We’re going to be looking at the process of creating a web site and how to make money online with your site. We’ll take you through the steps of choosing a domain name, web site hosting, designing your pages with web site templates, adding content and making money online with google adsense and affiliate programs.

The success of your online business relies on you making sales, actually selling your product or service to paying customers. The more the better. To get those sales you need to communicate well with your potential customers and make a good sales pitch. What you say and how you say it are therefore very important and can make the difference between your business succeeding or failing.

When you sell your products and services online, you communicate largely through text. What you say in that text directly influences the customer’s decision to either buy or not buy your product, in the same way that a real-world sales conversation would. Your potential customer wants to hear interesting and important information that will help them make that decision. That decision begins from the moment they arrive at your website.

Lets imagine you are looking to buy a particular product. You learn that the product is available on two different websites. You visit each site and read their text.

This is what Site A says to you in effect:

let us tell you about us, here’s some very basic product details we feel we should give you, here’s an inadequate photo of the product we had lying around, this is why we are in business and why we think we are great, yeah we know we’ve made it difficult for you to use our site. We didn’t want to make the effort to find out what our customers want, this is where we are located (usually accompanied by a picture of their building).

Site B says:

yes we sell the product you are looking for. here it is…, let us tell you all about it, here’s some good reasons why you should buy it immediately, here’s some good reasons why you should buy from us (and not our competitors), Its easy for you to buy from us. Just do this…, Let us know if we can serve you better or answer any questions you may have.

Which one is going to get the sale? Obviously Site B will get the sale. Why? Because they clearly show they understand their customers. They:

Focus on their customers! Focus on their needs! Focus on their priorities!

They provide information that is useful to you in making your buying decision. They are focused on you the customer, not themselves. Their text is all about “you”. They work hard to ensure all this and demonstrate it on their website. They make it very easy to interact with them and that also gives you the impression they will be very easy to deal with too.

Site A, on the otherhand, may indeed have some useful information on their webpage but its not there in quantity and for your benefit. It can of course be useful to know where a company is located. But, if they are going on about it or its the first thing you see on arrival, its more likely there to prop-up their over inflated ego and demonstrate how successful they think they are. Their focus is directed entirely on themselves. You are not their number 1 priority, they are! Don’t they realise that customers can read between the lines and spot this easily?

In addition to focusing on their customers, there’s also something else that Site B does very well. Its not as easy to spot but has a dramatic effect on their sales. Its the way they deliver their information. They know its vital to keep your attention and interest. If they lose it for a second they may lose it forever.

They’ve noticed that other sites write paragraphs of text that grab your interest in one sentence and lose it in the next, because the information provided is not relevant or important to you at that point. It should either be removed or replaced. So they have made a conscious effort to hold your interest at all times throughout a paragraph or piece of text. Their paragraphs say exactly what you want to know and in the order you want to know it. They hold your interest throughout with useful and valuable information. They don’t tolerate any irrelevant or unimportant information whatsoever.

This is the ideal situation for your company to be in. To have customers who are keen to listen to what you have to say and trust what you say. They know you are focused on them, their needs and their priorities. They are far more likely to listen to your recommendations and make purchases based on them. You will build stronger, equally beneficial and more rewarding relationships with them. Those relationships will be hard to break by your competitors, especially if you keep that focus and continuously improve your offers, products and service.

Questions to ask?

Are you focused on your customers? Are you providing the right information at the right times? Do you keep their attention and interest at all times? Do you distract them at anytime? Are you getting maximum sales from your website?

Action to take on your website:

Concentrate on selling more products. Concentrate on selling them well. Remove any distracting, confusing or irelevant text. Try to keep the readers interest continuously.

Remember: Focus on your customers! Focus on their needs! Focus on their priorities!

Good luck!

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All websites have a homepage. It is the most important page of your site. It acts as the main gateway to the entire site. Most of your prospective customers will enter through it. Its vital to get it right. You dont want them to just turn around and go away again.

Take a moment to clear your mind. Now go and look at your homepage and take a minute to evaluate it. Does it work for your prospective customers?

Most will arrive at your homepage and quickly scan through the content. If they are interested in what they read and see they’ll typically decide to click on a link that takes them to another page where they’ll find more information. As they make that decision they’ll be asking things like:

What do they do? Do they look professional? Whats in it for me? Do i have the problem they describe? Are they talking directly to me? How can i get it?

Alternatively, if the homepage hasnt interested them immediately then they’ll leave just as quickly as they arrived, unlikely to return.

Your homepage is the gateway to your website and plays a critical part in the prospects visit. First impressions count. The success of your site depends on your homepage. Now, before we look at what a homepage should be, lets look at what it shouldnt be.

It should not be a false homepage requiring you to click a link to get to the real homepage. It shouldnt be a page that fails to direct the prospect to further action. It shouldnt contain any content that doesnt serve an immediate and clear purpose. It should never read like a dull brochure, that does nothing to motivate prospects to seek more information or buy immediately.

What a homepage should be. It should have a clear message. It should be a dynamic page that instantly conveys a sense of what you do, how you do it, who you are, how you do business, etc. It should start to describe the direct benefits that prospective customers get by buying your product or service. It should create prospect interest and make them eager to find out more. It should provide direction and clearly marked links to get them there. It should focus entirely on serving the needs of your prospective customers and removing their anxieties.

The purpose of your website is to sell your products and services to your prospects. To be effective your homepage must meet the needs of your prospects exactly and provide answers to their questions. To do this you must know what your prospects want and how they want it. If you dont already know, find out. Ask them!

Also, spend some time looking at other homepages learning what works and what doesnt. Are there features and styles that you could adopt on your site?

Once you have these answers design your entire homepage around them. Spend some time getting it right and both you and your prospects will benefit. Dont settle for second best unless you want your website to fail as a result of being ineffective.

When you’ve done it. Take a moment to clear your mind. Now go and look at your homepage once again and take a minute to re-evaluate it. Does it work for your prospective customers now?

Good luck!

Evan Obijiofor is the webmaster of www.helpmysmallbusinesswebsite.com which offers small business website help. Atlanta Website Design solutions don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Contact him and get the help you need today.

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How to Really Annoy your Web Site Visitors

It is quite easy to build a web site. It is even easier to really annoy your web site visitors.

Build A Winner

Anyone can build a web site. Building a good web site is another story. Web designers can easily avoid some of the most common mistakes by watching out for the following pitfalls:

1. Pop-Ups – Pop-ups can really annoy a visitor as these advertisements that open automatically in a new window can be quite distracting. The visitor might be interested in looking at the content of your site but a pop-up can force the visitor to focus on other things. A better way to annoy visitors is by having pop-ups that spawn more pop-ups when the visitor tries to close the first one.

2. Never Ending Web Pages – Another way to annoy your web site visitors is by putting mass amounts of information on one long continuous page. The visitor will keep scrolling endlessly down the web page only to get lost in web site content unrelated to what he or she was looking for in the first place. Long pages are one of the easiest ways to make a web page look hokey. It is much better to keep web site pages short and sweet so that it is easy for the visitor to get right to the information that is being looked for.

3. Excessive use of Graphics – Some web developers think that by using flashy graphics they can attract visitors to their site. Instead, the visitors are likely to get irritated. Too many graphics will make your web site download very slowly. Due to slow download speeds people might leave your web site before even knowing what your site has to offer. In this fast moving world, nobody has spare time to sit and wait until your web site pages load. This is particularly true for the 42 percent of people still on dial-up.

4. Under Construction Pages – Another way to irritate your web site visitors is by diverting them to a page which reads “under construction”. Most people try to find content oriented web sites and if they come across your web page that reads “under construction,” the visitor is likely to be annoyed, having spent time getting there with no positive result.

5. Plug-Ins – Some web sites use plug-ins that visitors have to install before they can view the web site. This is one of the easiest way to really annoy your web site visitors. Some people feel that if they like a particular program then others should like it as well. A web developer might like a good-looking icon program which needs to be installed before his or her web site can be viewed. If the program is obscure and not used by most people, this will only be a source of discontent when things do not work properly on the site. Don’t make people download software to see your site. Never ever make them take extra steps to do something.

6. Lack of Content – Most people like content oriented web sites that give information on specific topics. Even search engines love content-based web sites and will rank content heavy sites higher in search results. Usually people visit a web site to see what benefit the site can offer them. Lack of proper content results in annoyed visitors leaving the web site.

7. Music – A few years back music was quite common on the web and many web sites had music that automatically played. Gradually people have realized that music creates a lot of distraction and is a nuisance to a lot of people. If you really want music then a choice should be given to the visitor to switch it on or off. Remember, may people surf the web with music playing already or while sitting in their office. When a web site automatically plays music, it will aggravate them to no end.

8. Inconsistent Page Design – Some sites are designed in such a way that after moving from one page to another the visitor feels as if he or she has come to a totally different web site. There should be some uniformity in page design or else visitors will feel lost and disoriented.

By paying close attention to factors that can annoy web site visitors, web site owners and designers can keep their visitors happy. Following, or rather not following, these eight web site annoyances, webmasters can make the most of each web visitor.

Evan Obijiofor is the webmaster of www.helpmysmallbusinesswebsite.com which offers small business website help. Atlanta Website Design solutions don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Contact him and get the help you need today.

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Being a webmaster isn’t the easiest job out there. It might seem to be a dream job for people that have a normal nine to five job, but they could not be more wrong. They might think you have it easy if they see you staying home a lot while they have to get up every morning to see their boss. But for you as a webmaster it really never ends, the job is always on your mind!

You continually have make sure your website(s) are doing what they are supposed to do and are generating you an income instead of losing you a lot of money. There are so many things to think about in the business of being a webmaster when you start out, that sometimes it isn’t even funny anymore. A few examples are:

* Find good hosting for your sites
* Doing Research into “what is a good market for me to build a site for”
* You will have to create the Web site(s) or have it created.
* Making sure you know more about “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO)
* Find affiliates and other programs that might generate revenue from your site(s)
* Try to find link partners to increase your popularity and promote your Web site(s)
* Setup Pay Per Click campaigns and do loads of re-search on advertisement like that
* Read through loads of scams that want to sell you things you don’t need!
* Try to get as much exclusive fresh content as possible

And this is only the tip of the iceberg, every day you will run into new ideas or things to explore. Its not a job for people that are easily frightened by working really hard and also working those long hours alone behind their screen. If you won’t work that hard and don’t commit loads of time to developing yourself and staying up to date in this business, you won’t last and your site(s) wont make it either.

On the other hand, if you do hang in there, and you keep growing and growing, then its almost impossible not to succeed in your mission. The rewards are extremely high if you make it because most successful webmasters make a lot of money. There are lots of things to worry/think about but in the end it will all be worth it and you will be running with the best.

Evan Obijiofor is the webmaster of www.helpmysmallbusinesswebsite.com which offers small business website help. Atlanta Website Design solutions don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Contact him and get the help you need today.

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If you have a website the chances are you receive e-mails from Webmasters asking you to make a link exchange with them. But how do you know whether you should link to their website or not? Well here are 9 rules of thumb, to help guide you through the linking maze.

1. Is their site relevant to yours?

This is key, and more and more important these days. If the answer is YES then it’s worth thinking about. If it’s off topic then you may want to think twice before swapping links. A link from a relevant website to your site is the preferred choice as it can help reinforce your website theme and potentially send some useful traffic your way.

2. How many links is too many on a links page?

When your link is being placed on another website, you ideally want that page to contain as few outbound links as possible. 15 or less outbound links is good, 150 outbound links is not so good. If there are a high number of links on a page [such as 150] then the value of each link out is weakened. Whilst we can only make assumptions about ‘link weight’ some Webmasters will use a cut off point of 50, 75 or even 100 links on a page as a top end maximum. Anything over 50 outbound links on an average resources page is certainly quite high. However if your link will appear on the page of a good quality site or ‘authority website’ an exchange can still be worthwhile.

3. What is the Page Rank of the site on Google?

Some webmasters focus a lot on Google’s page rank as a measure of a website. If you download and install the Google toolbar and turn on Page Rank in the settings you will see a measure of 1 to 10 shown via a horizontal bar for each site you are on. Typically the higher the page rank, the more important a site is perceived to be. A link from a Pr 5 page is often seen as a more powerful link than one from a Pr1 page. However, Google’s Page Rank is only meant to be a rough guide and should not be taken too seriously. Tip one should always preside – a relevant link is always what you want.

4. Should the links page be categorized?

Personally I prefer a well organised links page. If your citing a resource in context of an article you would link from the paragraph, but for the purposes of resource links it is a good idea to organise your pages into relevant themes relating to your website and business. If the site containing the link you are being offered is placed on a page with 200 links all mixed up and covering every topic under the sun, then it’s not ideal. If you’re an online shop selling Art Prints should you really be on the same links page as Hosting Companies and Travel Agents? Make the effort to organise your resource pages, even if some link partners don’t.

5. Is the links page being read by search engines?

It is important that the page your link is on can be found and read by search engines. The page should be no more than 2-3 clicks away from the homepage. You can even test if the web page is in the Google index by visiting www.google.com and typing into the search bar cache: with the full domain and page name extension after it. So your query in the Google search bar could read: cache:www.mywebsite.com/thelinkspage.html. The page should then show in the Google index. If it does not then there are a couple of possibilities. 1/ The page is very new and hasn’t been crawled yet or 2/ the site has a problem being crawled by search engines due to poor internal linking.

6. What if a Webmaster asks me to link to one site, but links back to me from a different site?

This process is sometimes referred to as ‘3-way linking’ or a ‘linking triangle’. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with 3-way linking as it can sometimes be done for convenience. However the first thing you need to do is 1/ Evaluate the site you are linking to and 2/ Evaluate the site and page you are getting the link from. So is the outbound link destination relevant to your site, and is the inbound link you are going to receive also coming from a quality related website?

7. Do I want to associate my business with this particular site?

It is a simple question to answer and this should form part of your decision making process. If you think you have been approached by a good website then the chances are others will feel the same and possibly the search engines too.

8. How do I know if my link partners are still linking to me?

You can do this manually by keeping the information for each link partner in an Excel spreadsheet or similar and then periodically check the exact URLs your link should appear on. However if you get to the stage of having hundreds of link partners this may become rather impractical. At this stage a reciprocal link checker might be advisable. www.linksmanger.com offers a link management system that includes periodic checking of link partners as well as a link exchange system for around $20 a month.

9. So what are the best links?

One answer could be “the ones that deliver lots of relevant traffic”. However links can mean different things to different people. Natural linking [when people link to you without you asking] is a great reward, but it is also wise to ensure you have some links from quality sites in your industry. Teoma can be a good place to find such sites as it focuses more on human edited results than say Google for example. Simply make a search with a good key phrase on www.teoma.com and you will quickly see which websites are the ‘authority’ sites. Set about trying to get listed on as many of the best ones as you can.

Evan Obijiofor is the webmaster of www.helpmysmallbusinesswebsite.com which offers small business website help. Atlanta Website Design solutions don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Contact him and get the help you need today.

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