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If you are in the market to purchase a website it is extremely critical that you do your homework before purchasing otherwise you could be in for a rude awakening once the transfer of ownership is completed. It is my experience that sellers tend to overvalue the sites that they offer for sale, while buyers tend to leap before they look.

I have been doing a lot of research on the subject lately and I thought I would share some of the information that I have found with you. Read the article below and you will find a number of tools that should help you Inspect What You Expect when buying a website.

Market Research

Market research is a fundamental area of research that you should be doing on your competitors. Do not take the seller at his/her word when the tell you the facts about their website. They will paint the best possible picture that exists without mentioning the warts. The collection below will allow you to inspect what you are buying without having to depend on the seller. It’s almost like being able to complete your own “home inspection” before buying.

I have gathered these tools from around the web from multiple sources and compiled them here and on my blog.

Spyfu is a web scraping tool that will show you what a site spends on Pay Per Click adverts. A site can generate 1000 dollars a month in revenue but if it spends 900 dollars in PPC to do it then the REAL revenue figure is 100 dollars per month.

URLtrends - gather SEO data, Pagerank, links, rank trends and more.

Backlink Checker - See who is linking to a specific website. Incoming links increase pagerank..at least allegedly.

Yahoo Site Explorer - Check to see what Yahoo shows for inbound links and indexed pages.

Market Leap - Test the rankings of web pages. Great for testing competitor’s sites.

WebTools - Check to make sure you aren’t buying a banned domain. Critical if you ever expect to be indexed in Google or drive search engine traffic to your site.

Trademark Issues

If you’re buying a fan site, celebrity site or any site with a potential trademark or copyright issue then you could be in for a rude surprise if you are served with a cease and desist from a law firm representing the trademark owner. The best time to find out what trademark issues you might face is BEFORE you pay for your site.

Trademark Electronic Search System - Use the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to perform basic and advanced searches for trademarks.

Patent Electronic Business Center - Search the patent office’s records for full-text and full-page image returns on your competitors’ issued and published patent applications.

Research done here now will make sure you have no nasty surprises down the road. If the purchase amount is sizeable enough then you should surely consult a lawyer if you have reservations.

Hosting

Would you like to know how to see which host a specific website is using? This doesn’t really matter much although it does give you a way to provide a “security” check on the seller. Some unscrupulous sellers will actually try to sell sites that don’t belong to them. An easy check up to make sure they are who they say they are would be to ask them who hosts it. If they aren’t the seller, chances are they won’t answer correctly.

Don’t rely on this as your only means of security but it’s another check.

Who is Hosting This - This will show you is hosting the site currently.

Website Pulse - Website pulse will show you the speed of a web host. It shows response time, sizes and more.

Traffic

Would you like to know how much traffic a specific website is getting? Sellers will tend to flaunt their traffic count in the For Sale listings and it can sound impressive but you need to look more closely. Inspect the incoming URLs and see where the traffic is coming from. If it is paid traffic coming from “buy traffic for cheap.com” then tread carefully.

Look for trends or spikes and don’t be fooled by a 3 or 6 month average. One front page Digg article can give a website a good monthly average for the year, even though these visitors are likely never coming back. Inspect the traffic month by month and even day by day.

Google Analytics - Google Analytics is one of the best tools around and a little known fact is that if the seller is using Analytics on the site you are considering, they can allow you access to their Analytics page. No secrets there.

Compete - Compete give a great overview of a site’s traffic. It shows visitor info, growth, traffic counts, and you can put multiple sites in a portfolio as well.

Alexa - Alexa is the most commonly touted service there is, however it is definitely not the best choice in my opinion. There is concern out there that Alexa is heavily biased towards certain kinds of sites. Tread softly if this is the only valuation of traffic that you are offered.

SEO Analyzer - This tool will analyzes the weaknesses on a website allowing you to fix them and enjoy a resulting traffic increase…..at least that’s the plan. You could use this to gauge how quickly and significantly you might improve traffic post purchase.

Statsaholic - This will show stats about a sites rankings, page views etc. I have very little experience with this but it is a popular tool.

Website Valuation Tools

You’ve probably seen those little widgets on blogs and websites that give a value of that site, did you notice how grossly inflated the price was? I am not aware of any service out there where you can plug a URL into it and it give you any idea at all what the site is worth.

The only way to accurately assess a sites value is using good old common sense and many of the tools that I have listed above.

I hesitate to even say this but a very rough calculation that is often used as a starting point is 12 times current revenue. This is NOT an accurate method but is widely accepted to be used as a basis for a starting point. There are so many other factors involved on website valuation that it will take another complete article to even begin to discuss tthe topic.

Conclusion

In the end the real value of the site is no different than anything else…. it is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. It’s no different than your house, your car, your timeshare etc…if a buyer isn’t willing to pay the amount that you ask then the site isn’t worth that much. Period.

If you have a website you are interested in selling or you have a comment on the website flipping craze then I would like to hear from you.

Author:  You can reach me on my Make Money Online blog at TheBlogEntrepreneur.com where you can read this same article with all of the links in place….saves you time.

Sitemaps have been about for a while. They were originally created a visual guide to your website. As websites became larger and more complex webmasters used them as a way to view the entire structure of a website to find the connections between pages. Think of them as a kind of interactive table of contents and index rolled into one.

In recent years the search engines have been viewing site maps as a good way to index websites and find all the related content. Google led the charge to make this a mainstream web tool when it introduced XML sitemaps. Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google is still the best way to get your website completely crawled by Google. It has become a standard SEO best practice.

As with many things on the web, Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Ask all had their own specific way to use and submit sitemaps in the format they dictated. About six months ago a couple of these folks joined forces to create a standardized method of sitemap creation. They formed an organization called Sitemaps.org and agreed on using the XML sitemap format.

Sorry for the history lesson, but this is really good news for small business web site owners because it will greatly simplify the process of creating and submitting your sitemap and in doing so enhance your chances of getting your entire website indexed by all the search engines.

So, in today’s article I’m going to tell you how to create and submit your XML sitemap.

What is a sitemap?

According to Sitemaps.org: “Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.”

Building an XML sitemap

While there are several ways to actually create an XML sitemap I like XML-Sitemaps.com The good news is that if you have a rather small site (under 500 pages) you can simply use their free tool to create an xml sitemap. Over 500 pages and you need to get the $19.95 download.

Getting Your Sitemap found

Once you create your sitemap it’s still a good idea to create a free Google Webmaster account so that you can submit your sitemap directly to Google Sitemaps

Robots.txt file

Now here’s where the coming together of the search engines gets really nice. Not only will Ask, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MS Live accept the XML format for your sitemap they have also decided to accept an easy, auto-discovery method. In other words you won’t have to figure out how to submit to each as they will find your sitemap if you direct them using your robots.txt file. A robots.txt file is a very simple file that resides on your server giving information for the search engines. Many use this file to tell the search engines not to find certain information.

If you already have a robots.txt file, you can simply add the line of code below anywhere to it. If you don’t have one, simply create a file in notepad or other text editor, add the code below, save it as robots.txt and upload to the root of your site. (Obviously you need to put the actual URL of your site in here)

Sitemap: http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Advanced tip - If you use the paid version of xml-sitemap generator you can set up what’s known as a cron job (it’s a Unix only thing) and have your site crawled on a weekly basis and update your sitemap. This is really great if you blog several times a weeks on your domain as it adds your newest posts. Ask your web host about this one.

Author:  John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com

Having launched more than 100 specialist content websites for clients over the last six months, I often get asked this question. My answer is always twofold.

Over the long term, which I suggest is 12 to 24 months, good-quality, highly focused and regularly updated content websites will triumph.

Google and the search engines are getting far better at separating the wheat from the chaff. They are 100% focused on finding the best content for each particular search request.

Once the search engines have visited your site and made an initial positive assessment, they will keep coming back and re-indexing your content. The more content you publish, the more frequently they will return. The more they like what they see, the higher they will rank you on the search results pages. The higher up the results list you appear, the more people will see your links and click on them. Hopefully, some of these visitors like what they read so much that they link to it from their websites or blogs. These inbound links from other sites are seen as positive endorsements of your content by the search engines, which respond by improving your site’s position on the search results pages.

And so the virtuous circle goes on and the traffic to your website increases.

The moral of this story is: keep publishing great content and don’t give up just because you don’t see instant results.

But this all takes time.

What can you do if you want to increase the number of visitors coming to your website?

There is a lot you can do. In fact, if you undertook all the activities that could build traffic, you would have no time to create content.

So where should you focus your early marketing efforts to get the greatest long-term benefits?

The answer is to build your presence, reputation and authority with your target audience so that you have a firm foundation of loyal and supportive readers who will help spread the word about you and your site.

To achieve this goal in the shortest possible time, you should focus on the handful of people in your market who can make a big difference. They will be characterized in the following ways:

1. They have a relevant audience of their own, probably via their own website or blog.
2. They have a good reputation for being authorities in your sector.
3. They are interested in what you write about.
4. They have shown they are happy to provide links from their site to other websites.

These are the people you need to engage with, so they will talk about you and what you have to say. If you are mentioned in articles written by perceived experts, you become endorsed as an expert yourself. This will bring targeted and relevant traffic to your website and will start building a loyal audience.

So how do you work with these very busy people who are continually being pestered for endorsements?

Here are some good ideas:

1. Get on the Radar - The best way to get on another blogger’s radar is to get him or her to see you as a useful and helpful ally. Most bloggers’ sites allow people to add comments after articles. The quality of these comments improves the site and turns it into a community. To get noticed, you should regularly add good-quality, well-thought-out comments on all the sites you want to work with.

2. Link to Their Blogs or Websites - Every successful blogger or website owner knows the importance of inbound links, so show your support by providing links to those sites, referring to specific articles (with links) and talking about them in comments and forums on other people’s websites.

3. Get in Contact - Once you have established yourself as a supporter, it is time to get in touch directly. But a word of warning; DON’T go straight in with a request for a link to your website. This will undo all the good work you have done so far. First you need to build a personal relationship, so think about how you can help the person be more successful. Here are some approaches that I know have worked:

a. Ask if you can do an interview, which you will publish on your site. Better still, make it a podcast that you publish on iTunes and similar sites.

b. Offer to write an article about a subject you know is highly relevant to that person’s audience for exclusive publication on his or her website. Try to become a regular guest writer.

c. Ask if you can republish on your website a specific article he or she has written.

d. If you have written an ebook, invite the person to be an official reviewer.

e. Ask him or her to comment on a particular article on your site that is relevant to something he or she has previously said.

4. Meet in Person - Nothing beats meeting in person to cement a relationship. Arranging to meet is usually best achieved at industry events, unless you are fortunate enough to live near the person.

5. Encourage Community on Your Website - Once you have engaged with all the key influencers in your sector, your ultimate goal is for them to start visiting your website regularly to see what you are writing about. When they visit, you ideally want them to leave comments or participate in your forum. For this to happen, you need to have created a community where you are visible and active.

Summary

Engaging with and being recognized by the key online movers and shakers in your niche is one of the fastest ways to build a core audience and credibility. Do everything you can to help these people become successful, and you will reap the rewards. Remember, to have friends you’ve got to be a friend!

Author:  SubHub provides an all-in-one solution to enable you to rapidly design, build and run your own content website. Publish for profit on the web. Website: http://www.subhub.com SubHub Articles Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SubhubStartASubscriptionOrMembershipWebsite-OnlineMagazineOnlineJournalOnlineNewsletter?format=xml

Writing a regular ezine (online newsletter) can sometimes feel like hard work. So if you’re putting in the time and effort to give your readers valuable content, consider implementing at least a few of the strategies in this article to help your efforts pay off in profits.

Here are 4 ways to help your ezine make you more money:

1. Self-promote

Besides giving valuable content in each issue of your ezine, don’t forget to add a little self-promotion as well. After all, it is one of your best marketing tools, and you want to make sure that you’re letting your subscribers know what products and services you have available for them. It’s best to do this in a separate section of your ezine, instead of in the copy of the article you write for your readers. A short blurb about you and what you offer, as well as a bit about one of your products and services with a link to more information is all you really need to do.

A tip: If space allows, consider adding one or two short testimonials from your clients/customers who are raving fans, too.

Depending on the method through which you are publishing your ezine, you can track how many times your links are clicked on, which gives you valuable market research information about what your readers are interested in finding out more about.

2. Give Options

If you are a service professional, know that there are many people who would like to hire you one-on-one but that option doesn’t fit into their budget just yet. If you offer them other options, and promote those offerings in your ezine, you’ll turn some of those prospects into paying clients.

For example, if you coach or consult one-on-one, consider offering a group coaching program with a price point that would be much more accessible than your private fees would be. Or take your knowledge and package it into an ebook, or a series of teleseminars, or an ecourse, and price them reasonably. Then promote them in your ezine.

3. Offer specials

Your readers may find the content of your free ezine valuable and would really like more, but they might need a bit of encouragement to buy from you. So give your subscribers a special discount on something you offer, with a time limit for purchasing (which really does encourage people to “act now”).

For example, offer a 2-for-1 deal on your ebooks, or 20% off one of your programs if they register within a week. This strategy will move some of your readers from the “free” part of your funnel into the “fee” part of your funnel, which is exactly what you want.

4. Offer recommendations

I get so many questions about the services I use in my business that I periodically give recommendations in my ezine. These products and services are ones I truly believe are of high quality, because I have used them personally or because they come highly recommended to me by my mentor coaches. Some of these I am a reseller of (an affiliate), meaning I make a small commission on every sale I refer, and others are products and services I love and know would be of value to my subscribers.

Don’t forget that your number one priority with your ezine is to provide valuable content for your subscribers. Proportion 10-20% of your content with promoting you and your offerings, and you will be working smarter and not harder.

Also remember that with each issue you put out, you are building trust and rapport with your list, becoming known as an expert in your niche, and gaining lots of exposure (especially if you submit your ezine articles to article submission services), all of which are so important to the overall success of your business.

Author:  Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & CoachT, founder of ClientAbundance.com and creator of 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success SystemT, teaches professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com.

Web analytics has been around for a long time but only in the last few years has it grown to provide data more useful to online shops and websites. The basic web analytics services were based off log files, and this service usually came packaged along with your hosting server. It simply worked by tracking each action conducted on your website as a hit and then converted this data into reports. In the following years it moved on from using log files to using transparent images to track the visitors directly. This opened a whole new line of data for web entrepreneurs to use their arsenal for better web promotion.
WHY TRACK?

The simplest answer would be to improve on your website’s purpose. But this is only possible if you correctly use the statistical information you have collected on your visitors. A basic analytics program would tell you six things:

1. NUMBER OF VISITORS
To see growth and also better understand your visitors and fluctuation of traffic on a hourly, daily and monthly basis. This helps better sell your advertising space once you have an idea of the exposure your website has.

2. PAGE VIEWS
Find out how many impressions you have and if visitors see more than a single page on your website before exiting. This would help pinpoint any webpages on your website that are not ’sticky’ which you can then improve on.

3. ENTRY/EXIT
See which webpage your visitor entered from and where they left your website. Sometimes you would be able to see if certain webpages made your visitors felt lost or just didn’t display user-friendly navigation to allow them to move on to your target pages.

4. REFERRERS
Is your website positioned well in search engines or do you mainly receive traffic from other websites and banner advertising. Find your website’s strengths and weaknesses and see what needs to be done to improve overall.

5. SEARCH PHRASES
Sometimes visitors find your website using keywords you wouldn’t expect. One of the quickest ways to increase traffic to your website would be to find keywords your website is popular for and build more pages based around those words. It is difficult to sometimes tell why search engines choose your website as the source of information for a certain keyword but knowing it will help you capitalize on the situation and not waste your time and resources focusing on less frequently occurring keywords searches.

6. GEOGRAPHICAL / SYSTEM INFORMATION
This is a broad array of information covering where your visitor is located, his PC and browser information plus various other details that would help you better build your website to suit your public. A simple example would be that if most of your visitors are using Internet Explorer browser in 640×480 resolution then it would be very important your website look nice and usable at that settings.

NEW LINE: ECOMMERCE
As websites grew more complex and online shopping became a norm, web entrepreneurs needed more information to better server their shoppers. This gave light to a new list of statistical information that would prove very useful, mainly the following three:

1. REVENUE TRACKING
Is your traffic converting to sales? Which keyword do customers type in search engines that actually go on and convert to sales? Find out this and more to better target your products to customers.

2. CAMPAIGN TRACKING
Due to the competitive nature of online shopping, advertising is standard practice for ecommerce websites. Popular advertising services such as Google Adwords, Overture and MSN AdCenter allow websites to make quick sales with no downpayment, strictly on a per-click basis. But how do you know which advertising campaign has a good ROI. Collecting information on this helps you better decide where to invest your advertising dollar for maximum effectiveness.

3. CLICKPATHS
The main focus of ecommerce websites is to make the sale. Once your visitor has found the product they are put through a series of pages to make the purchase. Obviously you can’t guide them through the whole process in person but if you could see the path they had taken it would be as good. Find out where your customers get stuck, at which checkout step they decide to leave your website or look for your FAQs page. This information will make your website more user-friendly and in turn help you increase sales.

BOTTOM LINE
Statistics is a very important aspect of any website. It covers a wide gambit of points that website owners should be aware of in order to effectively optimize their website. This includes popularity i.e. website growth, advertising space value and maximizing conversion of sales. But this is all only useful if you know how to properly utilize it. Basic statistics is easy to understand for any beginner but if you run an ecommerce or high traffic website with valuable advertising space it is highly recommended you get in touch with a professional to guide you through how to read the reports and properly utilize the results.

Author:  As Internut’s Projects Director, Vinay Gorasia has successfully managed analytics campaigns for small start up to Fortune 500 companies. All solutions are custom designed to increase productivity of every website by providing relevant statistics. To find out more visit http://www.internut.com.my today.

Every day hundreds of domain names become expired and become owner-less due to some reasons. An expired domain that is useless for someone may become usable and beneficial for others! An expired domain can offer several unique advantages and benefits for the person who uses it. Right now, increasing numbers of people are flocking together to own expired domains just to create a huge wealth and unlimited profits out of them. Intelligent and smart entrepreneurs are also using an expired domain as a tool to expand their online business operations and functions.

What exactly is an expired domain? There are several explanations that define what an expired domain really is. However, in simple terms an expired domain is a domain, already used by its previous owner, but abandoned and left orphaned due to some unknown reasons. Similarly, an expired domain name is not used currently by anyone. It could also be termed as a domain that is quickly approaching its renewal date. In other words, it could also be termed as “soon to be expired” domain name, while a domain that is past its fixed renewal date without the renewal subscription fees paid out is termed “an expired domain”.

In real terms, an expired domain could be anything in its nature like:

• It could have been a well-developed web site in its previous avatar.
• It could have been a web site that was well promoted and advertised by the previous owner.
• It could have been a well placed web site in the most popular search engines.
• It could have also been actively linked to different web sites and directories.
• It could have also been associated with a number of business deals and partnerships.
• It could have also been the big compendium of plenty of reciprocal links attached to it.
• It could have also been a web site that changed several ownerships in the previous months.

A domain can become expired due to several reasons and factors like:

• Lack of cash resources to run and manage the web site
• Lack of required funds to renew the domain name
• Wrong and invalid email addresses that can result in bounced mails.
• The owner loosing interest in the web site itself.
• A domain can also expire as a result of business closures and shutdowns.
• Sheer lack of knowledge and ignorance about the real value of domains
• Unknowingly forgetting to renew the domain name.

The overall control or ownership or dominance of a particular web domain is granted only for a limited period of time of one to two years. However, the ownership also comes with certain critical riders like:

• The owner will follow the right and prescribed registration procedures
• The owner will pay the prescribed renewal fees on time and within the fixed deadline.

By chance, if the owner of the domain either declines or forgets to pay the prescribed renewal fees within the deadline, the said domain will soon expire and become an expired domain. Once a domain becomes expired, it will soon go back to the pool of unregistered domain names; eventually, such a domain will be announced for open sale or auction to the general public. Though, subscribers register their domain names for one or two years, it is also possible to retain the ownership of the domain name for a period of two years or more. For such a lengthy period of registration, one can avail a generous amount of discounts and rebates for the domain name of choice.

An expired domain could be your goldmine of excellent business opportunities and chances. One of the biggest benefits of owning or buying an expired domain name is its capacity to set up a source of constant income. If you are looking for a viable business opportunity or if you have been searching for increased web traffic or when you want to sell your domain for a sustained profit, then an expired domain could the timely answer!

Author:  John Khu is the well-known author of a new e-book titled “Expired Domain Secret”. He is also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web site called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

Once you’re online business website is live, generating targeted traffic is your next hurdle. But to maximize your online success you need to go beyond traffic generation. You need to focus on web site conversion. Many online marketers spend lots of time and money on traffic generation. And they fail to pay attention to website conversions.

Here are 7 website conversion secrets to help you get more customers and make more money. Period. Lets start…

Conversion Secret #1: Pay attention to the buying experience. Put your self in your buyer’s shoes. How would you rate your site? The most important rule of thumb is to make everything drop-dead easy. No hoops allowed! Minimize the number of clicks in your ordering process. If they have to register… make it a one-step process. I recently read that up to 40% of ecommerce shopping carts are ABANDONED without an order because the order process was confusing.

When your customers get confused, they get frustrated or angry and then they leave. Not sure how you’re doing? Be smart. TEST. That’s the only way. Or contact your customers and ask them to rate their buying experience at your site. Just find out and you’ll know! Very simple.

Conversion Secret #2: Optimize your site structure. Sounds easy enough. And it is! But you’d be shocked to know how many marketers DON’T. Make it well organized and stupid simple to navigate. Prioritize your themes and sub-themes and structure accordingly. You have less than 6 to 8 seconds to capture your visitor’s attention and get them interested. Most people don’t sit there and analyze. They respond to unconscious feelings and the famous ‘gut’ feeling.

Conversion Secret #3: What is the goal of your site? Your conversion goal? What is the purpose of the page they’re on? I hope you have thought about this. If not… do it now! Do you have 12 options for them to click on? Ever consider they might get confused because there ARE so many options? You can have many options for them. And if you do then it’s critically important to have a very clearly defined navigation structure.

Conversion Secret #4: Make sure your site or page loads fast! The faster, the better. You know how impatient we’ve all become. Your site needs to be fully loaded in less than 6 to 8 seconds! Fully visible. Research shows again and again that up to half of your visitors will LEAVE if your site is more than 6 to 8 seconds to load.

Conversion Secret #5: Do you have an effective and clear call to action? Here’s something that has been known for many decades. Courtesy of direct mail pioneers who came way before the internet. But it’s still true! People need to be told what to do next.

Absolutely still true. Don’t be afraid to ‘politely’ inform them of what to do next, or just what to do! Tell them! Don’t expect the website visitor to know what to do next. You can alleviate fears of the unknown by telling them, in some fashion, what their next action will do. Click to order your product… click here to register for your free download, etc. People need to be reassured and you’ll do that by telling them what result will happen from their next action.

Conversion Secret #6: Do you have a strong message? This is different from call to action. I’m talking about a clear, strong, and consistent message throughout your page. If you’re talking about a particular product, theme, service… whatever it is, stay on topic and focus on it.

Conversion Secret #7: Test, test, and test again. Increasing your conversions takes time and is an ongoing process. There are lots of programs available to do this. Find out how much time people are spending on your pages. What do they click on? Find out what’s strong and improve on it. See if you can expand on it. Find out what’s weak and see if you CAN improve on it.

Your profits will soar if you do only half of what I’ve shown you here today. But why would do that? Do ALL of them. And there’s even more to be learned. Failing to work on your conversions is like running on half empty, or running on misfiring cylinders. So don’t do it!

Author:  A former college dropout, Dan “The Man” Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to an internet multi-millionaire. Discover how you can maximize your website profits in minimum time. For a limited time, you can test-drive Dan’s Insiders Club for 30-days Risk-Free and get $1,165 dollars worth of bonus gifts. Rush cover to: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/testdrive.html

How do you treat the people with whom you do business? Many times what we forget in this online world where so much of our customer service is automated is that, in the end, we’re still doing business with other people. Do your customer service procedures create raving fans or send people away into the Internet black hole, never to be heard from again, except when you’re bashed on some blog or disparaged in a discussion forum post?

What’s the real price you pay as an online business owner for your customer service? Usually, the “real price” boils down to one thing — word-of-mouth-marketing. If your customer likes the way you handle a situation, he will probably tell tell 3-5 others. However, if he feels he was treated poorly or unfairly, he’ll tell 50 of his closest friends about the bad experience. Sad to say, we human beings love to complain much more than to praise. Why burn bridges with your customer when you don’t have to?

Online business owners often create customer service rules that are based on fear — fear of being taken advantage of, fear of someone getting the best of you, fear of someone not paying you for your time What happens if the entire basis of your customer service standards is fear? Well, then fear-based outcomes is what you’ll get, because you tend to get what you choose to focus on. So, if you perceive that everyone in the world is out to get you and take advantage of you, then you’re right.

Is there a good middle ground to choose that protects both your interests and gives your customer a great experience? There is, and you’ll find it in my simple, 10-second philosophy of customer service. Ready? Here it goes…..treat your customer how you want to be treated. That’s it — nothing high tech here.

To help you evaluate your online customer service for my Golden Rule philosophy, here are 7 standards you should consider:

1. Don’t hide behind the legalese. Don’t expect your customer to page through a multi-page, small print document and read and understand all of your stipulations, especially if they’re written in legalese rather than simpler English. If you put unfavorable or difficult terms in your Terms of Service agreement and your customer signs it, sure, you have legal protection to back up whatever terms they stipulated to with their signature. But, will the wrangling over those terms be worth it in the end? If you have terms that your customer might not find favorable at a later date, be sure and point those out to him in the beginning. Don’t expect him to figure it out on his own, and don’t hide behind the cowardly excuse, “Well, you should have read the Terms of Service thoroughly There’s nothing I can do.”

2. Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes. Would you want to be treated the way you’re treating them? If what you’re doing to your customers makes you queasy and uneasy, that’s your instinct telling you that what you’re doing isn’t just and proper. Moreover, how would you feel if you were treated in this fashion?

3. Make it simple to do business with you. Don’t make your customer have to hire an attorney to understand your contract or to do business with you. I’m not advocating that you completely ignore legal help and advice. However, an attorney’s job is to protect you from ALL liability, even those things that have a very small likelihood of actually occurring. Consequently, this usually translates into a very long document that’s very difficult to read and comprehend. Work with your attorney to transform any contracts or Terms of Service agreements that you have into ones that are easily read and understood by the average person.

4. Don’t do customer support via email. When you’re first starting out, using email to answer service problems is ok, but as it becomes more and more difficult to send and receive legitimate business email, you’ll find that you start to lose inquiries as your business grows larger and as your number of inquiries increase. At that point, think about installing a virtual support desk. This is a website that contains common FAQs and answers, as well as offers your customers the ability to open a ticket to report a problem. All correspondence occurs within the site, so you lessen the possibility of lost email. One of the more popular programs is Kayako, www.kayako.com.

5. Make it easy to contact you. Nothing is more irritating than wanting to speak to a real, live person for help and all you find is a contact form or an email address. Don’t leave your customers out in the cold. Offer several options for contacting you, whether that’s by email, phone, instant messaging system, live chat on your website, or a help desk/trouble ticket system.

6. Make it easy to stop doing business with you. I learned a valuable lesson from the Director of Admissions when I worked as a student affairs administrator at a small college and was trying to change a student’s mind about dropping out of school. He told me, “Once they’re already decided to leave, their minds are made up and there’s no turning back. Just let them go.” This applies to your customers as well. There may be a small percentage that you can salvage as a customer in this process, but the overwhelming majority have already made their final decision. Don’t make them jump through hoops to cancel their business with you — make it as easy and painless as possible. However, do follow up with a phone call or email or survey to determine the reason for their departure, but don’t force them to go through this process to exit. Remember the AOL service cancellation call that was recorded and posted online that became a huge embarrassment for AOL? Don’t let your cancellation policy become the next big Internet joke.

7. If in doubt, ask your customer what to do. If you and your customer can’t come to a resolution that feels equitable to both parties, ask your customer what he believes is the fair thing to do. I believe that generally people are good and fair and that most will treat you humanely if they’ve been humanely treated by you. The final decision may not be everything that you want, but it’s probably not everything that your customer wants, either. You can use this strategy to end on a positive note, and while the customer may not return to you, he probably also won’t tell everyone he meets that you’re an ogre, either.

Figure out how you can implement this Golden Rule philosophy in your online business. You’ll find it to be a business asset that’s priceless.

Author:  Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com

So you want to build your own website, but where do you start? Once you decide that your company will benefit by going online, you should know that building a website requires a lot of time, hard work and dedication. The most important part of building your website is the planning stage; only once you’ve put all your ideas on paper can you move forward with purpose.

The First Step, Choosing a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name for your website can be exciting but also exasperating. It is easy enough to find a domain name which is catchy and suits your company, but is it available? The best and most obvious domain names are often already taken, which leaves you back at square one. The best way to go about choosing a domain name is to brainstorm a few ideas; sometimes it’s the most obvious or descriptive domain names that are available to register.

Now Register It

Once you’ve checked the availability of your chosen domain name you should register it to make sure that somebody else doesn’t beat you to it. If you’re aiming to receive South African traffic on your website you can register your domain name as a .co.za site and if you’re aiming for global traffic you can register as a .com website. You may find that your domain name is available as a .co.za, but not as a .com or vice versa. Consider choosing a domain name that is available in both, so that if your website grows you have the option of transforming it into a .com site, also, if a visitor mistakes your URL they won’t land on someone else’s page.

You can register yourself or you can ask a web hosting company to do it on your behalf, provided that they register the domain in your name. This is crucial if you wish to switch service providers at a later stage. Site registration takes between 24 and 72 hours for the process to be completed after which your site will go live. Once it’s live, everybody who navigates to your URL will be able to see your website.

Finding a Web Host

There are a lot of web hosting companies out there, so when searching for the ideal web host for your site, get quotes from a number of hosting companies. It’s always better to get a second opinion - and even better if you get a third, fourth and fifth.

Some web hosting companies ask you to sign annual contracts which means that you won’t be able to get rid of them if you’re not happy with their service, so before you sign anything, check them out thoroughly. Support is typically the number one priority, so look into this aspect very carefully; call or e-mail the support team of a prospective host to see what the response is like.

Make sure that the host is established and that their business is stable. Look at the quality and locality of their data centres. If you don’t know anything about data centres, ask an expert so that all the relevant questions can be asked. Make sure that their hardware and software packages are up to standard and that their network platform is reliable. You don’t want constant crashes when your website is up and running, so do your homework well.

Adding Content to Your Site

Building a website is not a once off event; it is an ongoing business process, requiring a commitment to maintenance. The more time and effort you are willing to put in, the more reward you will get out. It is difficult to get a site to start off with a bang, so continue adding content if you want to see traffic increasing.

You have to please your target market, so naturally your content should be centered around what your target market wants to read. Do your research and find the topics that your prospective customers want to read about.

Steer clear of Flash, unless you know exactly what you are doing; the design of your site is typically not as important as the content. People would much rather pay attention to the type of articles you have posted on your site than images that move around the screen. Having said that, good design should not to be neglected, because you can have the best content on your website, but if the layout and overall look of your site is not appealing then the content won’t look appealing either. A great website will have the balance of both; excellent content and a creative design.

Contact Details

When setting up a website you’re going to need an email address so that your visitors can contact you. Registering your own domain name means you can use the name for email too. It is important that you use a company or business email in order to portray a professional image. These are just guidelines to get you started, but they are not set rules. It’s not about following rules; it’s about playing around with the web and finding a formula that works for you. Once your website is off the ground all you’ll need is content and the World Wide Web’s your oyster.

Author:  Roger Theron is a copywriter for AlterSage, a company offering online marketing services for increasing traffic to your website.

How Well Do You Really Know Your Website?
If you’re like most webmasters, you have probably spent years building your site. You have spent years adding content, building links and cultivating traffic - but how well do you really know your website?

How well do you know the intricate details of your website’s traffic? Where do your site’s visitors come from? How long do they stay on your site? Just where do they go to on your site and how well do they convert into buyers or subscribers?

Do you know your site’s rankings in the major search engines? What are your site’s top keywords? What’s your site’s Google PageRank? Who are your IP neighbors? What your site looks like in other browsers? How much is your site worth?

These are just some of the questions you should know, mainly because the more knowledge you possess about your site, the better equipped you will be at improving it. So here’s a simple list of free site checking tools/sites that will let you “Big Brother” (monitor and watch) your site.

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps one of the most helpful analytical tools you can use on your site. Google Analytics will give you a wealth of information about your site’s traffic. Where it comes from, how long it stays on your site, where it goes on your site, how well your content converts… invaluable information every webmaster should have in their possession. ( www.google.com/analytics )

2. NetMechanic Toolbox

Check your site’s mechanics - find broken links, check browser compatibility, find bad HTML code, spot slow-loading pages, and check your spelling… all by using the NetMechanic Toolbox: ( www.netmechanic.com )

3. Keyword Suggestion Tool

This free keyword suggestion tool will tell you how many searches are done in WordTracker and Overture for your site’s keywords. Extremely valuable information since much of web’s traffic and ecommerce is keyword driven. ( www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/)

4. Iwebtool

This is another free site which offers many valuable webmaster’s tools that will give you information about your/any site. Google PageRank, PageRank Prediction, Link Popularity, Search Engine Positions for Keywords, Backlink Checker… also Visual PageRank where you can see all the PR values of all the links on a given page - both internal and external. ( www.iwebtool.com )

5. Alexa Traffic Rankings

Alexa tracks the web’s traffic by using the Alexa bar in a surfer’s browser. Most people know it is not an accurate assessment of the traffic on the net but is a handy measuring stick, nonetheless. It is also a handy tool for comparing sites and seeing the long-tern traffic trends of different sites, including your own. ( www.alexa.com )

6. Your Site’s Traffic Logs

Most webmasters know your raw traffic logs are worth checking and reading. It contains valuable information about your site. Especially helpful if you’re checking for broken links on your site, you don’t want to see those 302’s everywhere. Close examination and regular checking of your traffic logs and stats will point out the profitable keywords on your site.

7. BetterWhois

You can use this site to find out the domain information about your site. Do you have control of your domain? Many webmasters buy their domain name thru their web hosting company, while this is not a problem in itself, however, if any dispute should arise who has administrative control of your domain; you or your hosting company? Can you change hosting companies? ( www.betterwhois.com )

8. Google Alerts

Another valuable tool from Google which notifies you by email when your link or site is found anywhere on the web. Great for keeping track of any new links your site is getting. Many webmasters also use this handy tool to keep track of their competitor’s sites. They also use Google Alerts to keep track of whenever their own name is mentioned anywhere on the web. This one would even make Orwell proud. ( www.google.com/alerts )

9. IP Neighbors

Many webmasters have their site hosted on shared hosting plans, which means there can be hundreds of sites sharing the same IP address. This site lets you discover who your IP neighbors are. Why would you want to know your IP neighbors? Well like neighbors everywhere; there are good ones and there are bad ones. For example, if you have a neighboring site that uses email to spam, it could get your IP address blocked or shut down. ( www.myipneighbors.com )

10. Any Browser

Use to this handy site to discover what your site looks like in different browsers; you could be in for a real shock. ( www.anybrowser.com )

11. Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar can be placed on your browser so that when you’re surfing you can see the Google PageRank of each page/site you’re visiting. Many SEO experts believe Google is not giving us the true PR of a page and this bar is rather useless. However, like the Alexa rankings it is a handy measuring stick, nonetheless. ( www.toolbar.google.com )

12. What Is Your Site Worth?

Please take this last analyzing tool with “a large grain of salt”, but it is fun to use and to see how much your site is worth. Measurement here is done largely by the amount of links you have coming into your site. ( directory.sootle.com/website-worth )

In conclusion, all of these free handy tools/sites will give you a better, more complete picture of your own site. Remember, the more knowledge you acquire about your own site and your competitor’s sites, the more equipped you will be to succeed. This is one case where being a “Big Brother” can truly benefit your site.

Author:  The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Or why not try these: Free Marketing Courses.