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As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn’t matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world — if your website is poorly done you won’t be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I’m talking about a “good design”, I’m not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design — accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I’ve come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it’s high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I’d just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site — users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics — user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it’s illegible you won’t be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct everytime each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor’s screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it’s meant to do effectively. Don’t let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

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Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here’s a rough guide:

First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer’s wages, advertising costs and so on.

Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it’s a “no-brainer” choice.

However, choose freelancers with care. The best way to do this would be to go to elance.com. There, you can post the abstract of your project and get thousands of freelancers to bid on your project, so you will surely get the best deal. On top of that, you will be able to choose the designers based on their experience, past transactions and ratings, so your value for money is secured.

Another route you can take is to design your website yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Just spend a little time to sit down and do it yourself. You’ll be able to design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and so on.

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For those of you who are new to the internet this whole online business thing might seem a little overwhelming. If you have never really surfed online, you might find yourself wondering how to find information on the things that interest you. Once you get the hang of things, you shouldn’t have any troubles at all. This article will explain the basics for you.

Search engines are the new to the internet surfer’s best friend. The most popular ones include Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves. There are plenty of others, but as someone who is new to the internet, these will serve you just fine.

Since you are new to the internet, what a search engine does is take the important words that you type in and looks for the same words in millions of webpages around the world. It then throws back all those matching pages and they appear in front of you. This usually only takes a few seconds since all these pages and articles are already indexed. The most popular and most relevant (according to the main words) will appear at the top of the list.

For example, if you type in “craft supplies, wheat, felt, google eyes”, your first results on the search engine page will appear with all of these. Further down, or on the next page will come those that didn’t match all of the search terms. Perhaps they only had felt and craft supplies on the list. And so on and so forth until in the last pages you are looking at just one of any of the words that you entered, such as “eyes” or “craft”. For this reason, most people don’t bother looking further than those first two or three pages.

Once you have typed in the words or phrases that you are interested in and gotten back your results, you are ready to start looking at websites. This can get a bit confusing for those who are new to the internet. There is so much information crammed into a tiny space that it can be difficult to know what to look for. The first few results on the page, the ones that are separated by a colored box or a line, are sponsored links and they will generally lead you to a website that is trying to sell you something. Most new to the internet explorers fall for the appealing text of these ads, so stay away from them. Continue downwards until you find the real websites.

Each website has a title and a brief description. You can often tell from the few sentences that you can see whether or not this is something that you wish to look at. Many people who are new to the internet only read the titles and click, but these are not necessarily indicative of what there is on the page, so read the description, too. If the site is not what you thought, hit the back button at the top of your screen and try another site.

Just because you are new to the internet doesn’t mean you need to end up lost in cyberspace. Understanding how to use a search engine is the first step in getting to the sites you want to visit. After that, everything else is easy.

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Link popularity is a common term that is used with internet marketing. It basically means how many links to your website from other sites on the internet there are. There are various ways to measure this and this article will help you make sense of them.

Link popularity is important to all webmasters. It determines where you rank on the search engine pages for your keywords and can be absolutely vital in getting that coveted number one space on Google! While other factors are included in the equation, link popularity definitely figures high on the list and you should do your best to increase your incoming link as much as possible.

First of all, if you just want to check and see how many other ranked sites are linked to you on any particular search engine, you can simply enter “link:” (minus quotation marks) followed by the URL of your website and hit Enter. This will quickly turn up a basic link popularity count for you and is a good indication of the number of links you have from other areas.

It is important to note that you will get different results from different search engines because each search engine ranks link popularity according the links that it personally knows about. So if a website that links to you has made it onto Yahoo’s list, but not Google’s, it will only appear as a link in your link popularity rating when you do a search on Yahoo. On Google, you will be at least one link down.

Also, there are filters that may prohibit backlinks from being counted toward your site. This can affect your link popularity rating as well, changing it from search engine to search engine. It can also change with time, as the search engines are constantly adjusting their filters and requisites for link popularity.

PageRank, by Google is a basic form of link popularity, ranking sites from 0 (no link popularity) to 6 (amazingly high link popularity) must be taken with a grain of salt because of the above. There are most likely many sites that link to you which are not yet listed on Google and have not been spidered. They will not show up on your PageRank number until Google has checked them and only then if they are not banned by the filtering system which is notoriously difficult to get through on Google.

There are special freeware and shareware programs such as Link Popularity Check 3.0.3. You can install these on your computer and check your link popularity at any point with the click of a mouse. Or, if you prefer not to download anything, you can find several link popularity counters online. Some can even be set up right on your website, to display your link popularity stats to the public. This is only recommended if you happen to have fairly high ratings, otherwise, you are simply advertising that you are not very popular!

Link popularity is fairly easy to check and it is worth keeping an eye on after any promotional campaign. This way, you can see which marketing techniques boost your ratings more and continue only with the successful ones.

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Offers for free stuff abound on the internet and many of them are completely legitimate. While it might be nice to get a free sample of mocha coffee or a free pair of baby booties, what do you really do with all that free stuff? Why not earn some cash with it?

Free samples are so prevalent online that you can literally order five or six things every day and be getting free stuff in the mail for a month! These samples are available for everything from coffee creamers to baby wipes and antacids. The idea behind them is to turn you onto the products so that you will begin buying them, but you can also turn free stuff into cash in your pocket by reselling it.

Let’s start with samples. If you package similar items together, you have the perfect “sampler kit” or gift basket. All you need is three or four related items and you are good to go. For example, you could get together some baby products, a sample of Dove soap, a couple mini packs of baby wipes, a formula sample and maybe even some talc powder or baby perfume. Put those all in a cute basket along with a bow and cellophane and you have the perfect newborn gift basket.

To create a sampler pack, you need items that are even more similar, like coffee. If you can get eight to ten different coffee samples, they can be packaged together in a neat little box, perhaps along with a mug or creamers and sold as a sampler pack. No one will ever know it was created from free stuff!

Larger free stuff like baby booties and T-shirts can be resold online, on Ebay or Craigslist, for example. If you get together several T-shirts or other items that are similar, you can sell them on Ebay as a package deal, charging only a few dollars per item. Let’s face it after all, this was free stuff, so even a few pennies are pure profit!

Often, for free stuff that is actually worth something, like a necklace or book, you will have to do something in exchange. This might be signing up for an email newsletter or giving some kind of information, but there will be an exchange required. In most cases this is completely worth it since you can resell the item for a small profit.

To get really great free stuff, look for 100% rebates. This means that you actually buy the item, but with the rebate, the cost of the entire item is refunded, leaving you with high quality free stuff. You can find great rebates at places like buy.com, or search for them on Google.

Not only is it fun to get free stuff, but if you can also earn from it, what’s stopping you? Start ordering your free stuff today and in 4-6 weeks, you should have all the product you need to get your own free stuff business off the ground!

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You probably have one or two forums that you enjoy frequenting, where you read and post about issues relevant to you. Have you ever noticed that some forums just aren’t worth looking at because they are so slow moving? You could write a question and not get an answer for days! This is where a great business opportunity comes in . . . paid forum posting.

Basically, paid forum posting is just that, the forum owner pays one or more people to start new threads, keep older ones going and to basically maintain some movement in the forum. It is one of the easier online jobs you can get and if you join forums that are interesting to you, it can be useful as well!

There are two ways to go about getting a forum posting job. The first is to do it yourself. Find stagnant forums by doing a quick search on Google for the type of forum you are interested in. Go directly to page ten and continue from there. These are the less popular forums on that topic and the most likely to not have much activity.

Once you find a near-dead forum, write the administrator and let them know that you are available as a paid poster if they are interested. Offer to write quality posts, responses and start a minimum of two threads per day, for a fee. Although you can set nearly any price you wish, you will have a better response if you stick with the norm for forum posting which is between twenty and fifty cents per post.

To find a forum posting job with a company, do a search on a search engine like Google for forum posting jobs and you will come up with quite a few options. Check out two or three to see which ones pay the best and then ask on a forum or two (these sites often have their own) what other people think of the service. It is usually best to start with just one until you have an idea of how much work will come your way. Otherwise, you could end up with more jobs than you can comfortably do in a day!

You will be given assignments based on preferences and interests, usually. Any special instructions will accompany the assignment, along with how many posts you are expected to do each day. In general, you will be required to write high quality (not spam) posts that are at least 25-50 words long and spread over the different categories on the forum. Some forums will request four or five posts per day, with a couple of those being new threads and the rest replies, while others will only want one post every other day.

The nice thing about working for a company is that you can easily have up to 50 posts assigned per day without having to search for them. Although the pay is slightly less (usually between ten and twenty cents per post), you will be paid by the company, which means higher amounts in a shorter period of time. For example, you might earn only two or three dollars on each forum in a week, but the company will pay you the twenty-five dollars total from all the forums you worked on.

Forum posting can be a good way to get paid for what you enjoy doing anyway. So why not start looking for work in this area?

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It can be very confusing trying to figure out exactly what you need to do and buy in order to get going in ecommerce. There are a myriad of products out there that are quite different in prices, ranging from free to thousands of dollars and all of them claim to be the only way to really earn any money in ecommerce! While these products and information packages might be very useful, the reality is that you don’t have to buy a huge pile of things just to get started. That can come later, once you are established. So let’s take a look at just what you do need.

For any ecommerce venture, you will need a web presence. That generally means a website or possibly a blog where you can promote and sell your product. Ecommerce is all about selling, so you will need to design your website specifically for selling. That might mean hiring a good copywriter, especially if you aren’t a great writer yourself. This is no time to skimp on quality.

Obviously, in order to sell, you also need a product! The best products for ecommerce are information products like reports and e-books that can be easily and rapidly accessed online once the buyer has paid for them. You don’t even need to write or create your own product, you can get one that has resell rights and simply turn around and sell it to your own customers.

The disadvantage to selling someone else’s product in your ecommerce business is that you are not the only vendor, so if you are able to write your own e-book or develop your own product, you will have a leg up on the competition. If need be, you can hire a freelancer through a bidding site to do the work for you. This may cost a bit more, but you will end up with a higher quality product.

Once you have your product and your ecommerce website designed to sell that product, all you are missing is customers. You will need to build your traffic in order to sell your product. This can be done in a variety of ways, including free promotion such as article marketing and banner exchanges and paid methods like Adwords and the like. In general, the free methods work, but tend to bring in a trickle of visitors. If you have the budget, paid marketing is the only way to go! Take out a couple of Adwords ads and pay for a banner campaign or two and you will soon be swamped with visitors.

The last step in building your ecommerce business is to develop repeat sales. You will need to set up a mailing list, which is relatively easy. Sign up with an auto responder and have it collect people’s email addresses when they purchase your product. They will have to enter their email address in order to download the e-book or whatever it is that you are selling. Later, when you expand your product line, you can send them a notice letting them know that you have new products that they might be interested in.

These are the only things you really actually need in order to start in ecommerce. Anything else can be considered extra and a luxury. Ecommerce can be developed slowly as you have the time and money to do so.

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When you are first starting up your e-business, it can be difficult to decide which webhost to go with. While free looks appealing, it does have it’s setbacks and you might prefer to go with paid, but it is good to get all the options before making a major decision! For e-businesses with a very low budget, starting off on a free webhost can be the best choice, but you need to know what you are looking for.

Free webhosting for e-business has obvious appeal because you don’t have to pay, of course! However, while free hosting can be nice, you do usually get what you pay for. They aren’t just giving away space for nothing, the webhosts still need to earn money and most do that by placing ads on your website.

Having banner ads or a notice that says “Get Your Free Website Here” on your e-business site is not very professional, so you might want to look for other options in this case. There are free webhosts for e-business that allow for ad-free websites, but they are usually extremely limited in the way of space and bandwidth. As long as you stay small and don’t need to upload videos or major files, you can use these providers for your e-business.

Most e-businesses prefer to have their own domain name as it appears far more professional than a website hosted under a subdomain such as www.freehost.yourbusiness.com. If you decide to go with a free webhost, you need to make sure that you select one that allows for outside domain names. There are free hosts out there that allow for this and it really is your best option. If you are doing marketing and promotion for your e-business, you don’t want to lose all that traffic simply by moving to a new webhost later on. A domain name allows you to switch hosts without losing your traffic, you can simply redirect your domain.

Another thing to watch for when you are searching for a free webhost for your e-business site is upgradeable hosts. This means that if you like the webhost and everything is going well, when you need to expand, you can easily do so by simply starting to pay a low monthly fee. This gives you more space, bandwidth and other options for your e-business.

If you plan to monetize your e-business website with Adsense or another type of ad, you will probably be banned from doing this on any webhost that already runs Adsense themselves. An ad-free site is more likely to allow your ads to be placed, but make sure you check this out before signing up. It’s no fun having to redesign your entire e-business website just because you missed a “no ad posting” clause!

If you find a host that offers free webhosting without ads, with paid upgrades, allows for domain names and your own ads, plus the space that you need to get started, you have the perfect webhost for your e-business. It really does pay to shop around.

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Dropshipping has become the new way to sell on Ebay and it is growing in popularity with e-stores set up by individuals as well. There is a downside, though. Some dropshippers are unscrupulous and you really need to be careful before you start randomly selling things from any old dropshipping company. There are a few ways to make sure that you are getting a good dropshipping company and those are outlined below.

The first thing you need to do is find a wholesale company that specializes in dropshipping. Not all dropshippers are wholesalers, in fact, many sell their good for higher than normal prices! Even if they say wholesale on their webpage, you will need to check this out yourself.

It is pretty easy to check prices, just pop over to Google and do a search on a few of the items that you are interested in selling. For example, if you want to sell iPods, you can look up the regular price at Buy.com or any other regular vendor and compare it to your so-called “wholesale” price on the dropshipping company’s site. This will give you a good idea within a minute or two of how the prices rate.

Once you have a dropshipping lead that actually does have good prices (these can be very hard to come by!), you will need to test their shipping times and product quality. This might sound like a lot of work, but it is worth it in the long run. You will avoid having customers complaining to you and having to refund money by assuring yourself of the quality ahead of time.

To check the shipping and product quality, you will need to set up an account with the dropshipping company and order a sample of the product you intend to sell. Don’t worry about having to pay for it, since you will be selling it on Ebay anyway and shipping the first one from your home! This way, you get your money back without any problems, and you get to see if the whole system works.

It is often a good idea to test two or three dropshipping companies at a time so you can choose one faster. Check their websites for backordering details as well, since this could affect you in the case of selling on Ebay. You will want to know basically how long items will be backordered and what their refund policy is in these cases. This is another good reason to have two or more dropshipping companies on the line, you can always go with one when the other is out of stock.

The only thing left to do now is to choose your dropshipping company and start selling! Take digital photos of the sample items that you received and use those instead of stock photos on Ebay and your website, since this tends to portray more confidence. Start with one or two auctions at first and see how things go. If there are no hitches and your clients receive the product they ordered through the dropshipping company, you can go ahead and blitz the place!

It is important to take the time to test and review the dropshipping companies that you intend to use, since you will be on the hook if they fail. Checking out your suppliers before you sell is a generally good business policy anyway, so get in the habit of it.

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There are companies such as Picky Domain Names that specialize in finding the perfect URL for your business, but there is no reason why you can’t do the same thing yourself, for free! All it takes is a good imagination and some time to brainstorm. If you have friends who can help, all the better.

Most of the regular domain names have been bought up and used now, so it is a real challenge to find ones that are unique, describe your business and are easy to remember. That’s why you need to get creative.

-First off, there are a few general ground rules to ensure that your visitors remember your domain names. This is obviously the most important part of choosing an URL, so keep the following in mind:

-Limit yourself to a maximum of three words. Longer phrases tend to be difficult to remember and also they take too long to type in. People want information fast and if they have to try and remember a twenty letter URL, they probably won’t bother.

-Use words that are easy to spell. If you use weirdly spelled words just to get the domain names you want, you will lose a lot of visitors. For example, if myspace.com is taken, don’t go for myspayce.com, you will just end up sending traffic to the other domain name.

-Think carefully before using anything apart from .com as an ending for your domain names. It is the most common and often people will forget if you use a more unusual ending such as .name or .tv.

Now that you have the basics in mind, it is time to brainstorm. Start by writing down all the words you can think of that relate to your business. For example, if you have a diaper service, you would end up with a list of keywords that include “diaper, diapers, baby, bottom, cloth, wet, dirty, clean, service” etc. Include any slang or nicknames as well, such as “nappy, stinky,” etc.

Once you have a good long list, start trying to put the words together in a form that would work as domain names. You should be able to come up with at least a dozen that fit the description of your business. For our diaper service example you might end up with nomorestink.com, dirtytoclean.com, nappybottom.com, etc.

Next, you need to go to a domain names registrar such as GoDaddy and check to see if your domain names are available. Start with the ones you like best and work your way down the list. Chances are you will find at least two or three that are available. These are then your choices for domain names!

This whole process works best if you have two or more people to bounce ideas off of. Domain names that are wacky and outrageous are sure to come up as you work your way through a brainstorming session with friends or coworkers! And at the end of it all, you should have a handful of domain names that you can go with.

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