside of it.

If your customers live and work within a few miles of your brick and mortar business or home based business, you might not need one.

If you don’t have any plans to grow your business, you might not need one.

If you’re in denial and choose not to see that change is going to occur with or without you, then you might not need one.

If your community is small enough that you know everyone by their first name or can pass through the town in 30 seconds and you have enough business, then you might not need a website.

If you’re comfortable where you are and don’t want to change anything, maybe you might not need one.

Fact: Change is inevitable. It is the only certainty, besides death, we all know is going to occur.

You visited a great website some time ago that had some fantastic information on it. It is not easily found in search engines results so you decide to type the domain name into your favorite browser. The problem is that the url spells out something like keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com.

Does that sound ethical to you? It maybe helpful with those search engine rankings but for many visitors that can be a pain in you know what to type out.

For years I worked in an internet café and was surprised to know that many persons can’t type in a hyphen. Instead of finding out how to do it, they just move on to an alternate site hence a loss of traffic.

The average computer user can be a lazy fellow indeed. That’s why there are so many keyboard shortcuts. He needs to complete his task as soon as possible.

Ever wonder why the Googles, Yahoos, Amazons and Ebays of the online world are so successful? It’s because there domain name play a significant role in there branding.

You have only 10 seconds to impress your potential buyer.

Your Web site visitors don’t care about you. They care what you can do for them. Give them a reason to buy. If you haven’t reaped the sales you deserve apply these ten tips:

1. Write dazzling home-page copy that gives your potential customers a reason to click to your product or service sales letter.

Use hyper-linked benefit driven headlines that lead visitors straight through to a sales letter that includes bulleted benefits of your service or product. “Before I learned this ultimate power technique, my Web sales were flat.”

2. Preplan and know your Web site’s purpose and audience before you contact a Web Master.

Without knowing your site’s clear purpose, your headlines and copy for each product or service will lack clicking power. If your visitors don’t get a chance to know why they should use you or your product, they will be confused and leave your Web site.

Before you write much copy, make a list of your benefits and features. Your visitors want to know what their outcomes are for reading your book. Benefits sell. Use this list to create an order-pulling sales letter and headlines.

Thinking about starting up a business? The web is the way to go. Look around! More and more, people are relying on the internet as an information resource, a way to foster personal relationships, and method of purchasing goods and services.

What would you think if you received a business inquiry from an unfamiliar company, and you looked them up on the internet to find they had no website? They’d seem a little behind the times, wouldn’t they? They might even come across as slightly unprofessional. It would take away from their credibility, to see that they had no presence on the world wide web.

Likewise: if you own your own business or are thinking of starting one, the first place you should put your name is the internet. Why? It’s the cheapest method of advertising that gets you the most exposure… and it’s a way to present your offer to the world without ever leaving the house.

The web is reputation that builds on itself. It’s a potential buyer sitting at home, typing your specialty into a Google search, and seeing your company pop up. It’s your own website URL getting forwarded on via email. It’s someone in a chat forum passing your good name along because you gave them a bit of thoughtful advice.

My previous article I wrote called “One Point Two Billion” attracted quite some attention, the downloads through all the article syndication services has been astronomical compared to any other articles I wrote which are still with them.

It seems the numbers game is popular not only with the accountancy profession, but with just about anyone running a website who is interested in more sales from anywhere in the world.

The internet has proved to be the great leveller, even a grandmother I know has made hundreds of thousands of dollars just from publishing a couple of e-books, business of that magnitude is not now confined to those people with large sums of investment capital, teams of accountants, planners, secretaries, swanky offices etc. Anyone, even you, can make money regularly on the internet, just aim for a goal and ‘go for it!’

The costs of setting up have never been lower, the ease of making web pages has never been easier, ( I make my web pages in Notepad, which is on every Windows computer), and the potential audience for your web pages has never been larger. So what are you waiting for?