Almost every business can be enhanced with a website -
even if you only operate in a small area. Most Internet
Service Providers include web space with your subscription
but if yours doesn't there are many free sites out on the
internet you can use. Your choice of company will be
affected by the geographical area you wish to attract. If
you are aiming at a UK audience you will want a UK domain (a
web address ending in co.uk), if you are aiming at an
American or worldwide audience you will be better with a US
domain - e.g.www.abc.com if you are to take advantage of the
regional search engines.
All these companies will have the facilities to design
your own web page without any programming experience,
although you will find you are spending quite a long time on
line. It may be more beneficial to obtain a web page
program where you can design
your pages offline, with no experience and then upload to
your web site. For inspiration for the layout of your site
look at other sites on the web that appeal to you, and copy
or adapt their ideas.
1stChoiceWebHost also do all the work required with the authorities / name servers and transfers etc of Domain names where applicable. Both .co.uk and .com are just £15 with NO HIDDEN CHARGES
1stChoiceWebHost servers are set up so they generate revenue and still run at peak performance. Unlike some other webhosts who have been known to pack their servers at the expense of performance, they concentrate more on maintaining performance and less on maximising the revenue per server.
Two tier affiliate program also available, with the chance to earn 10% on your own sales and 2.5% on sales of any resellers you recruit.
A further feature of this package is reflected by the fact that the hosting company
domain name and server have been registered in a way that will not allow clients
to trace the root servers back to them. The only server name they will find is
homer.budgiedns.com. This unique feature protects our resellers, as they
remain totally anonymous, unlike other hosting companies whose servers can
easily be traced back.
By becoming a Hosting Reseller you can set up your own site in a similar way
to 1stChoiceWebHost.co.uk, offering your clients their own feature packed control
panel with free shopping carts, free web design solutions, free customer
support ticket scripts, unlimited emails, unlimited forwarders, unlimited ftp
accounts etc . This is ideal for webmasters on a budget or someone looking
for their first low cost and profitable Internet business.
Whilst you can get your site up and running totally free
(excluding your own time and telephone costs) I would
thoroughly recommend you buy two things:
1. Get your own domain name. Most companies will allow
you to divert the address to your free site, usually at no
charge so this will cost you no more than £10 for a UK
domain or £30 for a US domain including registration
fees. Check the small print though as some companies have
conditions over transferring the name when you are ready to
pay to host your site.
2. Splash out around £20 on probably the most
important manual you will ever buy. Called "Making Your Site
Sell 2002" you get 1500 pages crammed full of information on
everything you'll need to know to make a success of your
website, including a huge section on driving traffic to your
site, written by somebody from his experiences not from
theory.
Keep it simple - people don't want to spend ages waiting
for fancy graphics to load, so they won't!
Make it clear what you are offering - don't spend 4 or 5
pages on fancy talk whilst forgetting to mention the
product.
Make it easy to navigate the site, with links back to, at
the very least, the home page, from all pages. On long pages
there should also be links back to the top of the page from
the bottom.
Make sure your contact details are on every page, whether
this is e-mail, address, phone or fax.
Click here for
recommended books for creating your own website.
Free Software - Forever!
If you operate or are planning to operate your own online business or website, you'll frequently
come across pieces of software that can really help make life easier or more pleasant.
The biggest problem though, is that each program tends to cost from $25 upwards,
making a large hole in your wallet over time. Now however I've come across the
ultimate solution from The Software Partnership.
You pay one time, one price (currently $39, but likely to increase as catalogue grows)
and get Over 70 Software Products plus:
- Every Product They Ever WILL create
- Every product they ever buy Resell Rights to
- Every product they add, you get! AT No Cost. Forever. (new ones added weekly!)
- Plus HUNDREDS of eBooks!
AND You get RESELL RIGHTS to most products!
Start your own Web Business! They even give you a Web Site!
This is NOT Freeware, NOT Shareware - This is FULLY FUNCTIONAL, shrink-wrapped
style Commercial Software, and includes such titles as:
- Instant Site Maker - Quickly create stunning web pages in less than 5 minutes. No coding involved.
- Instant Site Safe - Stop other sites stealing your content.
- JavaScript Magic - Discover all the latest techniques without confusion
and add them to your web pages in a flash, effortlessly
- Web Product Page Generator - create stunning web product sales pages with
order forms for your products. No coding involved.
- Ezine Mailer - manage your opt-in or Ezine newsletters and mailings!
- Super Search - search multiple search engines at once
- Deadline Generator - add incentive to your sales page - set an auto-adjusting deadline!
- Popup Generator - create a popup window how you want it, in less than 2 1/2 minutes
- Instant Meta Maker- Boost your search engine ranking
- Small Business Tracker - Track business activities, ads, invoices, even passwords!
- Instant BookMark Maker - Let visitor bookmark your site with just 1 click
- How To Steal From PayPal (and how to stop it!) - both an educational ebook
AND contains DOZENS of software programs for protecting your web site
- FAQ Factory - create FAQ pages for your web site the easy way!
- Dazzle!Book Creator® - Creates incredible eBooks, Presentations, Catalogues,
MultiMedia, eTraining, ScreenSavers, SlideShows and more
- POPup Stopper - stop those annoying pop. up windows whilst surfing.
- LinkEvaluator - enhance search engine placement by evaluating your links
- AFFILIATE Armour - hide your affiliate links from thieves
- Instant email scrambler - Stop your email address from being captured by
spam harvesters from your website.
and much more!
For full details of the package, including the full software list and hundreds
of eBooks, go to The Software Partnership.
First
Website Builder
If you've been put off by the idea that it is
just too complicated or expensive, to create your own website I think I
may have found the answer. The Newbie Club has produced
"First Website Builder". This package is a series of 4
e-books, the first of which is written by a complete novice
who built a site, completely free, in two days.
In line with all the packages I've recommended in the
past, this is another one worth way in excess of the asking
price of $29.95 and comes with a no strings, no questions
asked, 1 year money back guarantee.
You can find full details, and download 3 sample chapters
from
http://newbieclub.com/builder/?
help_for_beginners
Win Free Advertising For Your Website!
Win a free FineClicks.com advertising account worth $300 in their free monthly draw.
Once you have your site up and running you need to tell
people about it. The way you do this will depend on your
type of business. If you are only operating in a
geographically small area, you need only use the web address
in all other advertising and business literature so that
interested people can access the site for more information.
If you are hoping to get work from a wider area, then you
need to get your web site listed with the top search engines
- Yahoo, Altavista etc.Make sure you read
"Make
Your Site Sell" to ensure you maximise your chance of
getting listed. You can either go to each site and enter
your site description or you can use one of the many
programmes or services available that will do it for you.
Recommendations are below. You will
need to resubmit monthly to ensure your site remains listed,
but should be aware that it can take weeks or months to get
listed by some of the bigger engines.
FREE WEB
SITES
If your ISP doesn't provide a website for business use,
click on the links below to check out some of the best free
sites for business use.
www.tripod.co.uk -
50MB available for personal or business use. Join the
appropriate "Pod" for your site and gain extra publicity.
Bravenet - In addition to free websites,
get yourself counters, guestbooks, search engines, webrings,
password protection, chatroom, ads, FFA site and loads more
utilities - ALL FREE
For a fuller list and more information go to
http://www.homebusinessuk.co.uk/websales.htm
The company I use myself is oneandone.co.uk. With a wide range of hosting packages from just £1.49 a month they are easily affordable for everyone.
Despite the low costs this is one occasion when cutting costs doesn't mean a cut
in facilities or quality. The company claim 99.9% guaranteed up-time and I've certainly
never experienced any of my sites down for more than a matter of seconds
Depending on the package you choose you get up to £400 worth
of software, on CD-Rom as well as the usual hosting package with unlimited e-mail forwarding, free e-mail
autoresponders, e-mail forwarding and a catch all e-mail address.
If you've never created your own website they even provide "Website Creator" - online software to create a professional
looking site in minutes. Try out the online demo now.
All packages come with a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee. If you are not 100% satisfied,
they will refund you your money although I'd be very surprised if you feel the need to make a claim.
Attract
Regular Visitors to your Website with FREE
Scratchcards
If you've got your own website, you'll know one of the
most difficult tasks is to get visitors to your site, not
just once but regularly. Now with the help of
Play4Prizes
you not only get to host a free scratchcard game on your
site, but you also get your site listed in their directory
to encourage daily visitors to your site.
SUBMITTING TO SEARCH
ENGINES
There are several products and services that will
automate your web submissions for you. Many offer limited
free trials which are worth checking out prior to buying
anything.
The one I use is by a company called self promotion. You
don't ever have to pay for the service if you don't want to,
but if you decide it is useful, you can pay a fee of your
own choosing. If you make a payment the details you have
entered in the past remain on the server making it easy to
resubmit each month. You can choose which companies to
submit to automatically, and links have been included so
that you can manually register when appropriate. They even
e-mail you if the submission fails for any reason. I paid
$10 (just £6) and can honestly say it's one of the best
investment I've made on my business. For further details go
to the website and try it out.
http://selfpromotion.com
Or try VERICA!'s
Web Submission Package
Submission to 13,500 + engines and directories
nationally and internationally (AltaVista, Direct
Hit, DMOZ Open Directory, Excite, Fast/All the Web,
Go/Infoseek, Google, HotBot, Lycos, NBCI/Snap,
Northern Light, Starting Point, WebCrawler,
Yahoo)... 6 month program - one submission every
month. Automatic rule check prevents accidental
spamming when engine rules are broken. Listed with
VERICA.COM! their family-friendly directory, free
from erotic content.
Generally I'm not keen on services that blast
your details to thousands of sites, but in this
case, the testimonials are extremely impressive and clearly genuine.
Yahoo! is by
far the most important directory to which you should submit
your site. An optimum listing in Yahoo! can bring in more
traffic to your site than all the search engines combined.
In fact, some sites get hundreds of new visitors every day
once they are listed in Yahoo!.
Yet, getting registered by Yahoo! is by far the most
difficult aspect of web site promotion. Even if you pay the
$199 fee for their Business Express submission option,
Yahoo! does not guarantee that your site is going to be
accepted. In fact, they have often been known to reject
sites even if they have paid the $199 fee. Furthermore, even
if your site is accepted after you pay the $199 fee, there
is no guarantee that it will get an optimum listing.
What it takes to get an optimum listing in
Yahoo!
Getting an optimum listing in Yahoo! involves 4 steps:
- Designing your site in the proper way. There are some
essential things that your site must contain, or Yahoo!
won't accept it, even if you pay the $299 fee.
- Choosing the right category for your site. If you
don't submit your site to the right category, Yahoo! may
not accept your site.
- Choosing the right description for your site. Unless
you choose the correct description for your site, you
will not get an optimum listing in Yahoo!
- Submitting your site in the proper way.
Get all the above 4 steps right, and you can sky-rocket
the traffic to your site.
Get just one of the above 4 steps wrong, and Yahoo! will
either reject your site, or will give it a sub-optimal
listing.
There
is however a way to Guarantee* Submission to Yahoo!
1st Search Engine
Ranking will get your site registered by Yahoo! -
Guaranteed!
When you order their services, they shall
- Inform you of the changes you need to make to your
site so that it is accepted by Yahoo!
- Identify the correct category in Yahoo! to which you
should submit your site.
- Help you choose an optimum description for your site.
- Inform you of the correct way of submitting your
site.
Total Cost: Their consultation fee for getting
your site registered by Yahoo! is $199. In addition to this,
Yahoo! will charge you $299 for the Business Express
submission option. Hence, the total cost for the project is
$199 + $299 = $498. This is in contrast to many other
companies who charge you in excess of $1,000 for the same
service.
Their Guarantee
"If, within two months from the time that you
order, we fail to get your site registered by Yahoo!, we
shall return $498 to you."
(Sumantra Roy)
President, 1st Search Engine Ranking.com
"Normally, if you pay Yahoo! $299 to get your site
listed, and if Yahoo! rejects your site, it won't return the
$299 fee to you. But, if you order our services, and we fail
to get your site listed in Yahoo!, we shall return not only
our consultation fee, but also the $299 Business Express
submission fee that Yahoo! charges you. Hence, ordering our
services is completely risk free for you - we bear all the
risk for you! You don't pay a dime if you don't get
listed!"
Visit
their site now for more information
*Please note - Yahoo will not accept certain sites, but
you will be advised if this applies to your site before an
evaluation is carried out.
MISCELLANEOUS MARKETING RESOURCES
REACH THOUSANDS MORE CUSTOMERS
by promoting your business in the press as NEWS.
Hit the headlines and enjoy "the best advertising of all" - with maximum impact, maximum credibility and minimum cost. A specialist PR service for small businesses is now available.
The Headline Helpdesk Service offers an outstandingly cost-effective means of reaching potentially many thousands more customers for your business. By "hitting the headlines" as news, you can achieve far more impact and much greater credibility than with conventional advertising - but it costs a lot less.
This powerful marketing bonus need not be beyond the reach of the "small" business person - and it certainly need not cost the kind of telephone-number fees associated with the bigger PR agencies.
The unique Headline Helpdesk Service, created and run by Westcountry PR Services Ltd, is specially designed for small businesses. It opens your eyes to a host of PR opportunities available to you and provides the affordable professional expertise that can turn these opportunities into headline-winning press promotion for your business.
It may well be that you have yet to discover the full potential of PR (public relations), if indeed you have tried it at all. For PR remains a little understood and seriously under-used marketing tool for most businesses.
Which makes it all the more of a highly valued marketing "secret" for those businesses that are in the know!
Short of word-of-mouth itself, I am sure you would agree that the best publicity of all for your business is "free" publicity. Anyone can buy advertising space, but the perception is that only the special companies win editorial "plugs." With good PR, you can generate your own favourable publicity and dramatically raise your profile.
Crucially, press publicity promotes your business as NEWS and implies valuable independent endorsement. A single press release issued by your business can be widely reproduced in newspapers and magazines and on radio, TV and web sites.
You can also turn your published articles into prestigious testimonials - for use with your brochures and mail shots, for instance. An impressive file of press cuttings strengthens your credibility with "cold" approaches.
A successful press release will enhance your good name, help build a sound reputation and increase that all-important feel-good factor for your existing and prospective customers. In our increasingly competitive world, your brand recognition is more vital than ever.
You can use PR for a variety of purposes - for instance, specifically to promote a product or service or, more generally, simply to maintain a high profile for your business and keep your good name to the fore in the eyes of your existing and potential customers.
The Headline Helpdesk Service offers even the smallest business affordable professional PR - and thus all the invaluable marketing extras that come from winning a high profile in the press and media.
It is your opportunity to benefit from the quality of expertise and advice that can only come from a long-established PR agency specialising in the promotion of small businesses in the press.
With Headline Helpdesk Service, Mike Truscott, a former business journalist who wrote for national newspapers and magazines, reveals a host of great PR opportunities for your business. Then he writes your press release for you and researches your press and media distribution list. This way, you can win your desired higher profile and do so in all the right places to hit your target market.
For FREE information pack, contact Mike Truscott at Westcountry PR Services Ltd
(quoting "Headline Helpdesk") - email: mike@wprs.co.uk;
tel: 01326 313345; fax: 01326 211460; post: 8 Grovehill Drive, Falmouth,
Cornwall TR11 3HS.
Hitsnclicks.com
is a subscription based online marketing knowledge bank that
enables members to drive traffic, value and revenue to their
website using proven, traffic generating techniques
CPO Direct Response Advertising
Leading direct response marketing and advertising
provider specializing in
as seen on television marketing
HNB
Internet Goldmine
Get TONS of FREE ebooks & marketing tools
JUST for subscribing to the HNB Internet Goldmine! A NEW
FREEBIE each & every mailing!
For more information on operating and
promoting your business go to
http://www.homebusinessuk.co.uk/online.htm
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If you have a business you'd like to
feature on the site, send details of the
opportunity to the address below for information on current rates and availability.
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INTERNET
HOMEWORKING DIRECTORY
or write to:
Mrs L O'Connor, 91B Acton Lane, London,
NW10 8UT
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