Masamuru Ltd.

In the course of doing business, we serve many customers. Likewise, in doing business, we will also be plagued by different problems.

Following is a list of the common mistakes that different web hosts tend to commit.

1. Falling For The Price Trap
A website price at a very low rate will generally provide extremely slow site or common services will be denied because the bandwidth was maximized. Use your instincts and avoid low-priced websites.

2. Lack of Reseller Research
Reseller hosting is not bad. As a matter of fact, good support is provided by resellers. However, it will be safe to research your reseller. They may offer good packages but they may be inexperienced in other aspects of web hosting. A good reseller must know their products inside and out.

3. No Clear Definition of Web Site Requirements
List down the resources that your web site will need and add more as you begin to expand. This facilitates everything when an upgrade of your website is needed as you can simply discuss them with your host.

4. Purchasing Hosting In An Auction
Auctioned hosting, to say the least, is not unreliable as it may seem. However, these hosts have a great deal of terms and conditions which are usually more than what that regular websites would offer. As a result, inflexibility of the package may be experienced.

5. Forgiving A Host’s Bad Or Limited Website
Host that do not develop their own informative sites are unlikely to spend time developing informational site for your website.

6. Putting All The Eggs In One Basket
Putting several sites in a single account may seem like a good deal. This does not hold true most of the time. When you site is income-generating, it may not be wise to interconnect them. Chances are when all your sites breakdown, your income will be lost. Try to work out with your host about how to spread out the connection of your sites.

7. Taking Testimonials At Face Value
Not all testimonials are similar or true for customers. Ask the host if they have a contact of their customers and if you can talk to them. If the host does not want you to do this, that is a danger sign.

8. Not Keeping A Record Of Their Contact Information
Keeping track of telephone numbers, addresses, contact persons or e-mail addresses is important. When a problem occurs in your site or when the system goes down, you can easily talk to the customer service to troubleshoot the problem for you.

9. Relying On Host Backups
It is advisable to keep a back-up copy of your website. This is critical in times of emergency.

10. Trusting your host to have the latest software
Viruses and computer hackers can strike anytime. It is always safe to check the software versions that you are planning to purchase from your host. Make sure that it is always updated.

Michael Colucci is a writer for $2.99 Hosting and Low Interest Credit Cards

(You are granted the right to reprint this article but the title and content must remain unchanged and the authors name and contact information must be included.)

Keep your site fresh with new content every day!

There are plenty of great reasons to keep your website filled with fresh content and sticky topics that keep visitors coming back for more.

Who wants to read the same old thing, not the public and surely not the Search Engine Spiders. Fresh content and updates are some of the keys to keeping any website in the public view.

Keeping your website or websites updates with new material can be a chore. It is important to keep your website updated with the latest and newest information, otherwise your competition will gain ground and your audience will not return.

So how do you keep fresh content? There are several ways.

- RSS Feeds with articles that are relevant to your websites theme. Probably the best way to do this is to have a second website that you control that generates these RSS feeds. Article-engine, offers a great script that you have ton’s of categories and topics – each with their own RSS feed. If you have never dealt with RSS feeds you can hire someone to install them or use either the script or the service found at rss2html.com. If you have even a little experience with scripts you will find it works like a charm.

- Open a Forum on your site, for open discussion. If you are using Phbb2’s open forum script there is an add-on that allows you to have a Search Engine Friendly Archive. Services like Stmadeveloper can install these for you and provide you with a feed from your forum on your main site. It’s a great way to keep both your forum active and fresh sticky content on your website.

- Create a Blog and post theme related events and allow outside comments. One of the best things about most Blogging Scripts is that they actually generate RSS or XML feeds for your topics. Wordpress does this but so do many other Blog Scripts. You will still need to install the feeds onto your main site using something like rss2html.com or hiring a programmer to insert them into your site for you. Again – it’s worth learning how to do it yourself.

- Hire someone to write theme related topics, and manually place them on your website. Your still doing some work but you sure don’t have to work as hard. We use Stmacontent.com to write both our articles and to provide us with full products and websites. Outsourcing can be a very lucrative way to get your content.

There are numerous ways to keep your website up to date. It’s just a matter of picking the right combination of ways that suit your individual style and needs. Don’t let a few technical aspects of website development keep you from achieving your Online goals and aspirations. There is a wealth of information available on every subject imaginable.

So go get some RSS Feeds. Learn to display them on your site using the free script from rss2html.com

Create your Blog, again learn to use rss2html.com to dislplay them on your site.

Make a Forum and install the archive script and make sure you link back to it – also set up the syndication plug in’s if they are available.

Hire a writer if your not a great writer. Services like Stmacontent and even places like rentacoder.com can get you all the original content you need.

Eric Gehler

Eric is a Business Analyst and Consultant. Co-Owner of
http://www.StmaDeveloper.com
and
http://www.stmacontent.com

Eric recommends that you join http://www.nichesitespecial.com if you want to totally automate your website creation. Eric is also available for business consultation and website development via http://www.eric-gehler.biz

Many people hire professional web site designers for as much as a thousand plus USD! You can, and very easily, make a web site for almost one hundredth of that price, and probably in half the time. Here are 4 easy steps to get you started.

1. Find a quality Web Host

This will probably take longer than you imagine, so I always like to start here. Googling “web host” itself pops up over 70 million results and includes many, many advertisements. Ask around, find forums, and rely on your feelings to find a host that you feel has the best quality for price (bang for your buck). Normally around $10 to $15 a month is a reasonable price (with no perks added). In addition, you should make sure that they can handle your needs (do you need a MySQL database, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, etc.) with no additional charges added for standard options.

If the host that you are using is a quality host, they should allow you to register a domain name on their site (or they will refer you to one of their partner sites). Which leads us into..

2. Create a Domain Name

What is your web site going to be about? Try to come up with a short list of specific keywords that relates to your web site’s theme. Many web sites that let you register domains offer a tool to find available web site domains based on your list of keywords. Some qualities of a good domain name are: short, rememberable, easy to type, on topic with your site, and preferablely .com (most people just think of web sites as .com so if you have a .net they might end up on the wrong site). Finding a good domain name can be hard, so don’t worry about taking to much time in finding the perfect one.

3. Find a Design

Instead of trying to code your own site, try looking around for templates that are relatively inexpensive. Many web hosts offer packages within their plans for web site designs and plans. A good template might cost as much as $100 but remember, by doing this yourself you are already saving almost a thousand dollars, don’t feel like you can’t splurge on a design you like.

4. Put it Online

This should be a piece of cake if you have purchased a design from your host, but if you found one from a different site, it make take some getting use to. You will need a FTP client (try SmartFTP, it’s free for personal use) to upload your files to your server. Customer support will help you if you can’t figure it out, but most web hosts give you all the information you need with a step by step process as well.

Good luck with the next phase of your site, promotion and marketing.

Jeffrey Abbott is a respected author and editor of eMoneyReport.com

Visit the site at http://www.emoneyreport.com and read reviews on programs that help you to make money from your own home. eMoneyReport offers a simple and easy format to find articles relating to all types of online business and website promotion.

Steps owners of web hosting companies can take to increase the probability of selling their company for the highest price and under the most favorable terms.

TO SELL OR NOT
There are a number of reasons to sell. For most business owners their wealth is tied up in the business. People sell their companies or even divisions when they want to move on with life, want to focus on another venture, or they believe the market value is high for what they have.

Businesses are not liquid A share of Exxon stock can be sold in 5 seconds, while many businesses are not even sellable. Any interest expressed by a company in the acquisition mode is worth listening to. The only time owners are 100% ready to sell is when the business is in decline and rest assured, they don’t like the valuation when that occurs. I know too many people who regret not selling when they had the opportunity and actually wanted to, but were too tough on price.

Companies seeking growth through acquisitions will almost always find something to buy. Whether it’s your company they acquire or not, it’s sometimes actually up to you. Many times sellers do their best to run buyers off, and don’t even realize it. Buyers will acquire a company they believe is a good strategic fit. You can’t control this aspect. However, with organized, timely, honest and decisive communication sellers can create a much more appealing deal.

Seller communication
• It’s ok to tell someone, “Yes, I would entertain offers for my company.” This simply implies that it would be a good use of their time and money to explore your company further. It’s not a sign of desperation.
• Playing “hard to get” usually informs the buyer the opposite.

• Be realistic with yourself regarding price. Potential buyers can be lost forever to unrealistic expectations of “home run” offers.

• Bottom line … buyers will not beg you to sell your company. There are simply too many other companies out there which are for sale.

BEING ORGANIZED

Business plans and business sales books There should not be a significant difference between a business plan used for internal management, raising money and planning, and a business sales book used to sell a business. Both of these documents should be 90% complete at all times. They give a wonderful first impression to a buyer. Never forget the buyer is the one with the cash and who is taking most of the risk. He is looking for any reason at all to walk away from the deal. Being organized and having the ability to give the buyer information in a timely manner is the MOST IMPORTANT and easiest thing you can do to increase the chance of selling your company for the highest price. Ideally, every time the buyer asks for information, it should be delivered in a timely manner, in electronic form, accurate and up to date. Try to refrain from providing 1990’s dreamy type pro-formas. They’re not in vogue anymore. One final point; buyers do realize that the last piece of due diligence information received is usually what the seller doesn’t want anyone to focus on.

Preparing the company for sale: Run your business like you plan to keep it for the long term. When sellers attempt to prepare their company for sale, many times they avoid making needed investments in the company. If you invest cash into a project that has yet to pay off, then get credit for it in the valuation.

Other thoughts:
• Would you be willing to sell parts of the company or just the whole?
• Do you want to stay on with the buyer or leave after closing? And why?
• It is more attractive to buyers if there is someone at your company who can run the show upon your post closing departure.
• Stock vs. cash for consideration? There are way too many variables regarding stock to be covered here. However, keep in mind you may prefer $900,000 in cash and $300,000 in stock, as opposed to just $1,000,000 in cash. If treated correctly, stock deals can be beneficial in many ways.

THE PROCESS

The initial communication with a prospective buyer: In the first or second communication, the seller should determine who the buyer is, what they are looking for, and basically how they value it. Don’t pin the buyer down for exact valuations initially, because he doesn’t know what you have. Every business is a little different. There is no harm in telling a prospective buyer what you have in regards to number of sites, domain names, servers, employees, etc … after all it’s not your customer list. Inquire about their business and don’t forget many times the small fish eats the big fish.

Selecting an attorney: Find an attorney who has industry specific experience in mergers and acquisitions and understands the appropriate tax implications. Ask them how many deals they have done in the industry, how much they charge, etc. Please, don’t use your brother in law who is a great divorce attorney. Deals get stalled and even cancelled because an inexperienced attorney delays the process. There is a fine line between being thorough, and taking so much time with documents the buyer walks from your deal and seeks another company to acquire.

THE DOCUMENTS

The letter of intent should be short and sweet. The purpose is not to map out every single issue, rather to come to a gentlemen’s agreement on the very basic aspects of the proposed deal … without spending too much time or money. The basics which should be covered are stock vs. asset purchase/merger, valuation, consideration, assets included or not, timelines, etc. If everyone agrees to the letter of intent then each party, at their own expense, should start working on the purchase and sale and other closing items. If both parties cannot agree on a 1-3 page letter of intent within a week they typically will never make it through the entire process.

The purchase and sale agreement will spell out every aspect of the deal. If both parties agree on the letter of intent, then they should work on the purchase and sale while all of the other aspects of the due diligence process and pre-closing issues are being handled. Most of these events can and should occur simultaneously. Don’t forget, some variables are more important to the seller, while others are more important to the buyer.

Every once in a while there is a real “tough guy” on one side of the table or the other. This guy just has to have every variable to go his way or there’s “no deal!”. These guys kill mutually beneficial deals all the time and rarely accomplish anything. Hire “tough guys” for the collections department.

On a final note, always be honest and fair. This world is becoming smaller every day.

M. Eric Furlow, President
Furlow Consulting Corporation
362 Gulf Breeze Pky., #202
Gulf Breeze, FL 32561
http://www.furlowconsulting.com

Presently, Eric Furlow assists individuals and corporations both acquire, merge, divest and value technology companies. He has experience in over 150 transactions in the paging, SMR, cellular, tower, local phone, long distance, software, ASP, MSP, ISP and web hosting industries. He has a Masters in Finance from Bentley Graduate School of Business in Waltham, MA. Before heading up Furlow Consulting Corporation, he was the Mergers and Acquisition Manager for A+ Network, Inc. which was sold to Metrocall Inc. in 1996.

Did you know that 45% of your potential USA customers may be abandoning your web site after finding it in a search engine or linked to by another web site because your slow loading web site is unbearable on a dialup Internet connection? The statistics(7/6/2005 – Jupiter Research) show that the USA only has a 55% broadband penetration rate and that 45% of the Internet users in the USA still only have a dial up modem! (A link to those statistics can be found at the end of this article.)

If your web pages load slow on a dialup, then you risk alienating 45% of your potential customers as soon as they try to load your home page. And at the current rate of broadband adoption you can expect significant rates of alienation for slow loading pages for at least 2 or 3 more years.

Studies have shown that web surfers cite slow loading web pages as the #1 reason for web site abandonment. Slow loading web pages were cited even more frequently than unprofessional looking pages! Don’t kid yourself, if your web pages load slow on a dial up modem, then web surfers will just abandon your web site in droves! Alienating 45% of your potential customers the very first minute they enter your business establishment is the worst possible business practice no matter if you are a brick business or if you are a click business or if you’re selling candles online or if you are FORD motors online.

Should Ford motors theorize that if someone is too cheap to buy broadband then they are too cheap to buy Ford cars and then design their web site accordingly? I’ll bet you that many current dialup users drive Fords and some brand new Fords too. Maybe they were able to afford the new Fords by going with dialup instead of broadband!

Always test your web site on a dialup Internet connection. If it loads slowly, then make your web designer do it over, or kiss good-bye to about 45% of your potential customers!

It’s no accident that Googles pages load FAST. They did it that way on purpose because they know what they are doing! It’s only one part of their winning web design approach but a very key part I assure you. Go with the winners, and make it an important part of your web design specs.

Creating web pages that are branded looking, yet still load fast, now that’s tough! It’s done using a combination of smart graphic design, HTML TABLE techniques, and CSS stylesheet techniques. Those techniques are the real secrets of fast loading yet branded looking web pages, and you had better find a web designer who knows them or kiss good-bye to about 45% of your potential Internet customers!
USA broadband statistics link:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/crm/actionable_analysis/article.php/3517561

David Malia is a 20 year computer veteran who’s done his road work in business web page usability. He offers fast loading web page design, eye popping graphic design, strong cross browser compatibility coding, and solid web application programming. “Web Pages Designed for the Real Web – Not the Ideal Web, Because That’s Where Your Customers Are”. http://www.RationalWebDesign.com

If you are just starting out in your new business and you decide that a website could be a valuable addition to this business how do you go about getting one up and running? You have two basic options really. Do it yourself or employ an individual or company to do it for you. Which option you take depends upon your own confidence in acquiring the skills necessary and the amount of funds you can divert to hiring in a company. If you have sufficient funds then hire in a company as this will enable you to devout all your time to developing your core business. If you don’t then you will have to do it yourself. So how do you go about it?

You will require no or little knowledge of HTML as you can purchase a whole package from a web hosting company which should include some form of website developing software and your domain name plus the hosting of your website. Give some thought to your domain name. It should be easy for people to type in and remember. Not too long, succinct and preferably no hyphens. So you have chosen your domain name and your hosting service now you must develop your site. Again give some thought to this. How many pages you are likely to produce, how many links you will need. What sort of information is going on each page. If you are completely new to this then I would suggest that using your site editor software you produce a first draft and publish it. You can always modify everything later as you go along. This will give you your first website which you can then submit to the search engines albeit not exactly what you want or one that is going to attract visitors.

Now you need to do quite a lot of research on the internet as to how to make your site visitor friendly and search engine friendly. Here you will discover the importance of good content, changing content, appropriate keywords, backward links, article writing and good copy on the website. Taking this information on board will enable you to restructure and rewrite your site over a period of time, probably many times. However all the time this learning process is going on your site is actually published on the Web so is likely to start being trawled by search engines and getting indexed even if it doesn’t sky rocket through the rankings. The most important thing to do from the outset is to write good content that will be of interest to your visitors. If it holds the attention of your visitors and gets them to contact you then it will likely be of equal interest to the search engines. Do not produce a site that is written with the search engines in mind. It is your visitors who are important and by following a few simple rules that are published all over the Web your site can become very attractive to visitors and to search engines also. Keep the site textually based, there is no point in having very flashy graphics as these are not noticed by the search engines and often annoy visitors who want to get at the information they are after as quickly as possible and not have to wait for some animated introduction to finish before they can enter the actual site.

Having put into practice all the advice that is out there you should have put together a pleasing and appealing website that visitors and search engines like. Each day or week you add more content and develop more links and you will gradually climb up the rankings. The last piece of advice I would give is start writing and submitting articles. One or two a week would be excellent over a year or two. Once your articles start being published you will see an immediate leap in the number of links back to your site and a subsequent rise in the rankings if your content is also good. Aim to produce over time several hundred articles if possible. The more you write the more links back to your site you will develop and the more visitors you will get as well as boost your rankings in the search engines.

David Smith is the owner of wesparkle.co.uk a contract cleaning company which specialises in the care and maintenance of natural stone flooring and tiles

No, ‘cheap’ is not necessarily a bad thing (well, not always), but when it comes to a services industry as competitive and with as thin margins as the web hosting industry, customers better watch out. Hosts offering ‘low-cost’ services tend to offer the world for Rs. 900 per year but, usually fail to deliver even the most basic of services. Surprised? I’m not. Let me explain some basics for the benefit of the vast majority who would still be unsure as to what I’m rambling about.

A “web host” is a company (well, most like to think of themselves as such but that’s a whole new article) that is in the business of procuring bandwidth (internet connectivity) and servers (glorified computers) with the intent to re-sell the same, in smaller bits, to people who need storage space for their e-mails and websites. This is usually (read always) accomplished by renting out dedicated servers with a decent hard drive and bandwidth quota and then using a hosting automation suite (control panel) to divide the server resources up into smaller chunks called ‘hosting plans’. The goal is to price these plans in a way that they remain affordable for the client while helping the host maximize profit from the resources it has.

Now comes the fun part…

Since there are almost no barriers to entry in this particular industry, new web hosts keep popping up every day. This helps keep the price for hosting services sane and should also mean better service for the customers since there are many hosts competing for their business. What really happens is that one Johnny-come-lately decides that the only way he can grab some market-share is by offering the lowest prices. Once customers start quoting his price to the host struggling for their business, the host decides to match it. Before you know it, everyone has slashed their prices by half! This, in Pakistan, can be seen every 10 – 12 months.

“Good”, you say? Read on…

What does this mean for the web host? Suddenly, all their existing clients are paying them half of what they used to. This means that in the coming year, they would have to generate twice as much new business just to make the same amount as last year! Is this considered growth? I think not!

Sadly, the number of clients does not magically increase with every price shave. So, the web hosts are left with little choice other than to cut costs just to make ends meet. Where there were 3 support people, they decide to make do with just one. Where there were 2 servers earlier, they decide that they can load all of the clients onto just one server resulting in lower operating costs. These measures, needless to say, do have a positive impact on the host’s bottom-line but deteriorate the services resulting in un-answered support queries and long periods of downtime (website/email inaccessibility) or extremely slow server response due to excessive loads on the server.

Now, if the host were to put their existing clients first, they would price their service fairly so that every client not only feels good in his wallet, but can also rely on the service being offered. I guess, all it boils down to is; whether a web host is in this business to provide a top-notch service with a long-term business goal or is just there to make a quick while competing with all the fly-by-night hosts who happen to come along.

Recently, I have come across at least three such hosting companies that are now in financial peril because they could not resist the urge to slash prices in order to try and capture some new business. Sadly enough, these are not people who are ‘new’ to the industry. Such an impact on the market is magnified 10 fold when an older host decides they would be better off by just slashing prices rather than improving on service. As a result, the younger companies follow suit and create a mess for themselves and more importantly their clients. The ultimate outcome is that frustrated clients decide to switch to foreign web hosts that provide a better service at a saner price.

From experience, I have learnt that providing a good service is what really matters. The rest falls into place when clients realise that they can only run their online business if the service they get is of good quality. After all, you get what you pay for. What good is a cheap service when you will eventually stop getting any?

Zahid works for Inspedium Corp. and writes for ArticleStreet.com.

If you’re looking for a quality hosting control panel for windows, do check out InsPanel at www.inspediumsoft.com

Submitted with Article Distributor.

There are quite simple & easy ways to choose the wrong web host. How do you avoid this pitfall?

If you are new to e-commerce, you probably just started to take the internet seriously. Where do you begin? How to find the right web host.

Finding the right host is not easy. There may seem a lot ( and there are!), but make sure to compare them on even footing. There is nothing worse than half way through your web site design, you realize that you need more space on the server or that the bandwidth will not accommodate the high volume of visitors you might get.

To avoid this, you need to think ahead. What will your website be like in 6 months? Can the package you are choosing, handle the potential explosion in sales that you project? If the answer to these are no, then you might want to keep searching.

For the business minded, our recommendations are for hosts that give you a complete package including, shopping cart, and web builders. Unlimited emails will surely come in handy as well as extensive template choices and sub-domain creation. These hosts offer full file uploads, and accommodate most extensions which enable you to work on your website offline and upload it at your convenience.

Full service hosts should actually offer FULL Service. It might sound weird, but be warned the package that looks like a full package may end up costing more as you have to pay for many things that another host would have include in the package.

With some, disk space starts at 5Gb, which is a good amount of space for storage, and unlimited bandwidth encourages you to drive even more traffic to your website. Some web builders carry 100’s of templates, as well as free marketing advice and tools. You also get free help services online and well as an entire website dedicated to helping you develop a world class website.

Are there some web hosts out that are free or very cheap? Sure! Why not go with a cheaper package you might ask? Well, on the web, cheapest is not necessarily the best. The rates may look cheaper initially, but do they offer money back guarantees, do they offer the complete ecommerce solutions?

If all your are getting is space and a domain name, unless you are a big business; without a shopping cart especially if you are looking somewhere to create a drop shipping business, it is difficult without ecommerce capabilities.

For all hosts however, make sure to Read the fine print, some may seem a good cheap basic package, but chances are you can only get what you need if you sign up for additional upgrades. Don’t be fooled. Do your homework first.

“Increase Your Website Traffic with NO Cost” is a bold statement don’t you think. But, believe me it’s true. You can increase your traffic by 1000% with no cost involved if you do it the right way. Continue reading if you want to know how.

I’ve outlined 5 ways to reach your target. But, please keep in mind that these are not the only ways that you can do to increase your traffic. There are hundreds of techniques to increase traffic. But these one are the proven one. I’ve used it personally. More importantly, these techniques can get you FREE traffic. You’re money is saved in your pocket. Let’s go to the first one.

1: Linking strategy

Linking strategy is the easiest way to get free traffic. When I say “the easiest way” it does not mean that you can ask everybody to link to your site and do nothing after that. Compared to other techniques that you’ll discover, this one will take less time to do.

Here’s how to do it. First select the site in your niche market. Be selective. Choose one that has a high traffic. Usually a high traffic site is pretty stingy to put link to your site. So, the key here is to be persistent. Ask them how many visitors do they received per month and if they could link to your site. If they don’t answer your request, email them the second time.

Be persistent. If they don’t want to link to your site, ask them to trade link instead (reciprocal link). This is the last resort you want to have.

Word of warning: Don’t crowd your site with too many links. Only accept link trading if it’s really worth it.

2: Offer Free eBooks or submit articles

You’ll fall in love with this technique if you see what it can do to your site. This technique can create an excellent’Viral marketing’ effect. It can multiply the no of visitors to your site in a matter of days. This most important thing about this technique is that to offer something that is really useful to your visitor. So useful that they can only get that information from you!

You need to the ‘wants’ in your need market. What problems do they encounter? Solve these problems and you have a killer articles or e-book that you can give away for free. Remember, don’t sell it. Give it away for free. If you feel really reluctant to give your article or e-book for free, you can give your visitors a partial of it. But, make sure it’s really useful. Don’t forget to put your name and your contact information in this article or e-book. Usually, if you write an article, you need to include your resource box at the very bottom of your article.

The most important task in this technique is to offer a reprint right to your visitors. What this mean is that your visitors can publish your articles or e-book to anyone in any medium; email, Ezine, website or anything. But please state your condition: Include your contact information or resource box. This will create viral effect to your visitors.

Before I forgot, there is one particular e-book compiler that is good in doing this kind of task. The name of this e-book compiler is ‘E-book Edit Pro’. With this compiler, you can offer your visitors a customizable e-book. This is a great incentive for them to distribute your article or e-book since they can put their name and information in it.

3: Classified Ad

This is the most time consuming technique compared to all 5. While it is time consuming, it is really worth it.

Tips – This technique should be used together with the above technique. Let me explain:

First, you need to write an e-book or article that you can give it away for free. Then, you need have an autoresponder. If you don’t have an autoresponder (your hosting company should provide this service for free), you can get one for free. Just type ‘free autoresponder’ in your search engine and you’ll get hundred of sites that provided free autoresponder.

Enough talking. Let’s continue.

After you have your own autoresponder, place your free article in this autoresponder. Now, you need to advertise your autoresponder address in the classified ad website. Don’t put your email address but your autoresponder address. The best part with this technique is that you can capture you visitor’s email. You can contact them again and again if you have any offer in the future.

4: Deliver informational pack Ezine/Newsletter

People surf the net to look for information. Out of 100, only 3 people surf the net to buy something. But others are doing some research or try to find something informational.

With this keep in mind, you can attract people to come to your site if you can deliver them timely information. By producing timely information, you glued these visitors to your site preventing them from going elsewhere. This can be done by giving them free newsletter or Ezine.

This is not an easy task because there is abundance of free information on the net. You need to give them something different from these ‘free’ stuff. Try to provide something unique in your Ezine. For example, if you’re publishing music Ezine, try to make a deal with music label so that you can give special price to your subscriber. Make sure your subscriber cannot get this of kind if deal in other place. If you can create this unique proposition, you’re already on top of the world. Your Ezine will spread like fire. More people will come to your site to subscribe your unique newsletter.

5: Offer affiliate program

This is the greatest FREE traffic generator technique out there. With this technique both parties win; you and your affiliate program participant. You get more traffic and sales, they get more money from referral commission.

This topic is really a large topic. I can write a whole e-book about how to create a successful affiliate program. But, I’ll discuss the basic thing about affiliate program in here.

Basically, to create an effective affiliate program, you need to create an interest for your visitor’s to join your affiliate program. You can do this by giving them high referral fees and marketing tools for them to use. Above all, you need to make them easy to promote your product or service. Don’t make them do all the hard work. It is your job.

The next thing you need to do is to motivate them to spread the word about you. Contact them in a timely manner. Don’t forget them after they’ve joined your program. Make them feel special. In fact, they are special since they are the one who will do the promotion and advertising. A well designed affiliate program can increase your website traffic and sales by unimaginable amount. But again, you need to devote all you effort in this technique if you want to have a successful affiliate program. Don’t do it half way. Even if you’ve to work 18 hours a day to create your own affiliate program, it’s really worth it in the future. The payoff is going to be thousand times your initial effort.

All of these techniques are free. You don’t have to spend a dime on them. Try it on your site. I’ve tried all these techniques. And they work!

Welcome to the first chapter of your Basic ASP Learning Series.

I mostly communicate on a personal level, so it’s better we acquaint ourselves in the beginning. My name is Amrit Hallan and I’m a web developer. I work through my web site – http://www.bytesworth.com. I’m not a nerd (and don’t want to be) and most of my knowledge has come to me piecemeal through lots of hard work and interaction with my other developer friends. I don’ t think it’d be fair to say that I’m an authority on ASP but yes, I have a few satisfied clients in my portfolio and I know enough to get you started. By the time you are through with these daily chapters, you’ll have learnt enough to make a small shopping cart in ASP.

Most of the chapters will be organized in a linear fashion, so that you always have to work according to your previously acquired knowledge. Sometimes I’ll sound like writing the entire chapter in a bulleted form, but that’ll be just to keep the unnecessary (I mean that is out of the scope of this reference) stuff out.

I wish I could know your name too. But I don’t know how many people are going to read this. If you want to let me know that YOU are the one at the moment reading this, you are welcome to send me a friendly message at mailto:amrit@bytesworth.com. I love to hear from people (ok, the word “people” excludes Spammers – they are not people).

Enough of my warming up. Here we go with the first chapter.

Installing Personal Web Server

==> Beginning of Chapter One <==

If you want to work with ASP (Active Server Pages) on your personal computer, you need to install the Personal Web Server (PWS). As the name indicates, it’s a server. Unlike the normal HTML pages, dynamic pages (either created with CGI, PHP, ASP or Cold Fusion) require some sort of a server to carry on their business. Without a server, you can create a dynamic page, but you cannot view it decently in the run-time mode.

Since I mostly work with the Active Server Pages using PWS, I’ll tell you how to install the PWS.

It ships free with the Win98 CD, and should be in the add-ons folder.

>From there, install the PWS on your computer. The installation program creates a folder, inetpub in the directly you specify during the installation. This inetpub, further has a folder, wwwroot. So if you install your PWS on your C drive, the wwwroot path should be

C:INETPUBWWWROOT

All the files that you create, you store under wwwroot. What we generally do is, we create separate folders for separate projects under the wwwroot folder. So if I created bytesworth folder in wwwroot folder, the full path should be

C:INETPUBWWWROOTBYTESWORTH

And when I have to view the page on my browser, I’ll have to type

http://localhost/bytesworth

as the URL.

After you’ve installed the PWS, it’s icon appears on your desktop, and at the bottom right of your screen. Click or double-click on the icon. On the main window, you should see the message:

Web publishing is on. Your Home page is available at http://servername

The servername is the name you use instead of localhost. But if you are confused about this name game, just use localhost and it should always work if you haven’t been naughty and messing around with your computer’s basic setup.

Before you proceed further, open the Windows Explorer, go to c:inetpubwwwroot and create a new folder here by the name of “learnASP” (how boringly predictable! So you can name it something else). We’ll be storing ALL our files in this folder.

Hence, whenever we want to run a newly created file, we’d type in the location bar:

http://localhost/learnASP/newfile.asp and press Enter.

Ok, next, click on the Advanced tab. Select Enable Default Document

In the Default Document(s) box, type the list of file names you would like to use as your default file once the name of your site is type in the browser.

If you have no idea what’s the default file, it is the file that answers your call when you type a specific URL without a specific file. For instance, if I type http://www.bytesworth.com the file that actually gets loaded by default is DEFAULT.ASP. This depends on the setting. Some servers use INDEX.ASP or INDEX.HTML or INDEX.SHTML. It all depends on the file parsing set up on your web-hosting server.

Then click on the Edit Properties button, after selecting the Home folder. There are three select boxes, viz., “Read”, “Execute”, “Script”. Select all of them. The selections tell the server that we want to execute server side scripts in our ASP pages. ASP pages won’t run if the server can’t read and execute them.

Close the window, and your PWS is running. Of course do not run two servers simultaneously. So if you installed the Apache Web Server and left it running, and then loaded PWS, there is going to be some problem for you to sort out.