Author: Admin

Categories
General

Finding The Best Windows Email Server Hosting Plan

One of the most crucial decisions you will make regarding your business’ web presence is which the best windows email server hosting plan is for you. Making a decision about you email servers hosing may seem trivial compared to everything else you have to deal with, but the truth is that you will rarely be as frustrated as you will when you have email problems. Additionally, if you have a strong web presence, then you will likely do a great deal of your communication via email, so it is important to make sure your email server hosting service is reliable. Here, then, are some tips on what makes for the best windows email server hosting plan and where you can find it.

First of all, you have to figure out what it means to have the best windows email server hosting plan. There are a few factors you should consider, including the secure server capabilities of your host, the server speed, and the reliability.

Security

The best windows email server hosting plans are going to be able to provide you with a secure server. Such a server can do everything from protect you from spam to filter out viruses. Be sure to ask about the secure server because the best windows email server hosting plans will have good ones for you.

Speed

You certainly don’t want to have to wait for important emails, so a fast server is a necessity from the best windows email server hosting plans. If you are a busy company, you will find that emails can often fly in and out of your box fast and furiously. So if you have a hosting company that has slow servers, you could end up getting delayed on answers to clients and information getting to and from others within your own company even.

Reliability

There is nothing more frustrating than having your email go down. In order to save yourself such frustration, you should find an email server hosting company that can provide you with good reliability. In fact, the best windows email server hosting plans should include reliability of at least 99%, and in most cases you should look for something even higher than that. You want your primary form of communication to be available, so make sure you are using a reliable server host.

Other services

There are other services you should look for from the best windows email server hosting plan. You should insist on unlimited email aliases, auto-responder capabilities, and even some sort of access to your administration features. The more control you have over your email’s hosting, the better off you are going to be. Additionally, look for something that offers no restriction on the size of files you can exchange. This is especially important if you are going to be sending files across to clients or colleagues.

Choosing the best windows email server hosting plan is an important step in your business. Once you understand what features you should look for, you can more accurately compare companies with one another and come up with a way to get everything you want in one package. Keep communication up and you will have a more successful business and to do that you need the right email host.

Categories
Monetization

How To Make Money Blogging

After you create a blog that is interesting, now it is time to start making money.  The second step of getting visitors is the most important, if you plan on making money. The third step is choosing how you will make money from your blog.  You should try to keep your blog on the same topic on all your post, being that you can have an unlimited number of blogs, you can have a blog for any and every topic you choose.  Make sure to start a new blog if you are totally off the main subject of the blog that you are posting to.

Blogger and several other free blog companies make it very simple to have a brand new blog up and running in a matter of a few minutes. Try not to post an article about dogs on a blog about golf. Once you have an interesting blog on one particular topic, the best place to start making money is Google AdSense.  Blogger has made it very simple to add AdSense ads to your blog.
The ads that show up on your blog will be targeted towards the topic of your blog, which means if you have a blog about dogs, the ads that show up on your blog will deal with pets. It’s like Google is paying you to advertise on your blog.

Another way to make money with your blog is with affiliate programs.  Companies will pay you good money to  advertise their products, and all you have to do is put a link or banner on your blog leading to that companies web site. Once a sale is made the company gives you a commission. That is the reason you should pick one topic for your blog.  If you want to have a blog about your life, by all means do it, but have other blogs about specific topics if you want to make money.

Once you find a topic that interest you, look for affiliate programs for that particular topic.  With the dog blog example, there are several dog training products that you can have links and banners to on a dog blog that will make good money. ClickBank is the top company when it comes to affiliate products, they have over 10,000 products to choose from.  Browse their products to see which ones you would like to promote. Obviously you want to pick something that fits the topic of your blog, but don’t limit yourself to just one, you can change a product you are promoting with a few clicks.

The internet is the essence of marketing, by that I mean, every word in an ad matters, every color, where the ad is located on your blog, whether is is blinking or not, and the color of the text.  It might not seem like all of those things matter, but the fact is, everything that you decide matters.  The good thing is you can experiment with how your blog looks as much as you want.  There are several e-books written on how you should place and where you should place them, in the beginning, just go with the basic blog set-up until you get the hang of things.

Categories
Monetization

Marketing Your Business Online

You would rarely find these days a household or person who does not have access to a computer or the Internet. Thus, it is needless to say that if you are running a business it is important to make use of the advantage of the web. But marketing online has never been easier. There are steps you have to consider to successfully market your business online.

  1. You need to obtain a good domain name. A domain name refers to the internet address that allows computer users to find your site. In choosing your domain name make sure that it is easy to spell and easy to remember. Likewise, make sure that it has not been trademarked by another person.
  2. Create a professional looking site. People often look for websites that they feel they can trust. If your site radiates an aura of professionalism, visitors will be encouraged to stay for a while and even make a purchase. Bear in mind that the website is a reflection of your business so as much as possible make it radiate the professionalism in you.
  3. Build a site that is easy to navigate. Nothing can discourage a visitor than a site that takes ages to load. If your site takes longer than twenty second to load, chances are visitors will click away from your site. Make sure that it is easy for your visitors to find what they need to know. Take a look at some of the great sites out there. Studying their site can help you plan how to design your website.
  4. Build an email list. Email marketing is one of the best and cheapest ways to market online. It is ok to send email notices about your products or services to people who have shown interest in your company. This is one way of communicating with your customers and potential customers. You have to make sure though that you have set forth a Privacy Policy on how you will use any personal information. Likewise, remember that emails are still considered as personal forms of communication so make your letter conversational and friendly.
  5. Buying banner ads can enhance the visibility of your site. Just make sure that the ad is visually appealing with link to a particular page on your site.
  6. Provide great customer service. A satisfied customer will keep on coming back to your site. Thus, give great customer service support all the time.

These are just a few tips to consider in successfully marketing your business online. There are other ways to make you business shine in the virtual market. But consider adding these marketing options in your promotional arsenal.

Categories
Featured

When To Consider A Dedicated Server

Having a popular website is a great thing, especially if that website is related to your business. However, you’ve probably never thought popularity could cost you money.

If you use a shared web service, you’re allotted a certain amount of bandwidth every month. Each host has a different way of dealing with the situation if you go over that amount of traffic.

Some will suddenly shut your site down, which means your visitors will see only a page telling them you’ve exceeded your allotment. Others will allow your page to keep running, and will charge you for the extra bandwidth.

If your site gets popular quickly, you could find yourself facing hundreds or thousands of dollars of extra charges for that usage.

This is why it’s vital to keep an eye on your bandwidth usage and the traffic that goes through your site every day. If it begins to look like you’ll exceed your bandwidth allotment, it might be time to look into getting a dedicated server.

It might be tempting to use one of the shared hosting servers that claims to offer “unlimited” bandwidth. However, in the end, you’ll probably find that there are limits written into the fine print.

Shared hosts also have a lot more down time than a dedicated server. By upgrading, you’ll be increasing the amount of time your site is available to its visitors, and eventually attract even more.

Upgrading to a server of your own will improve reliability and performance, as well as giving you total control over your website.

You’ll never have to deal with unexplained downtime, bandwidth limits, or restrictions on what scripts you can run. You can also run more sites on one server – as much as a few hundred. However, be sure that you plan for the extra cost.

In the end, having a dedicated server will bring in enough traffic to pay for itself, but you could be surprised by the initial cost.

There’s a setup fee, and a dedicated server can cost as much as $200/month. However, if you stop and think about it, you’ll realize that that amount per month in exchange for reliability is a good deal, versus poor reliability and occasionally being charged several hundred dollars for bandwidth overage.

Put an end to the nightmare of shared hosting look into your options for a dedicated server. You won’t have to deal with problems from scripts other users are running, downtime, or extra charges just because you’ve become popular.

If you’re happy with your existing provider, ask about their options for dedicated servers. If you’ve had to deal with bad customer service and other problems, however, you might be better off shopping around.

If your site is growing in popularity, keep an eye on the bandwidth your visitors are using. If you don’t pay very close attention, your site’s popularity could end up costing you a lot of money.

Instead of having to worry every month whether or not you’ll exceed your allotment, try switching to a dedicated server that will put an end to unexpected fees and extra downtime.

In the end, a dedicated server may cost a bit more, but it’s well worth it. Control, reliability, and all the bandwidth you need to serve your site’s visitors make a dedicated server cheap for the price.

Categories
General

Help! My Blog is Boring!

So you have this really great idea to start a blog on a particular niche. And perhaps, maybe you even want to make some revenue off of AdSense, Clicksor, or other contextual advertising. Super. You’ve wrote your heart out and posted some blog content. Great! No problems there. But what do you do to keep the content fresh and insightful? Are you feeling that the content you offer on your blog just “lacks”? Is your blog boring? Maybe you can’t even pinpoint what exactly is “lacking”, but you just feel it. Possibly, you just do not have the time to put forth to writing 1000 word articles every couple days. If this is you, it is time you look into using other people’s articles!

“WHAT?” you say. No, I am not suggesting you steal or copy others articles. However, I am suggesting that you utilize websites that offer free web content on your particular niche. There are many free web content sites or ‘article directories’ that offer free articles for you to use on your blog or website. You are able to use these articles totally free without a problem. The only thing you are required is to give credit to the author who wrote the article. Fair enough?

Now you ask, “Why would I want to use someone else’s articles? How lame is that?!” It’s actually not lame at all. Think about it. There are thousands of other people offering new, unique insight on exactly what you are writing about. You will find that people offer a different point of view or perspective on the particular subject. A different perspective or a new idea can be very refreshing for your blog. To even go further, find those articles that offer new thoughts and respond to the author’s thoughts.

Consider the benefits of using free content articles for your blog or website:

  • When you use other quality articles, you are offering your visitor with useful content, and in effect, your visitor comes back for more.
  • Using free web content will allow you to keep your blog fresh and updated on a daily basis with valuable information.
  • Other people’s articles can inspire new thoughts and ideas for your blog.

How do you find quality free web content for your blog? When you find an article that you would like to put on your website, make sure you are permitted to actually use it. You can usually find that information right on the article page or the website’s terms of service. When you are positive that you can use the article, read it over to make sure it is even applicable to your website. Do run it through a spell check to make sure that level of quality is portrayed in the article. If there are a bunch of errors, do not change the errors because that would violate the terms for the article. Instead, move on to finding another article. So do some searching and reading. Find that interesting web content and post that interesting web content for your readers! Delight your readers with something interesting and exciting!

Categories
General

Link Building to Your Blog

Link building is not difficult, you have to google search to get information on how people have started with link building, there are many sites that offer for you to earn revenue by linking their site to your blog.

A little bit of research can help you get to the point of earning good money through link building. Andy Hagans and Patrick Gavin just started with http://www.linkbuildingblog.com on text link ads. The blog will help you to understand the techniques of link building. They have done some hard work but it is worth reading through their blog, the way they have established link building and their confidence about link building.

If you want to know more about link building then www.swapw.blogspot.com, talks about the link train.com and that is the similar thing to what we have been talking in this article. Well in this blog he uses words as Alexa trains, technorati trains, link trains, viral link trains etc…which again talks about linking. Well technorati is a term used for a link, it is either linking to one other blog or other site. This is also just an experiment to understand if the linking helps in getting visitors and earns reputation for the blog itself.

It is essential to also understand other Blogs and know how other Bloggers are earning a potential income from nothing. Research is the best thing to understand and know the other Bloggers as well, it is important to establish a rapport or communication so that you are able to learn some things that you do not know in Blogging.

One other thing in Link building is to establish good linking sites and learn from those sites and than may be take permission from the owner of the site for link building, I am sure a polite language can always give you an earning potential in the Blogging industry. There are people who do not have patience, and want to find their way in earning good money but they fail because of the impatience and ignorance in researching more about what they want to do and how they would like to achieve certain things as Bloggers.

Today there are tons of Bloggers who are into the business of Blogging and they are doing pretty good I have to say, but it is just through learning, establishing and link building that you find your way in this business. Link Building is fun, because this is a way of getting to know what other blogs or sites are doing and you also come to know the improvement methods for yourself so that you can keep changing your styles as in with the flow like other Bloggers do.

Categories
Monetization

Shopping Carts and Online Stores

Setting up an internet shop can be very confusing and bewildering, especially if you are someone with very limited technical knowledge. With hoards and hoards of solutions available, offered by thousands upon thousands of website design companies and software developers, it is easy to choose a system that may not necessarily suit your business. Many companies have spent a lot of money on their ecommerce website solution, only to find that it does not work for their business. Unfortunately for them, this usually means a trip back to the drawing board, arguments with their developer and inevitably the need to spend more money so that  the site will work in exactly the way they want to.

So what can be done to make sure that the shopping cart solution you choose is the right one for your business? First of all, you must have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from the site. Spend some time to make good notes and write down a clear and concise plan and method of operation for your site. If will help very much if you take a good look at your competitor’s websites, especially the successful ones.
Visit your competitors sites, browse through the various sections, making notes about the  structure of the pages ,the site navigation and anything else of interest. Ask yourself questions as you check through the site. Are you able to quickly find the items you are searching for? Is the checkout system simple to use? These are just some of the elements you should be looking at. Compile as much information as you can, take the best constituents and combine them with your own ideas to create a well defined and structured plan of what you need. Once you have put together a well thought out site plan with all the required features, it will make up good a brief that can be worked on by a website designer.

How you go about turning your site plan into an actual website will depend on the budget you have to spend. There are many options that can be explored, from shopping cart software that will enable you to build your online store yourself through ready built, off the shelf solutions right up to completely bespoke programmed websites built from the ground up by a competent web development company.
What ever route you take, you should spend time researching the various systems and improving your knowledge so that you can make the right decision before committing  yourself to spending lots of time or money on your project.

Although you can spend a small fortune getting your on line store up a running, you really don’t have to. There are simple to use systems which use tried and tested technology to get you up and running in a short period of time. Many of these systems don’t require you to have any technical knowledge either.

To take credit card payment for goods online you will have to make use of a web based payment gateway. There are many to choose from but all of the payment processing solutions make profits by charging you a percentage of the transaction fee, so you must make sure to take this into consideration when calculating you profit margins.  Look for an  ecommerce systems that is readily configured to use the payment gateway you choose. This way, once you have opened your merchant, account all you need do to start to take credit card payments through your website is enter your merchant account number into a web page form in your site admin.

Categories
Monetization

Using Landing Pages And Why You Need One

All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman. But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. But how about your landing pages? Are they all set for your business?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?

Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites. But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads. Why? Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads. And take note, it would do you a lot better if you create a great landing page than a so-so one.

Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.

As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program. Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be. And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.

Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program. Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.

Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.

Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. The same is with the other two pages mentioned. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we’re sure that you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.

Final Word

You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. And don’t get us wrong; it isn’t enough for you to have just a landing page it should be a great landing page!

Categories
General

Improving Your Sites Look and Feel

Driving traffic to your website is important. But it is likewise important to ensure that your web design makes your visitors stay. After all, what is the use of spending thousands of dollars and wasting lots of effort and time in creating a unique product, securing top rankings on search engines and creating a hundred page site if your visitors don’t stay once they found your page?

There are a lot of factors to consider in creating a successful site. First of all, your site should be easy to navigate. Don’t make your visitors click on ten links and scroll down each page just to find what they are looking for. All pages on the site must not be five clicks away from the homepage. Visitors will enjoy surfing your site if it is easy for them to find the information that they want.

Second of all, your site must load fast. This is often one of the biggest problems on the Internet. Some sites take more than twenty minutes to load and some visitors don’t have the time and patience to wait for a long time. As a result they click away from your site. One of the best ways to make your site load fast is to use more text and fewer graphics. Keep in mind that not all visitors have fast connection so you have to design your site the way everyone can view it quickly.

Third of all, always remember your purpose in designing your website. Ask yourself, do visitors say wow when they see your site and then click away? Or do they stay and surf your site for a while? Does your site sell or just impress people?

It does not really matter is your visitors are impressed by your graphics and animations. What you have to keep in mind is your purpose. If you want your site to sell you have to design it in such a way that your visitors get interested in your offer and are encouraged to buy.

Fourth of all, use the right colors. Color is a very important to your website. When they are used correctly they can highlight important points and add clarity and impact to your message. But when they are used incorrectly, it can confuse your visitors and compromise your message.

Keep in mind that current trends play a big role in color schemes. A good strategy is to design your site in such a way that if a color change has to be made, it can be done so easily.

If you are able to follow this tips you will not only attract many visitors but you will also encourage them to stay for a while and maybe you can turn them into paying customers.

Categories
General

Linux vs. Windows Web Hosting, Does it Make a Difference?

One of the most confusing decisions someone new to web hosting will have to make is which platform their server should be on. There are a number of different choices out there but the main two are Linux and Windows web servers. There are also a lot of sources of information about hosting, but the majority of them are tainted by the author’s biased personal opinion unfortunately confusing the issue. Having just put in some solid hours researching the topic I have come to the conclusion that in general it quite probably does not matter which server you use. For the majority of people it will be far more important to choose a really good web host than to worry about the server-type that they implement.

Microsoft developed and owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. However, this fact doesn’t really affect you unless you are actually setting up a server for yourself and if you’re reading this article then I’m guessing that it’s safe to assume you’re not. This article is going to offer information for those trying to decide which hosting company to go with. The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package as much as you may think. Despite the general opinion that Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be just as cheap or even cheaper than an equivalent Linux hosting package.

Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn’t true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods. The main difference is that some of the FTP commands are slightly different between Linux and Windows and some FTP programs will be designed with one or the other in mind. This means you may occasionally find that when you try and get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message, but it won’t happen very often.

Your choice of server platforms should be dictated by the use to which you intend to put it. The majority of web features run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, POP3 etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. There is limited support for a number of these technologies in Linux, but they can be expensive and are usually lacking in features. It is probably worth considering the fact that if you use server specific technologies and then change hosts you’ll have a much harder time of it than if you use technologies that can be run on any system. Having it run generic technologies removes the need to focus on specifics and allows you to focus on the quality of service itself.

The reliability and stability of the different platforms have been the topic of many long arguments. The main reason that Windows is seen as being insecure is that it is the most widely used operating system for home PC’s. People spend more time looking for flaws in the most common system. With Linux being the most common server type, it has a surprising number of successful hack attempts made on it. In the end the security of both platforms comes down to the competency of the system administrators. If you are security minded then you’ll do better to make sure that the hosting company is reputable and highly skilled than to worry about the server they use.

In terms of performance there’s not a huge difference between the two servers. Linux reportedly performs faster because Windows (as usual) attempts to offer an ‘all in one’ package instead of the extendable Linux implementation. You’ll generally not notice a difference but if performance is of utmost importance to you then maybe this will influence your decision.

I’ve come to the conclusion that unless you are specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another your time will be much better spent looking for a really good quality host than a really good quality server. Developers are constantly improving both Linux and Windows so they should be fairly close in terms of features, security, and reliability for a long time. It’s the people implementing them that you should be basing your decision on.