Rain Online

It isn’t very difficult to design a bad website. In the past you needed to know how to format and program in HTML, but with today’s WYSIWYG (pronounced whizzy-wig, what you see is what you get) editors, even those provided by free hosting sites like angelfire.com and geocities.com, anybody can setup their website within a few minutes, for better or for worse. Other free weblog hosting services, like blogger.com, give you all sorts of website design options, called templates, which you can alter to fit your needs and desires. Again, going through the free signup procedures through these sites is a snap, and you can add your two cents to the overall content of the world wide web in minutes. But is anybody going to read what you’re writing? Are they going to want to?

Website design choices range from the boring and mundane to shiney, gee-wiz java applets that can make the text literally jump off the page. If you’re just getting into website design, either for a business or for your own personal site, you’re going to want to learn the HTML basics, even if you’re using a WYSIWYG editor. Find a tutorial, there are lots of them out there, and learn how to create boarders, add text, manipulate photos, and setup links. Once you’ve figured out how to do these things you can go onto designing your site, either from a pre-made template or from scratch. There is a lot more to learn, and it’s to your advantage to keep learning once you get started. Figure out how to add backgrounds, page dividers, and how to manipulate the text you’ve entered. However, don’t feel the need to get too flashy.

One of the biggest mistakes in website design, both by professional programmers and first-timers, is that programmers try to make their websites too flashy. They include flashing banners and text and animated images. Big intros eat up bandwidth before users even get a chance to find the information they’re looking for. Colored text clashes with colored backgrounds and shimmering headers. Though all of these extras may show off your design chops, they’re going to make your website hard to navigate for users.

So, follow the golden rules of website design. Keep your site simple and easy to navigate. Be sure to link your pages internally; nothing is more frustrating to a user than having to navigate back to the front page every time they want to get to another area of your site. Colors are great, but pick a color scheme and stick with it. Make important content easy to find, and link every single page back to the home page. Follow these rules of thumb and you’ll keep your website from looking like a train wreck, and more people will listen to what you’re trying to tell them.

Originally posted 2007-11-25 13:09:29. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I have been looking at ways of earning money from home on the internet. It seems that there are multiple listings for being an affiliate or associate for different companies. As I looked at various websites it seems that most companies offer an affiliate program, but how do you choose the one that is right for you. As I was doing my research I found that there is an affiliate program directory. This proved to be very helpful to me.

The affiliate program directory offers many resources for associates. I found that the affiliate program directory did a nice job of reviewing the different programs that are available. There are listings that place the different programs into categories so that it is easier to find a product, service or organization that fits your interest area. The affiliate program directory also offers tips for associates. This is done through newsletters as well as forums. In the affiliate program directory you can pick and choose without feeling pressured to work for a certain company. This is helpful because it seems that every website that you visit is pushing to sell you on one particular product or program. The comparison over the various one and two tier programs was the most helpful for me.

As I am doing more research into the area of affiliates and associates I am finding that there are many companies that claim you will make huge amounts of money weekly by being an affiliate for their company or product. It is important to ask questions about how much money you have to invest in advertising to get the huge commission checks. I am sure that there are some affiliates that do make large sums of money; however they are also investing large sums in advertising. The affiliate program directory helped me look at this more closely. I did this by joining the forums and posting questions to the different associates. I know that I am relying on the person responding to be honest in their response, however you have to place your trust in something and I am hoping that through the variety of responses I receive someone will be honest with me.

The internet provides a world of opportunities for the person that wants to work at home. The key is finding an honest program that will deliver what they promise. The affiliate program directory is one tool to use to find a program that will match your individual needs and interests.

Originally posted 2005-11-24 11:02:00. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Is the best web site design that which you pay for and hire a leading, expert designer to craft, or is the best web site design what you study for, practice doing, and create yourself?

IF YOU GO with an EXPERT for the BEST WEBSITE DESIGN

If you want to use a qualified, experienced professional, you will want to research by visiting the sites of those same persons. Do not fall for their own advertising saying they offer the best website design in the world, on the planet, on the worldwide web, etc., for they may be lying (imagine that!?). As you have probably seen elsewhere, more than one vendor will boast the best, will toss out this hyperbole, and will in effect have to be lying, save ONE. For example, the latest TV ads for “fewest dropped calls” reveal TWO competing companies each saying they are REPORTEDLY the number one company with the FEWEST dropped calls. Do the math, here, and realize that 1, only one of them can boast lowest number, 2, they are endorsing themselves, and 3, why would you want ANY dropped calls? Anyway, on to better examples, more appropriate to web design.

Another thing to watch for is the designer who includes a promise to make your pages so kwr (keyword rich) that they will rank #1 on the search engines! First, if they are advertising to anyone other than you, how are they making hundreds of websites #1? That would make for a very crowded rank space. Second, they do not know what they are doing/saying, as search engines do not all crawl the web using keywords as their primary grasping element. Some search by other measures, looking at, for example, relevance. And, third, again, the person offering the best web design might be rating the work by criteria in his/her favor, not by the standards.

So if you go to the professionals for the best web site design, you are smart to study the gurus, the internationally renowned, experienced, respected, and proven experts

If you’re paying every month for a website, are you making sure that your getting the most for your money? If you just have a series of static pages sitting in cyperspace for people to read and then move on, you’re definitely not making the most of your site.

Here are some things to do. Make sure your website keeps track of how many “hits” you get each day or week. How can you assess the effectiveness methods you’re using to draw people to your site if you don’t know how many people are actually visiting?

Also, have some things for people to do on the site. If you’re selling widgets, you could offer a free leaflet on how to use widgets, for example. You could have a video for them to watch. If you’re a singer/songwrite or a voiceover actor, you could have one free audio download.

Have links within your pages to other pages on your site, but be careful of links to other sites. The goal is to keep people on your website and to ultimately have them buy your product or use your service.

Offer to send them a free e-newsletter. When signing them up, ask for a little more information than just their e-mail address, such as where they live, what they do, what their interest are. It’s up to you and your needs to determine what to ask. But don’t ask so much that they will be intimidated. This will give you valuable information about the people who are interested in your business. There are companies that provide e-newletter services for you, so you don’t have to figure out how to program your site to do this. All you have to do is sign up with a service.

You can also sign up with companies that provide standard shopping cart services to websites so you don’t have to invent the wheel on this one. Shopping carts don’t necessarily keep track of who purchased what, however, so it might pay to have a programmer design your site so that you can know when someone is a repeat customer and what their needs are. You’ll see an example of this kind of customization on Amazon.com.

Provide content that is of value to your visitors. And have sections that are updated at regular intervals, at least monthly. People are not going to keep coming back if they always see the same things. You want to think of your website itself providing a service to your customers.

Blogging is one way to have updated content. Blogs are very popular with internet users. Another popular thing to do is to provide industry-specific news updates. If you provide timely and useful content, people will come to rely on you as a source of useful information.

The more people rely on you for timely information and great products, the more they’ll keep coming back. So go ahead and do something today to liven up your website.

Most people easily confuse a domain name with a website. MSN.com is a domain name whereas, MSN is a web portal that uses the MSN.com domain name. A domain name may be defined as a unique name that identifies a website. In more complex terms, a domain name is the text equivalent of the Internet protocol number that is assigned to each and every computer that is hooked up to the Internet. According to the online glossary at www.simplenet.com, a domain name must be unique and users access websites using specific domain names. Who assigns these domain names? Well, most domain names are assigned by the ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and numbers. This is a private, not for profit organization that oversees the registrations of domain names on the Internet to ensure that some basic standards are complied with. The ICANN is primarily responsible for the .com, .org and .net domain names. With over a billion web sites on the Internet, it is only sensible that such an organization exists.

Country specific domain names like .us, .uk, .ca and scores of others also exist. The one country that probably benefited from the granting of country-specific domain names was Tuvalu (.tv). Being a domain name that most broadcasting corporations would be sure to want, the .tv domain names began to fetch a good deal of interest and money and the government of Tuvalu reaped the benefits. Some of the other domain names that are soon becoming popular are .biz, .us, .info and .biz. Scores of others exist and choosing the right domain name for your business or personal use is becoming an art by itself. A directory of accredited registrars of domain names can be accessed from the ICANN website at www.internic.com/alpha.html

But getting a good domain name is no longer an easy task. The heady dot com days ensured that ALL the words in a standard dictionary have been registered, even if they are not being used. This has given rise to what has come to be known as