Training for Book Authors
|
|
Other Resources for Book Authors & Publishers
|
|
Please Support Our Advertisers
|
|
|
|
|
Tips For Building Your First Website
Copyright (c) 2007-2023 Benny Tsabba
New people are coming online everyday. And many of those people desire to turn their spare time into spare cash. So begins their journey.
Selecting a Webhosting Provider
Many begin their journey on a free website. There are actually many companies that offer these "free websites." Here are a few examples:
http://www.homestead.com
http://www.freewebs.com
http://www.bravenet.com
http://geocities.yahoo.com
http://www.tripod.lycos.com
http://www.freeservers.com
All of the companies who offer free websites do so in order to have new pages in their inventory where they can sell advertising to other companies. As you may correctly surmise from this, their "free" really isn't "free."
These same companies also offer low-cost hosting options that you can utilize at some point in the future to enable you to keep your website address and without having to run advertising for other companies on your website.
If You Are Going To Buy Web Hosting...
The prices offered by these free web hosting companies make it really easy for a person to take the plunge and buy webhosting from them. Freeservers for example offers monthly plans at $3.95 and $7.95 per month, depending on the functionality that you want with your website.
The downside to these low-cost hosting plans is that your website will still reside on a domain that is branded by your webhost. When your visitors look at the url of your website, they will know right away that you are using one of the "free webhosting" companies for your website.
If you have created a business oriented website, then the "free web hosting" company's subdomain option is really a bad deal for you. "Trust" is an important plateau that you must be able to cross with your potential customers, if you are to be successful. If your business website is being hosted on a "free domain," then your potential customers will take you less seriously... And with a lot less trust.
People are always concerned about where and with whom they spend money online. If you have your business sitting on a free webhost, then you are advertising to your potential customers that you are not making enough money to support your own domain... which is really inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.
The Costs of Domain Ownership
The costs of owning and operating your own domain is dirt cheap when compared to the early days of the internet. These days, you can buy the ownership of a domain name for anywhere from $5 to $40 per year. Shop around, but always read the fine print.
The costs of hosting your new domain property is also relatively inexpensive, ranging from $10 to $40 per month, depending on the company where you buy hosting and the features you would need with your website.
At the base end, depending on your product offerings and level of interactivity you would like to have with your visitors, you would want to at least make sure your webhost allows you to have CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and/or PHP capabilities. Although you may never learn how to create websites or areas of your website using these technologies, the first time you buy a tool from a third-party provider, you will generally need this kind of functionality.
Introduction to Hosted Scripting Solutions
Making sure that you have CGI or PHP capability on your site is important, but even if you decide against it, you will often be able to find companies that offer "hosted solutions" through their servers, For many people, this is an awesome solution in itself. Hosted solutions ensure that you don't have to install and operate the software, to get the kinds of functionality that you want on your own website.
The best example of a hosted solution is http://www.paypal.com
Prior to the creation of Paypal and other similar solutions, in order for a webmaster to have a payment processing capability on their website, the webmasster had to jump through many very expensive hoops to get the job done.
In those early days, a webmaster very literally had to get a merchant account. And most people had to go through their bank to get their merchant account. The problem in those early days is that bank's were slow to cash in on the internet revolution. Few banks were willing to give a merchant account to any company that only served online customers. And when they did, boy was it expensive.
Even when people purchased merchant account services from people who catered to the online businessperson, it was not uncommon for a business to have to drop a thousand dollars or more upfront in order to get a merchant account established.
Then came the fact that merchant accounts require a "secure server," utilizing the https:// prefix in the URL. Getting your web server secured was a whole new challenge. You pretty much had to be utilizing a "dedicated server" in order to set up a secure server. "Dedicated" means that only you are renting space on that server, and that is a very expensive proposition in most cases. Then, you had to buy a "digital certificate" or a "SSL certificate" to ensure the security of your server. And finally, you had to hire a programmer to install that certificate on your server and to set up your "secured server."
It could literally have cost you thousands of dollars just to get the capability to accept payments online.
There were other third-party hosting solutions that allowed you to take payments online before Paypal, but they generally required a big upfront payment, and a monthly fee to maintain your access to the system.
Paypal was actually the very first to offer a third-party solution, where you did not have to pay any money to them, unless you ran a transaction through their system. And then the percentage of the sale that they took on the transaction was still much lower than that of the competition.
Paypal was the salvation for many small online businesses. Paypal finally gave small businesses the opportunity to sell their products and services online, without requiring the small business owner to turn over much of their limited startup capital to the payment processing companies.
If you did not understand before, now you do understand how Paypal quickly became the most widely used online payment system on the internet in a relatively short amount of time.
Creating Your Actual Web Pages
As with everything else on the internet, it just keeps getting easier for the average joe to get started. Most web hosting companies have tools in their account management area that helps you to build the HTML coding for your site. It is as simple as typing what you want to say, then highlighting the text and applying font formatting code to it by clicking a button. The HTML manager actually converts your visual copy of your website directly into properly formatted HTML code for you.
It is so easy, even a person logging onto the internet for the very first time could build their first website in the same evening they unboxed their first computer.
Interactivity Is Important To Your Business and Your Visitors
The one thing that will make or break the success of your website is the "forms" that you add to your website.
If you have ever visited a website and they asked you to type in your email address so that they could send you email, then you have used a form.
If you have visited Yahoo.com and registered for membership with their site, then you have used a form. If you went back to Yahoo and logged into their website, then you have used a form.
In a nutshell, any page that asks you to input information into the page is a "form." A form allows you to give your visitors a way to communicate with you. A form allows your visitors to sign-in and participate in member's only activities on your website. A form allows you visitors to actually purchase your goods and services from you.
For any website that has been created for the express purpose of making a profit, the website form is an essential element of the design.
Although most web hosting companies offer a HTML tool to help you build your own website, those tools are pretty much worthless to you when it comes time to build a form.
You have a few options for getting around this limitation with the HTML design tools.
You will need to learn enough HTML to build your own forms.
You will need to buy and install a form building script on your website, utilizing either CGI or PHP as the source foundation for the script.
Or, you can use a third-party hosting solution to operate those scripts for you.
There really are no wrong answers or wrong choices. Each person will need to answer for themselves what the best option will be in their own case. But, if you do decide that the best solution in your case is the simplest of options, then third-party hosting solutions should be at the top of your own list.
Benny Tsabba started http://www.formlogix.com in May 2005. In Benny's world compromise simply does not exist. After creating his first form, he realized that other people might be challenged to build forms for their website. He decided to create a new third-party solution for building web forms with a database backend. FormLogix has made the process of creating forms and databases so easy that one could create their own web forms the same day they build their first webpage. And it is completely free of charge. To get started right now: http://www.formlogix.com/Registration.aspx
|
VOTE ON THIS ARTICLE
Needs Work >>
0 -
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5
<< Excellent Article
Tell our authors what you think about their article.
|
Top-Level Category: Business Online Articles
10 Most Recent Articles Written by Benny Tsabba
Most Recent "Business Online" Articles
Four Tips For Creating An Effective Authors' Resource Box
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-08-27 |
Word Count: 1669 |
Page Views: 8290
| Votes: 18 |
Rating: 2.50
In article marketing, there are many factors that will
affect your articles' ability to promote your website in
the most effective manner. In this article, we will briefly
discuss a couple those factors, before we dive into how to
create an effective Authors' Resource Box, also known as
the About The Author Information.
Website Traffic Generation: Winning the Love of the Traffic Fairy
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-08-24 |
Word Count: 1149 |
Page Views: 9151
| Votes: 14 |
Rating: 1.86
Some people still believe that all they have to do is build
a website and customers will magically appear on their
site... Once they have built their websites, they wait
anxiously for the "Traffic Fairy" to come and sprinkle its
magic dust on their website too, so that they can make lots
of money like other success website owners.
What Kind Of Backlinks Are Best At Helping Your Website In Google?
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-08-21 |
Word Count: 439 |
Page Views: 10213
| Votes: 23 |
Rating: 2.74
I was in the Warrior Forum, and someone asked what kinds of
Backlinks are worth pursuing. This is my answer to that
query.
Understanding the Mechanics of Effective Article Marketing and Article Syndication
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-08-01 |
Word Count: 1399 |
Page Views: 6795
| Votes: 10 |
Rating: 1.80
Visit several marketing blogs or marketing forums, and you
will find dozens of people proclaiming the death of article
marketing as an effective marketing tool. Before we start
agreeing with them, consider this...
Top 10 Reasons Why Online Marketers Fail With Article Marketing
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-07-31 |
Word Count: 1025 |
Page Views: 8088
| Votes: 13 |
Rating: 2.08
If you've been marketing products online for any length of
time, you've likely heard people talk about the power and
promise of article marketing for the promotion of your
online business. Unfortunately, many online marketers have
tried to utilize article marketing to benefit their online
business and failed. In this article, I document the top ten
reasons why people fail to find success with article
marketing... And how to fix your article marketing
campaigns...
Article Marketing Tip: Stop Trying To Sell From Within Your Articles
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-07-30 |
Word Count: 1229 |
Page Views: 6245
| Votes: 10 |
Rating: 1.40
The basic premise of article marketing is to present people
information that will be important to them, then at the end
of the article, present information "about the author" and
offer to the reader a means to see how the author can help
the reader further. When done well, article marketing
continues to be one of the most effective methods of
promotion that one could employ online.
The Six Degrees of Internet Marketing
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-07-30 |
Word Count: 991 |
Page Views: 8671
| Votes: 14 |
Rating: 2.43
The theory behind the Six Degrees of Separation is that all
people on earth can be connected together in as little as
six steps. Now, I know what you might be thinking at this
juncture... That sounds fun and interesting, but what does
that have to do with Internet Marketing? That is a great
question that I am going to answer for you in this
article...
How To Win More Eyeballs for Your Offers and Websites
Written by: Bruce Lansing |
Distributed: 2013-07-29 |
Word Count: 1373 |
Page Views: 6148
| Votes: 11 |
Rating: 1.45
Most people using search engines on the Internet are looking
for answers to questions and solutions to problems. If you
can give people what the answers they want, you will be able
to position your business as one worth hiring today or
tomorrow.
How To Increase Your Rates and Earnings As a Freelance Writer
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-07-29 |
Word Count: 1191 |
Page Views: 6176
| Votes: 11 |
Rating: 1.55
Freelance writers fill a very important role in today's
business marketplace. They create the on-demand, customized
content that business owners everywhere need to push their
businesses forward. In this article, the author explains
what freelance writers should do to ensure that employers
will pay them well for their services.
Promoting Your Business With Content:: Defining Your Writing Strategy
Written by: Bruce Lansing |
Distributed: 2013-07-25 |
Word Count: 677 |
Page Views: 5875
| Votes: 11 |
Rating: 2.00
Many people suggest that you should write articles on the
basis of the benefits that people will get from reading your
articles. I'd like to suggest that there is a better
reason, and that is to write your articles on the basis of
what problem people will be able to solve, as a result of
reading your articles.
Most Viewed "Business Online" Articles
Attracting Readers to your Book
Written by: Alastair Hall |
Distributed: 2006-05-18 |
Word Count: 708 |
Page Views: 46682
| Votes: 17 |
Rating: 2.06
One of the common and obvious ways to market a self-published
book is having your own website. The harder part is how to
attract your target audience and then convert the sale.
How To Make Visitors Bookmark Your Site
Written by: Cheryl Miller |
Distributed: 2006-10-10 |
Word Count: 536 |
Page Views: 38965
| Votes: 21 |
Rating: 2.19
When visitors bookmark your site it is a sign that you have built
a great website and are pleasing them. Visitors think highly
enough of your site to want to return and possibly tell others
about it. You are not only increasing traffic from your existing
clientele you are encouraging new traffic by means of viral
marketing.
Treat Online 'Guests' With Respect
Written by: Rick Sloboda |
Distributed: 2007-07-27 |
Word Count: 472 |
Page Views: 30473
| Votes: 33 |
Rating: 3.33
Does your website show your customers lack of respect? Review the
following checklist to find out.
How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day! (One Internet Marketer's Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic)
Written by: Titus Hoskins |
Distributed: 2007-11-06 |
Word Count: 1545 |
Page Views: 28518
| Votes: 10 |
Rating: 1.70
Is social bookmark traffic useless? Is it even worth cultivating
for your site? Can it be used from an online marketing
perspective? Read to discover one Internet Marketer's analysis
of social bookmark/media traffic...
Successful Article Marketers Help Readers Solve Problems
Written by: Bill Platt |
Distributed: 2013-07-24 |
Word Count: 816 |
Page Views: 26285
| Votes: 34 |
Rating: 2.79
Every week, I have the opportunity to speak with people about the
benefits and challenges of using article marketing to promote an
online business. Article marketing is about getting your sales
message in front of potential customers and to get links to your
website. Many interpret this to mean that an article should
directly promote a website within the article, but that approach
is wrong and will reduce one's success using this methodology.
The Importance Of Effective Follow-up
Written by: Kate Smalley |
Distributed: 2007-01-15 |
Word Count: 493 |
Page Views: 14488
| Votes: 22 |
Rating: 2.55
Marketing experts say that following up with clients is crucial
to successful selling because most prospects do not buy the first
time, according to Aweber, a leading autoresponder company.
People must encounter a marketing message multiple times before
making a purchasing decision.
Today's Google Bots and What They Do
Written by: Kim Roach |
Distributed: 2006-08-02 |
Word Count: 1061 |
Page Views: 14177
| Votes: 16 |
Rating: 2.63
Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages. However,
before these pages were placed in the index, they were each
crawled by a special spider known as the GoogleBot. Unfortunately, many web masters do not know about the internal workings of this virtual robot. This article will attempt to
reveal some of the most important Google spiders, their function,
and how they affect you as a web master. We'll start with the
well-known GoogleBot.
Ten Tips For User Friendly Online Registration Forms
Written by: Jim Romanik |
Distributed: 2009-02-24 |
Word Count: 775 |
Page Views: 13379
| Votes: 15 |
Rating: 0.93
Have you ever registered or attempted to register for an event
and spent half an hour trying to figure out what you needed to
do? Or have you used an online registration form that lost your
data or was so complicated that it seemed like more work than
faxing the form?
Successful Forum JVs and How To Get Them
Written by: Diana Barnum |
Distributed: 2006-06-15 |
Word Count: 648 |
Page Views: 13110
| Votes: 19 |
Rating: 2.11
The forming of common alliances, also referred to as a joint
venture (JV), happens nearly every day in the business world.
One of the most popular means of linking people up online of so
that they can work together on their projects is via forums,
where people of all levels of business and expertise post in
common threads.
Changing Your Company Name: The Good, The Bad and The Unnecessary
Written by: Marcia Yudkin |
Distributed: 2009-07-16 |
Word Count: 520 |
Page Views: 11378
| Votes: 24 |
Rating: 1.79
Wondering whether or not to change your company name? Several
reasons for doing this are legitimate. Other reasons should make
you stop and reconsider.
Highest Ranked "Business Online" Articles
Is Your Business 'Out Of Site'? Employ The Ultimate Marketing Tool
Written by: Rick Sloboda |
Distributed: 2007-01-09 |
Word Count: 445 |
Page Views: 5586
| Votes: 21 |
Rating: 3.76
With the rapid expansion of the digital economy, the web site is
conceivably the most powerful marketing and sales tool you can employ.
Find out what a web site can do for you.
How To Use Your Race To Get Rich
Written by: Herbert Harris |
Distributed: 2009-07-07 |
Word Count: 1407 |
Page Views: 5995
| Votes: 48 |
Rating: 3.71
Amid recent news reports that there continues to be an ongoing
and substantial gap between the net worth of Whites and other
racial groups, it is easy to be distracted and overwhelmed by the
raw data. However, I am immediately reminded of a quote offered
by an economic expert from the past... "There are lies, damned
lies, and statistics!"
Why I'm A 'B-Level Marketer!'
Written by: Willie Crawford |
Distributed: 2007-07-16 |
Word Count: 917 |
Page Views: 6865
| Votes: 26 |
Rating: 3.58
At a recent Internet marketing seminar, I was sitting around the
hotel lobby with approximately 20 other seminar attendees and
speakers. The seminar's host was in attendance, and the
conversation covered a range of internet marketing topics with
extreme frankness. Our proximity to the hotel bar certainly
contributed to our 'conviviality.'
15 fixes for a failing website
Written by: Rick Sloboda |
Distributed: 2007-02-07 |
Word Count: 593 |
Page Views: 3555
| Votes: 25 |
Rating: 3.48
Employ these 15 tactics to improve your search engine rankings,
engage visitors and convert more sales.
The Most Important Ingredient for Info Product Success (is You)
Written by: Judy Murdoch |
Distributed: 2008-04-15 |
Word Count: 981 |
Page Views: 6046
| Votes: 15 |
Rating: 3.47
Last week I was attending a conference and mentioned to someone I
help small business owners create information products. The other
person was very friendly until I said "information products."
Then the temperature in the room dropped about 10-degrees
How to Keep Your Article Content Fresh and Interesting
Written by: Craig Ritsema |
Distributed: 2006-08-29 |
Word Count: 699 |
Page Views: 5567
| Votes: 25 |
Rating: 3.44
Webmasters everywhere are constantly on the lookout for fresh and
interesting content for their website. Along with these content
qualities is the requirement that it be unique. Everyone wants
their website to stand out above the others in the search engine
results. So what is the trick for you to keep a steady supply of
this quality content coming your way?
How To Build A Profitable Twitter Profile
Written by: Harold Hemmings |
Distributed: 2009-08-06 |
Word Count: 1357 |
Page Views: 2747
| Votes: 8 |
Rating: 3.38
Online marketers everywhere are finally starting to tap into
the Twitter Marketplace. Marketers are getting involved in
Twitter at awesome rates, but all seem to have one
unanswered question: How do we actually monetize this
marketplace? It is my goal that by the time you have read
this article, you will have a clear idea of exactly how to
monetize your activities in Twitter.
Increasing Productivity In Your Online Business
Written by: Willie Crawford |
Distributed: 2006-06-14 |
Word Count: 1407 |
Page Views: 7454
| Votes: 40 |
Rating: 3.35
Running an online "empire" of approximately 1600 websites and
blogs, selling a variety of products, services and ideas, I
have to be much more productive than the average person in a
"regular job."
Turn A One-Night-Stand With Google Into A Long-Term Relationship
Written by: Diane Metz |
Distributed: 2007-07-10 |
Word Count: 882 |
Page Views: 2711
| Votes: 6 |
Rating: 3.33
Want to win the favor of Google? Then you've got to build a
long-term relationship with her. Many new SEO strategies are
simply recycled old-tricks. And Google is a smart gal who can see
right through them. Position your website for the future by
understanding what Google really likes â€" and what she
really loathes.
Treat Online 'Guests' With Respect
Written by: Rick Sloboda |
Distributed: 2007-07-27 |
Word Count: 472 |
Page Views: 30473
| Votes: 33 |
Rating: 3.33
Does your website show your customers lack of respect? Review the
following checklist to find out.
|
|
|
|
|
Article Reprint Rights
|

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License
You are not required to show the creative commons license notice when you reprint this work.
|
Article Statistics
|
Word Count: 1511
Total Views: 19532
Article Rating: 2.11 of 5
Votes Cast: 18
More Articles By Author:
Articles On This Website
Last Distribution Date:
2007-05-30 10:00:00
Internal ID: #4915
|
|
|