Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Remember Geocities?

Those of you who were online since the 90s should have known Geocities.com quite well.It was the largest free hosting provider then.It was started in 1994 and shut down on 26 October 2009.
It introduced the Cyber Cities concept where members could select which neighbourhood to host his website.Somewhat similar to the Categories of modern portal websites.Everyone flocked to Geocities, brushing up their web building skills and uploaded contents of all sorts, some are serious academic and cultural stuff while a lot were pure garbage.

I had a few websites too. Since I was the owner of an active MIRC channel, I created one site for channel members to interact. I had a personal homepage, in which I put photo of my 2 children, from they were babies to their first day in school, Parents' Day, Prize Giving day. I wrote articles about their progress and their health.
When chatting on the net, I always urged people to check out my sites and reminded them, "don't forget to sign on my guest book!" LOL
Beside Geocities, there were other free hosting websites like AngelFire, Tripod.They were less popular. I later started using paid hosting services when I became serious on internet marketing. Since I had no intention to monetize my geocities websites, so I let them remain there. Once in a while I would visit my old personal site to look at the old photos in there, it brought back sweet memories.

Geocities was later acquired by Yahoo to boost its own failing hosting business. But it did NOT work out as expected, so Yahoo shut down Geocities.I found this out one day when I tried to access my website but was informed that geocities was shut down. I was furious! I was not given time to retrieve my data. I wish someone will buy over Yahoo one day, and shut it down the same way it did to others. That will be sweet revenge on my behalf and on many others' behalf! I always advise those who are keen on running their own online business, use only paid hosting services. Avoid big names like Yahoo, they may change their policy over night and won't give a damn to your benefits.

For newbies

If you are looking for free work-at-home business, check this out:
Light Breeze's Web

Basic Online Business Model Part II - Web Hosting Account

We discussed domains in my last post,let's talk about website hosting account today. Your domain is useless for all practical purposes at this stage because visitors can not be led to any where by typing it in the address space in the browsers. It is like in real life world where you booked a unit in a new housing project from the developer or its agent but can not view it because the project has not started yet.
Your domain should be associated with an existing website so that the address it represents will point to that website. This website have to be kept somewhere on the internet, in other words it must reside on a remote server which is referred to as a Host.A company providing this type of hosting services for websites is called a Web Hosting company (what else? lol).
There are providers of free hosting services around also just as in the case of domain names. But I strongly advise you to go for a paid service for several reasons. Firstly you will appear professional and people will take you seriously. Secondly, free hosting companies will insert advertisements on your web pages whenever they are loading which not only slow down your pages load but also irritate your visitors. Thirdly and also the most important factor to consider is whether the free host will stay in business for long term. It will be very sad if they wind up without warning and go down together with all your hard works over the years.
I personally use Host Gator here's the link Host Gator
The support of this host excellent. Another bonus is that you can either be their reseller or affiliate if you are interested.Now there is a difference between the two here. A reseller has to sign up for a reseller account, and pays a monthly fee then sells the service at whatever price he sees fit. Whereas an affiliate needs not pay any monthly fee but the price charged is set by the company, you only earn a commission on any sale closed. When you are at the Hostgator page,

you will see there are 3 categories of hosting are offered :

1. Reseller Hosting
2. VPS Hosting
3. Dedicated Servers

Click on the first option if you are interested to be a reseller, otherwise go to the top and click on the View Web Hosting Plans button. When you are at the next page,

Select the BABY option, the HATCHING option is too small to be useful, unless you want to use it for capture page or one page sales letters.

The next screen allows you to buy a new domain or use your own existing domain. Enter the new domain you just bought at Godaddy.com, click CONTINUE TO STEP 2, you will be taken to the billing page fill it up and you are done! We will learn how to set up your website on this new host in my next post.
By the way, I am a reseller of Hostgator. I accept local bank transfer if you do not have credit cards,Paypal,Alertpay, etc.

My email Benson Law

Writing Ain't for Everyone, But Article Writing Is! in Article Writing

Ready...Set...Go! If you are not submitting articles to article directory web sites, which pertain to your site's content and theme, you are missing the proverbial boat on gaining additional popularity for your web site and valuable, one-way links back to your site which are critical for good placement within the search engines.
Many formerly well-ranked, front-page sites have found themselves re indexed and tucked away on page 15 of google. Sound familiar? Who's going to find you on page 15? Answer: No one. You may want to check some of your top 5 keywords on Google, Yahoo, and MSN to see where you are located. Different that what you expected? Is your site traffic down? Then, you'd better do something and do it quickly. Sites which refuse to write and publish content are "on their way out," as one web designer and SEO expert has said. Let's take a look at this issue a bit further.
In recent months, it has become absolutely critical for web site owners to submit content-rich articles for publication on major article directory sites, ezines and newsgroups. Gone are the days where it was relatively easy to get front page placement for your site for a few, or even several, key search words ("keywords"). Why the difference? Because the search engines are continually changing their search algorithms to provide more relevant search data to their consumers/customers. The "Big 2," Google and Yahoo, compete fiercely to supply relevant and cutting-edge results for these searches in order to get people to come back for future searches.
In review, the game goes a little like this: Let's say Sally is taking her lunch break at work and wants to look up some information on shopping in Madrid. Sally fires up her browser, surfs to google and enters "shopping in Madrid" in the search box. On the date of this article, there were 19,600,000 results for this search phrase and only the top 10 are listed on page one. Even though less than thirty percent of people will click to page two, Sally decides she would like to copy-n-paste the first 20 results into an email to her home computer, so she can check the search results in detail when she gets off work. She creates the email and sends it off and does, in fact, research the top 20 results when she gets home. Sounds like "shopping in Madrid" had 0.0001% of all available results indexed actually looked at by a google customer in this instance. Question: What if your web site has a major section devoted to downtown shopping in Madrid? Do you think, with your current level of web presence, that you have a chance of being on the first two pages of google? Would someone like Sally even know you existed? Chances are, she wouldn't know your web site from a bale of hay!
How would you like to *know* that the major portion of your site, which you have spent thousands of dollars developing, pertaining to "shopping in Madrid," has a very good chance of getting high placement, maybe even front page, on google? While there is no way to "guarantee" this, it is important that you begin writing articles about "shopping in Madrid" and submitting them to the major article directories. Not a writer? Not a problem! Read On!
You'd be surprised that once you simply open up your notepad.exe file and begin typing, the ideas just seem to come forth. Type each of these ideas about what you would like to say on a separate line, pressing the enter key twice after each thought. Think of as many things as you can, regardless of how good or sorrowful they might be, and type them out, each on a single line. Tip: Think of what is already on your site and try to dovetail some of this content. Then (we're almost there...), after you have more than a handful of ideas, go back and put an asterisk by the ideas you think would have the making of some decent content. Save this file as "Topics.txt" on your computer's desktop and place the icon right smack-dab in the middle of your screen. Now, go get a diet coke or a cup of coffee and think about what you just did. Come back to you computer, open up the file that you just saved, choose one of the topics that you placed an asterisk beside, go to the next line and begin typing whatever comes to mind about that idea. Congratulations! You have just gotten over the hump of writing your first article! I have found that 90% of the "battle" is just selecting the topic. Obviously, you already know at least something about the topic you selected or you would not have written it down in the first place. Now, do a google or yahoo search on your selected topic and see what comes up in the search engines. I bet you see where I'm going with this...
Webmasters and site developers, you don't have to be Truman Capote to write a 600 word article. Most people speak 600 words before they get out the door to go to work in the morning with a cup of coffee in-hand. Do you think you can put together 15 or 20 organized sentences on a topic that you are "supposed" to know a little bit about? I bet you can. Simply begin writing additional ideas below the topic you have selected and form them into a few paragraphs of organized thought that you think someone would be interested in reading. In the above example, "shopping in Madrid" I might see what the new happening place is to get good deals on Spanish antiques. Look up a few sites, select a shop, do a little research and then start writing.
The process of writing articles is really not that difficult once you get the hang of it. The above method is a very basic one that should work for many people. Also, please be sure to list the article on your own web site for additional new content which the search engines seem to really like. Once you have this information on your site, you may be surprised what could happen. Let's say, the Spanish antique dealer which you wrote your article about might just contact you requesting a link or a banner ad be placed on your article page. How did they find your page? They did a search on google for "shopping in Madrid" and found your article listed and contacted you! Ah...success! While this probably won't happen, you have the assurance that you are going through the right process to promote your web site and gain exposure in the search engines. There are many article directories to submit articles to. If set up properly, with one click of your mouse, you have the ability to create over 400 one-way back links to your web site. How long would this take you if you were doing the old reciprocal link campaign?
Go! You have invested countless hours and extraordinary effort to have a successful online business. It's now up to you to keep it! By the way, the above article took less than one hour to write, revise, proof-read, and submit to over 400 article directories...and this writer ain't no Truman Capote. Good luck!

About Domains

We are still on the topic of domains. Some internet marketers are promoting very hard their ebooks, membership sites which sell nothing but domain names.Don't confuse this with the domain registrars mentioned in my previous post.The domain registrars let you register brand new domains, whereas these marketers registered the names which they think will be popular then resell them for higher price.
I tried them all, but did not make any money. Now come to think of it, who in his right mind will want to pay more for domain when he can just register it cheap? Maybe you have to tweak the name slightly, but no big deal, it still works. True, in the early days of internet boom, many huge corporations had not got bitten by the internet marketing bug yet. They did not bother to register their trade marks and let their brands/trademarks to be registered by some cunning marketers. When they finally wanted to go online, alas, their names were already taken! They have got no choice but to pay huge sum to buy back their names.But those were the days, you can't do it any more. The trademark law has now covered internet also, a few cases were brought to court and were won by the corporations who own the names in real life world! So don't try it, else you will find yourself landed in court!
The only way you may hope to make big money by selling a domain name is to emulate the founders of Yahoo, Facebook, Youtube. Can you? Sure wish you can! If you own such a domain name it is hard not to become rich.
There is yet another group of marketers selling ebooks on how to make money through "parking" your domains.They urge you to register hundreds of domains and then park them at their websites, they will pay you commission when visitors click on your domains parked there. The money earned is less than a fraction of that would be earned through Adsense if you were to use these domains to create websites and insert the adsense codes in them.why is that so? It is because visitors were tricked into clicking on these domains but found that they are either empty pages or broken links. The next time they see these pages again, they will close the window without hesitation.
Yet many people were attracted by the idea of not having to pay any hosting fees and no work were needed, but they find out the truth later and end up with tons of domain names which they do not need.

Basic online business model - part 1

We start by discussing domain (or domain name). It forms part of your URL (universal resource locator), the online address of your website.A full URL looks like this "http://www.bensonpslaw.com", bensonpslaw.com is my domain.
I prefer bensonlaw to bensonpslaw but it is already taken, so be warned that you are not always possible to get the exact domain you want, someone maybe quicker than you.
While there are free domains around, but it is important to have your own domain to reflect your serious attitude towards your online business, to tell people that you are not some amateur internet marketer trying to make a quick buck and disappear. Also your domain name can also inform others what field of business you are in.Therefore choose your domain carefully.
There are many companies offering domains at reasonable prices, they are called the domain registrars.I use these two: http://www.godaddy.com and http://www.namecheap.com. Go to any of their websites, look for the search box and type in the domain name you desire then click go. It is what it looks like at Godaddy below:-

Let me remind you again that your desired domain may not be available sometimes, hence you may have to accept one with a little variation, just like mine demonstrated above.When you found one name which you like, proceed to make your payment for registering it.I'm not going into the payment process here, just follow the onscreen instructions.Just remember one thing though, go straight to the "check out" page, ignore any special offers, else you will have to pay much more than you need to.

Click on banners below to register your domain
      
After registering your desired domain, you should change its Name Server settings in order for it to point to the correct hosting server. Here is how to do it:

When you click on the namesever icon, a drop down menu will appear, select "Set NameServers". The following screen will pop up:-

Ask your hosting company for the correct name servers settings to enter into the Name Server 1 and Name Server 2 spaces.Then click OK.It says it will take 48 hours for your new name to be propagated (letting the whole world know about it..LOL. But for fresh domain it would not take that long, it may be active much sooner than expected.
Alright, enough for one day, see you later.

Basic Internet Business Model

Many people spend hours after hours searching for the perfect internet marketing system but cannot find one. Some were drawn to the getting rich over night schemes only to realize these are all scams after parting with their money. It is very sad to hear about these stories and I can understand why they fall for these tricks. They are either in financial difficulty or hate their current jobs and wanted to quit immediately.

The hard truth is that it needs time to grow your online business, there is no perfect system and over night success formula around.

The basic internet marketing model is very simple comprising the follow components:

1 Domain

2 Hosting

3 Website

4 Autoresponder

Maybe most of you already knew. But they are essential and vital for your success.

These are tools, not your online business. It is possible that you have come across them individually and even are very well verse in one or two of them. Unfortunately nobody told you how to piece them together to form a solid business model. It is natural, because it is always easier to sell part by part than selling a complete package, so why should they tell you the truth and risk losing your business?

Since these are tools you are expected to come out with some money in order to be allowed to use them. You understand that you need money to run a business be it online or offline. Of course, you have heard a thousand times that you do not need any money to start an internet business. But it is not true, you have to spend money, although not a lot of money. Also you need to put in consistent hard work to make it a success.

You can write books on any one of the components mentioned, but you need not go to that detail, you only need to know enough of each to form a successful online business model.

I am about to do that, telling you just enough of each to get you on the right track to success. I will create a series of posts, be sure to check back often in order not to miss any of it.

What is important when designing a website

One of the most overlooked and misunderstood portions of web site designing and set up is the content. What do you actually fill the pages with, is the most common question today. Well the answer is rather simple, content and lots of it. One of the biggest problems with content these days is there is not enough original web content for your site. Why would you have an article that 500 other sites already have on theirs? This will not keep you in the race if you do not have original stuff.

As every good web site designer knows, it is the use of keyword rich content that can make or break your site. These keywords are what are considered a beacon for the page, when the keyword is typed into the viewer's browser. Not having keywords or very poor ones will not generate traffic to the site, leaving the site virtually in the dust of the competition. This is where creativity comes into play, you need to keep sharp to stay on top of the competitors and keep your site flooded with traffic. The more traffic you have the higher the page ranking. When your page ranking is high, you will have your site up around the top page or pages where most people surf.

Many people for one reason or another rarely venture past the first few pages in a search engines listings, if your site is not in high rankings chances are you are not going to be seen. There is word of mouth yet someone actually has to stumble onto the site and view it for it to be noticed. For this one reason alone, you need to have content that can generate hits. Now there are many sites where you can grab free content for your site, yet this free content rarely has any keyword rich value to it and is surely not going to make you financially stable anytime soon. You need to find the stuff that no one else has in order to be original. Having fresh content that a viewer is actually looking for and has not found everywhere else online is the key to bringing in more business.

This is not restricted to merchant based sites or affiliate sites, this goes all the way down the list of possible web site designs. Many people today write their own content with their keywords in it, to ensure that the indexing is updated regularly. If you do not have any writing skills or have no programs to ensure that the content has not been used before, this could easily be a daunting task. There are however, many sites dedicated to this very problem. You can go to a site such as Elance and employ a hired gun to do your content development. This is a site where web designers congregate, and you can simply put out ads on what you are looking for. Then a writer has the option of taking on the task of filling your site with proven content that will sell for you.

Put what you have learned to work now.

Most internet marketers,especially us Malaysians, are held back by one very wrong belief when building our online business.We believed that we should learn every thing about internet marketing, have a very solid foundation before doing any real work on our online business, just like the way we must get proper education before joining the work force in real life world. Therefore we bought tools, ebooks, reports and join courses and membership sites. We spend tons of money and hours after hours in training but not making a single cent.We are thus further convinced that we are not ready to start our business yet, we spend more money on buying stuff.
We buy all sorts of software when people tell us to run our business on "auto pilot".
We buy every ebook when the gurus offer to reveal their "tips" and "secrets".
We join one membership site after another because we do not want to miss out any "goldmine" or "treasure".
Stop. You have spent enough already!
It is now time to settle down to review what you have got in your own treasure trough and what you have learned all this while, try to sort them out and put them into good use. You might be able to start making some money right away. The most important thing to do now is to have a proper approach and stick to it, you would be amazed at the result you will get. I would like to suggest an approach briefly here:

1. Have a website with your own domain name for selling your product and building a list.
2. Find a nich market.
3. Creat a product or get someone to create it for you. You may convert a privete label rights (PLR) product and make it your own.
4. Sell the product at Clickbank,eBay,your own website or by emails to your list.
5. After making a sale, follow up with other related products or a more complex version of the product just sold at a much higher price.

Apply the above principle to create more products for sale, you then have a long term business. I will write an ebook with full details on the above approach and post the link here. Please check back often.