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Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Collecting Online Data with Adobe FormsCentral
Building online forms used to be the domain of a capable designer. If you ever tried to build one on your own, I expect you (if you're like me) quickly gave up - or wasted countless hours trying to get alignment and appearance just right. Oh, the inhumanity!
Suffer no more. Adobe FormsCentral is the new way to automate online data collection. Allow the cloud to collect and compile your important data. Build a custom form, or use one of the 14 included templates. Templates come in categories such as: feedback, marketing, registration and membership.
Suffer no more. Adobe FormsCentral is the new way to automate online data collection. Allow the cloud to collect and compile your important data. Build a custom form, or use one of the 14 included templates. Templates come in categories such as: feedback, marketing, registration and membership.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Going for Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing, an expensive and popular endeavor
For the last five years or so, search engine marketing has become an increasingly popular promotional technique. As the popularity of the medium has increased, so have the costs of playing the game. Pay-per-click advertisements are being driven up in costs as the demand for online advertising space increases. Organic search engine marketing is a long-term, uncertain and often costly endeavor.
So here's the real question: is all the hype over search engine marketing is really worth your attention? Let's find out!
Paid vs. Organic Search Engine Marketing
Paid Search Engine Marketing
There are two basic methods of search engine marketing. The first is paid search engine marketing. Using this strategy, you pay for advertising on search engine result pages (commonly known as SERPs). With many companies dealing in paid search engine marketing, the advertisments are also shown on other web pages where the content of the page seems to match the topic of your ad.
Organic Search Engine Marketing
Organic search engine marketing consists of building up the reputation of your web site with quality content and incoming links in an effort to rise to the top of search engine result pages. In this marketplace, you are competing with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of web pages all focusing on the same topic as your site.
Getting a significant enough of a reputation to beat out the competition takes a lot of time and effort. Search engines are also slow to reward sites for building reputation quickly, so the time you put in now might not pay off for months down the road.
So, is search engine marketing worth my time and money?
The fact that the search engine marketing marketplace is thriving means that a lot of individuals are throwing in their lot with at least with the paid method. On popular topics, companies will pay 2-20 dollars per click on their advertisments. Since the market determines the cost, these advertisers must be getting a bang for their buck, otherwise they would drop out.
While competing with advertisers for popular topics can be expensive, there are still some significant opportunities with less popular topics that can offer even a greater return on investment.
And what about organic search engine marketing
While it's difficult to track how much web site owners are making off of organic search engine marketing, many people make their living off of the business leads they get from organic search engine results.
In conclusion
Search engine marketing, in either its organic or paid form, is still a growing marketplace, and until it reaches its saturation point, there are still significant opportunities to be had.
Domain name registration is easier than throwing rocks!
While there are few connections between stone tossing and domain name registration, one parallel is the shear ease of doing either one.
For an individual who is just starting to design their own web sites, the learning curve of understanding all of the technology, the lingo, and the concepts behind the web can be a big challenge. When it comes to the registration of your first domain name, most people don't know where to look outside of their favorite web browser's address bar.
Domain name registration starts with a search
A common method of checking for the availability of a domain name for registration is to type in the desired domain name in your web browser. However, there are a couple of potential problems with this method:
The domain name could have no hosting account associated with it
Even if it doesn't look like there is a web site behind a domain name, it still might not be available for registration. Sometimes people purchase domain names as investments, in the hope of selling them later at a profit, or starting a web site at a later date. In these cases, they may not have a hosting account associated with it, an the domain name will look like it's available for registration.
The domain name could be "parked"
A "parked" domain name is one that has already gone through the registration process, but is being hosted at a domain name registrar's web site.
How to search for a domain name
My favorite place to search for a domain name is over at www.networksolutions.com. You can easily check to see if multiple domain names are available for registration with a single input. They also store your previous domain name searches so that registration is easier later on. One more plus is that you can search for multiple domain name extensions like .net, .us, and .com before you decide on one for registration.
Next, it's time for real domain name registration
While I like Network Solutions for searching for a domain name, I like the prices of domain name registration at www.godaddy.com a whole lot better. They offer some nice domain name management tools as well.
To complete the domain name registration, you just add a domain name to your shopping cart and checkout, just as you would to purchase a season of Seinfeld. And that's it, badda bing, badda boom!
For an individual who is just starting to design their own web sites, the learning curve of understanding all of the technology, the lingo, and the concepts behind the web can be a big challenge. When it comes to the registration of your first domain name, most people don't know where to look outside of their favorite web browser's address bar.
Domain name registration starts with a search
A common method of checking for the availability of a domain name for registration is to type in the desired domain name in your web browser. However, there are a couple of potential problems with this method:
The domain name could have no hosting account associated with it
Even if it doesn't look like there is a web site behind a domain name, it still might not be available for registration. Sometimes people purchase domain names as investments, in the hope of selling them later at a profit, or starting a web site at a later date. In these cases, they may not have a hosting account associated with it, an the domain name will look like it's available for registration.
The domain name could be "parked"
A "parked" domain name is one that has already gone through the registration process, but is being hosted at a domain name registrar's web site.
How to search for a domain name
My favorite place to search for a domain name is over at www.networksolutions.com. You can easily check to see if multiple domain names are available for registration with a single input. They also store your previous domain name searches so that registration is easier later on. One more plus is that you can search for multiple domain name extensions like .net, .us, and .com before you decide on one for registration.
Next, it's time for real domain name registration
While I like Network Solutions for searching for a domain name, I like the prices of domain name registration at www.godaddy.com a whole lot better. They offer some nice domain name management tools as well.
To complete the domain name registration, you just add a domain name to your shopping cart and checkout, just as you would to purchase a season of Seinfeld. And that's it, badda bing, badda boom!
Make Some Money With Reseller Web Hosting
A little about reseller web hosting
Many web hosting providers offer particular web hosting plans call "reseller web hosting". These plans are offered to individuals who want to try to do just that, re-sell their company's web hosting services.What do web hosting providers offer reseller hosting?
A reseller relationship between the web host and the re-seller works like this:
the re-seller saves a lot of time and energy by not having to run their own web hosting servers. They can draw on the technical expertise of those operating the hosting servers in keeping the servers up and running on the web, installing and upgrading software, and often times taking responsibility for making regular backups of data.
The web hosting provider benefits from this relationship by outsourcing their advertising, billing and customer support to the reseller. These items can be particularly costly, and distributing the costs among a network of re-sellers can be tremendously advantageous.
How is a reseller account different from normal web hosting accounts?
Reseller web hosting accounts typically come with some extra tools that typical hosting accounts don't have. With these tools, you can manage customer hosting accounts and allocate resources between your different customer accounts.
How does billing work for a reseller hosting account?
Typically, the web hosting provider sends a single bill to their re-seller. The re-seller then bills their customers and uses their own system to keep track of invoicing. Web hosting providers generally let their re-sellers determine how much they will charge for their accounts.
Let's say you get a reseller account with 10 gigabytes of bandwidth and 1 gigabyte of storage space for $30. You can then split this into 5 different accounts, each with 2 gigabytes of bandwidth and 200 megs of space. To break even, you would need to charge at least $6 for each customer account. A markup of 100% is typical for reselling, so you would then charge $12 per account, making an additional $6 per month, per customer, or $30 total a month.
But $30 doesn't seem like a lot of money!
True. If you're running an entire business re-selling web hosting, then you're going to need a significant number of customers to get a decent monthly income. Web hosting providers improve their margins by automating as much of the billing and customer support as they can. In order to become a competitive, affordable force in the marketplace, you will need to take a similar approach.
Consider also using reseller hosting as an add-on for your other business can be a great upsell, and you wouldn't have to focus too much energy on advertising and promotion.
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