Archive for November, 2011
Locally Hosted Email Responders
Locally hosted autoresponders are autoresponders that you host through your own web server. Normally, they are either scripts or programs that you need to have installed on your web server. They often require you to have a database, such as SQL 2000 or mySQL. They will also require you to purchase or lease programs or scripts that were written in ASP, Perl, or PHP.
Once the installation has been completed, you’ll need a web browser to start using these programs, to set them up, and run your subscriber list. You don’t need to be an expert with these programs, although you will need a working knowledge so you can operate them effectively. There are several autoresponders out there, many of which are flexible and offer you powerful features. If you are a webmaster with your own site, a locally hosted email autoresponder is a great investment.
If you are in the internet marketing business and have a large subscriber base, locally hosted email autoresponders are a great choice – especially when you compare them to autoresponders that are remotely hosted. Locally hosted programs will also provide you true flexibility, involving no third parties. You don’t have to worry about any company hosting your autoresponder – simply because you will be doing everything yourself.
One of the best things about locally hosted email autoresponders is the fact that you own the program. Once you have purchased the software, you own it for the rest of your life. This way, you don’t have to worry about any other charges. You won’t have to pay a company to run it, which will save you a lot of money in the long run. There are no monthly charges involved either, which makes locally hosted email responders that much better than remote hosted responders.
Providing the licensing condition allows it, you might be able to run the email responder on multiple sites. Some will let you run multiple copies on several different websites, while others require that you pay a small fee to upgrade first. If you are planning to run multiple copies, you should first find out how many copies or how many websites you are able to use the software with, before you make a purchase. This way you’ll be able to determine the true cost of the software and whether or not it is right for you.
Considering the fact that you’ll be running locally hosted email responders yourself, you’ll have more control than you would with a remote email responder. Locally hosted email responders give you more control over the database, and a better range of customization features. This way, you can set things up to your liking and rest assured that you are in total control.
Some locally hosted email responder programs will allow you to further customize the script to fit your needs. You can do this yourself if you know enough about scripting languages, or simply pay someone to do it for you. If you the program you are using or plan to use allow customization, you can pretty much fine tune it to your liking.
All across the Internet, there are several locally hosted email responders that you can get. Some of the best include Post Master, Send Studio, and Intellisponder Pro. There are other great programs out there, although they will cost you money to use. Once you buy them though, they are yours for as long as you use them. When you consider what’s best for your online business – you can’t rule out the power and features that a locally hosted email responder will provide you with.
Benefit of Expired Domains
When you are creating a business or new website on the internet, as you probably know you will need a domain name. This of course is the obvious for any internet business, without a domain name you will not have a website, end of story. Now if you are new to the internet business world (where have you been?) you may not realize the importance of SEO tactics. SEO tactics, if done correctly, are designed to give you an advantage within the search engine ranks. Of course, you may be sitting there wondering, “What in the world are you talking about”.
Well, this all leads to the title of the article and will answer the question what is the “Benefit of Expired Domains”. You see when an domain has been in use by another person and this person allows the domain to expire without renewing, the domain name is placed back into the pool of “domains for sale”. This is where the benefits begin to show, just like a new domain name, the expired domain name is available to anyone who wishes to purchase it. What is the difference between a new and expired domain name? Simple, the expired domain name has already been in use. This means that the previous own has likely invested a great deal of effort and time, not to mention money into the promotion of that domain name.
Furthermore, this means that the expired domain is likely all over the internet, with a multitude of back links. Think about it, taking possession of an expired domain name means less work for you and more time for other, more important issues. You will have the opportunity to take advantage of the work that someone else has already performed. The expired domain could already be listed with many search engines, forums, directories, and a wide variety of other websites that have this link already on them.
What does this mean? Because the previous owner already did most of the legwork, it leaves less for you to do. The traffic specific to that expired domain now becomes your traffic, which leads to your sales, and ultimately your revenue. All of this because someone else was kind enough to do the work for you already and let the domain name expire.
Now surely you would know by now, that if you were to purchase a brand new domain name, you would have to do all the advertising, promotion, SEO work, submission to search engines, forums, and directories yourself. That is a lot of time, effort, and money spent on your part and trust when we say it takes a lot of all of the above to make a new domain work. It makes sense to take advantage of an expired domain does it not? We think so, you should find the expired domain of your choice today and begin taking full advantage of the legwork that has already been done for you and use it for your website.
5 Important Website Writing & Design Conventions
This article outlines the five most important conventions for writing and designing your webpages.
Your presentation is every bit as important as your content. The best content in the world won’t ever be read if the presentation is so bad that nobody stays long enough to read it. If you maximize your website usability, your visitors stay longer, read more, and you make more sales.
If the purpose of your web site is to educate your readers and/or lead them to a specific action, (like buying something) then you should seriously consider following these design and writing conventions…
1. Start Each Page With Your Most Important Content.
2. Use Meaningful Link Text to Provide Information.
3. Write Scannable Pages.
4. Use Simple Website Designs.
5. Use Clear, Consistent Website Navigation.
1. Start Each Page With Your Most Important Content.
People are impatient; they will scan your page quickly and leave as soon as they get bored. Put your best, most important content near the top of the page.
Design your layout so that nothing pushes your most important content down past the “page fold”. That is your “Prime Real Estate” — don’t waste it. Large logos, unnecessary graphics, ambiguous headlines…. all these things are a waste of your must valuable space.
Begin each page with a summary or a short list of page contents. Be specific, and place the newest items at the top of the list or in a “What’s New” section.
2. Use Meaningful Link Text to Provide Information.
Web surfers decide in seconds whether or not your page is worth reading. When you use bland, content-neutral words for your link text, you miss an important opportunity to provide information. (Also – visually impaired web users often instruct their computer to read the link text aloud, “Click here” won’t help them.)
The words used in your anchor text should suggest what the reader will find when they click on the link, and help them decide to click or not.
* Bad: To learn about icebergs, click here.
* Better: Icebergs
* Best: Where icebergs come from.
You can make your links even more informative by following them with a blurb:
Blurbs: Short Previews of Web Pages
A “Blurb” is a short paragraph that gives a preview of the page at the other end of a link. You are reading a blurb now. If a blurb helps a reader decide to click the link, then it works.
3. Write Scannable Pages.
Offline, books and magazine articles are designed for sequential reading: You start at the beginning and read to the end.
Online text is not necessarily sequential – it relies upon smaller chunks of text, which the reader often does not read in order. So each page of your website must make sense to a visitor who did not see the preceding page, or just arrived from a search engine.
Meaningful, informative headers & subheadings, bulleted lists, and bold keywords all help readers scan the page quickly and easily.
4. Use Simple Website Designs.
Your visitors didn’t come to see your fancy graphics. They came to find information about prices or availability, they’re looking for contact information or directions, or maybe they just want some technical details…
Unless your website is about cool graphic effects, I can guarantee that your visitors don’t really care about your spinning logo or dancing unicorns, or even whether or not your menu buttons blink or change background images on a mouse-over.
Web-savvy visitors have ‘trained’ themselves to ignore ads. Anything that flashes, shimmers, blinks or dances around will not get the attention that it deserves.
The more such things you put on your page, the harder your reader will have to work in order to find what they want. Too much of that and they are gone, never to return. Use images wisely. Every image on your page slows it down, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot….
* Use smaller images whenever possible.
* For large collections of images, use an index with thumbnails that they can click if they want to see the image full-size.
* Use an image editor to reduce the file size of your images
See our “Using images in your webpages” section for more about all that ~ http://blt-web.com/web_design/using_images.html
5. Use clear, Consistent Website Navigation.
Next to pages that take forever to load (and pop-ups), the biggest complaint that surfers have is difficult to understand and/or inconsistent website navigation…
* Use the same menu on all your pages.
* Use a logical link hierarchy, with related items together.
* Be perfectly clear with your link titles & descriptions.
* Use text links whenever possible.
* If you must use image links, use the alt=”link destination” element.
A website with more than ten or fifteen pages may not need a link from every page to every other page… you can link to each section from each page, but give each section its own “Table Of Contents”.
Every page should have a link to the home page and to the site map. (If you have less than ten pages, you may omit a site map, but your home page should have a text link to every page for search engines.)
See our “Menu Design Tips” page for more information ~ http://blt-web.com/web_design/menu_design.html
Following these 5 simple guidelines will help your website be a success. With faster-loading pages and easier-to-find information, people will read more of your content and are more likely to take the action that you want them to.
To Your Success!
Tim
Additional Reading:
http://www.smbtn.com/books/gb57.pdf ~ Writing and Editing Like a Pro Entrepreneurs Guidebook #57, from Small Business Town
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/ ~ Writing for the Web, Research on how users read on the Web and how authors should write their Web pages.
http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/ ~ Writing for the Web, by Jakob Nielsen, distinguished engineer; PJ Schemenaur, technical editor; and Jonathan Fox, editor-in-chief, www.sun.com