Todeo Net

When creating an e-cover the what’s the first thought that comes to mind? How do I do it? What software do I need? How much will it cost? How quickly will I have it complete?

Most people will start searching for software to automatically create the cover. There are several “cookie-cutter” software packages available to create e-covers for e-books, and software boxes. Most of these packages come with pre-designed templates. It’s very much a fill in the blank scenario and out pops the cover. Give strong consideration to this one area. Do you really want a “cookie cutter” designed e-cover? Although the templates you may encounter are very impressive, you will be sharing your layout template with 100’s, maybe 1000’s of other sites. The reason why they are so cheap is because those “specific templates” are sold and re-sold as much as possible!

Just like the theme of your website, your e-cover should complement and initiate the emotions of your niche market causing them to buy your product or service. Some items for consideration when defining your niche market are:

Lifestyle: conservative, exciting, trendy, economical
Social class: lower, middle, upper
Opinion: easily led or opinionated
Activities and interests: sports, physical fitness, shopping, books
Attitudes and beliefs: environmentalist, security conscious
Age: children, teens, young, middle, elderly
Gender: male, female
Education: high school, college, university
Income: low, medium, high
Marital status: single, married, divorced
Ethnic and/or religious background
Family life cycle: newly married, married for 10 - 20 years, with or without children.

Always keep the “eye candy” of your niche market in mind when creating e-covers, graphic headers, or even the background.

Look at your competition. How do you set yourself apart? Create the picture of your product or service to completely identify with your niche market.

That’s why I believe the first step in creating good graphic design for e-covers should be the specifics of your niche. Take some time to really determine every unique aspect of your niche market before you begin your graphic design. You want to appeal to their specific desires, fears, and needs. You’ll want to carefully craft your unique selling points around those unique desires, fears, and needs. Choose the color, the tone, the size, the words, the fonts, and the overall theme to match the profile of your niche market. You don’t want your e-cover to simply look good. You want it to evoke the buying emotions of your niche prospects.

While it’s very simple and easy to get the software and create a cookie cutter e- cover make sure it will give you the return on your investment you want. Sometimes the return on your investment may be much higher if you choose to have your e-covers and other graphics for your site professionally designed. The investment to have your e-cover professionally designed probably is not as expensive as you may believe. Often it’s even cheaper than purchasing the software and spending the time to do it yourself. The professionals spend each and every day concentrating on the uniqueness of niche markets. They are quick and adept at knowing how to target the emotions of the niche using graphics to evoke the desired response. There’s a big difference in “looks professional” and “being professional.”

Remember, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Take the time to make sure YOUR picture matches your market. And then — Watch your profits soar!

Andy Eaton has created a 10 day ecourse, which includes informative articles, training videos, special offer discounts, plus lots more - finally learn to create your own amazing ecover graphics. simply send a blank email to arpgraphicslist@graphicsecretsexposed.com or visit http://www.graphicsecretsexposed.com

Internet has opened a whole new world for web developers and web designers who are looking to get their websites developed that are finally launched on the huge world of World Wide Web. Keeping that factor webmasters are the people who have to face a lot of problems mainly due to the entrance of new software, programming languages and viruses that are a real threat for the webmasters.

Besides that issues like building the traffic to their website, a successful ezine, selling the products successfully and many other issues come side by side where newbie’s and potential webmasters both need to get the content. There was a time when becoming webmaster and handling a website was a major issue as the webmaster has to have the knowledge of all the major web issues, have to get the targeted traffic for the website and much more. But now with the increase in the internet and the number of websites, more and more people are becoming webmasters without much knowledge of the issues. That is why webmasters are now looking for information where they can get knowledge of how to handle the issues and how to make their websites standout of the rest.

Internet is a whole new paradigm and there are a lot of resources available for the webmasters, E-books are one of them. There are a lot of websites where you can download e-books for free while there are some good books for which you have to pay. There are a lot of potential websites where free e-books are available for the webmasters besides hosts of templates, Webmasters Tools items from Software and More are available. By using these e-books and Internet Business Tools, Auction Tools, and Technologies items webmasters can know the new things and what is new in the market.

E-books have been a great resource as far as the webmasters are concerned. As internet is filled with content but it still is missing with good and quality content. A bit similar is the case with E-books for webmasters as well. There are so many how to … and 21 Tips … book series guide all aiming at helping the webmasters at a great deal but it is fact that most of them have been written poorly by the novice who wanted their published material to be online with their names but not with some good content. So, while picking an E-book and starting to work over that, you must read out the intro and some references and if sounds good to you then you should go ahead with that.

Some E-books for webmasters have been aimed towards selling a particular product to the webmasters. Some web based tools, some Forums, some software or designs, hence the material on that e-book is aimed more towards the software while the catchy line of that E-book may refer to as ‘A complete Web mastering Guide’ or Learn Web Mastering. These E-books thus help the webmasters drawing traffic to their websites, by giving away these free E-books, not only they provide links but also information that can help the customers and visitors get back to them again and again. E-books thus are a necessary resource for the webmasters and they can be efficiently used in drawing traffic to your website by promoting web site promotion, submission, positioning, and design and marketing e-books by noted Web experts.

Most of the e-books that are much common on internet are on basic web mastering issues and on topics like Affiliate marketing programs for webmasters to earn money, Internet marketing solutions, Creating Viral Web Site Traffic, web site designing, submission, positioning, marketing and profitability, Website developing, hosting, search engine optimization methods. All these topics are very much essential for the webmasters to have knowledge of and hence these e-books do help them in guiding what they require.

Yasir Nisar is a 25 years old poet, writer, freelance journalist, script writer, director, software engineer and web master of many websites. He has been writing when he was in his early teens and till then he has written thousands of articles, tens of poems, have handled edited many magazines, directed as well scripted many shows and music videos. He has been handling and managing his own software house where he specializes in web marketing, web development, web promotion and technical writing. He can be reached at yani@yasirnisar.com and his web address is http://www.yasirnisar.com

If you are new with Web Hosting and/or Web Design there’s some things that you need to know before you think about link exchange or link popularity. First if you don’t have a domain name or you don’t have a web hosting you need to go and take a look to this article Things you should know about Web Hosting. If you have your domain name and you already choose a web hosting you need to know a little more about Link Exchange, Inbound Link and Link Popularity.

Link Popularity - If you want people to be able to get to your website you need to have Link Exchange and/or inbound link in your website. The reason for this is that theres too many pages on the internet right now that if the search engines don’t know that you exists you’ll web site will never get to be shown on the search engines. This means that if your page is not on the search engines the only way to people go to your website is if they know your domain name or if you advertised the site in magazines, newspapers, or other methods of advertising.

Link Exchange or Reciprocal Links - No matter how big or small is your website you should have links exchange to help you get on the top positions on the search engines. You’ll hear or read a lot of articles that tells you that its better to have only inbound links and this is good but with my own experience I can tell you that having Link Exchange and Inbound links at the same time had help me a lot in my websites to be on a decent ranking on the search engines. You can find a lot of Link Exchange programs out there some free and some that you have to paid, if you want or needs more information about those you can visit this page. Just have in mind that you need to choose whatever is best for your business and for your budget.

Inbound Links - This type of links are the one that you can get from writing articles and posting articles in different web sites. Another way to get inbound links is trying to reach a webmaster form a website and some how negotiate with that person to see if they add a link to your website without you having to add a link in your website to them. In this type of links you pretty much can find services out there that you have to pay to get inbound links going to your web site. If you want more information about this type of link you can visit this page.

Have in mind that Link Popularity is only on part of the puzzle in Search Engine Optimization because if you don’t have the right content on your page for the keywords that you are trying to rank then you are kind of wasting your time and your money. I hope that this article helps you to understand more about how Link Popularity works.

The MARQUEE tag is used to scroll text across a web page and is only supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer.

You can change the background color, width, the number of times your message will scroll and the speed that your text scrolls, by adding the following attributes within your MARQUEE tag.

BGCOLOR=”#CCCCCC” - background color

LOOP - Determines how many times the text will scroll. -1 is indefinite and will continuously scroll. You can set this to whatever you’d like.

SCROLLAMOUNT - Determines the speed your text will scroll.

WIDTH - Determines the width of your marquee.

Example Marquee

Plain old static html error pages are in-descriptive and
frustrating, one of the main to reasons webmasters commonly
choose to make a mistake and redirect all 404s to their home
page. Instead of redirecting, use PHP to let the user know what
page they were trying to access and a note saying it no longer
exists. Then give them a couple of options such as go back to
referring site, continue your site’s home page, etc.

You might also integrate an email function to let yourself know a page is no
longer up, or a site is linking to a non-existent page on your
website. Even an option for the visitor to report the
non-existent page is a good idea.

Most of your customers are not unreasonable sort of people. They understand that problems crop up and mistakes do happen. I don’t know about you, but I know that I am a MUCH more reasonable customer when the company I am purchasing services or products from promptly communicates any problems that arise.

The web is all about communication, so you would assume that any company that makes web hosting its primary business should really understand this and put measures into place that allows for the most reliable and uninterrupted communication with their customers. We talked about this a bit in our last article and promised to give you some tips about methods we have implemented to increase our ability to communicate with our customers during emergencies.

Let’s face it, there isn’t a web host out there who hasn’t experienced times where the server that their company web site is on has gone down. Sometimes only for a few minutes, but sometimes those minutes can turn into hours - or even days if a major piece of hardware has gone belly up on you. And in most cases, you don’t dedicate an entire server to your domain - you have customers who also share that server. Customers who now are not only unable to gain access to THEIR domain, but can not reach yours either. They are effectively cut off from electronic communication with you. So what do they do? How can they find out what is going on with their web site, and more importantly, when it will be back online?

Some hosts, like AlphaOne Technology, have emergency support available by telephone. In that case, (if they can remember the phone number since they can not access your website to find the number), they begin calling. And calling. And calling. Usually there are over 100-200 customers hosted on a single server. Do you or your staff really have the time to be fielding that many phone calls when you are in the middle of a crisis and need to devote your time to fixing the problem and getting the server operational? Probably not. Nor do your customers want to spend time on hold or dealing with busy signals. Every minute on hold, or every call that results in a busy signal, leaves a bad impression with that customer. They want to know WHY they are down and they want to know NOW.

If you are large enough to have multiple incoming lines & an automated voice mail system, a simple solution is to immediately record a server status alert, along with an honest assessment of what has happened and, if you know it, an estimated time that the server will be operational again. This will allow customers calling about their site being down to get the information they need without having to talk to a live technician. The customer is happy to be informed, (even if they are VERY unhappy about having their site down), and you have saved yourself time and money and can focus on the important problem at hand.

In your recorded status alert, let the customer know how often the status will be updated. We recommend that if a server is down longer than 90 minutes, updated information should be made available every 30-45 minutes.

If you are a smaller host with only one incoming line, you probably don’t have enough customers that busy signals will become a major irritant, but keep the message very short and to the point.

By now many of you are saying “what about those of us who don’t HAVE a tech support number to call?” Good question since a recent survey shows that over 75% of web hosting companies do NOT publish a tech support number. Fear not, there are a couple of other ways that we will discuss in upcoming articles. Our next article will talk about using Voice Over IP service and Instant Messaging.

This article may freely be reprinted on your web site or BLOG as long as all links and author information are not altered or disabled.

The first questions you have to ask yourself are: how much space and bandwidth do I need; do I want one site or several sites; how much will I have to spend; am I going to use an SQL database; how much uptime does the web host offer; does this site host spammy adult sites; what extras are offered; are there script limitations; do they provide a control panel; and if my site gets too big, what is the next level and how much does it cost?

Let’s take bandwidth for instance. If you are starting a brand new site and don’t have a lot of other sites to link to it, which, by the way, is becoming increasingly less efficient due to changing search engine rules, it may take over a year to build any real traffic to even worry about this point. But, with bandwidth being a lot more reasonable lately, why not go ahead and pay the 6-10 dollars a month for 1 - 4 gigabytes currently available. After all, your goal is to grow right? So get something a few sizes too big and grow into it. Don’t think that you necessarily have to pay a lot of money to get a good web host. You could just as easily spend 20 dollars or more a month and have terrible uptime and any number of hassles. Now if your site is going to be filled with images, especially wallpaper size images, then get as much bandwidth as your budget will allow. If you plan on having a growing site and it becomes even moderately popular, you’ll need all the bandwidth traffic allowable you can get. Watch out for hosts that claim they have unmetered bandwidth. Read carefully, especially if we’re talking about a host that charges below 5 dollars a month. It’s better to have a clear number that you can keep track of in your control panel. You don’t won’t them to come up and give you a generic excuse like “Your site is using an unfair amount of system resources or traffic as compared to our other customers so therefore we have to shut you down”. Please note that system resources and bandwidth are two different issues when dealing with a web host. For instance a script that locks up and has a bug could cause a server to use a great deal of system resources that could cause problems between you and your web host if you are on a shared account versus a dedicated server. So do your research on the type of script you want to run. Bandwidth is the amount of traffic going out from your site including your images, clips, pages, etc. As far as images, sounds, and clips this is easily monitored in your control panel as long as you have a clear number of what you are allowed to use. Unmetered bandwidth could mean anything and really is worthless in the long run if you plan on getting a lot of traffic sometime in the future. And why wouldn’t you want to get as much traffic as possible for your site?

Some hosts allow to host more than one domain on your account. This could be a very great way to cut costs especially with new sites that may take a while to build up traffic. Once any of your sites grows too large you can always move it. Please be cautious though heavy interlinking between sites on the same i.p. address may get you dinged by search engines.

For the most part 6-10 dollars per month is what I consider great area to be in cost wise. Anything lower than 6 and I would get nervous. Anything higher than 10-15 per month and it better have a lot to offer that I can’t get anywhere else like bandwidth, space, etc. That’s a very basic rule of thumb from my own experience, but it all depends mainly on what your site needs are.

You need to know if there are any script limitations. Are there scripts like cgi, php, etc you want to use that your web host doesn’t allow? Of course most are going to work with php and cgi with no problem. Also find out about how many SQL databases you can get and if they offer it at all. Databases can be a very powerful tool that can save you tons of time and are usually necessary for forums.

Do research. Check out sites with reviews from actual customers. You need to see what your average joe says about the uptime and other factors of the web host you’re thinking about using. Remember, most people will complain more than take the time to praise, but a really good host will have a lot more praise then criticism.

A new thing is starting to come up. Certain search engines may penalize sites that are on a server with red flag sites like gambling, spam sites, adult, etc. Gambling and adult sites tend to spam a lot so search engines may be penalizing whole servers that house these sites. Make sure your web host will put you on a server free of these types of websites.

Always think ahead to save time and money having to movie to another web host. Always get as much bandwidth and web space you can get at an affordable price. Ask yourself if your site grows faster than you predicted what is the next level with the web host your using? How much is it going to cost to upgrade if necessary, and what do they offer? Some companies that offer reasonable rates and good plans only offer one plan, but they tend to increase their plan’s offerings every year or so. So keep that in mind as well when considering how much bandwidth and space your going to need in the coming year or so.

There’s an old saying: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, but this hardly applies to the science of designing web graphics. Everybody judges web sites by their ‘cover’ or home page, have no doubt.

Is your site giving out a professional, visual aura, or is it telling visitors that you built it yourself, because of bad design?

Ask yourself: Of the many thousands of web pages trying to sell you something, which are the ones that keep your interest? Which ones have convinced you to depart with your hard-earned cash?

If you are honest, you will say the ones with the most attractive and professional graphics - the pretty pictures. Human nature determines that what catches your eye, and is pleasing to view, keeps your attention.

Subconsciously or not, you make a judgment within seconds, on how professional is the website you are viewing. If the appearance of a site is amateurish, the owner can kiss goodbye to any potential buyers bothering to purchase.

Visual appeal is critical. Sure, current thinking is that you should focus more on the content, than on the pretty ‘bells and whistles’ for your website, but you must have professional-looking graphics. Like branding a business, your web site graphics, headers, footers, buttons etc. should all be in the same theme, the same colour scheme and consistent design.

If you want proof of the importance of this consistency, check out the ‘livery’ (a fancy word for the logos, design, colours and badgeing) of corporate giants like Microsoft and Nike. Most people in the western world know the Nike ‘tick’ logo instantly, almost as well as they know the slogan ‘Just Do it’. And the Microsoft logo and colour set must be the most familiar visual environment on the planet. Want to bet that Bill Gates’ people spent many millions on developing this set.

In today’s digital publishing world, you can’t see the ‘bits’ and bytes’ so digital products must be represented by pretty ‘boxes’ and with carefully matched colour schemes for their sales sites.

That’s why web designers produce those very familiar eBook covers and Program boxes, with the shadows and reflection effects.

Why do you think that hard copy book publishers make sure their covers are in well matched colours, and have good pictures and dramatic fonts?

Why do you think that so much work goes in to covers for videos and DVDs in your local video hire store? In the visual flak of such a store, there are hundreds of covers competing for attention, visually asking you to hire them.

Check out your newsagent and see what effort magazine publishers put into the design of their front covers.

On the web, there are many millions of sites clamouring for attention.And, despite the vast number of programs now available, like Adobe PhotoShop, and Jasc PaintShop Pro, good design is hardly a DIY skill. It requires creativity, expertise and, most importantly, time. This is why web designers, and their close cousins, banner, header and footer designers, can charge up to $50 for one good web page header, and more for a complete set.

You’ll notice that there are many schools and colleges offering courses and degrees in design, so it’s not something that you will be able to pick up without study. So there’s the dilemma. You need good design, you’ll probably have to pay for it, but doing so will likely pay dividends.

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People often come to me in a state of crisis and say their website isn’t working. Usually they’re in a cold sweat:

“Mike, give me some practical things I can do to get more sales from my website!”

You want practical advice? Stop treating your website like an object in your business and start treating it like an employee. Most businesses treat their website like a physical item in their business - such as a filing cabinet for example. Just take Mr. Smith from ABC Ltd.:

“Everyone else has got a filing cabinet so I thought we’d better get one. I’m not very interested in cabinets myself but people seem to think they get you more customers. It looks quite neat though - I made sure my face is on the front of it.”

Very good. How much business do you get from it?

“Business? Oh I don’t know - I haven’t even looked at it for a year or so. It’s been a waste of money. We paid a company to build it and it doesn’t work.”

Right, I see. Have you updated it regularly and promoted it extensively?

“What? No - it went live and that was it, nothing’s happened. I thought the phone would be ringing off the hook. Come and have a look at it anyway, it’s over here in the corner - gathering dust.”

So here they are:

5 Ways To Treat Your Website Like An Employee And Make More Money As A Result

Treat your website like one of your employees and it will start to behave like one.

1. Look after your employees - give them the attention they deserve, pay them well and don’t neglect their needs

2. Make sure your employees look the part - first impressions count: scuffed shoes and scruffy clothes won’t bring in the business

3. Give them mobility - buy them a company car so they can get out into the world and sell for you, they won’t sell much stuck in one place and not being found

4. Keep them informed - give them the latest information on the focus of your company, new services, new sales scripts, latest changes to the way you do business etc.

5. Introduce them to everyone - don’t let your employee feel like they’re on the sidelines of your business, separate to everyone else - they need to be a fully integrated part of your business, not an after-thought bolted on at the last minute

Mike Cheney

www.magnet4web.com

About The Author

You can get free access to lots more of my articles plus a Free Bonus Special Report “How To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnet” worth a value of £47 ($85) here: http://www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=freeguide

You just got your website online. Everything is setup and you’re ready to go. Excitement is high and the time has come to open your virtual doors to the millions and millions of Internet users around the globe. You put out the cyber welcome mat and declare your site ready for action. But, instead of sitting and watching the users trample over one another to get to your site, you see little to no traffic.

Don’t worry! This is something every webmaster goes through and is to be expected. (Well, webmasters in the late 90’s expected to launch their site and be millionaires the next morning, but times have changed since those wonderful days!)

But there are some quick and easy things you can do to begin building your ‘link network,’ which will ultimately help drive traffic to your site. Since the Internet’s conception, the notion has been that sites link to one another, while web surfers click from place to place. Thus, the challenge begins: Get your site linked to as many others as possible.

You can start contacting other websites offering to trade links (but be prepared to invest a lot of time); you can buy links (but be prepared to fork out some cash); you can join link-trading programs (but be prepared to get a lot of irrelevant sites linking to you); or you can start submitting your website to web directories.

What Is A Web Directory? A web directory is a compilation of sites organized by category or topic. Most web directories have multiple levels of categories, progressing from general to highly specific. In addition, a web directory editor will likely have to approve your site, lending it at a certain degree of credibility. Being listed in a directory ensures that if a web surfer finds their way into a specific category, they don’t just see your competitors, they see you! And, if they can see your link, they can click it, producing traffic to your site.

A Web Directory Listing Helps with SEO If you have a website, you undoubtedly know the importance of ranking well in Google and other major search engines. These search engines count links from other sites as votes for your site, which helps determine your ranking, or position in the search results. There are a lot of other parts of the algorithm and this brief explanation doesn’t do it justice. However, it serves the point that links improve your ranking, and that’s something every website owner needs to know.

A link in a directory that is spidered by Google (and a lot are) will count as a vote for your site. This improves your ranking, and yet again helps drive traffic to your site. It’s important to note that not all directories help with SEO. Sometimes, a web directory will link to your site through a special URL that is often a programming CGI script. If the URL is not a direct link to your site, then the search engines don’t count it as a vote. Therefore, it’s best to pick directories that offer a direct one-way link to your site. (This way, you get more bang for your buck: traffic from the directory and improved search engine ranking.)

Relevancy Matters If you trade links with random sites, then you are theoretically building your ‘link network,’ but you are sacrificing the quality of that network. Web searchers who are looking for information on a particular topic often use resources that link to a variety of sites related to what they seek. This makes web directories the perfect destination.

Since directories are categorized by topics, a person can arrive in the directory and have one-click access to a variety of resources. You definitely want to be one of those resources! Plus, when the other search engines pick up your link, it will count for more since it is surrounded by relevant content, which is most likely filled with your important keywords.

As you build your link network, you’ll continue to see increased traffic. And if you use web directories as your vehicle, you are essentially paving more paths to your site. Several good submissions in popular directories will help get you rolling. The best part is that many directories are free, so this jump start won’t even hurt your bottom line.

Good luck and happy submitting!