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To save you the time and trouble of reading all of this text, I will say upfront what you need to have a popular and paying website.
1. A limited company or a corporation (maybe).This may not in fact be necessary, as you should be able to set yourself up as a 'sole trader' or 'sole proprietor', if that is in fact what you are. Ideally, you should get a merchant account as a sole trader. A limited company can be set up in the UK for less than £100. You will need a registered office, and an official sounding accommodation mail address, which can also be bought for around £150 a year. Check the business classifed ads of any local paper in any large city for this service. BUT!! first see 2. below. 2. An (International) Merchant account. The cheaper,
third party, factoring options : I would avoid using any other provider not mentioned here. There are very few internet-based credit-card processors or merchant account vendors that can be trusted with your money. Bricks and mortar companies are a different matter, but many will leech off you in subtle and varied ways anyway, or not pay you at all. Always research the company before parting with your money!! International Merchant Account Providers:Get the dirt on getting a non-U.S. international credit card merchant account providers; buy the registered version of this ebook! Read more on merchant accounts... 3. A product which is unique on the World Wide Web in some way, and also highly desirable. Actually, this should be your first consideration. If you are selling p*rn you have intense competition. If someone does a search for "p*rn" of any description on the 'net will your site come up near the top of the search engine results? Only if you get your pages set up properly - see below. Even then you'll have to pull every trick in the book to stay on top. If, however, your customer is one who is looking for "antique pens" or "babysitting in Atlanta" you're onto a winner almost from the start - as long as enough people actually want this service, and they have internet access. There's a case to be made for choosing a product that is already established on the web as long as you can do it cheaper or faster or better than the competition. You must ask yourself "what's so good about my product or service that anyone would enter their credit-card details into a web page to get it?"
Most Important: Will you make back FOUR times or more of what your product costs YOU? This is the
margin you have to consider. You have to take into account your operating
expenses and labour as well as the monetary cost of the product to you.
Trust me on this. Two or three times isn't enough. If you are selling
'intangibles' like me then this should be feasible. Software is good,
as it can be sold and resold at little ongoing cost to you. Ask Bill
Gates (!). It's too easy to get caught up in the excitement and labour of setting up a web-based business and not think about the basics. I always think of those ladies who think setting up a dress shop would be nice - a year later they've got 'closing down sale' signs in their windows and a much depleted bank balance. Thankfully
the expense of setting up an internet-based business is much less than
a high-street one, but money is power and money is freedom and if you
don't want to lose yours you should go out into the middle of a big
field and have a chat with yourself before setting up a proper web-shop. I'm a cynical
man, and every time I see another 'me too' site go bust, I have a good
old chuckle. Why? Because sure ways of going bust on the internet are: If there are
already big, well-established sites in the field you're going for, have
another think about it. If you deceive yourself the battle is lost before you've even taken the field. 3. You should pick a profession that you love. That's the ultimate 'secret'. If it's your vocation, you will be good at it, it won't be a trial to get out of bed in the morning, and you greatly increase your chances of success. 4. Do not diversify. Stick to one product. Don't sap your energy trying to juggle too many balls at once. Plenty of time for that later when you're hiring and firing executives and getting fat and grumpy on $10 million a year! Many businesses try to be all things to all people, and thereby fail even at the one thing they're good at. On the positive side there's plenty of opportunity to experiment without getting burned. You can set up a page one day, and delete it the next. The internet is a slate whereupon you can write what you will. Go to!
4. A web page with text on it which contains the right ratio of keyphrases to ordinary words. First, the page should ideally be named after your most important keyword or keyphrase e.g. free-money.html, or free_money.html, not freemoney.html; search engines will see the latter as a single keyword. A well set up web page should have your business details and site navigation prominently displayed, especially on the index page. It should have bullet points, and spell out exactly what problems buying your product will solve for your customer. It should play on their fears a little: "Don't be left out!", "Back-ache costs you money!" "Provide for your little ones if you're laid off!" etc. Set a time-limited discount: "Available for only $29.99 if you order before the 30th of July!". Include genuine verbatim testimonials: "Your product was so simple to use, it really changed my life" J. Edgar, Dallas. Don't be tempted to edit or 'improve' your testimonials. They will look false, and carry less weight if you do. Use call-to-action words and phrases like "approved", "entire", "ease of use", "best selling", "genuine", "discount", "credit cards accepted", "in seconds", "certified", "exclusive", "extraordinary", "hefty", "dominant", "free replacements", "complete details". It should provoke an emotional response; fear, lust, avarice, excitement. If it doesn't hit your friends in the gut, have another think about it. Tell a story. "I remember one time I had this suped-up Pontiac, and was looking for some parts so I could get it fixed to go to my brother's wedding, when...". More is more. You can ramble on about the benefits and features over to the next page. This makes people more comfortable. Keep the pages short, but have more of them. Less is more. Short sentences. Short pages. Plenty of white space. 65 character column width. Get the point to the forefront of each sentence. "The dog ate the big bone" is clearer than "The big bone was eaten by the dog".
On design.... It should NOT use frames. Some browsers don't support them, and they are irritating. AND they can't be indexed by search engines. It should have as much text with as many pertinent keywords on it as you can get away with and still read well. MOST IMPORTANT: To get a high ranking in search engines the ratio of keywords and keyphrases to 'ordinary' words should be as high as you can make it without actually spamming. It's
also vital that you include a fair amount of 'ordinary' text to bulk
the page up. I did some bare bones keyphrase-heavy pages recently,
and they sank without trace. One page which by accident had a wodge
of related, hidden text got loads more hits. Therefore set up some 'doorway' pages with the keywords in the text as well as in the meta tags, and keep these pages 'small' - not too much readable text, chock full of different keyphrases, in readable, well-constructed sentences. Don't make them utterly bare either. What you need is a keyword density analyser. I found a site which would do this for free, at keywordtracker.com. A better bet is GRKda keyword density analyser at grsoftware.net/grkda.html. I've tried it recently and it works well. It's a pc program. The ratio of key-phrases to other words should be about 2.5-3.0 %. Any more and it looks like spamming. You can put what you like on the 'main' pages, but your 'doorway' page will then still rank high on search engines. You can make up a number of different doorway pages to see what works best. Obviously you put a link from the 'doorway' to the 'main' page! Put some obscure words in as well, as these will receive a heavier 'weighting' by search engine bots trawling your site. It's a waste of energy in the long run to keep plugging away at having a site that ranks well on search engines and gets lots of hits, if no one buys anything. Your focus should be on getting people to your site who are primed to get out their credit card to buy what you have. Quality, not quantity is what you should aim for. The best way to do this is at the moment to set up an affiliate program. For 'content' pages: Less is not more here - search engines will index your page by how often keywords come up (words like a, the, and, or, internet, web, will be ignored or lowly-ranked), and the more people can read on your site the more comfortable they will be about dealing with you. It looks like you know what you're talking about, and you've taken time over your site, and you're not going to fold tomorrow. The opposite
scenario is where someone puts up a crude minimalist site with fancy
graphics and/ or BIG TEXT WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!! in eye-searing
colours, which immediately suggests a con-job. Type the words "bulk
email" or "web design" into a search engine to get a
flavour of what I mean. The site should not be too 'deep' - surfers should not have to follow too many links to get to what they want. And as for ShockWave and Java and Active X and animated gifs and large jpeg files - get rid of them if at all possible, unless you're in the design/media business or you really need to show pictures of your products. In the latter case use thumbnail images and/or ones with reduced numbers of colours. Better yet give your customers the option of viewing them if they want to by putting them on another page and linking to them. And don't forget the ALT="image name" tag for those of us who have images turned off. It's also good in that if someone just puts their mouse over your image, information will come up in a little box so people know what they're missing. Java can do some fancy tricks, but it shouldn't be on your main page, and it shouldn't be essential to the site's operation. Look at your site in the oldest browser you can find with Java and Javascript and images and cookies turned off - that's how some people surf the 'net, for reasons of speed. People get very irritated by lots of pop-ups, so limit yourself to, say, one good one. Don't be so arrogant as to require your customers to have IE5 or Netscape Communicator before they can get to the meat of your site. If you must have lots of pics and tables I've found if you put some useful text at the top of a page it gives the customer something to look at while the graphics are loading, as this text will appear almost immediately. Any site that requires a plug-in to convey important information is a waste of time and will irritate viewers. Or it won't load at all in their browsers if they've turned all that crap off (for faster surfing), or if they've got an old browser like Mosaic or Opera or IE3. The exception would be a site hosting RealAudio files - a lot of people get this program because they specifically want to listen to music for free (or view p*rn, I have to say). Just make sure you encode your files in an earlier version of RealAudio - if you use the latest some customers may not be able to hear/see it. 5. A web page with meta
tags which contain the maximum number of key words permissible related
to your product. In order of importance to search engines the tags are as follows:
Click here for the rest of this section. Read more on search engine optimisation...
Click here for the rest of this section.
These tags
in general are not as important as they once were, as search engines
are wise to spamming via them. The title
tag is the most important to get right. Put the most important keyphrase to the front of your title tag. More important is the actual text in your page, your links, and the ALT="imagekeyphrasename" tag for your graphics. You may however try setting up a number of versions of each page with different keywords and repetitions to see how well each does. Tip: Check
your listed pages at AltaVista by typing host:yourdomain.com
in the search field. You can also type in a unique phrase like "YourCompanyName", in quotation marks, if that's on the page you want to check up on. You will of course have to have submitted the page first! I find it's best to submit all the main pages you want listed individually, as you can't rely on the bots or spiders to find them all via your links. It's also better to go to the main search engines directly and submit at least your index page by hand. Search engines are tending to ignore automatic submission services, as they are really spammer's tools. For a list of search engines and search-engine submission sites, click here. Keep trying to get into the most important directories - yahoo.com and dmoz.org. The latter acts as a database for some very important search engines. If you can get into either, or both, your traffic will shoot up, and be less dependent on search engine spider whims. Both require that your site has good, honest content - don't try any re-directs, pop-ups or full page ads i.e. spam. Your site will be reviewed by a tired human being who's seen all the tricks, so don't try them. Tip: Check who's
linking to you at Altavista by typing link:yourdomain.com into
the search box. Important: Your tags should reflect the content of your page, and be in its visible text. Search engines are wise to spamming now, and Yahoo probably won't list your page at all if you go in for it. Don't be tempted to use cheap tricks like colouring text the same colour as the background to hide it, or inserting fake, invisible gifs with keyword ALT descriptions. They are amateurish, and you are greatly increasing your chances of being banned by search engines. LEGIT TRICK 1. If your keywords in the text also appear as links e.g. if the words 'silver jewellery' were a working link on your page about jewellery, then your page would rank higher on a search for silver jewellery, all other things being equal, than a page that didn't have this. LEGIT TRICK 2. Get a free site tracking service from extreme-dm.com. It uses JavaScript, and if your visitor has graphics or JavaScript turned off they won't register, but the details they give of those who don't are great. It's a real eye-opener, it's simple, and it's free. It puts a cheesy looking gif on your page, which puts off people who know what it means - that you're a cheapskate who can't set up a proper cgi tracking script! Otherwise you can track your visitors by getting software which goes through your server logs - if you have your own server, not a virtual one - or you can re-name all your pages with the extension .shtml and use Server Side Includes (SSI), which is a bit of a pain if you have a site already set up, but you could do it just for one page to start with. Try xav.com for AXS 2.0. I use this, and it's very good (and free). 6. Continuous promotion by every means. SEARCH ENGINES: The most important are Yahoo and DMOZ, which are directories, and Altavista. Submit to Hotbot/Lycos to get into the Inktomi database. Submit to Google to come up in searches at Yahoo. The next most important are AllTheWeb, Northern Light, Webcrawler et al. You need to submit your page by hand to Yahoo, and it had better be straight up - no spamming keywords, no text coloured nearly the same as the background, and it should look like a legitimate business as your page will be indexed by a tired and suspicious human being. Obviously, take the time to submit it to the proper sub-directory. You may have to resubmit (your index page only, unless yours is a truly varied site with great content !) many times before it's listed. If it's a business, you'll have to pay $199 to get in. Click here for more Yahoo tips (registered users only).
For the rest you can (and should) use a free automatic submission service. See jumbo.com for the latest free offers in this department. Don't bother using paid-for submission software just yet - all those free links sites it submits to bring in a very small percentage of hits. I bought Exploit Submission Wizard some years ago - it cost £80 for a years' use, and tended to break down in the middle of a transmission. Waste of money. See, you're saving money already! A comprehensive list of free submitters can be found here. Another A free utility is AgentWebRanking, at aadsoft.com, which requires IE4 to run. I've fallen out of love with these automated submission services. I went recently and entered my main pages to the main search engines by hand, and got much better results. At the moment I use the automated services just to get the pages out quickly to whichever engine will accept them. A month later I then go and do the rounds, and enter my urls by hand. If you find that a page you made is getting good hits, save it in a different directory on your computer, before you alter it again. You may find that your changes will cause the number of hits it gets to go down. Search engine algorithms are tricky things to please. Get as many of your customers as you can onto your mailing list, by making it a condition if they download something they have to give their email address. Don't spam them. Give them the opportunity to decline emails. If you have a large list you can charge others to advertise their products on it - just don't put irrelevant junk on there. The following is also the bones of your order processing system. You set up your shop from one of the options in the included, separate shopping-cart text. You have your merchant account. Now here's how to process orders by hand: 1 . Use RSVP Mail Processor to auto-respond to your emails whilst they're on the server, available at chimerasoft.com. 2. MailCollect winsoft98.com/mailcollect.htm downloads your emails (and can leave copies on the server) in a format that can be read by a text editor immediately - handier than you'd think, if you want direct access to your rders. You can use a 'grep' program ( the 'find' function in Win95/98) to seek out a file with a specific email address or date, or credit-card number, for example. 3. Aureate Group Mail at group-mail.com is a very good mailing list program. 4. Use the mail filter function of Netscape Communicator to put your emails in separate folders. Outlook Express also has this function. You sort your emails into different folders according to the subject, email address, or other variables. Also try Eudora. These three are the main email programs in use on the 'net, so third party programs, like email extractor programs, will cater to them. 5. Use Inbox Organiser at coloradosoft.com to query and save their contents to a text file. 6. You should, if possible, consider getting an order form script that saves your order on the web server in a database format, as well as sending you an email. Emails are very tricky to import into database programs on your home computer. The order script should encrypt or exclude the customer's credit card details from the web-server database, ideally. This is to stop hackers or your web-hosts' staff getting at them. Try my OMNI script. 7. Mailloop purports to do all of the above, but it's expensive, and should be considered only after you have read the registered version of my book, after which you can put together a solution for a lot less money. It has the advantage that you don't need to set up a server-side mailing list solution. Coupled with a decent web-shop, it might be an option. Alternatives to Mailloop are on the super software page (registered users only). BANNERS. These can be annoying to surfers. Choose carefully. The best ones are those which are related to the subject matter of your page, and pay you a few cents per click. Don't expect to make much money, if any, from these. Feb. 2001. Revenue from banners is falling, as the allure of IPO's (initial public offerings), and hits-at-any-price has worn off. Surfers are ignoring them, too. Use them if you are running your own pay-per-click service or affiliate program. Otherwise, the only worthwhile banners are those of affiliate programs that 1. Pay well and 2. Are directly related to the content of your site. A good idea would be to apply to a few good ones and put them on pages where you give away worthwhile freebies and you have good content, and link from there to your main page. Then at least people will be more inclined to put up with them, and so will the advertisers. RECIPROCAL LINKS If you link to a site which isn't directly competing with you, email them, tell them you've linked to them, and ask if they'll link back to you. At the time of writing I think it would be better to set up an associate program, and give people a good reason for linking to you i.e. hard cash, and as much as you can afford. But if you have the time it's a very good idea. A program which automates reciprocal linking is LinkCrafter at linkcrafter.bannermation.com Another idea is to set up a 'link-to-me' contest, whereby you enter anyone who puts up a link to you site into a monthly draw. The prizes should be worthwhile, 'though! WEB RINGS.... If it's a specialized ring, it might be ok. These are conspicuous by their absence on professional web-sites. Don't put too many on the same page or it'll takes ages to load. ...is a waste of money. You can do better, more cheaply, because you care. Outlook Express, Opera, and Netscape Communicator have newsgroup readers in them. All you need to do is find out the URL of a newsgroup server; usually news.yourispname.com, enter it in the set-up section of your reader or email client, connect to the internet, and off you go. Be aware that some of the more 'interesting' newsgroups might not be carried by the news server of your ISP, but you can sign up with other providers, or occasionally find a free one. Also set up a signature file in whatever email client you have. Free advertising! Go to cgi-resources.com or hotscripts.com, and check out the scripts. These can add a lot of 'value' and interest to your site, and make operating it much easier. Many are free, too. Your should try to set up: 1. A message or bulletin board, 2. An email newsletter/mailing list, 3. A chat room, 4. A feedback form for your site. These encourage customer interaction, and give reasons for visitors to return. You won't be able to set these up on most free web accounts, apart from Hypermart, and even then it will probably be awkward. And your site will be promoting your web-host. Get a proper virtual server web host account. Check out budgetweb.com for a list of cheap web hosts. Do it even if you're happy with the host you have - you may be (un)pleasantly surprised! Also try HostSearch (hostsearch.com) or TopHosts (tophosts.com). Other host search sites include: hostfinder.com, hostfind.com. CGI scripts are a cheap way of adding content to your site - they only cost the labour of setting them up in most cases. See the Auction and Chat and Free For All links Page etc. on my site for good examples. You just have to: click here for the rest of this section. It is part of the shareware version.
7. A web site which establishes you as an honest and reliable merchant. Get a name which
You can get British .co.uk names at nic.uk. I don't recommend these; setup is fiddly, and not all webhosts are registered to accept them It's best if you get a domain name that contains the most common key-phrase surfers search on to find the product you're selling. You can get two, if needs be; one for the key-phrase, and one for your company name, if you must. Both can be pointed to the same web page. Search engines also take note of the domain name, in ranking queries to their database. If you're selling real-estate, and you're in Florida, then florida-real-estate.com would be an investment, provided that's a key-phrase surfers are searching on. Here's where you find out what keywords customers are using. Caution: If you use a web-based query service and find a domain name is available, and it's a good one, buy it immediately. Dither, and someone else might get it. I think that querying good names at a web-site, and then not registering them, might not be too smart. It wouldn't be hard for the site owner to save these queries and register the clever ones. Just a thought. A mini-industry has sprung up registering and hi-jacking good domain names, and 'ransoming' them to the highest bidder. Using free web-space and the associated domain name marks you out as a cheap amateur, unless you're selling your own programs or scripts i.e. you're an IT student on the make. Even then, your own domain name and webspace can be acquired very cheaply. You also could buy a domain name via netnames.com, which will 'park' it on their server and will redirect traffic to it, to any URL you want. You can change the URL it redirects to easily, as many times as you want, at their website. You can also easily set up the forwarding of emails to your new domain name to your main email account. This service is principally for people who want to buy and hold onto a domain name, or want to get a proper domain name and re-direct its traffic to their free web-site. It can present a frames version of your web page, without much of the rest of the code, or a straightforward re-direct. On the plus side a 'mask' URL like this could be very handy, and ultimately you can transfer it to your own server if you want. Also, this service is not free, but it is cheap for what you get. To register a domain name, assuming it's available, you need to know the following: 1. The Administrative Contact. This is the name, postal address, telephone number and email address of the person or organization to be contacted about changes to the domain name registration. This would be you. 2. The Billing Contact. This is the name, postal address, telephone number and email address of the person or organization paying for the registration and upkeep of the domain name. This would be you again. 3. The Technical Contact. This is the name, postal address, telephone number and email address of your web host. 4. Your web-host's name servers' URLs. These are the servers that map your domain name onto your web-site directory on your web-host's servers. These would look something like NS.YOURHOST.COM, and NS2.YOURHOST.COM. One is a backup for the other. Your web host, if it's a good one, should help you set your domain name up. If they don't, you might consider getting a new web host. Don't go for a cheapo one. Do a bit of research first. Good technical backup from your web-host is most important. You'll need to contact them often with questions, especially in the early days. It's not unusual for webmasters to make a mess of the registration process, so don't be discouraged. Ultimately, you can fax proof of your identity to the registrar, and then telephone them, and ask that they make the changes you want to their database. The main thing is to make sure that you are down as the Admin and Billing Contacts - don't let your web-host 'muscle in'. If they do, the domain is theirs, legally. When registering, use an email address you're sure you'll have the use of in years to come i.e. not Hotmail or Yahoo. Site appearance: This is an easy one. Use white as your background colour, no fancy graphics, think formal, think sober, think minimalist, but informative. Put your company name, address, registered office, telephone and fax number on the main page, as well as the main links clearly visible. Have a company information page. For Gawd's sake check the spelling on all your pages. And that all the links work. Set up a copious FAQ page, and add to it as you go along, to cut down standard enquiries. If you don't have a fax machine, get SuperVoice Home at supervoice.com. It turns your PC in a fax and answering machine, if you have a voice modem. If you do this you should enable the 'power management' options on your PC by pressing DELETE when your computer is booting up, and changing the settings, so that your computer will go into standby mode after a certain amount of time, until it's activated by your fiddling with it again, or by an incoming call or fax. This will enable you to leave the computer on continuously. You should turn your screen off, of course, when you're not using it, as it's a fire hazard, and unnecessary. (You should also get a processor cooling program, which cools down your computer's CPU. Go to cpuidle.de for CPUIdle, or just do a search on 'cpu cooling' and 'overclocking' on Altavista. They're very popular programs with people who over-clock their CPU's.) Give people seven to thirty day money-back guarantees. If they decide to cancel their credit card payment you're going to lose out anyway. Explain that your order page is secure. Reply to emails as soon as possible. Be courteous, but firm, with timewasting enquiries. Give discounts on future purchases, and two-for-one deals. 8. A shopping cart or order page which can be used by ANY browser, and which sends the order to you securely.
9. A cheap web-host offering lots of features with good technical support. You can find one of these via budgetweb.com. You will at least need one that offers SSL, Telnet, FTP, your own cgi-bin and permission to upload your own scripts. They should offer the option to have a sub-domain name e.g. yourname.theirname.com rather than demanding you get your own domain name. Generally, the more accessories they offer the better. (This site also has a list of adult web hosts - useful if your content is controversial, or if you have loads of bandwith-sucking images and mp3's and downloadable zips. Mainstream webhosts won't put up with your site hogging all their bandwith for very long.) [Here's a tip. Don't get excited about being offered 300mb for 15 dollars a month. Even if you actually had that much data in files to set up, they'd never let you hog the bandwith necessary for your customers to download it regularly. You pay for each megabyte your visitors download. Read the small print. That's the real reason porn and mp3 sites are barred by many web-hosts. They take up too many system resources.] If you're serious about your business you'll get your own domain name anyway, as anything else looks suspicious, but it's nice to have the option of checking out their service first without having to go through the rigmarole of transferring your name to their servers. This latter operation can be a real pain. I've found it best to ring Network Solutions direct once you or you web-host have sent them the correct and complete details, and get them to append your domain name to the new name-server in their database while you're on the 'phone. 10. Regular back-ups of your site. You web host may get attacked by hackers, or their hard disk may just fail, and they may not have a back-up. It's not that uncommon. It's happened to me! There are a lot of little pests out their who like trying out hacking tools, and are just vandals. And a few dumb web hosts. Back up your site using the zip -r doodah.zip * command in a Telnet session whilst in your root directory. It zips up all the files and subdirectories in your site into a file called 'doodah.zip' (or whatever). Download and save this onto a separate diskette on your pc as well, just in case your own pc's hard disk fails. Delete it from the server unless you can afford the space it takes up. Just think if your site disappeared tomorrow. What would you do? Doesn't bear thinking about, does it? Back up your site at least once a week. Tip: Put a blank page called index.html in all your web directories to stop people trying to peek at what else is in them besides the page you want them to see. And that's it. Updates to this text are sent to registered users out at irregular intervals. I'll send you news of an update, which you can download at no extra cost. Yours faithfully, 'Tiger' Tom O' Donnell.
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