Choose a Good Theme

When you create a blog by using a system such as WordPress or Joomla, you get thousands of options when it comes to themes for your new blog. A theme is basically an overall design, sort of like a template, that will determine the look and feel of your blog. Choosing a theme is relatively easy, as when you look through WordPress or Joomla, you will see thousands of free themes, as well as some paid ones that you can instantly apply to your blog. However, this is not something that you will want to rush into. It’s better for you to look carefully at all the designs available and select one that will work well for you.

The theme that you use will need to match well with your business and should be similar in appearance to your main website. Don’t hesitate to ask colleagues for advice on which theme will be better for you.

If you have some graphics and programming knowledge, you can design your own blog theme, or edit an existing one to make it match your needs better. You can also pay someone to make a custom made theme just for your blog, however the services of a professional theme designer could cost several hundreds of dollars.

Make Sure Your Blog is Inviting to the User and Easy to Navigate

One of the most common complaints that blog readers have is that the blogs seem to be filled with ads, opt in boxes and other monetization options, so much that it is difficult to actually see what link will lead them to an actual content page and which one is an ad. Of course, it’s important for you to make money from your blog and this is probably one of your primary objectives. But remember that the first purpose of the blog is a communication tool that you use to convey information to your visitors. Therefore, it needs to be easy to navigate for the user.

To determine whether you’re doing things right, create your blog and install your theme, make any customizations necessary and add a few test posts. Then show the result to some people to see whether they like it or not. Get some input on what they think should be changed or improved on your new blog. This will allow you to make some changes before you officially launch your blog.

Building Your Blog for Online Marketing: Part 2 is a post from: Websites For Sale

Advantages

• Ease of updating your website. If you plan to update your website on a regular basis, such as adding or removing products, adding new content, adding and removing seasonal promotions and special offers, etc. than a content management system will make this a whole lot easier for you. All you would need to do would be to log into your back end, make the necessary changes and it’s done. No need to use an HTML editor software, or re-upload files constantly to your web host.
• No coding or web design knowledge required. Here, you will not need to have any web design knowledge, or know how to use HTML. All you would do is install the CMS, then install the necessary themes or templates that will be the backbone of your site.
• Good for e-commerce. When you are planning to run an e-commerce website, using a CMS is mandatory if you are serious about it. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal all have e-commerce themes, both free and paid, that you can use to manage your website with ease. You can perform operations such as adding products, setting up different prices, coupons, promotions, integrating with different payment processors and gateways, etc. There are also dedicated e-commerce CMS available out there, such as Magento and OS Commerce.

Disadvantages

• A bit of a learning curve. For those who are used to working with simple HTML pages, using a CMS for the first time may seem like it has a learning curve associated with it. You will need to figure out which theme is best for your website, then install it and figure out how to use it to make the necessary changes and customizations. However, there are plenty of free tutorials, resources and help files available online for all themes and content management systems. Therefore, even though you may need to spend a few hours learning how to figure it out, in the end it will all be very easy for you.

As we can see here, using a CMS for your business website is definitely a good choice. No matter what kind of website you want to run, there will always be themes and templates available for you. Also, your site management will be streamlined significantly, as you can simply update your website with a few clicks of the mouse, rather than having to fire up Dreamweaver, make changes to your site, save the new file, then upload it to your webhost and replace the old one. Therefore, there is less work involved when using a CMS.

Building a Good Small Business Website: Part 3 is a post from: Websites For Sale

Blogs have many advantages. They make it very easy to add unique and new content, which will help them remain interesting with readers and also make SEO easier. With blogging platforms such as Joomla and WordPress, creating your own blog has never been easier. So how do you make one for affiliate marketing? Here is an example scenario:

Let’s say that you are promoting web hosting affiliate offers. The main topic of your blog will be web hosting, or issues that are of interest to other internet marketers or webmasters. You would make regular posts such as: web building tips, reviews of particular web hosts, comparisons between different types of web hosting, SEO advice, etc. Basically, anything that is related to being a webmaster.

There will be various ways for you to “plug” the affiliate ads into your blog. You can, of course use classic banner ads, or text ads placed in prominent locations. But it is also possible for you to include affiliate links inside the text of your blog. For example, you could link the name of a web host that you talk about in a blog post to the affiliate offer.

But one important thing to remember when you are creating a blog for affiliate marketing is to not make it look like this is the only purpose of your blog. Sure, for you the main objective of your blog would be to generate money for you. But your readers come to your blog in order to be informed about something they care about, not simply read post after post that is singing praises of various different companies and products.

So back to our example of a web hosting blog. Sure, it is fine to have certain posts talk about how great a certain web host is, or that inform readers of a special promotion that a hosting company is having at this time. But you also need to include some informative content as well. So you could make some posts that talk about web design tools or posts that explain how VPS web hosting is different from shared hosting, etc. If your readers notice that your blog is nothing more than an advertising platform, chances are they won’t trust it very much. They will probably leave to go to another site and the chances that someone would click one of your ads and sign up for one of the web hosts that you are pushing are quite remote if your blog is structured that way. Basically, the key to success is having regularly updated and informative content.

Using a Blog for Internet Marketing is a post from: Websites For Sale

1) Make sure you have proof that your website has made regular income for at least the past 6 months

2) Make sure your website ranks well for its main keywords. If it doesn’t spend a couple of months building up your backlinks which overtime will increase your websites position within search engines and also increase your websites page rank.

3) Make sure you have a unique design for your website. I highly recommend having your website built on wordpress as wordpress rank very well on search engines. Also many webmasters know how to use wordpress due to how easy the interface is.

4) Make sure you have unique content on your website, having duplicate content on your website just lowers the value of your website to both the buyer and also to search engines.

5) Try to build up an email list on your website.  The more emails you have on your list the higher the value of your website.  The value of 1 email address is $1 a month. So if you managed to build up an email list of 1,000 leads, you can get at least $1,000 extra for your website.  I highly recommend using Aweber as an email autoresponder as they provide cusomised templates you can insert into your website to make the optin forms look very professional. Its also a recognised leader in email lead capture.  A very good way to build up your email list is to give a way a free ebook related to your websites niche.

6) The addition of a forum to your website can be very useful also if you can build up a large community of users, as a buyer can see this as a great way to market to this large community of forum users, which will increase the value of your website.  Not only that it will also increase the amount of traffic to your website. The more traffic you have coming to your website the more valuble your website is.  Because any internet marketer looking to buy a website also looks at the amount of traffic coming to your website. The more traffic you have the more opportunities your website will have for your buyers to monitiese from.

7) Age of domain – Its important to have a well aged domain, i would say at least 12 months, the older the domain the better.

8.) Social networking followers. Another good idea is to setup a Twitter and Facebook fan page and try and get as many followers as possible because this is another very good way to get traffic to your website and also increase the value of your website because its another avenue the buyer can market to your followers.

9) Make sure you have as much statics as possible, potential buyers love to see as much proof as possible when deciding to purchase an internet business.  For example – Google analytics, Income stats from any affiliate accounts you have, any transaction proof you have from paypal. Maybe even creating a video of you logging into your accounts to proof your website has made the income you state on your listing.

10) If your website doesn’t have a blog, get a blog setup with at least a months unique content. A blog is very good for optimisation on search engines, and a buyer will be looking to make sure the site has a blog.

Getting the most money when selling your internet business is a post from: Websites For Sale

Web hosting services provide space on their servers for your website in exchange for a monthly fee. That space is essential for getting your website up and running. There are a lot of different companies you can choose from, but there are only two different types of hosting. Picking the right type of hosting depends on a few different factors.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is a type of hosting where your site (or sites) shares a server with a other sites. The server is divided up between all the customers paying for space on it. With shared hosting, you’ll usually get unlimited bandwidth, but limited system resources. If you tax the processor, or the RAM too hard, you will likely incur additional charges from your hosting provider. Since you get unlimited bandwidth, you can get as much traffic as you’d like, as long as your site doesn’t tax the server’s hardware. There are a lot of ways you can avoid that. If you are running a site built on WordPress, you can install a caching plugin that will keep your usage well within reasonable limits, no matter how much traffic you get. Most people won’t need to move off of shared hosting.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is a type of hosting where you get access to your own server to host your website (or websites) on. Dedicated hosting accounts often come with limited bandwidth, but unlimited server resources. If you plan to launch a site that runs some complex software, you’re going to want to get dedicated hosting. Alternately, if you plan to run multiple high traffic websites, you’re probably going to want to use dedicated hosting. The additional system resources are necessary to handle the additional load put on the server by the additional traffic.

If you only run one website, and you don’t have any plans of running others, you can probably use shared hosting for the entire life of your website. By being mindful of the system resources your site is using, you can be sure that you’ll never outgrow your shared hosting plan. If, on the other hand, you plan to run multiple websites, or if you plan to implement features that will tax the server, you’ll want to go with dedicated hosting. If you know your needs, you can pick the right hosting program to suit your needs. Once you know which type you’ll need, just shop around for a company that suits your needs in terms of pricing and other features.

Choose The Right Hosting To Suit Your Needs is a post from: Websites For Sale

If you’re interested in starting a website, but you’ve never done it before, there are a few things you’re going to want to know before you get started. You need a few essential tools and services before you can really get your site off the ground.

Hosting

You’re going to need a place to house the files for your new website. There are a number of hosting options available to you, some of which are free, some of which are extremely expensive. It’s important to know your needs before you pick a hosting provider. The free, and cheap providers tend to be lacking in functionality, so it’s important to know what features you intend to put on your site before picking a hosting provider. If you don’t plan on developing the site yourself, ask the developer you have hired what sort of features you’ll need, and whether or not they have any hosting recommendations.

Domain Name

Your domain name should be representative of the content on your site, and if possible it should include a keyword relevant to any searches your target audience might do. Your domain name should be short, and easy to remember. If you can get a .com name rather than a .net, .org, or any of the other suffixes, that’s best. Most people try to go to the .com version of a site first, and then think about the others. As with hosting, there are a number of companies you can register a domain with. In fact, the hosting company you’re using probably offers domain registrations.

Content

You’ll also need a website full of content. If you’re not comfortable designing your own site, you can always hire a firm or a freelance contractor to do it for you. There are also a number of freely available content management systems like WordPress that make developing a website much easier. No matter what your budget, there’s a way to get a site up and running. Once your site is up and running, you’ll want to add content on a regular basis. By updating a site frequently, you are actually boosting your search rank, as search engines look at how frequently a site is updated when determining search rank.

There are a number of ways to get a new site up and running, and no matter what your budget, you can get started in a short amount of time.

Start Your First Website is a post from: Websites For Sale

If you’ve ever thought about starting a new website, chances are you have looked into hiring a professional designer. A lot of design firms charge extremely high rates for simple websites, and in many cases there are additional costs for different types of functionality. With design firms charging such high rates, it’s hard to imagine getting a website off the ground on a budget, but it can definitely be done.

Setting up a site using WordPress is actually fairly simple. If you’re comfortable with some light HTML, chances are you could do it yourself, as long as you’re not looking for anything too complicated. Most hosting providers offer an automatic install of WordPress, and once it’s installed, all you really need to do is make a few simple tweaks to the theme to get it looking the way you want it to. If you’d like to add a little bit of additional functionality to your site, there are many plugins and widgets available for WordPress that allow you to do a wide variety of things. There are some plugins to help with SEO optimization, some to add things like polls to your site, and some to allow you to embed a podcast right into a post. Some of them require a little more effort to set up than others, but if you’re on a tight budget it might be worth the time.

If design firm prices don’t fit in your budget, and you don’t feel like you could learn to set up a site on your own, there’s a third option. Sites like elance.com let you connect with many freelance designers. Freelancers can often product the same quality work that a large firm would deliver, but given that their operating cost is significantly lower, you’ll get a much better price out of them. It’s important to go through a site like elance rather than just searching Craigslist for a freelancer. Elance, and other sites like it let you see a designer’s profile, along with reviews of their work. That way, you can be sure you’re getting a designer that can handle your site, and won’t leave you high and dry if there’s a problem.

Don’t be discouraged by the prices big design firms offer. If you take the time to do a little work with your site yourself, or if you can find a freelancer that suits your budget, your site can become a reality, even if your budget is tight.

Get A Good Looking Website On A Budget is a post from: Websites For Sale

If you’re reading this site, you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with blogs. Blogs are online journals used either for personal, professional, or journalistic purposes. Whatever you decide to do with your blog, there are a few tips you should keep in mind if you want it to be profitable.

First thing’s first – pick a topic for you blog. Figure out exactly what sort of content you want to put on your new blog, and think about your audience, and their wants and needs. A blog won’t be profitable if no one reads it, so your content needs to be high quality, and it needs to appeal to a broad audience.

Now that you know what topic you’re going to be blogging about, it’s time to decide where to host your blog. You can use any number of free blogging sites, like WordPress, or Blogger, but it’s usually a better idea to host your blog yourself. Using a blogging service makes things easy – just sign up and start blogging. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow for a lot of customization. Hosting your own blog leaves room for a great deal of customization, but it’s a little harder to set up. You’ll need to register your domain name, get a hosting package, and then set up some blogging software, like WordPress, on your new site. It’s a little harder, but the customization options make it easy to build an attractive and engaging site.

Now that you have a blog up and running, it’s time to put some ads on it. Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, and Clickbank are easy to deal with for new comers to internet marketing and web design. All you have to do with each of those services is sign up, and paste the ad code into your blog posts. With a little effort, you can get some ads in your posts that are directly relevant to the topic of the post, which makes those ads more likely to get clicked on.

If you’re already familiar with internet marketing, consider looking for some more profitable affiliate programs to put on your site. Look for products and services that would be of interest to your target audience, and be sure to put your ads in noticeable places.

Building a profitable blog isn’t easy, but it is possible. Once you have your ads in place, remember, they won’t do you any good if no one reads your site. Put yourself out there, and do everything you can to drive traffic to your blog. If you can get it some traffic, you’ll have a profitable blog before you know it.

Make Money Blogging is a post from: Websites For Sale

It’s no secret that you need to figure out what keywords apply to your content in order to create an SEO friendly website. The challenge comes in figuring out exactly what to do with your keywords. We’re going to show you a few uses for keywords that will help you create a SEO friendly website.

The first (and one of the most important) place you should be using keywords is in your title. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, you should try to use as many keywords as you can in the title of the post you’re creating. If you’re building a website using an editor like Dreamweaver, or just hand coding it, then try and use your keywords as part of the title of the page, in between the title tags. It’s important not to make your title awkward by overusing keywords. You have to remember, your visitors see your title too, it’s not just there for search engines.

Descriptive meta tags, and keyword meta tags aren’t as big a part of how search engines rank sites as they used to be, but that doesn’t mean they should be overlooked. Description meta tags should contain as many keywords as you can manage, while remaining coherent. It’s important not to make your description awkward or overly bulky just to squeeze in a few more keywords because search engines often use those descriptions as a snippet about the site when it shows up in search results. As for the meta keyword tags, don’t exceed 20 keywords when using them. Search engines view excessive keyword use in the meta tags negatively, so you could actually wind up doing more harm than good if you overdo it.

A visitor that comes to your site through an image search is no less valuable than a visitor that comes through a regular search, so make sure to handle your images correctly. Be sure to take the time to name your images carefully. Be as descriptive as you can, and don’t be afraid to give the image a somewhat lengthy name. Be sure to use the alt tags to describe the image in detail as well.

All of the uses for keywords covered above are important when building an SEO friendly website, but they’re all supplemental to keyword-rich content. Search engines are putting a greater focus on the actual content on a site, and h ow it relates to the keywords in your niche. So be sure to use keywords effectively in your code, images, and content, and you’ll see your search rank rise before you know it.

Doing The Right Thing With Keywords is a post from: Websites For Sale

The biggest growing segment on the internet for traffic is mobile web browsers. Every smartphone (minus BlackBerry until BB 6.0, at least) has a very capable web browser able to display rich content just like you are used to on your computer.

The problem is, it isn’t always fluid. What does that mean? When you are viewing your website on the web browser, and you have an iPhone or Android phone (without Flash) your header image might not be there because it was Adobe Flash based instead of HTML. That ruins the experience for the viewer, and with more and more people that will be viewing your website on their phone you need to do something about it.

First thing first, no Flash. I don’t care if Android just announced they would be getting Flash today, you are still segmenting a huge piece of the market if you continue to use Flash on your website. It simply isn’t worth the hassle.

Another thing to be conscience of is your navigation. I have a Motorola Milestone and it doesn’t have the best touch screen (actually, it is horrendous). The inability to click on tiny links is very frustrating to me and ruins my experience (and wastes my time) on may of my favorite sites.

By making navigation bigger and easier to select (and not select the wrong one) you will improve your user experience both on computer and mobile browsers. Drop down menus are a great example, Android phones can click the first link fine, but any links in the drop down menu can be easily mis-clicked while on a mobile device, breaking the experience.

You can have a great website for a computer, but make sure you also consider the mobile device. Having your designer code for the mobile version as well is really important. Keep the mobile market in mind when doing anything, or have a complete mobile version. WordPress and many other platforms have great mobile plugins that allow you to easily transform your design into a mobile version, or create your own.

Make Your Website Mobile Browser Friendly is a post from: Websites For Sale