General Webhosts Vs WordPress Specific Webhosts
If you are hip on the blogging scene, then no doubt you’ve heard of WordPress. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms around. Likewise, it has become something of a phenomenon as webhosts are now offering WordPress-specific webhosting. The question is- should you go for a generalized host or a WordPress-specific host?
What To Expect From WordPress Hosts
First and foremost, WordPress users want a platform that is easy to install. This means that advanced editing of configuration files is out of the question- and webhosts know it. Even general webhosts give access to auto-installers for WordPress, so the initial installation shouldn’t be what worries bloggers.
The problem lies within the support for the product. Generalized webhosts don’t always have time to keep up to date on new additions of WordPress- meaning their customers could be at potential security risks. It only takes one delay in upgrades for a blog owner to lose everything they have- and at this point in time a WordPress-specific host would have been the better choice.
Where general webhosts tend to fail bloggers is in the upgrade category. Auto-installers such as Fantastico (packaged with cPanel) offer easy ways to upgrade, but the configurations, themes, plugins, and other content will be lost in the upgrade as files are overwritten. Clearly, WordPress specific hosts get the win here, since they take previously configured files into account when upgrading.
Anyone WordPress user that has been on the front page of websites such as Digg.com know that with excessive demand comes downtime. This is because WordPress is database driven- meaning that if a lot of people are on your blog at the same time, it is bound to go down. WordPress-specific webhosts take this into effect and offer better performance and efficiency at the database level.
Bloggers Get Added Bonuses
One of the biggest benefits of WordPress hosts is the fact that they tend to offer free content to WordPress users. You shouldn’t be surprised to see free WordPress themes, plugins, and content from these webhosts. Try finding these benefits from normal webhosts- odds are you won’t.
The biggest benefit to webmasters in this case is the exclusivity of the themes that WordPress webhosts provide. Since the themes aren’t open to the general public, there will be very few blogs on the Internet that have the same theme as you do. This will help blog owners to brand their domain name and company identity with ease.
Custom designs for WordPress blogs can easily run hundreds of dollars. As compared to the low fees of a WordPress host, it’s no contest as to which route every WordPress user should take in regards to themes.
In the end, webhosts that specialize their services for WordPress users have some of the best deals around for blog fanatics- or anyone just looking to maintain their own website without the hassle!
How To Properly Adhere To Web Design Practices
Web design is a raging market with all types of creativity, originality, and colors bursting over every website over the Internet. The trick comes to maintain one’s individuality and still conform to web standards, readability issues, and proper design.
Before all sorts of colors, tables, and shapes are created- the concept of the readability of a website needs to be learned. The reader of the website is the target here, and how well they can read the content is the goal that needs to be achieved. Common practice states that a 10 pixel font or higher is sufficient, but going for bigger fonts is always appealing to Internet users.
Being able to read a website may be the number one goal, but navigation is a close second. Navigation is an essential in today’s standards, since it gives the Internet user an idea on what they can do and where they can go within the website they are viewing. Nifty little CSS menus with even niftier rollover effects can be created, but the average top or left navigation menu seen on most properly designed websites is usually sufficient.
How accessible a web design is to the user is another important factor that dictates how many Internet users can even access the website at all. Different web browsers use different engines to read how a website is coded. This means that how the website appears in one browser may be totally different in another. In some cases, it might not even render at all- meaning extra work needs to be done to standardize the design among multiple browsers.
Once all the basics in standardization and readability are maintained, the act of being creative and reestablishing the norms becomes the next test. Using different palettes of colors, using new forms of shapes and blocks (The rounded rectangle box is a current favorite for web designers), and ultimately thinking of new ways to display information has become the measuring stick in how a web design project is rated.
Popularized web design tactics are still good to make use of, in spite of the fact that creativity and inspiring designs are important in obtaining. Most web design features that have become popular are popular for a reason, and keeping a few of them around won’t do any harm. Most notably, the rounded text box and gradient usage of recent years is always a nice addition to any design.
In Conclusion
Web design is a very tough industry to get into. There are many aspects in design and coding that need to be learned, and much of it isn’t something that’s going to be learned overnight. Thus, aspiring web designers should try to strive and mimic other designs and coding principles before trying to make the next big thing in web design. We have to walk before we can crawl- and patience is definitely a virtue in the concept of web design.
Search Engine Optimisation: Back to Basics
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most overlooked and under utilised means of website advertising, and even many web development businesses seem to stuggle to understand it, and apply it to the websites they design and develop. SEO is simply the process whereby a website is designed and developed with a view to it being found on one or more search engines.
Search engines are the basis of your website marketing campaign because the majority of websites are still found via search engines. Here are some commonly asked questions about SEO:
Is it free?
Generally still free, although with the huge number of websites now going live the wait for your site to appear on that search engine can be long (several months). This is especially true of International search engines, many of whom have introduced paid “express submissions”. These can be value for money, but be careful.
Submit to 15,000,000 search engines for free?
Don’t you believe it. I do not recommend any company use these tools to submit their website to search engines. These services can spam search engines with your URL, an effectively get you banned or certainly prevent you from submitting your site again under controlled conditions. Submit your site to search engines one at a time. Remember: do it once and do it right!
What are the tricks then?
There are several key things, which need to be considered:
1. Domain name. Perhaps the most easily overlooked, a domain name that “says it all” about your business is really the first step 2. Meta tags. While not the answer to your prayers, they are vital to good search engine rankings 3. Keyword density and layout. Attention to keyword density in your both your meta tags, and site text is essential.
Another thing to remember: search engine optimize every page in your site separately, and relevant to the topic of that page.
Salary Of Web Designers
Being a web designer is a good thing: the industry is growing, and the income is pretty good.
Growing E-Commerce
A lot of online businesses have set up. It’s understandable because they don’t need inventory, overhead is cheaper, and sometimes they don’t even need to actually own the products to sell them.
What certain online businesses do is they act as an interface between a wholesaler and the customer. The customer will place an order online on the website and the online business will simply transfer these orders to the wholesaler, making a margin off of the profit in the process.
Places like Wal-Mart have items that are only available through the internet, which is why web designers are needed in the first place.
Increasing Web Design Salary
Like most salaries in other fields, web design salaries vary depending on the person’s experience, education and location. Although web design work can be done remotely, smaller companies prefer to work with web designers in their local area because they can meet face to face.
Coroflot Salary Survey
There was a survey, conducted by an employment agency called Coroflot, that asked for the salary levels of web, interior, graphic, and industrial designers.
All fields had a lower end salary of around $15k/yr. In the middle, web designers earned $56.7k/yr with interior designers making $15k/yr less.
Industrial designers make $3,500/yr less and graphic designers make $13,000/yr less than the average web designer.
At the upper end of the spectrum, industrial designers earned the most, with an annual income of $210,000. Web designers were second with $200,000. Graphic designers followed at $185,000, and interior designers at $100,000.
Regarding education levels, 71% of web designers have a Bachelors, 20% a Masters, and rest a high school diploma.
7 Features to look for in your web host
A web host allows you to put your websites on their servers so that people can access it. There are lots of web hosting companies around. Some have their own servers while others are resellers. Each web host provides you with different plans or packages. You should be very careful, while selecting your host or a particular plan. Most people pay high attention to content and website design and overlook the selection of a proper web host. Many times, they end up selecting a plan that costs more than their needs. Here are seven features that you should look at, while selecting your host or a plan.
1) Disk Space: Each hosting plan offers different amount of disk space. The price is directly proportional to disk space offered. So select a plan that provides you with enough disk space to host your web site. Also, make sure how much you should pay for each additional MB of space in case you need extra.
2) Scripting Languages: You should make sure that your hosting plan supports all the scripting languages that are used in your web application. For example, if your site is created using PHP and Perl, than you must make sure that your host supports both, PHP as well as Perl. Another example is that you cannot use Linux host for websites created in ASP.NET. Also, make sure to look at the version of scripting languages supported by your host. This is extremely important, as some scripts written in PHP 5, do not work in PHP 4.
3) Database: If your web application has a database backend, than you must make sure that your hosting plan provides you with required number of databases. Apart from number of databases provided, it should also provide you with the same database management system that’s used in your web application. You might end up struggling to get your web application running, if your script uses PostgreSQL and you are provided with MySQL database.
4) Uptime: Go for a host that guarantees at least 99% uptime. To provide you with the guarantee of such uptime, your web host should have power generators (Diesel generators), backup systems and connectivity to multiple Internet backbones.
5) 24/7 Support: Make sure that your host provides you with 24/7 support by phone, email or live chat. This is most important if your business totally relies on your website. Your host must give you immediate support in case of emergencies; else you could lose your customers.
6) FTP Support and Online File Manager: FTP helps you in uploading your site quickly and setting permissions to your files and folders. Some hosts provide online file manager, which you can access directly from your account control panel (CPanel). Make sure that your host allows more than one FTP account. This will help you if you need to hire someone to maintain your website. Having more than one FTP account allows you to create a separate account for him rather than sharing your login details.
7) SSL Support: If you are going to host an e-commerce application, than make sure that your host provides you with SSL support. SSL certificate guarantees your users that their credit card information is not accessible to packet sniffers. Your host should have 24/7 monitoring facility of all incoming requests to prevent security breach. Before selecting your web host, take some time and go through all the features that are provided by your candidate hosts. Compare their prices. Call them up or email and clarify all your doubts. This will also show you how quick they are in responding to your requests. Stay away from hosts that claim to provide unlimited bandwidth. Do not select a host just because of their cheap hosting plan. If you have no choice but to go for a cheap web hosting than make sure that they provide you with guaranteed uptime and proper support.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
6 Steps to Picking Profitable Adsense Keywords
Knowing how to find the best keywords for use in your Adsense ads is not a straightforward process. Finding and implementing high profit, low competition keywords in your ads really is the trick for making Adsense payoff big.
The following process should yield profitable, low competition keywords for your Adsense ads. This process is not perfect, but when you analyze it and try it for yourself, you can see that it makes sense. Adsense that is.
Step 1 Research some keywords for your niche that have a high CPC value. To do this, first find your keywords using the Google Adwords keyword tool or another tool that will give you niche specific lists of keywords. Save those keywords into a spreadsheet program as a csv file. Copy and paste those keywords into Google’s Traffic Estimator (you will need an Adwords account). The traffic estimator will give you the estimated clicks per day and the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. Copy and paste this information back into your spreadsheet file for later reference.
Step 2 Multiply the average CPC by 30% to get an estimate of your maximum earnings per click. The higher the average CPC, the more likely the CPC for the 2nd – 8th positions are high as well. You want this higher average CPC to start because if the CPC starts to drop off significantly after the 3rd position, your chance of getting high click earnings as an Adsense publisher will be diminished.
Step 3 Use any one of many tools available on the internet for helping to estimate the 1st – 8th position CPC values. These tools will estimate the CPCs for each position and allow you to see how much the CPCs drop off after the first position. This dramatically helps your analysis for picking the most profitable keywords. If the CPC values stay close to the each other and to the value of the first position, then you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.
Step 4 Now determine which Adsense ads occupy which positions. You can do this by searching on Google for your keyword and looking to see which Adsense ads are generated in the search results and in which order they are. Another way to estimate this is to use the Adwords Accelerator tool. It has a feature whereby Adwords ads are dynamically displayed for a given keyword you input into the tool to check. If the Adwords advertiser has used “Adwords for Content” in his advertising, these ads will be the Adsense ads someone else is displaying on their website.
Step 5 Compare the ads you found in step 4 to the results of using a keyword check function tool (available on the internet). If the advertisers you find by doing this closely match those you found in step 4, you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.
If the advertisers are not he same, then the advertiser is possibly not using the “Adwords for Content” mode of advertising in his campaigns. This means that the keyword may not be the basis for the Adsense ads and may not be profitable.
Step 6 Now you must get the traffic. If you decide to get traffic using the Adwords approach, then just use the keywords in your Adsense ads that scored well from the above evaluation. Then, use lower cost per click keywords in your Adwords ads. The difference between the earnings from the click you get on your Adsense word from the cost of the click you pay on your Adwords word will be your profit.
If you are planning to use search engine optimization techniques to get traffic to the website where your ads are, make sure the keywords you choose have the highest KEI possible. KEI is the ratio of the number of searches for a keyword to the number of competing sites having the keyword. The combination of a high KEI and a high score from the above evaluation will yield the best profit results.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.
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6 Tips For Affiliates
Affiliate marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years. Affiliate programs offer merchants the opportunity to employ vast armies of sales people who only get paid for the results they achieve.
The rewards for affiliates are high also, and the skilled affiliate marketer can earn many thousands of dollars a month. This win-win situation has led to an explosion in the number of affiliate programs that are available to the would-be marketer. With this proliferation of opportunities has come many questions; how do you go about choosing the right opportunity for you? What qualities should you look for in a program and which gives you a good chance of making a sustainable income? Below are some tips that will help you to evaluate merchants and their programs, and help you to avoid wasting time and money.
1. How Much Commission Does The Merchant Pay? This may seem obvious, but it is very important that you know how much you can expect to earn from a sale. There is no point in spending time and money promoting a product that doesn’t pay well. You could end up spending more on marketing than you are likely to make on sales. It is probably best to stick with marketing products with a high commission value, unless you have found a niche market where you can sell vast quantities of product, and make substantial commissions on your volume of sales.
2. How Much Traffic is the Merchant’s Website Getting? Try to discover the amount of traffic the merchant’s website is already receiving. Alexa.com could be a useful tool for doing this research. If the website is ranked in the top 100,000, the merchant is getting a good volume of traffic, and there may already be too many affiliates. If it is ranked below 500,000 it is either no good or it could just be a golden opportunity to make some real money! Always research a merchant’s product if their website has a low traffic ranking. It may be a good idea to buy the product yourself if you can afford to. Otherwise you could do a search to find out if there are any adverse comments about it on the internet. If all is well and the product is good, you may have found a gold mine!
3. How Often Are Commissions Paid? Some merchants pay commissions every week; some once a month, others only pay every quarter. It is important that you know how often you can expect a pay check if you are going to have financial control over your business. Do you have the financial resources to continue to market a product if you have to wait a long time before you get paid? It would also be wise to find out the minimum commission that you have to earn before you get paid.
4. Does The Company Use Tracking Cookies? Many customers do not buy on their first visit to a merchant’s website. It is important therefore that the merchant uses cookies on their site, so that you get credit if the customer returns and buys at a later date. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer the cookies lasts; the better the chance of getting paid!
5. Does The Merchant Pay On Subsequent Sales? Some merchants will only pay commission on sales that come through customers visiting their site via a direct link from your site. They pay you nothing for any subsequent purchases that the customer makes if they visit the merchants site directly. It is important that you get paid no matter what route the customer returns by if you are to build a sustainable business.
6. What Promotional Resources Does The Merchant Offer? Look at the type and quality of the promotional material that they provide. Do they provide articles or content that you can use to promote them on your site or free guides, special offers or samples? If the promotional resources are good it is likely that the merchant will provide good support for their affiliates. Finding the right merchant can be a tricky business. The best advice is to do your own research. Use the above questions as an aid to finding a merchant that enables you to reach your financial goals. You never know – You could strike gold!
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
Generating Revenue With Good Planning
For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace.
The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks.
For example, you might have a “food” section, an “accomodation” section and an “entertainment” section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.
When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google’s Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.
As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!
5 Tips on Using Private Label Content
Private Label Content is becoming increasingly popular as people join the rush to fill their websites with high-quality information. Admittedly, you can have articles written by freelance writers at sites like Elance or Rentacoder, but it gets expensive. For those who are not yet generating a high income through AdSense or affiliate sales, Private Label Content (PLC) provides a welcome alternative.
=== What is Private Label Content? === PLC generally refers to articles, e-books and manuals that are free for subscribers to use as they wish. There are a few restrictions, however: you cannot claim copyright to PLC, or submit it to article sites, unless you change the content significantly. (Interpret ‘significantly’ as ‘unrecognizable as the original article’.) The cost of membership varies, but typically ranges from around $24 to $67 a month. For this you might receive anywhere from 150 to 300 articles per month. Some sites also offer graphics (e-book covers and site header graphics) and even ready-made sales letters.
To use PLC to the best advantage, you need to be aware of a few things.
=== 1. How Can You Use PLC Articles? === The most common use for PLC articles is to provide useful, interesting content for websites. There are other uses, however. Think about your immediate needs. If you require an incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter, you can offer an e-book or training manual made up from PLC articles. It’s easy to tweak these to be more relevant to your website and your clients. (As well as putting yourself in Google’s shoes, put yourself in your clients’ shoes. What do they most need to know?)
You could also create an e-course (anything from 6 to 52 articles – a short e-course, or one that offers an article for each week of the year). This gives you an excellent reason to stay in touch with your clients.
=== 2. How Can You Alter PLC Articles? === Submitting articles to public article directories along with your resource box is a great way to generate traffic to your web-sites. However, many directories don’t allow you to submit duplicate content – ie, you have to submit your own unique article. Therefore, when submitting an article that you obtained from a private label content resource, it’s advisable to first alter the article before submission. Here are a few tips in that regard…
(a) Change the title of the article. If you are using keyword-optimized articles, make sure you keep the keyword in the title – but be creative about the words that surround it. So if your article is based on the keyword “Mongolian Guinea Pig”, your title might be “Where to Find the Mongolian Guinea Pig” or “Taking Care of Your Mongolian Guinea Pig” and so on.
(b) Change the opening paragraph. All you need to do (usually) is make sure that your keyword appears once. Take a look at the rest of the paragraph. How can you say the same thing in a different way? Look for synonyms – using your thesaurus – or alter the tone. Perhaps you can adopt a more casual approach (this might work better for your readership anyway). You might prefer write a different introduction altogether.
(c) Work through the article. Add a sentence here; subtract one there. Present the facts in a different order. Expand by adding some new points. Break a long article into two shorter articles. (If you do this, make sure each article seems complete in itself.)
(d) Rewrite the ending. When you do this, think about what you want the reader to do. Is this a good place to put your own affiliate link, or write a lead-in to your own product or services?
=== 3. Blend Several Articles Into One === You can get a whole new look if you take two or more PLC articles on the same theme and blend them into one longer, fact-packed article. Sometimes you might find you HAVE to do this, if an article seems a bit ‘lightweight’. Not all PLC articles are created equal! Sometimes it’s obvious that the writer was low on inspiration.
=== 4. Think Outside the Square. === Most PLC articles are presented in batches relevant to one niche. For example, you might find that over the course of a month you get 20 articles on golf, 20 on cell phones, 20 on credit cards and 20 on travel. Let’s say that you are busy building a golf site. It might seem at first glance that only 20 of the 80 articles are relevant to your needs.
Not so! Golf vacations, for example, are very popular. Could any of your travel articles be massaged to fit the theme of golf vacations? It’s very likely that they could. And what about communication while you travel – or while you play golf? Does the golfer need a new cell phone that will easily adapt to overseas communications? How will the golfer pay for a new set of clubs or a golf vacation? Might he need to explore credit card options?
You see how it’s done. Be creative in your use of Private Label Content, and you will definitely get your money’s worth.
=== 5. One Final Tip – Hold Out For Quality! === Now that Private Label Content is becoming popular, more and more PLC sites are opening up. You can afford to be choosy. Check out the quality of the articles on offer, and especially the niches being targeted. Niche areas like golf and credit are popular, and that’s exactly what you want. You want to go where there is an *existing* demand. You do NOT want obscure niches where there is little activity. You WANT to go where there is competition. Naturally, the profitable niches will always have competition. Where there is competition, there are buyers! So you want to look for demand, look for competition, and carve your niche!
Finally, consider being a member of more than one PLC site. Is it worth it to you to spend $150 a month on quality, no-strings-attached content? That would get you membership of 3-4 sites and upwards of 400 articles each month. Even if you can use only 50 of those articles, you’re getting them for $3 each – a bargain!
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
5 Ways to Make Your Visitors Want to Buy
In his book “Practical Thinking”, Dr. Edward de Bono talks about the basic thinking processes, how one understands, and the ways to be right or wrong in thinking. He said that the main purpose of thinking is not just to accumulate knowledge but also to get enough knowledge in order to act on something. He also said that, in practice, the validity of an idea does not have any bearing in being right in thinking, for being right is a feeling, a belief that one is right during the time of thinking.
To put this into practical use, you should write your ad copy so that your visitors will feel it is right to buy your products. Make them feel that it is their idea to make the purchase. By doing so, it will be easier for you to persuade these potential customers to hit that buy button.
Here, then, are some ways to create that feeling of rightness in your readers:
1. Provide the benefits of your product. People usually buy because of the benefits, not because of the features of a product. They think, “How can this help me? What’s in it for me?” By providing the benefits, you can show how your product can avoid pain. For example, you may say, “Never again be rejected when asking for a date.” You can also show how your product can gain pleasure. An example, you can say, “Imagine yourself opening the doors of your dream home.”
2. Use “goody-goody” words to build up the positive emotional reaction of your readers. Words such as honesty, freedom, dignity, love and dream, convey such emotions that your readers react positively to them. For example, you can say, “Financial freedom for you.” Your visitor will then have the feeling that financial freedom is possible for them, and they may want to take a look at your product.
3. Use “bad” words to elicit the negative reaction. Using “bad” words, such as hate, weak, or debt convey the opposite. By using these words, you can heighten the negative feelings of your readers that they may see your product as a tool to avoid or end their pain. You can say, for example, “Don’t you just hate your job?”
4. Assume your visitors will buy your product. A popular line in ad copy starts with the words “Who wants to be the next”. For example, by asking, “Who wants to be the next millionaire” you are assuming that by buying your product, your visitor will become a millionaire. You can also start your sales letter with the greeting, “Dear Future Millionaire”.
5. Add a little humor in your sales letter. Humor can put people in a good mood, making them to agree with you and lower their resistance to buy. This can provide that little extra push needed to close a deal.
Remember; make your readers feel that buying from you is a right decision they are about to do. Provide the benefits of your product, use words laden with emotions, and add a little humor in your ad copy. This way, you may see a drastic improvement in your sales conversion.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.