Unlimited Web Hosting Tips

Archive for May, 2010

As new and even experienced web site owners we have all committed our share of blunders and stumbles along the way of making our sites rank higher on the major search engines. A lot of times we have gone against our gut feelings and listened to hearsay and unproven search engine optimization advice, or have jumped on the latest SEO bandwagon circulating the top SEO forums. But how many times have you made changes to your web site structure, content, or link popularity that cost you search engine ranking without being able to pinpoint the exact cause in the first place?

Well, ranking drops or the lack of ranking success initially can happen for many reasons, some of these reasons are within your control and others are not. For example, search engine algorithms updates and competitors moving on in your territory are completely out of your control. However, in this article I want to focus on factors and search engine optimization techniques that are in your control, but you may not be even aware of.

Do you like to give your web site a fresh new look every couple of years or even more frequently? Did you know that the number one reason for ranking drops is site redesigns without taking into consideration the SEO implications?

Perhaps you have changed the page titles on a few web pages, or renamed a couple of important directories and as a result your search engine rankings had dropped. How can you prevent unintentional ranking gaffs from happening in the future?

Ignorance is No Excuse When It Comes to Google, Yahoo and MSN

While no one can prevent you from committing every possible SEO mistake especially unknowingly, but these top 5 SEO blunders you should definitely want to avoid.

1.) Structure, Design and Usability: Images used to embed content and navigational link. Designing or redesigning the web site with content embedded in images. There is nothing wrong with designing your web site and navigation to be super sleek and stylish. However, going overboard with visual layouts and fancy graphics can reduce the amount of text you can squeeze in the content area and visible links, leaving nothing for the search engines to index. On average, each web page should contain a minimum of 200 to 300 words of text sprinkled with the target keywords. Also the navigation should contain mainly text links using well focused target keywords in those internal links.

2.) Web site Navigation: “Click Here” – “Click There”. Your website visitor will no doubt will understand and follow the “Click Here” instructions, but can the search engines figure out as easily what the target pages are about? Give the search engines and your visitors a clue about the destination page by “labeling” your hyperlinks with a simple 2-3 word keyword rich instruction instead of using “Click Here” over and over. For example, if you want your visitors to find out about your “blue widgets” products, use “blue widgets” in your hyper links like this Blue Widgets. The bottom line is, no one cares if you rank number 1 for “Click Here”.

3.) Usability and SEO: “Welcome to Our Home Page”. If every page title on your web site starts with this text you are on your way to be ranked number one for this phrase. This is clearly not what you want. It’s time to review every web page on your web site and give it a meaningful keyword rich title, and while you are working on the head section of the web page, pay some attention to the meta description, and meta keywords as well. Although optimizing meta tags are no longer considered a ranking factor on today’s search engines, having a unique page description and set of keywords will set your pages apart from the competition, not to mention the meta description is often used word for word to describe your website in the search results pages.

4.) Link Popularity: Cross linking your website and acquiring inbound links over saturated with the same keywords. If you own a number of domains, the temptation is always there to take the easy road to link building by linking your websites together regardless of content and keyword focus. It seems easy right? There are two problems with this approach. The first one is, you mostly likely host all the websites on the same server so your web sites are easily grouped into the same C IP class by the search engines and set of spam triggers. The second problem is linking web sites with a diverse keyword focus may diminishes any inbound linking gains due to thematically unrelated keywords. An unnaturally high number inbound links with the exact same anchor text links can also spell trouble. The web is a naturally growing ecosystem of sorts, everyone links to whom ever they want to, and how they want to. This results in inbound links with a wide variety of anchor text wordings. When you acquire inbound links through link exchanges, paid links or other sources you have to watch for links with an unnaturally high repetition of keywords in the anchor text to avoid the search engine spam radars.

5.) Structure, Design and Usability: Changing page and directory names and leaving orphaned pages on the engines. Changing web page names and directory names should be done with the outmost care. The older the web pages are the more harm you can do by not following some simple rules in removing or changing web page URLs. The search engines index new web pages within days if not hours on your website automatically thanks to their powerful crawler agents. Once the location of the new URL is registered with the search engines, it will remain in their database forever providing you don’t delete or rename the page. If you remove or rename the web page, the search engines will remove the page from their index including any link popularity or Google Page Rank data. This can have a negative influence on your web site’s ranking and your link popularity. The better approach would be to leave the page URL intact and simply write new content for the page. If you absolutely must remove or rename the web page, use what is called a “301 Permanent Redirect” to the new URL.

People hate their jobs. We do not have to look hard or far to find a person who hates what he does but who continues to do it simply to bring home a paycheck. At the same time, few have the courage or ability to leave their current situation and take on a whole new realm of business, all with the purpose of finding vocational fulfillment and feeding their family all at the same time. The world of multi-level marketing, or MLM, has offered a great MLM opportunity for those who want to, as Willy Nelson once wrote, take this job and shove it. But where can they find these great opportunities?

MLM opportunities abound, and a seeker must only look as far as his home computer to both find an opportunity and to investigate it. The internet hosts a variety of sites that explain the MLM opportunities available. Watch sites will explain which MLM sites legitimately offer great opportunities and which will lead a worker begging the boss that he just left for his job back. As long as the MLM opportunity exists, so will dishonest scams that seek to bleed the working man dry. Watch sites will help the average and ignorant Joe make a logically, educated decision.

Neighbors and friends will also give great advice. Everyone has a story about the cousin who either hit it big with a MLM opportunity or went broke with one. Those seeking a new job opportunity should research all aspects of the opportunity that piques their interest. Taking time to research will save oodles of money and heartache in the end, and again, allow the maximum opportunity for success in this new venture.

Many frown at the MLM opportunities available and will cite things such as the illegal dealings of such companies. Remember that just like all lawyers are not alike, all MLM companies are not alike. Some offer legitimate products to customers in need and give salespeople the opportunity to do what they love best.

What is an IDN?

IDN stands for Internationalized Domain Name, also known as multilingual domain names. It allows you the possibility to use more characters in domains names, besides letters and numbers. It uses characters available in other alphabets, like accents.

Example of IDN domains:

Chinese IDN – 毒瘤.com which means cancer
If you go to 毒瘤.com you will see the domain is targeted towards cancer but in English.

Romanian IDN – divorţ.com you will see the domain is targeted towards divorce but in English.

Polish IDN – pieniądz.com you will see the domain is targeted towards money/currency but in English.

Greek IDN – βίβλοσ.com you will see the domain is targeted bible/books but in English.

.cn with Chinese results: 例子.cn you will see the domain is samples but in Chinese.

Al these are targeted through http://parkingsite.com and take 5 days to target once a keyword is given.

What browsers support IDN names today?

Only the latest version of Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 support IDN Names directly entered into the browser.

IE6 and earlier versions will not support IDN’s.

What TLD’s or ccTLD’s support IDN?

First of all what I am saying with that question is what extensions can be registered like and IDN. Can I register毒瘤.com? 毒瘤.net? 毒瘤.org? 毒瘤.cn? 毒瘤.jp? and what others can I register.

Here is a list of the ones that I have registered:

.com
.net
.tv
.cc
.jp = Japan
.cn = China
.de = Germany
.gr = Greece
.tw = Taiwan

Do all Registrars support IDN registrations?

No, as of writing this Enom does and so does Domainsite. There are others that do but mot d not. Please check with your registrar BEFORE you register any or you will get stuck with a long name that has no value whosoever.

What IDN’s should you register?

You should use the same principles that you have learnt while registering English domain names. Go after the higher paying ppc terms first. Make sure if there are more than one way to say a word in any language that you get them all as you never know which ones will have the most traffic. I have registered quite a few dual meaning words and it’s never the one I think that has the most traffic.

女孩儿 ; 姑娘 ; 女孩子 all mean girl with slight variations in Chinese. In this case and such a major term, unless you speak the language, grab them all.

Google results for all of them:
女孩儿 – 1,870,000 results in Google
姑娘 – 4,460,000 results in Google
女孩子 – 2,840,000 results in Google

Most IDN’s with Google over 1 million will have some traffic unless you get ridiculous generic terms like ‘the’ which have no value whatsoever.

Also, as with English domains, dig a bit deeper. If loans is taken in the language you want go for things like home loans, car loans, boat loans and so on.

How to find and register IDN’s?

There are many ways to find and register IDN domain names. The best way is obviously if you speak the language but even then you must be careful. Just like in English some common words will not actually be used and a short form may be used. In English most people know the word automobile but rarely would use it. Most would use the word car.

This can be illustrated by the two overture scores:

1572 http://automobile.com

18016 http://car.com

Now this does not mean automobile is not a good IDN to register, it just means go after the one that is more likely to be typed in a browser.

Now if you don’t know anyone that speaks a language you are going after, your only choice is to use a good translator software, I suggest you use logos.it

When you enter a word it gives you results in multiple languages at one time and makes it really easy to get a keyword in multiple languages.

For example when you search for the word insurance you get:

English
insurance

Italian
assicurazione

Spanish
seguro ; aseguración

French
assurance

German
Versicherung

Russian
cтрахование

Arabic
تأمين ; ضمان ; كفالة

Albanian
sigurim

Asturian
seguru

Basque
aseguru

Bolognese
asicuraziån

Brazilian Portuguese
seguro

Breton
asurañs

Catalan
assegurança

Danish
forsikring

Dutch
verzekering

Esperanto
certigo

Finnish
vakuutus

Flemish
verzekering

Furlan
sigurance

Galician
seguro

Gujarati
વીમો

Hebrew
ביטוח

Hindi
बीमा

Hungarian
biztosítás

Indonesian
asuransi

Irish
árachas

Japanese
保険

Marathi
विमा

Norwegian
forsikring

Piemontese
assicurassion

Polish
ubezpieczenie

Portuguese
seguro

Punjabi
ਬੀਮਾ
Romagnolo
assicuraziòun

Romanian
asigurare

Sanskrit
क्षेमकरणं

Serbian
осигурање

Slovak
poistenie

Swedish
försäkring

Turkish
sigorta ; sigortalama

Ukrainian
страхування

Valencian
segur

Venetian
assicurassion

Welsh
yswiriant

I have found that just like domains, the one I think will get the most traffic, surprisingly won’t, but the languages I have never heard of get some traffic.

Now let’s see how you go about registering IDN names:

Let’s go to logos.it and look up the Russian word for weasel as an example which is ласка, so now I go download the IDN Domain Conversion Tool then open it up and paste ласка into the space unde the heading IDN Domains and hit the ok button. You will get a code called a PUNY code which is: xn--80aa3ac5a , then take that and add a .com on it and you will end up with this http://xn--80aa3ac5a.com. Now check a whois or try to register http://xn--80aa3ac5a.com and see if you get it. To keep it organized and try to keep my domains in one place I register most of my IDN’s at Enom. There are other choices if you like. You can take the actual ID code and go to and type in the IDN and it will tell you if it’s available without doing the PUNY conversion but you should know how to do it anyways.

When I check now ласка.com is available.
In case you are wondering you cannot register ласка.ru yet as the Russian ccTLD does not support public IDN registrations yet.

If I find an IDN like ਬਿੰਗੋ (xn--f9b5b1c6b7k) should I register .com or .cn or both?

This really depends on how strong the term is, if it’s a great term and you have the $, by all mans register them both. If you don’t my suggestion is get the .com. You will need to do some research here as every country operates differently. Some countries are big on their ccTLD’s while others go for the .com first and only if that’s taken will grab their ccTLD after that.

Personally, I have been registering the .com’s and if it’s a great term I get the ccTLD for that country if its available.

To learn more about IDN Names visit the Domain Name Forum where all the domain experts hang out and chat.

Are all the good IDN names taken?

Absolutely not, take your time and do some mining and you will find gold in them mountains.

Remember don’t expect miracles from IDN domains now, the miracles will come once most of the world has a browser that can support it.

Should you expect to make $ from your IDN’s now?

No, if you are lucky you will have a few that make something., I have registered thousands of these and at least half have traffic so that’s good enough for me to know the future will be great for these. Be patient they will be worth it in the long run.

Is there anything else I should know about IDN’s?

Yes, there is lots more, please take the time to learn about Domain Names and feel free to ask and post your questions as thre are many IDN experts there and they will usually answer you within a few minutes.

I hope this helps some of you get started in what should be an interesting area of domains

Don’t download anything when you don’t trust the source. Even if you are emailed or given a link in a chat room or forum you should be cautious. Look at the URL. Some links will directly download programs – including viruses – without your consent.

While using anti-virus and anti-spyware programs will help avoid problems they can’t catch everything. Know where you’re going and who is sending

If you work a typical 9 to 5 job, you may find yourself getting sluggish through the week. Waiting for the weekend to come seems to take forever, and you can’t stand being at work one second longer each day than you absolutely have to. This gets old very quickly and you are wondering where it will all end.  You slide into your desk right at 9 am and slide out the moment the clock strikes 5. You find yourself taking the long w

Life is rarely perfect. You already know while Shangri La is a great idea, it just doesn’t exist. You learn to make do with living in the next best option, San Francisco. The spring of water gushing up to eternal life, not to be found. Will Diet Coke do?
If you are shopping for a web hosting company and seek perfection, you may have to lower your standards a bit and compromise to “pretty good hosting”. In such matters, as always, the issues boil down to this matrix:
1> Price
2> Quality/Speed
3> Service/Support

You can have at most two out of three. Of course, if you are not careful, even one out three may not happen. If you are richer than Croesus(or are Amazon.com), you can safely discount the “Price” factor and focus on Quality and Service. Chances are that you are trying to have to make some difficult decisions, based on your affordability, the kind of visitors you are likely to have, and the complexity of your website.

The web hosting companies, despite what they may tell you have similar costs. The servers, routers, and bandwidth cost essentially the same. While some may have savings on hardware and infrastructure due to economies of scale, they have a high sunk cost in coming up with the infrastructure. Therefore they pass those costs to you, bringing them to par with smaller shops without the soccer field size room of rackspace humming with PCs.

So why are some cheaper than others? Let’s go back to the matrix. More likely than not, the hosting is putting way too many sites on each server trying to recoup their costs a bit at a time. If you have an informational, text heavy site about the Inuit community in Congo, this solution may actually be fine. You don’t get too many visitors in the first place, and the few who do, will put up with a slower loading site. They don’t have much choice—a google search of “Inuit community in congo”” shows just about 20 hits. These visitors will stick around and read your fine article.

However, really there isn’t much money in writing about “Inuit community in congo” and understandably most people create websites to make money. Let’s consider a different term “tickets”. Here we are talking 850 Million hits. Lots of people want to sell tickets and the visitor has a lot of choices. A vast choice encourages “impatient visitor”–ff your site is too slow to load up, they will happily cruise to the next site. A slow site could be because the site owner chose the cheapest possible hosting company with little regard to speed.
Given the steps most website owners go through to bring visitors to their site, I am shocked by the number of owners willing to pay 5,000 dollar per month for PPC, but not willing to cough up an extra 50 dollar for fast hosting. These penny wise site owners have an enormous number of bounce back visitors. They often wonder why Google is charging them for PPC clicks, but their web statistics don’t show any corresponding visitors. Little do they know, that visitor got tired of waiting for the site to load up on your slow server and has happily paid more to a competitor to buy that concert ticket.

We have discussed price versus quality—what about service? If you are running a single site, with few expected visitors and no marketing costs, you can comfortably choose an inexpensive alternative. However, if you are running a serious business and suddenly are faced by a DNS foul up, you wouldn’t want to wait for the weekend to be over and 9:00 AM PST to stroke before someone can handle your request. Things need to happen and right away too!

It’s a complex world…no Shangri La’s here. It helps to know the issues, and what your business needs are before choosing the web hosting solution that is best for you.

Web Hosting Insider is here to help. Just drop us an email, and explain your needs. We will be happy to give you our recommendations.
For more details about webhosting Insider visit: http://www.webhostinginsider.net/ideal-web-hosting.phpLife is rarely perfect. You already know while Shangri La is a great idea, it just doesn’t exist. You learn to make do with living in the next best option, San Francisco. The spring of water gushing up to eternal life, not to be found. Will Diet Coke do?
If you are shopping for a web hosting company and seek perfection, you may have to lower your standards a bit and compromise to “pretty good hosting”. In such matters, as always, the issues boil down to this matrix:
1> Price
2> Quality/Speed
3> Service/Support

You can have at most two out of three. Of course, if you are not careful, even one out three may not happen. If you are richer than Croesus(or are Amazon.com), you can safely discount the “Price” factor and focus on Quality and Service. Chances are that you are trying to have to make some difficult decisions, based on your affordability, the kind of visitors you are likely to have, and the complexity of your website.

The web hosting companies, despite what they may tell you have similar costs. The servers, routers, and bandwidth cost essentially the same. While some may have savings on hardware and infrastructure due to economies of scale, they have a high sunk cost in coming up with the infrastructure. Therefore they pass those costs to you, bringing them to par with smaller shops without the soccer field size room of rackspace humming with PCs.

So why are some cheaper than others? Let’s go back to the matrix. More likely than not, the hosting is putting way too many sites on each server trying to recoup their costs a bit at a time. If you have an informational, text heavy site about the Inuit community in Congo, this solution may actually be fine. You don’t get too many visitors in the first place, and the few who do, will put up with a slower loading site. They don’t have much choice—a google search of “Inuit community in congo”” shows just about 20 hits. These visitors will stick around and read your fine article.

However, really there isn’t much money in writing about “Inuit community in congo” and understandably most people create websites to make money. Let’s consider a different term “tickets”. Here we are talking 850 Million hits. Lots of people want to sell tickets and the visitor has a lot of choices. A vast choice encourages “impatient visitor”–ff your site is too slow to load up, they will happily cruise to the next site. A slow site could be because the site owner chose the cheapest possible hosting company with little regard to speed.
Given the steps most website owners go through to bring visitors to their site, I am shocked by the number of owners willing to pay 5,000 dollar per month for PPC, but not willing to cough up an extra 50 dollar for fast hosting. These penny wise site owners have an enormous number of bounce back visitors. They often wonder why Google is charging them for PPC clicks, but their web statistics don’t show any corresponding visitors. Little do they know, that visitor got tired of waiting for the site to load up on your slow server and has happily paid more to a competitor to buy that concert ticket.

We have discussed price versus quality—what about service? If you are running a single site, with few expected visitors and no marketing costs, you can comfortably choose an inexpensive alternative. However, if you are running a serious business and suddenly are faced by a DNS foul up, you wouldn’t want to wait for the weekend to be over and 9:00 AM PST to stroke before someone can handle your request. Things need to happen and right away too!

It’s a complex world…no Shangri La’s here. It helps to know the issues, and what your business needs are before choosing the web hosting solution that is best for you.

Web Hosting Insider is here to help. Just drop us an email, and explain your needs. We will be happy to give you our recommendations.
For more details about webhosting Insider visit: http://www.webhostinginsider.net/ideal-web-hosting.php

So you want to start your own restaurant business but your worried you can’t raise the finance you need to set your business up, if so this article is for you. I will cover the different options that you may want to think about where you can get finance for your new restaurant business, the following are: -

· Your friends and family – you may think this is the best option if they have the finance available for you, but you have to remember they will only have a certain amount of money available and properly wouldn’t be able to give you more if you ran into trouble and also you may feel bad not being able to repay them as quickly as you thought you might be able to, as making a profit in a business can take a good year or even more. You will also have to discuss what interest you would give them, all this may cause problems with your relationships with the person or persons is it worth it, give it a thought.

· Your savings – if you have a good amount of savings you may be able to use them for your new restaurant business, it depends on the amount you have saved. This amount may run out quickly and if it does you would have to have a plan b in which you could get finance from elsewhere.

· Credit Cards – they offer you money to buy items but if you wanted cash from these they usually charge a daily interest rate for this. Credit cards also have a maximum limit on these depending on your credit history this might be only £3,500 and this wouldn’t get you far in setting up your business so you would have to take out more than one card, but also you have to pay a minimum amount every month and when your setting your business up and have no income coming up you may not be able to afford the minimum payments every month.

· Home Equity – using your home as equity can be a very risky, what happens if your business doesn’t work out the way you think it would and you couldn’t pay bills etc. your house may be taken away from you leaving you with no house to live in, you need to seriously think this one through is it worth the risk?

· Bank Loans – you may be able to take out a bank loan if you have a good credit history, the amount you may be given is up to this and therefore it could be a few thousand pounds but it could be a lot more like fifty thousands pounds. Interest would be calculated every month and it depends on the company on how high this may be.

· Angels Investors – business angels can give you from twenty five thousand to up to two hundred thousand pounds depending on how many angels group together if this is possible for your business. The angel or angels will provide financial backing for you at the correct time and will give you advice but won’t be involved in the running of the restaurant on a daily basis. Be prepared as they will want a good stake of the company so they can get the money back they invested and more, but they can be very helpful as they may have done the same or similar to you only a few years ago and made a success of their business enabling them to help others out.

· Venture Capitalists – they provide financial backing for your new restaurant business but also help you sort out how to run the restaurant and help make important decisions etc. They will also want a good return for their investment like the business angels.

All of the above are options available to most people and I’m sure whatever circumstances you’re in you will find appropriate funding for your restaurant business.

Are you one of those business owners that took the time to build a Web site and now ready to sit back and ready to reap the benefits? If you are you are, then you are in for a rude awakening. Building a Web site is only the first step in a journey with many miles.

Just because you have built a Web site, it doesn’t mean anybody will ever come to see it. A Web site is like any other marketing tool. If you don’t get the word out about it, nobody will know it exists.

The funniest thing of it all is the first who need to know about your site are not human beings. Oh no, they are robots. If you prefer living things, you can call them spiders. Spiders are working for the search engines like Google and Yahoo. Without the spiders visiting your site the search engines will never get to know your Web site. These spiders are not your normal eight legged creatures. They can read your Web content, evaluate your links, and index and categorize your site.

Once the spiders came, they’ll be back. It is not a one-time visit. Spiders return more-and-more often. The more often the spiders return to your site the more important they think your site is.

To get the spiders to pay a visit to your web site sooner you should build links pointing to your site from other related Web sites. When a spider visits another site with a link pointing to your site it then visits your web site too.

There are many ways to get links pointing to your site. You can contact other Web site owners to exchange links. You may write articles related to your products and services and posted in article directories. You may contact bloggers to pitch your products or services. You can submit your site to search engines, and list your site in online directories.

There are many ways to get visitors to your site. The most important concept to realize that building a Web site is only the beginning of your online marketing campaign.

Once upon a time when Earth did not commercialize the internet invention, someone published an ad in a national newspaper saying “Send Me $1 and I will show you how to become a millionaire”

People from all the over the place sent their $1 dollar bills waiting to get the secret recipe to become millionaires. A few weeks later they received the following note “Repeat what I have done and you will become a millionaire. I have just become one from the same ad you responded to”

I believe that this person has set the ground for most of today’s business ideas that we find on the internet. The idea includes all the usual hype that we read in many sales letters today:

1 – A simple task that does not require much of your daily time.
2 – A simple system to copy.
3 -No sales
4 – No phone calls
5 – No sponsorships
6 – Takes 30 minutes to implement.
7 – You can repeat it as many times as you want
8 – Start earning thousands within a couple of weeks
9 – A minimum investment

As you can see that the idea and the copy did not make a single lie, yet do you think that the ones who received the note appreciated the clever business idea?

I am sure that their disappointed was great although their loss was one single dollar. Now that person was lucky since he did not want to make a business out of this idea. It was a hit and run operation.

The online business world today acknowledges the fact that such an activity is completely unacceptable. But the contradiction between what is known to be as unacceptable and what we are seeing actually happening even from some of the prominent names in the industry is very evident.

We are still seeing messages such as “Start earning immediately,” “Start cashing within a couple of weeks.” I know that many will have examples of people who actually hit gold within days of their experience, but can we actually take those experiences and make the audience expect such results for any person who ventures into online business.

Today e-mail inboxes are full of messages regarding the importance of building lists. We all know that this activity alone does not happen either over night or in a couple weeks. So how can we start suggesting to a new person that he/she should be expecting to earn money within days?

The funny thing regarding the List Building sales letters is that they are now promising that their systems would help generate massive lists within days as well.

The Mortar and Brick business world is struggling today to become customer centric organizations. Yet all they do is concentrate their resources on developing efficient processes for cost cutting purposes without any consideration to the customer. The dilemma that the offline business world is living today with regard their truthfulness in becoming customer centric organizations is manifested in the online business arena through the wish of avoiding hype.

What I cannot understand is that every single person who is involved in online business is aware of the negative bottom line effects that hype has, still they cannot avoid being involved at least partially in providing hyped promises.

Whether selling to the end user or encouraging affiliates to sell products, a hyped message will dramatically affect business continuity. Therefore, the online business today has a void for a combined offering that has both a solid product/program and realistic and hype-free promises and claims. The first to fill this void will reap huge benefits in the online marketplace.

A well established name in online business will have a better opportunity at filling this void and reaping the benefits than a new person who is still starting in this marketplace. Yet the challenge for those who are well established to change their ways from partially hyped messages to a complete hype-free environment is tremendous. Accordingly, someone who is new to the industry but committed to providing a consistent and continuous hype-free messages, might be able to surprise the well established.

I hope that this article does not come across as an accusation to prominent online business people that they are promoting hype, yet it comes as a red flag to all involved in online business who are shaping the environment and culture of this marketplace.

As the internet matures, so do the attitudes of people buying more and more online. Many companies exist that will ship merchandise to nearly any address specified, without being the same address as the buyer. This opens the door for selling opportunities for just about anyone with the initiative to do a little work online and keep track of their earnings. One of the problems with having a retail website, is you become the buyer, seller and shipper all at once. When you offer merchandise for sale online you are opening the door to a global audience and will need to have an inventory of merchandise that you offer for sale. Constantly sending out apologetic emails informing buyers their choice is either discontinued or on back order will not win many repeat customers and will eventually leave you with nothing but a nice looking website. This is no way to build your Hundred-Fold-Life. You can, however get hooked up with wholesalers who maintain a large inventory of merchandise and allow you to sell it on your website. When an order comes in, it goes directly to the wholesaler who will pack it and ship it as well as handle all the finances. You make money based on the profit from the sale of the item. For example, you advertise a DVD player on your site for $59.99 plus tax plus shipping a handling. A customer buys it and submits the order. Once payment is received and the item has shipped. If you are getting that DVD player from the wholesaler for $40, you will be paid the difference of $19. Many drop-shippers work with online auction sellers who simply list the merchandise on their auction site and the wholesaler takes over the shipping of the merchandise. For auction merchandise there is a risk to the seller in that if a listed item doesn’t sell, the seller is still responsible for any listing fees for putting them item on the auction. Additionally, once an item sells, the seller is charged a final value fee, which is a percentage of the price at which the item sold. Consequently, the seller has to sell the item at a price higher than the unit cost, plus listing fees plus the final value fee before they make any money. Selling straight off your own website may not elicit as much business, but by the buyer paying shipping and handling charges, everything paid over the unit price is your to keep. You can also choose to buy small inventories of merchandise you believe will be in high demand and list in the items description how many are available. Being honest with potential buyers on the front side that only so many are available may improve the chance of a sale, as well as diminish disappointment when you run out. Using a drop-shipper or maintaining your own inventory is up to you. It again comes down to doing your research to find what will work best for you. I f your are a home-based business like I am I would recommend using a reputable wholesaler and drop-shipper. That way I don’t have to have space for products in my home and they do a much better job at shipping than I could. Keep your Hundred-Fold-Life simple to run and profit from.