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How I Host My New Dot-Com Websites For FREE!
by Michael Hopkins

When it comes to selling online, one thing is
certain: a small focused website that features just
one lead product will far outsell a big website that
features lots of products and links.

By focusing on just one product, you avoid distracting
your visitors or forcing them to make decisions. That
way, they'll take the time to study your product and
the chances of making a sale are vastly increased.

I can see the evidence for this in my own business.
While the main company website continues to bring
in a steady stream of sales, it's actually the individual
websites for each of my ebooks that are responsible
for the lion's share of orders.

The problem, however, with having one website for every
single product is that it adds a lot of extra overheads.
In general you're looking at minimum $100 for any kind of
webhosting and somewhere between $8 and $35 for a
domain name.

These are not huge figures, but let's face it, costs are
costs and if you're in business you want to keep them as
low as possible.

That's why I felt it was worth sharing with you my little
'trick' for setting up brand new websites for just the
price of a domain name.

This week I launched a new website for my ebook
publishing guide. The TOTAL cost to set up this new
website was just $8.97!

So how did I manage that?

Well, the first step I took was to set up a new folder
(directory) in my existing webhosting account that
would be the 'home' for my new website.

----------------NOTE---------------------
This method can also be applied effectively to many
free hosting services. Just ask your domain name
registrar if they'll be able to redirect to your free
hosting service address before you buy the domain
name.
-------------------------------------------

Next I designed the website, and published it to
the folder I'd just created.

Then, I went along to the domain name registrar and
bought the domain name I wanted for $8.97. The domain
registrar I used offers a whole range of domain name
services completely free (domain parking, URL re-direction,
e-mail re-direction, etc.). If you shop around, you'll find
that there are lots of low-cost registrars that offer such
services for free.

Once I had the domain name, it took me just a couple of
minutes (via the domain registrar's website) to set up the
new domain name to point (or re-direct) to the folder I'd
just created.

I'm even able to 'cloak' the address shown on the browser's
address bar, so that, even though people are surfing on my
sub-folder, what shows up on the address bar is the proper
domain name I'd just purchased.

Finally, the domain name registrar even re-directs my e-mails
for free. This enables me to create new addresses and have
any messages that are sent to these addresses re-directed
to my regular e-mail address inbox.

And that's it! A brand new website -- hosted and all --
for less than $10.

Now there's no excuse not to create sales-focused
mini-websites for ALL your products!


--------Additional Info Added May 17th 2003--------
I've received quite a few questions regarding how to set up the 'cloaking'
and 're-direction' ideas mentioned in this article. To help clarify things,
here's a copy of a typical reply (in all its un-edited glory) that I've sent
in relation to these questions.

"I'm delighted you like the hosting article. Having just re-read it
for the first time in months, I can see that there's a need to add some
extra information. The cloaking is something that is taken care of
by the domain name registrar (they call it 'framing'). At the time of
writing I was using DNBuy.com, but now I use NameCheap.com
for all my domain names. Both these services include 'Framing' as
a free extra when you buy your domain name - once you have
the domain name you can set it up via your admin control panel.

There are probably other ways to do this using JavaScripts or
such-like (if you already have your domain name and your registrar
doesn't offer 'framing'), but I'm afraid I don't have specific info on
this off the top of my head.

Likewise, both these registrars (and, doubtless, many others) offer
re-direction as part of the package. Again, this can be set up via
the admin control panel once you've bought the domain name.

If you're in doubt, as to whether a given registrar will be able to
provide you with the necessary services to set yourself up, just
contact them and ask them these questions,

- Can I have my domain name re-direct to another URL
of my choice?
- Can I 'cloak' or 'mask' the real URL in the address bar
so that my new domain name shows up instead.
- Can I create email addresses with my new domain
name and then have those emails forwarded to my regular
email inbox?

(The first two are the most important. The third point is useful
but not 100% necessary).

Another point worth noting (and that I need to add to the article)
is that you should make a slight adjustment to the order links (if
you have any) that you place on the page.

On my website http://www.create-pdf-files.com which uses
this cloaking method, I noticed a problem. When someone clicked
the order link and were taken to ClickBank's payment window,
there were two problems. Firstly, the URL address in the address
bar still stays the same which may make a potential customer feel
uneasy - after all they would expect a ClickBank URL. Secondly,
the browser didn't recognize that it was entering a secure page and
didn't display the padlock towards the bottom of the screen. Again,
this would have a negative effect on customer confidence.

Fortunately, it's quite easy get around this problem. For the order
links you should include target = 'parent' to the link. This will break
you out of cloaking and allow the user to continue payment in the
environment he/she expects. Here's how the URL for the order link
would look in HTML,
<a href=http://www.YOUR_ORDER_LINK.com" target="_parent">

I hope this helps. Please don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of any
further help with anything."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Hopkins is a Successful Web Marketer and Owner of BizzyDays Ebook Publications. Visit Now to Download Original Ebooks for Free at: http://www.bizzydays.com
This Article First Appeared in Michael's Newsletter, Ebook Times. To subscribe visit: http://www.ebooktimes.com

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Get FASTER Download Times By Making BIGGER Web Pages!
by Michael Hopkins

As a webmaster you already know how important it is
that your web pages download fast. In a nutshell, if
your pages are slow, then you're losing visitors.
And if you're losing visitors, you're losing money.

To speed up your download times, most web design
experts will suggest that you optimize your GIFs and JPGs
so that they download faster. They'll suggest that you make
your images smaller or remove them altogether. Or they'll
simply suggest that you put less stuff on your pages.

All of these methods work. The problem, however, is
that they all involve doing things that you don't want to do.
You don't want to squeeze any more quality and color out
of your images. The same goes for your content - you put
it there because you want it there. Basically, there's only so
far you can go with these approaches before you really
start to ruin your page.

Fortunately, there's one way to get your pages opening
faster without having to compromise your images or your
content. This is a simple and effective method, but one
that is rarely discussed by the web design experts.

To understand this approach, it's important to recognize the
difference between "perceived" download time and "actual"
download time. The perceived download time is the time it
takes to have enough stuff displayed on your page for the
visitor to be able to start studying your content. The actual
download time is the time it takes for the entire page and all
its contents to be fully downloaded.

The perceived download time is the one that really counts.
Why? Because once your visitor has something before
his/her eyes to read or look at, then there is much less risk
that he/she will click away because your page is taking too
long to load.

So how do you improve your perceived download time?

Simple, you break the content of your page down into two
or more tables.

You see, web browsers will not start displaying the contents
of a table until it has compiled the entire table to the end.
Once a table is compiled it will display, and the browser
will start compiling the next table.

That means that if you place the entire contents of your
page inside one big table, the browser will have to
compile the entire contents of your page before anything
will be displayed. The result: your visitor spends all that
time staring at a blank screen.

However, by putting some of the content towards the
top of the page into a table of its own, the rest of the
page can be downloading farther down, while your
visitor is busy studying the stuff that's already displayed.

I've used this method to great effect on my own website.
I went from an actual download time of up to 20 seconds
(staring at a white screen) down to a perceived download
time of rarely more than 3 seconds (often as low as
1 second)!

The ironic thing is, my page is now bigger (in terms of
Kilobytes) than it was before I made the change.
That's because 2 tables take more HTML than one.

But boy has that extra bit of HTML paid off!

Make a test page now and try it out. Your hit counter
will thank you for it!


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Hopkins is a Successful Web Marketer and Owner of BizzyDays Ebook Publications. Visit Now to Download Original Ebooks for Free at: http://www.bizzydays.com
This Article First Appeared in Michael's Newsletter, Ebook Times. To subscribe visit: http://www.ebooktimes.com

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Is Your Website "Killing" Your Online Business?
by Michael Hopkins

The design of your website is crucial to the
success of your online business.

People have gotten wise to Internet amateurism
and a poor looking website will turn many visitors
off buying. Similarly, a site that lacks focus and
tries to be too many things to too many people
will not have visitors scrambling to hand over
their credit-card details.

In short, if your website is to succeed, it must inspire
visitor confidence, be clear about its purpose and give
off a general air of success.

Fortunately, you don't need specialist training in
web design to create an effective and professional
website. Just keep it SIMPLE and keep it FOCUSED
and you'll make life easier for both yourself and
your visitors.

Here are 27 things you can do that will give your
website a credibility boost:

1. Aim to capture your visitors' interest as soon
as they arrive on your page. It's important that
you let them know IMMEDIATELY what they'll find
on your site and what they gain by being there.
Try to come up with an opening headline that will
capture the attention of those people you're trying
to reach.

2. Be consistent in your design. Each page should
have the same fonts (text style), the same navigation
links, the same general layout, the same color
scheme, etc.

3. Choose your colors carefully. Don't put inappropriate
colors together. I read an article recently that suggests
that designers should look at the colors they're putting
together on their web page and ask themselves if they
would put wallpaper with that color scheme in their
living-room.

4. Use a plain color background (i.e. no fancy textures
or designs). Make sure your text contrasts STRONGLY
with your background color -- black text on a white
background is the best combination.

5. Optimize your pages to download quickly. Avoid
using excessively large images (both in terms of
memory size and actual on-screen size). Images
which are too large will slow the download time of
your page, often look bad and are usually unnecessary.

6. Don't make your pages any longer than they need
to be. Pages that scroll down forever can be tiresome
and, unless they're well written, keeping your visitor's
interest is difficult. Be sure that you NEED everything
on the page. It's worth critically examining the
contents of a page, sentence by sentence, and ask
yourself which stuff is really necessary and which
stuff can be done without.

7. Don't be afraid of empty space. Don't clutter up
your page with loads of 'stuff'. If it's not essential
leave it out. You can draw attention to the important
things by giving them space to breath rather than
making them big or loud.

8. Be sure to put a link to your home page on every
page of your site. Links marked 'Back' are no good
to people who've arrived directly onto one of your
pages from a search engine.

9. Include your contact information (company name,
address, link to contact page and perhaps even
tel./fax. numbers) at the bottom of each page of your
site. This will save visitors having to search for it,
and it will reassure them that you're a real and
credible business.

10. Don't put a graphic counter on your page. People
will not buy from a site that has something like
"Visitors since 1998: 00001471" in a glaring graphic
at the bottom of the page. Just don't do it. You'll
have all the statistics you need about your visitors
from your webhost (or third-party stats services
like sitemeter.com).

11. Don't clutter your home page with banners, ads,
and unnecessary graphics. Less is definitely more in
website design. If you want to place ads on you site
keep it to a minimum - especially on your home page
(maximum 2 banners - preferably none). These only
take up valuable download time and distract your
visitors from your central product(s).

12. Make sure your site works well with the main
browsers and screen resolutions. Verify that you've
no broken or outdated links.

13. Check and double-check your spelling and your
grammar. Mistakes on this front will kill a sale
quicker than you can say "How do you spell disastor?".

14. Don't even consider putting background music on
your site. Nothing sends visitors running away faster
than a woeful, repetitive midi file tinkling away in
the background.

15. Avoid overusing gadgets - again if you don't
need it and your visitors have nothing to gain from
it, leave it out. There are very few gadgets that
impress nowadays. If you want to impress your
visitors give them clear information on clearly
laid-out pages that download quickly.

16. Your navigation bar should contain links to the
MAIN pages of your site only. Links to additional
sub-pages can be made from those main pages.
Try to ensure that nothing on your site is farther
than three clicks away from your home page.

17. If you're using graphics for your main navigation
links, you should consider including text links also
(at the bottom of the page, for example). This will
be appreciated by visitors who can't (or don't want
to) download graphics. Also, Search Engine Robots
can only follow text links, so if you only have graphic
links they will not be able to get to the other pages
of your site.

18. Don't put 'under construction' signs on a page.
If it's not finished don't make it accessible.

19. Keep Your Links Honest. Don't put a link that
says "Click here for a free gift" that actually sends
your visitor to another site that is offering nothing
for free.

20. Use CAPITAL LETTERS sparingly to highlight
important words. DON'T TYPE LARGE BLOCKS OF
TEXT ALL IN CAPITALS. IT MAKES YOUR TEXT HARD
TO READ AND LOOKS AWFUL. YOUR VISITORS WILL
NOT WANT TO READ IT. IF YOU WANT TO
HIGHLIGHT SOMETHING IMPORTANT, TRY USING
SPACE OR COLOR INSTEAD.

21. Don't put large blocks of text in BOLD. You
should use bold text sparingly, for emphasis or
for headings.

22. Avoid UNDERLINING text on your page.
People will think it's a link (that isn't working).

23. If you have links incorporated in your text,
make sure they're visible. The best way to get
your links noticed is to use the standard
blue-underlined link look.

24. Avoid the use of frames (i.e. when the screen
is broken into two or more parts). These add a
whole heap of complications that you can do without.

25. Avoid using one of those 'Click here to enter'
entry pages. They're a waste of your visitor's time.

26. Get others (who have some experience with
surfing the Internet) to check out your site. Did
they find it easy to understand? Did they find it
appealing to the eye? Did they get lost or find
themselves stumbling into a dead end? Would they
feel confident buying from a site like yours?
Leave a message at webmaster forums asking fellow
website designers to give a look at your site and
make comments.

27. Concentrate on keeping things as simple as
possible -- both for yourself AND for your visitors.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Hopkins is a Successful Web Marketer and Owner of BizzyDays Ebook Publications. Visit Now to Download Original Ebooks for Free at: http://www.bizzydays.com
This Article First Appeared in Michael's Newsletter, Ebook Times. To subscribe visit: http://www.ebooktimes.com