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MiniSites & Powerful Low Cost Hosting means Faster Development, Less Headaches and More Profits! | |||||||
When you purchase a domain, the next step is to select a web host. Ideally you want a low-cost host so that it doesn't dig into your profits. But you also want it to have high availability and up-time and great tech support which is 24 hours available to you. If you have another job, you may be doing the majority of your work on the weekend. The last thing you want is to have a question and not be able to get it answered until "business hours" on Monday morning. Beware of some inexpensive hosts. The majority of them are created in the owner's garage. And he/she may support you or may not. Most of them are not hosted in a certified data center or have quality back up solutions. Believe me, I have tried hosting my own server. There are a lot fewer headaches going through a quality web host. Another thing you may not have considered is that highly profitable websites are often only one web page. Sure, you may see a lot of sites out there that have 5 major link pages such as Products, Contact Us, About Us, Our History, etc.... but you really don't need that to be successful. Very successful infopreneurs and eproducts sites make a fortune every day, thousands a month or millions a year, just by having multiple well designed Minisites. The minisite has great advantages:
Here is a minisite for the SEO Elite software which can be helpful when working on marketing your website. It is excellent and I use it myself. But putting that aside, let's look at the minisite's structure. Notice there are very few graphics. The author, Brad, has put in some screenshots of his product, but for the most part it is text. The opening line of the minisite is in large font and in bold type. Some minisites have a banner at the top, but this is not necessary or required. It does nothing to help you, and it can't hurt you. But if you aren't great with graphics, skip it for now. The opening Main Header targets a select audience and focuses on a particular need. In this minisite, Brad is targeting an audience of people who have websites and their specific need is to draw more visitors and traffic to their website. Notice underneath the Main Header is a Sub Header. It is not in bold and it is in smaller font. But it is more descriptive. It doesn't just focus on the need of the client, it focuses on the product that can satisfy the need. Below this, Brad empathizes with his reader. He says he understands that they are skeptical at this point and that he would be too, but then he goes on to describe the benefits of the product. Notice he bolds words such as extremely skeptical and actual rankings. He uses quotes often and the italics to set off some text from others. All well designed minisites use the same techniques to make their content more readable and to focus the attention of the reader to catch terms. Remember, people don't read paragraphs and comprehend them word for word. They comprehend small phrases. If you emphasize the ones you want the reader to remember, then you are making it easier for the reader and have a better chance at getting your message across. An important part of any minisite is the evidence presented. The graphs and screenshots are part of the evidence. The graphs also are useful to set off text and make it easier to read. It serves the same purpose of the bold, Italics and other font features. The Audio testimony is optional and has a cost associated with it. It is unnecessary but can add to the impact of a good sales pitch. I will discuss how to do this and add video to your site in future courses. Now you will start seeing more text, with yellow highlights and even RED text. Again, this is for emphasis. He even uses boxes and a plethora of bullet points to set off major points. Use this technique! The most important evidence is testimonials. Customers like testimonials. It humanizes the product because real people use it. Real people's lives are changed, enhanced, simplified by the product giving people more time, more money, more pleasure than they would have had if they didn't DISCOVER AND USE the product. At the end of the minisite, the benefits of the product is listed out. Additional free gifts are listed out. You get all of this for $$$$. Brad also includes a way to sign up for his e-newsletter. You don't need to sign up for this, because I will have all the same info discussed in my newsletter. And I will go into detail on everything to make it easier for you to work with. Plus I will have more nuts and bolts techniques discussed. Even if you are a web newbie, I will get you to a high level of expertise. And advanced guys, I will include some tidbits of information that would blow you away. Most websites based on Text, or HTML, rather than the Flash websites which focus on a movie experience can be Snatched off the web and used as your main template for your website. Of course, you don't want to steal anything, but it is a great way to learn how great websites are created. You can do this easily by going to your browser's toolbar and choosing File--Save As--Choose a Location--and click Save. This will save the entire website to your hard drive and all the pictures will appear in a folder in the same directory. You can then use your favorite web editor such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage to edit the minisite. Once in the editing mode you get to see all kinds of nifty things such as the graphics that were used, the code behind the website, the size of the font and the color schemes used. If you are skilled enough to eliminate references to the former website, you can fairly quickly turn a locally saved website into a useful template for your web site. Just be sure not to use anything that is proprietary or copyright protected such as images and exact paragraphs. In grade school teachers taught you that plagiarism was wrong. But the truth is that nothing today is 100% original. Even the Nobel Prize winning writer, Faulkner, once said that he wasn't a great writer, but a great thief. Use websites and minisites as inspiration and ideas. Feel free to rewrite existing content in your own words. Use structures freely. There are thousands of minisites using the same structure. Don't reinvent the wheel. First you will take forever to create something 100% original, and secondly, you will not create something as successful as following in the footsteps of these master templates!
Think about it another way. Whereas a lot of businesses can start up and fail, often driving the business owner into bankruptcy court, you can start an e-business for less than $60 bucks which can't bankrupt anyone. You can test a business plan out and see if your business is sound and your plan is successful. Also, many businesses take 3-5 years to break even with profits. An e-business can break even with one or two sales!!! Any sales over that is gravy, and pure profit. Think you can at least get 2 sales in a year? I will show you how to generate so much traffic to your site that you will be wondering why anyone would ever want to have a physical store again. Sure they could earn millions of dollars, but they have millions in upkeep, salaries, contractor fees, utilities that just eat their profits away. You can earn the same and have virtually no costs!! Ok, here is a bit more about web hosts: The $3.95 plan is called a virtual host. The difference between dedicated and virtual hosts deserves a bit of discussion. Most people can do just fine with a virtual host which is also the lowest cost host around. Virtual host just means that there are other clients also hosted on the same server hardware as you. The virtual clients share the costs of purchasing and maintaining the software, hardware and telephone lines that all go into the costs of running a web server. Sometimes it is beneficial to have your own dedicated server. This means that you are the only client using this server. This allows you to have more freedom with installing particular applications that may harm other virtual clients if hosted on the same server. You also have more hard drive space to host your websites. If you have lots of images, Adobe PDF documents and movies, having your own server is essential. The lowest level virtual hosting plan gives you 5 GB of hard drive Space and 250 GB Transfer. This is usually plenty for most sites. I always recommend my clients to start with this plan. They can always upgrade later. 5 Gigabytes can hold thousands of images. Most web sites generally don't exceed .05 gigabyte of space. That means you have plenty of space (4.95 GB) to grow. Transfer is the amount of Internet bandwidth allowed for your website. 250 gigabytes is allowed on the lowest level virtual server. This means within one month 250 gigabytes are allowed to transfer out from your website to client websites. Typical websites never even come close to that. Sometimes though, if you have large downloads and tens or hundreds of thousands of clients downloading large files every month from your site, you may need to bump up your plan to pay for more dedicated internet connection space. This is called Transfer. If you end up in this situation, that means you have made it, and you are now a very successful web site owner. It is a problem that everyone wishes they had. Another consideration when choosing a
web host is deciding between Linux or Windows. If you
have applications that run on MS SQL or require Windows for
plug-ins, choose a Windows server. Linux uses MySQL for
databases, and to most client websites, it looks the same as a
windows platform. Generally there isn't much difference.
If you are using Microsoft Frontpage Extensions you will want to
definitely have a Microsoft Server rather than Linux. If you
have a special application that will run on your web host, check the
requirements of the application to see if it requires Windows or
Linux. 95% of apps will work on both Linux and Windows.
But it is important to check.
If you want to use automatically generated Templates with flash intros http://domaindjinn.com has an easy way to start your website. In fact, you just plug in your information to the template and your site is uploaded instantly. No software required. You get it by clicking on Build a Website and then Website Tonight. We have done everything in our power to make it easy for even a novice to make a website. The cost is minimally more, but to get flash development, you could literally spend thousands to a graphic designer.
When you sign up for your web site hosting account you will be assigned an IP address for the FTP site. The FTP address will allow you to access the web host through Internet Explorer. Instead of typing HTTP:// you type in FTP:// followed by the IP address given to you. For example: FTP://64.124.134.12 and then enter your username and password. Now you are in. You can just drag and drop your website to the browser area and your website will be uploaded. Now open up a new browser and go to your domain name to see if it looks right. Remember, that it generally takes 2-3 days for a website domain name to link (replicate) to your IP address of the web host. The reason is because the Web must replicate the link of the web host IP address to your domain name across the web. There are 12 main web servers on the internet and once they are fed the information of your website, it takes the AOL, MSN, and other internet service providers from a few hours to a couple days to pull down the new information. You can still test your website by typing in the IP address like this: HTTP://64.124.134.12. Another thing you should know is that your home page is always named index.htm or index.html. When you use a linux server, capitalization matters. It is best to keep your web pages in lowercase letters. Also, you should check to make sure your domain name is accessible with and without the www. For Example: http://www.domaindjinn.com and http://domaindjinn.com. Most web hosts such as domaindjinn always make your website available with the www and without. But I have seen so many web hosts out there that forget that and only put one up there. Also, every web host puts up a default index.htm. You must overwrite this if you want your web site to show up. In the next lesson we will talk about templates, web development tools, and more. All the best, Christopher Car |
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Copyright Domaindjinn.com 2005. All Rights Reserved |
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Most minisites
have minimal hosting requirements. Click on
HOSTING PLANS, and you will be
brought to a page showing a virtual hosting plan which costs $3.95 a
month. That is less than $50 a year. If you remember the
first lesson, the key to making the most money is to keep your costs
down. A domain with hosting through domaindjinn.com runs at
$60 a year. Not bad, considering you could spend thousands to
start a brick and morter storefront.