Towards A Healthy Economy + Marketing World

An aesthetically pleasing colour scheme can make or break your website. After all, in advertising, colour accounts for 60% of advertisement’s acceptance or rejection. Therefore, colour plays a pivotal role in determining whether or not a potential customer will choose to conduct business with your firm. A web designer needs to ensure that all of your website’s colours work in harmony, while keeping the client’s identity consistent with other marketing efforts.

Quick Rules of Thumb

•Stick to 3 to 5 colours when planning a website
•When in doubt, use white for the background colour, and black for the text colour

Using Your Company’s Logo Colours

If your company already has a logo designed by a professional - great! This is the best starting point for choosing your website’s colour combination. You may choose to use the exact colours found in your logo, or even add some complimentary colours. But, it is important not to stray too far from your logo’s colour scheme in order to keep your company’s identity consistent.

Colour Defines Mood

The colours of your website are important because they can elicit different emotions from your visitors. Colours can make us happy, excited, angry or sad. Below is a list of colours along with the corresponding moods which they evoke:

Warm Colors

Red: aggressiveness, passion, strength, vitality Pink: femininity, innocence, softness, health Orange: fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance Yellow: positive thinking, sunshine, cowardice

Cool Colors

Green: tranquility, health, freshness Blue: authority, dignity, security, faithfulness
Purple: sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty, mystery

Neutral Colors
Brown: utility, earthiness, woodiness, subtle richness White: purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined Gray: somberness, authority, practicality, corporate mentality Black: seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness, being classic

Choosing a Color Scheme
Once you understand the colours and their connotations, the next step is to choose a colour scheme for your website. Below is list of different types of colour combinations:

Monochromatic colour combinations use a single color. Variations in lightness of the selected colour can be used to create the sense of different colours. Monochromatic colors go well together, producing a soothing effect, and are very easy on the eyes. The drawback however, is that, it can be difficult to highlight the most important elements on your website.

Analogous color schemes use colours that are related, but not the identical, to create visually attractive combinations. Choosing this type of colour scheme is accomplished by picking colours that are close to each other on the colour wheel. For example, a selection of blues and purples, or reds and oranges would make a good analogous combination. One colour must be picked as the dominant colour while the others are used as accents.

Complementary (or contrasting) color schemes are comprised of 2 colours that are opposite each other on the color wheel. This combination is most appealing when a warm and a cool colour are used. For example, red with green or blue work well as contrasting colours. Using one colour for your background, and its complementary color to highlight key elements will give you colour dominance and colour contrast. One word of caution: it is difficult for the human eye to focus on contrasting colours at the same time. Therefore, it is best to avoid using strong contrasts for background and text colours.

Paul Coulter’s company,www.cost-effective-design.com/”>Cost Effective Web Design provides low cost, custom web design services for small businesses in the Windsor Ontario area. To view more of Paul’s articles, visit his website:www.cost-effective-design.com/articles.html“> Web Design Related Articles

The best way to explain this is by comparing it to a real-life (brick & mortar) situation. Picture a web hosting company as the owner of a shopping mall. The shopping mall owner invested a lot of money on hiring architects, constructors, engineers, etc. to build it. Now all the stores on it are empty and the owner is going to rent them to smaller businesses that can’t afford (or who simply don’t want) their own building.

As a small business owner, you can rent this store space on a per-month basis. But remember it is empty. So it will be your responsibility to decorate your store, fill it up with your own products, furniture & displays and to advertise your store to the world in order to get new customers.

The responsibility of the shopping mall owner is to keep and maintain the building in a top condition for your business to prosper. In the exact same manner, a hosting company invests a lot of money to set up high-speed connections and a full-fledged data center. And as a small business owner, you may rent virtual space on the web to set up your store and offer your products or services to the world.

When you set up your account it will also be empty and it will be up to you to design your own website (or hire a web designer to build one for you), and to advertise it to the world.

For more information on web hosting please visit:
http://the-easy-way.com/webhosting.html

Sean Felker is the publisher of the very successful and popular Work at Home and Making Money on the Internet blog:
http://making-money-online.blogspot.com/

Welcome to the first chapter of your Basic ASP Learning Series.

I mostly communicate on a personal level, so it’s better we
acquaint ourselves in the beginning. My name is Amrit Hallan and
I’m a web developer. I work through my web site -
http://www.bytesworth.com. I’m not a nerd (and don’t want to be)
and most of my knowledge has come to me piecemeal through lots
of hard work and interaction with my other developer friends. I
don’ t think it’d be fair to say that I’m an authority on ASP
but yes, I have a few satisfied clients in my portfolio and I
know enough to get you started. By the time you are through with
these daily chapters, you’ll have learnt enough to make a small
shopping cart in ASP.

Most of the chapters will be organized in a linear fashion, so
that you always have to work according to your previously
acquired knowledge. Sometimes I’ll sound like writing the entire
chapter in a bulleted form, but that’ll be just to keep the
unnecessary (I mean that is out of the scope of this reference)
stuff out.

I wish I could know your name too. But I don’t know how many
people are going to read this. If you want to let me know that
YOU are the one at the moment reading this, you are welcome to
send me a friendly message at mailto:amrit@bytesworth.com. I
love to hear from people (ok, the word “people” excludes
Spammers - they are not people).

Enough of my warming up. Here we go with the first chapter.

Installing Personal Web Server

==> Beginning of Chapter One <==

If you want to work with ASP (Active Server Pages) on your
personal computer, you need to install the Personal Web Server
(PWS). As the name indicates, it's a server. Unlike the normal
HTML pages, dynamic pages (either created with CGI, PHP, ASP or
Cold Fusion) require some sort of a server to carry on their
business. Without a server, you can create a dynamic page, but
you cannot view it decently in the run-time mode.

Since I mostly work with the Active Server Pages using PWS, I'll
tell you how to install the PWS.

It ships free with the Win98 CD, and should be in the add-ons
folder.

>From there, install the PWS on your computer. The installation
program creates a folder, inetpub in the directly you specify
during the installation. This inetpub, further has a folder,
wwwroot. So if you install your PWS on your C drive, the wwwroot
path should be

C:INETPUBWWWROOT

All the files that you create, you store under wwwroot. What we
generally do is, we create separate folders for separate
projects under the wwwroot folder. So if I created bytesworth
folder in wwwroot folder, the full path should be

C:INETPUBWWWROOTBYTESWORTH

And when I have to view the page on my browser, I’ll have to type

http://localhost/bytesworth

as the URL.

After you’ve installed the PWS, it’s icon appears on your
desktop, and at the bottom right of your screen. Click or
double-click on the icon. On the main window, you should see the
message:

Web publishing is on. Your Home page is available at
http://servername

The servername is the name you use instead of localhost. But if
you are confused about this name game, just use localhost and it
should always work if you haven’t been naughty and messing
around with your computer’s basic setup.

Before you proceed further, open the Windows Explorer, go to
c:inetpubwwwroot and create a new folder here by the name of
“learnASP” (how boringly predictable! So you can name it
something else). We’ll be storing ALL our files in this folder.

Hence, whenever we want to run a newly created file, we’d type
in the location bar:

http://localhost/learnASP/newfile.asp and press Enter.

Ok, next, click on the Advanced tab. Select Enable Default
Document

In the Default Document(s) box, type the list of file names you
would like to use as your default file once the name of your
site is type in the browser.

If you have no idea what’s the default file, it is the file that
answers your call when you type a specific URL without a
specific file. For instance, if I type http://www.bytesworth.com
the file that actually gets loaded by default is DEFAULT.ASP.
This depends on the setting. Some servers use INDEX.ASP or
INDEX.HTML or INDEX.SHTML. It all depends on the file parsing
set up on your web-hosting server.

Then click on the Edit Properties button, after selecting the
Home folder. There are three select boxes, viz., “Read”,
“Execute”, “Script”. Select all of them. The selections tell the
server that we want to execute server side scripts in our ASP
pages. ASP pages won’t run if the server can’t read and execute
them.

Close the window, and your PWS is running. Of course do not run
two servers simultaneously. So if you installed the Apache Web
Server and left it running, and then loaded PWS, there is going
to be some problem for you to sort out.

It’s a proven fact simple and user friendly websites
generate more sales. To improve your sales, look for ways
to simplify and make it easier for your visitors. Test your
ordering process. Remove the clutter, broken links and
anything that distracts or confuses. Here’s a quick
checklist to help your site pass inspection with your
visitors and convert more of them to customers:

1. Sizzle Your Headlines.

Headlines are the most important marketing element of your
website and your web marketing in general. Think about it a
minute. What makes someone click your email out of the
scores of emails in their ebox? Why do people choose your
article out of a list of 20 or so on the page. They click
because of your headline.

Invest time into crafting a sizzling headline. Seek to
capture the interest of your visitor when they first arrive
at your site. Using your headline make them want to know
more about your product or services. Develop your headline
to grab your prospect by the hand and lead them throughout
your site emphasizing what your product/service can do for
them.

One more thing, after developing a heated headline, make
it stand out from the rest of your copy. Use bold type,
large font sizes and even a different color according to
the style of your web page.

2. Write Sizzling Sales Copy.

If the headline is the most important marketing element of
your website, the second most important element is your
sales copy. Turn the key to your profits by using benefits.
After capturing your visitor’s interest with a sizzling
headline let them know immediately what’s in it for them-
benefits. Make the most of your direct contact with your
prospect. They have arrived at your site looking for
something. If you have targeted your visitors well they are
looking for your information, product or service. Include
the basic elements every sales letter should have. There’s
lots of good sales letter writing software, templates and
advice around the internet. Don’t know where to start?

3. Create Simple Navigation

Make your site easy to navigate. Place your links or
buttons in a prominent place and keep them in the same
place on every page. Your design should guide visitors
through the information you want them to read. Make your
colors, layout, links, and buttons consistent. Title every
page so visitors will always know where they are. Place
your buy buttons or contact information in same place from
page to page. Provide links on every page back to the
homepage.

4. Develop a Clear Call to Action

Many website’s lose countless opportunities to make a sale
or capture a lead because they fail to ask something of
their visitors. Call your visitors to a specific action. At
the end of every page use the power of the direct command
whether it’s simply directing them to contact you for
further information or a directive to browse further into
your site. For example, instead of “If you would like this
beautiful travel brochure, we will be happy to send it” use
“Sit down right now and fill out this form to start
planning your vacation.” Or instead of “Call us to
purchase your very own widget” use “Dial this number 877-
846-9908 to purchase your widget today.”

5. Use Harmonic Images

Unseasoned site owners will sometimes use graphics or
photos that do nothing to help illustrate their message.
For example, they choose cutesy stars and flowers on a site
selling accounting services. Look for clipart and photos
that will support your important message.

Select graphics or design elements that will harmonize and
illustrate your site’s message. Web Wit Tip: For non-
techies like the author invest in inexpensive clipart/photo
sets that will enhance and help illustrate your
communications. Additionally, unless you are training to
become a graphic artist look for graphic programs with
templates to shorten your learning curve.

Now for your homework. I bet you didn’t know homework came
along with this article. Well it does. Now that you have
discovered or re-discovered this information you must act
upon it. Remember the old phrase, “Use it or you lose it.
I don’t want you to lose. I want you to win-win more sales,
more subscribers, more clients, more profit. As we have
covered, to win your site must pass inspection with its
visitors.

Don’t worry it’s a take home assignment and there’s no
timer involved. All you need to do is go through your site
and make sure the above items are in place: sizzling
headlines, sizzling sales copy, simple navigation, clear
call to action, harmonic images, compelling opt-in offer,
testimonials, about us page, usability/function test, and
visible contact information. Pass inspection with all your
web visitors and prosper!

©Earma Brown, 11 yr. Web Developer, Author, Service Business Owner
Helps service business owners, and writers with full featured hosting, domain names, websites and a host of other web solutions. Send any email to webwit@arrowproduction.com for free ezine Web Wit and mini-course ‘Jumpstart Your Website to Success’

Most webmasters on the net today are familiar with what the
industry calls “shared” web hosting accounts. A shared hosting
account is where you rent a small amount of space on a server
which is shared among many other users.

This is a cheap way to get started online but it has many
disadvantages - you will encounter email delivery problems
because of spam complaints against other sites on the same
server. You will find your site’s grinding to a halt when
someone else does some heavy database work on your server. You
might even find your site going down because of a denial of
service attack against someone else hosting hacking or piracy
related material on your server (these type of sites attract
antisocial elements!)

How can you avoid all of this drama?

By upgrading to a virtual dedicated server. A virtual dedicated
server lets you run your sites as if you had your own
“dedicated” server, except it is cheaper because you are really
just using part of a server that has been split into multiple
virtual dedicated servers.

You can find out more about this by searching Google for
“virtual dedicated hosting”. Virtuozzo is the main commercial
software that web hosts use to run virtual hosting services.

You will find virtual dedicated server accounts starting at just
$30 a month. You’ll get a much larger chunk of bandwidth
compared to shared hosting, and none of the problems that go
with a shared host. You can also get multiple IP addresses that
are exclusive to your sites.

So what’s the catch? Not much. You’ll probably spend a bit more
on hosting each month. The main disadvantage of upgrading to
virtual dedicated hosting is that you will need to be more
technically proficient so that you can administer the server.

This requires a bit of time learning the necessary Linux skills
to make sure your server runs smoothly.

Many hosting providers will have a “premium” support offering
that includes a bit more hand holding - this is definitely
recommended if you don’t have much experience with Linux, or are
new to virtual dedicated hosting.

With the increased speed and bandwidth that a virtual dedicated
host offers, and none of the shared hosting headaches, the move
is one you will never regret.

There are more than billions of Web Sites, running Online Businesses, offering products and services. But only a few Web Sites manage to make any sale.

Only a few Web Sites are capable of pulling in visitors and turn them into customers. Only a few are able to get profitable returns for their investments.

Then what’s wrong with the rest of the Web Sites that are unable to get the required returns of their investments or do not make any sale at all?

Even if they recieve huge traffics, they don’t make any sale. No need to talk about the Web Sites that doesn’t even recieve any visitors, leave alone making any sale.

They just don’t follow the basics of an effective Online Business process.

They don’t know how to build websites properly, how to write keyword-focussed contents that ranks well with the search engines, how to write effective contents that PRESells the visitors and turn them into lifelong customers, how to write contents that builds credibility and trust, how to successfully promote web sites to reach a wider, targeted, willing-to-buy audience.

The basics below are usefull to anyone, whether you want to build, develop or promote a web site…

What are the basics of selling on the Net?

Simple,

3) Write high info-value keyword focussed content that ranks well with the search engines. A PRESelling content (not a sales pitch) that establishes confidence and trust and influences the visitors into becoming customers.

After you are done with the above process, you need an effective, useful and easy to use marketing and promotion strategy to let the audience know that you exist.

There are many online as well as offline ways to promote your web site.

Online methods include:

Media and television advertising, newspaper classified ads, placards. radio announcements, word of mouth and others.

Remember, for a professional, profitable and successfull Online Business you need effective strategies, intelligent investments of time, money and energy and motivation to succeed.

Devasish Gupta
Independent WebMaster: I run my own Internet Marketing Blogs. I strive to deliver my visitors quality informations on effective Site Building, Site Development and Site Marketing services.

http://evarsity.blogspot.com/
http://emarketingtips.blogspot.com/

What you should do and know if you are an artist and you
have decided to have a website.

1) Look at “Web Sites That Suck.”

If you are an artist and have never had a website, the
concept of a website can seem unnerving. The first thing to
do is look at a web site called “Websites that Suck”, www.
websitesthatsuck.com by Vincent Flanders. This is a
website that is so funny, and so enlightening and it is very
hard to stop looking at it. You will also learn a great deal as
an artist about the Web and feel much more at ease after
that experience.

2) Get a domain name.

A domain name is “www. name.com” of your web site.
Artists need to have their own name as part of their domain
name, “www. yourname.com” or “www. yourname
artist.com”. It is not a good idea to have the gallery that may
represents you as part of your domain name. Web visitors
are looking for the artist, the artists art work, not the gallery.
But, by having the website in your name, you also help the
gallery, because you can promote the gallery on your
website.

3) Find a person to design the website.

People like to design for artists; this is one of the “perks” of
being an artist. There are a lot of great people involved with
the Web who do not have huge overheads who can design
a very good website for you. The cost can be for as little as
$500 or less.

4) Find a Hosting Company.

There are many places that will host your website for $100
or less a year. Your web designer should be able to help
you with this.

5) Web browsers come in different sizes.

Web browsers come in all different shapes and sizes, from
very small to very large. It will be impossible to make your
wesite look perfect for every size web browser. This means
that you as an artist will need to make some compromises.
This is a good thing to know while you are thinking about
your website design.

There are websites that let you look and see how your
website looks in different sizes and on different web
browsers for free. After your web design is completed,
lookup “web browser size test tool” on a search engine to
find one.

6) Copyright information.

It is impossible to completely protect your images on the
Web. People simple do not pay attention to copyright
information. Your best protection is to keep the images
small, so if a visitor enlarges the image, it will look blurry.
Also put “your name © the year” under the image of your art
work. All the fancy things that are suggested for protection
do not work. You can put copyright information all over your
art work, I’ve seen it done, but it defeats the purpose of your
website and web visitors will not return.

© Mary Baker 2005

Mary Baker is a contemporary realist painter, whose studio
is in Newburyport, Massachusetts. This New England city,
north of Boston, has been the inspiration for the artist’s
realistic oil paintings. Mary Baker is a professional artist and
has shown in New York art galleries.

You can visit Mary at her website, Mary Baker Art, at http://www.marybakerart.com, see her beautiful paintings and read her
articles on a variety of subjects including, Art, Artists and
Money, Tips on Breaking the Creative Block , Art,Women and
Creativity and the four part series on Art, Artists and the Web.

A list of articles can be found on her Site Map and Mary’s
paintings can be seen on every page of Mary Baker Art.

Redesign To Stay Relevant
Web sites have the same shelf-life as print and broadcast advertising commercials. Very seldom do you see the same ad run longer than several months? You’ll see the same product, but the packaging changes because times change, issues change, public consciousness changes, and the way people research and judge businesses or buy items changes. If businesses are not updating their materials or message, they are shortchanging themselves and will eventually be overtaken by smarter, more aggressive competitors.

The new competitive edge is to redesign and update your Web site in order to stay relevant to potential customers.

And these customers are no longer down the street or across town. They’re worldwide and they’re creating a large pool of wealth for businesses that take their Web site seriously and do what’s necessary to connect with people. The Internet has erased state and country borders and has created a global economy that gets more technically savvy each day.

When potential customers surf the Internet, the first impression they get from your Web site is its design. Much like a storefront, it’s either attractive and professional, or it’s shoddy and questionable. A powerful Web site design creates a sense of trust and respect between you and your on-line visitors. The site explains its purpose clearly and quickly, and why a visitor should spend time browsing it. The client has to be able to say with little doubt, “This is a place where I can do business.”

Search Engine Optimization

The growth of the World Wide Web continues at a phenomenal pace. And that explosion is quickly changing the way people shop for items or information. The World Wide Web has truly made us one economy, one world.

Whether it’s a product, service, issue or cause that you want customers and potential customers to know about, you’ll need to rank high in major search engine results or become a victim of “search fatigue” because you’re buried on page 8 or 18, where most people never tread.

It is paramount that your Web company specialize in Search Engine Optimization so your business is listed on the first or second page of a search. This tactic ensures more eyeballs see your site than your competitors. “Eyes on screens” is the name of the game when it comes attracting new customers. Your Web company also must be dedicated to studying the major search engines to stay in tune with new algorithms and search methods that deliver top rankings.

Experience
Almost anyone can build a Web site these days, so your best bet is to find an experienced company that has built hundreds of successful sites — someone who’s seen it all and has the knowledge to prove it. They should have a good understanding of Web marketing, e-commerce applications, data management, and e-mail marketing.

A broad background in Web design could include: computer companies, medical groups, trade industries, financial management firms, E-commerce businesses, auto retailers, software companies, real estate companies, architectural firms, engineering companies, military contractors and many other businesses. Experience like this ensures your Web company understands the world of business, the economy and buyer’s habits. It provides a great competitive edge over the business using a run-of-the-mill Web designer.

Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx,
a Web design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to
national companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United
States. Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net

The matter of choosing between the operating system (OS) running the web server hosting your web site as old as the web hosting business.
The OS controls all the functions of the web server hosting your site, so it comes naturally to pay special attention when choosing one over another. But what are really the options you have?

Mainly you can choose between web hosting based on Windows, Linux or Unix operating systems. A brief description and analysis of the different systems will narrow the list of options to only two.

Microsoft’s Windows server operating systems (NT/2000/2003) have a rather friendly and familiar user interface, making IT teams to easier in this aspect. Another plus is given by it’s excellent integration capabilities with other applications developed by Microsoft and let’s face it their range is absolutely impressive. The main key point of Windows based hosting is its support for .ASP (Active Server Pages) or the advanced ASP.NET. This language for web development was created by Microsoft to facilitate the creation of dynamic web pages linked to SQL databases. It also provides capabilities for integration with other systems.

It can be said that Unix is the OS that powered the beginning of the Internet era and due to his qualities is still used today. Linux OS was developed having Unix as starting point and this is how the two share many features. Today the Linux version of the Unix system is more common on web servers and this has to do with the higher licensing costs and with the rather specific hardware requirements for Unix. This is why we will continue with Linux only, but Unix is taken into account as well. Linux hosting has its strong points in fulfilling one’s requirements for a good web server and Web serving, file serving, mailing, and streaming are only a few. It proves itself is a very cost-effective choice from using hardware efficiently, and allowing an increased web sites per server ratio, this ultimately resulting in a decreasing the cost of hosting per account.

So here are our two choices Windows and Linux.

Reliability

In the past Linux OS were seen as more reliable over Windows. However with the release of Windows 2003 server Microsoft has gone a long way and closed the gap in this area.
Linux servers are compatible with certain Microsoft extensions and applications and the same is true for Windows.

Web Programming

Even if trying to host a simple personal web site, your might want add some simple scripts to spice up your pages. The issue gets bigger when you are looking to host an e-commerce site supported by some serious server-side programming. So how are our two contenders doing in this aspect?

Supporting java scripts is not a topic to be argued upon as they are executed on the client side (the user’s web browser) and both Linux and Windows have no problem feeding this content to your visitors.

It is a whole different matter when discussing server side scripting. For web site owners trying to implement forms on their site it is common knowledge that ASP is supported by Windows and PHP is the tool to do just that under Linux. However both developed solutions to support each other’s programming language for web development. This support is not perfect and its limitations recommend Linux for a good PHP support and Windows for ASP, especially when it comes to hosting web sites that require the full use the advantages offered by PHP or ASP.

Linux offers a support for FrontPage extensions. Windows has a weak point in offering only limited CGI/Perl support, so if Perl is the scripting language of your choice, you should opt for Linux.

Databases

Dynamically driven web sites require some sort of databases. Beyond sites employing databases, most frequently you will encounter mySQL or MSAccess. If your web site is relying on mySQL, then you’ll have no problems hosting it on either Windows or Linux. For MSAccess databases, look your only option is Windows.

Price

Linux web hosting is cheaper. The reason must be searched in licensing costs, that are lower that for Windows, and in the ability of Linux web servers to support a higher web sites per server ratio without compromising the quality of service.

Although Windows hosting cost a bit more, you will get something for your money. It’s reduced development time and functionality

As the option of one over another depends basically of your actual needs and of the plans you have made for the future of your web site. For example will it move from a rather static web site to one relying heavily on server side scripting? And if it is so what would be the programming language used: PHP or ASP? Consequently your web site will be set up on a Linux or on a Windows web server.

Almost all serious web-hosting providers will offer you the choice between Linux and Windows.

There is no winner of this contest, at least not yet. In today’s terms, your preference of one system over another should be given only by your requirements and the needs of your visitors.

Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (http://www.hostpinpin.com), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory Resource.

HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting articles, tips, web hosting reviews, compare web hosting plans and more.

This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact.

You’ve heard the expression, “The Great American Novel?” If
not, a short explanation is in order before I continue.

The “Great American Novel” is that “quick email” you start to
write that goes on for two screens. Or the short memo that turns
into a business letter, or the solo that takes three complete
window scrolls to read. Or an article that runs on a tad too
long… or… oops, sorry! I guess I’ve made my point.

Anyway, the newest of my own personal expressions is “The Great
American URL.”

If you haven’t created your own website yet, and are promoting
affiliate programs, you’ll have to make do with using one of the
“short url” services. http://tinyurl.com is a popular choice
lately and free to use. However, everyone’s link ends up showing
“http:tinyurl.com/whatever” and loses a bit of its own uniqueness
in the process. Don’t get me wrong, if your url is the size of
Brazil and you don’t have your own website, run don’t walk, to
shorten it now!

However, if you do have your own website, there is a quick, easy
way to hide those long, ugly links and make them appear to come
directly from you.

And it’s not hard to do!

Take for example this fictious link:
http://www.applesforsale.com/cgi-bin/bananas/waytoobig.html

Looks suspiciously like an affiliate link, doesn’t it.

So, how do you turn the above monster into that mighty mouse?

Click on My Computer. Open your C drive. Highlight the folder to
your website pages (you do have a backup of your website on your
hard drive, right?) Create a new folder within this directory.
Give it a short name, like RD (for redirect). Close Windows
Explorer.

Now, open the HTML Editor of your choice. Begin a NEW webpage. No
doubt there’s a bit of code already on your page, like a small
meta tag of sorts and the < TITLE >< /TITLE > area.

Now you COULD do a standard redirect in the BODY of your new page,
but this type of redirect causes a pause as the system stops either
briefly or not so briefly on its way to its final destination.

It’s like getting from one link to another via a “middleman.” We’re
going to take the middleman out of the equation and let your viewer
pass immediately to the page of your choice.

You will not enter anything into the BODY of this new webpage.
Instead all your redirecting code sits inside the
portion of the webpage you are creating.

Here’s a sample code (do copy and keep it for your own use):

[Note: To double check that the code below appears the way it
should, you can see a text-only version of this article at:
http://www.mywizardads.com/article14.txt]

< html >
< head >
< title >Apples For Sale< /title >
< meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0;
URL=http://www.applesforsale.com/cgi-bin/bananas/waytoobig.html" >
< /head >
< /html >

See where I’ve filled in the TITLE? And I’ve copied and pasted
the monster of a url from above just after the URL= portion of the
coding.

That’s it. You do not add anything else to your webpage.

Now you’ll save this page giving it a short name like “apples.htm”
inside the RD folder you created on your hard drive.

Next you upload it to your website.

However, before you FTP it, or publish it if you use FrontPage,
you’ll need to create a new folder on the server side (the internet).
You’ll also name this new folder “RD” (without the quotes). You then
upload your newly created page called apples.htm to this new
server-side folder RD at your website.

The final product? The url you’ll use to advertise will reflect
YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME and will look something like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/RD/apples.htm

No more worries about broken links when you advertise! Plus, your
link now has a more professional appearance. It takes your visitor
to where you want him or her to be, but does it with a lot more
style.

© Theresa Cahill - All Rights Reserved. Feel free to distribute this article. Please keep it intact and with the resource box included below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Theresa Cahill, a two decade veteran of marketing, is the owner of http://www.mywizardads.com and invites you to take a look at the services of MWA and download fr.ee helpful information and more at http://www.mywizardads.com/sitemap.html