The goal of this site is to provide information and links for at little or no cost. Well, actually that's one goal. This is also my personal web page design and web site development notebook and a possibly-make-a-little-money-thru-referrals website.

This site is intended for individuals interested in starting up and maintaining a small e-business -- do-it-yourself types who want to develop a web site for a work-at-home-business on the internet. It covers only the introductory issues. Please let me know if you find anything amiss -- especially if you know of information or resources I missed. (email dr.j)

This is presented as-is -- without any assurances that I actually know what I'm doing on the internet. (Actually, so far the appropriate slogan for my level of success would be, 'Don't quit your day job.') What I can assure the reader is that I'm not entirely dim and the information below comes from hundreds of recent and ongoing hours of surfing, reading, mining and sifting the internet for what seemed and seems to be the clearest, most helpful information and the most useful programs, services and links.

a product to sell

You can sell information, services, arousal and items (crafts and merchandise) -- and probably a few other things I can't think of just now. Selling one set of things can introduce you to opportunities to sell other things (see selling for others, below).

Items, of course, are easy to understand. You sell like you would through a mail-order catalogue only it's on the internet instead.

Services are generally like services anywhere else -- things you do for people -- though when dealing through the internet you do the service after they pay you.

Arousal refers to games and/or "adult" stimulation that bring people to your site for some form of excitement and/or arousal. These sites come in two flavors (well, okay, a lot of flavors, depending on how you divide things up, but for this discussion we'll divide them into two) -- sites you pay to get into (kind of like a service where you pay first) and sites that are free. The free sites draw surfers in the hopes that they'll click on the various ads and either buy things (from sites that pay the original site a commission) or give information or something.

Information sites don't really sell the information. The information sites are like the free sites drawing surfers to arousal opportunities, only in this instance it's information drawing the surfers. The information brings surfers to the site to get information, ideas, suggestions and recommendations about strategies, procedures, services and products. It is expected that some of the surfers will click on the links on the site and go to the service or product sites. It is expected that some of the surfers that go to the service and product sites will purchase or use the products and services offered. Some (or on some sites, all) of those service and/or product sites give the originating site a pay-per-click referral fee (a few pennies) or commissions (5%-50%) on services and products purchased.

This page is an example of a webpage/website offering an information "product." I spent months gathering info and keeping track of links in an effort to get a little e-business going. I kept the links in a webpage form which I put on my head-cleaners website in case others might be interested. After my experience with setting up my website, I realized that many of the services I use and some of the products were offering commissions for referrals. I took the information I had gathered in my head and put it on the page of links. Now I have a webpage intended to draw surfers interested in this topic by providing free, good information and offering easy access to the services and products described -- some of which will pay me a commission on purchases or sign-ups. (Recommendations on this or any other page on my website are candidly made on the basis of what I really believe, but keep in mind I'm smart but not all-Knowing and I'm offering no warrantees. Sites that will pay me if you purchase something are marked by a little star.)

a web page to sell it on

Keep an eye on web pages you see on the internet. Check out their web site design and their individual web page design. Many seem too cluttered, too disorganized. Many are very sharp, glitzy, engaging.

Your target audience: surfing customers. You want a page that is enticing, impressive, informational, easy and quick to load and easy and quick to understand. Your web page design needs to make it easy to find information, navigate and (if selling) make purchases. Web sites with lots of content -- information, articles, links to related sites -- are most likely to be bookmarked and remembered and returned to.

Your target audience: search engines. You can advertise your site by placing ads in various media or hope to be recommended on popular sites, but the greater majority of hits on your web site will come from surfers surfing via search engines. In fact, the rule of thumb is that most hits on your web site will come from surfers checking out no more than the first 30 listings on whatever search engines he or she uses. No matter what customers you believe are your target audience, if you don't plan to pay a great deal for advertizing or pay-per-click links, your first target audience is going to be made up of the various search engines. A website must first be understandable and attractive to the search engines, and only then will it matter if the website is understandable and attractive to humans. This makes it very important to find out what the search engines look for, what strategies they use to understand the content of a site, what results in higher ranking, and what the search engines might misunderstand, ingore or punish a site for.

basic concepts & terms

Spidering is the process in which the search engine visits your site, gathers a list of all your url's, looks at your keywords list and tries to make sense of what the important information on your site is. The more often words appear on your site, the more important the spider thinks they are. The spidering process tries to find real information for surfers and tries to ignore and/or get rid of information that seems to be trying to trick it -- so you need to watch out for "tricks." The spidering program collects the information and then moves on to do the same thing at all the url's it gathered from your page. It apparently takes the spidering programs months to make the rounds through the internet. Then they start again.

Keywords are usually listed in a META tag at the top of the page -- an area invisible to the surfer but seen and understood by the search engines' spider program. Some search engines don't bother with META tags. Some only take in the first 200 characters of the metatag keyword list. Whether the search engine spiders pick up the keywords or not, they reportedly take note of the most commonly occurring words on the page. They can tell the difference between sentences and words just mindlessly repeated and as I understand it they are designed to ignore and/or dismiss words trying to "trick" them into thinking they are more important than they are. A general rule of thumb is to have plenty of text on your page that uses the keywords you have in your META tag in proper sentences. (Read more about keywords further down.)

Search engine ranking is done on the basis of "popularity." Some engines also rank on the basis of paid-for ranking, but this will be discussed below. "Popularity" is defined by search engines on the basis of how often they find your url on other pages on the internet as they spider their way around the world wide web.

.com realities

You start with a decision to make: do you get your own domain name (www.myproduct.com)? The domain route is, of course, the most professional-looking. Your option is having a very amature-like address (e.g., www.mylocalserver.com/~daryl/myproduct.html).

Domain names. Assuming you're going to get yourself a domain name, you need to check out whether someone else has it yet. Register.com or Internet Goldrush are sites where you can check and see if the domain name you want is available.

Before you pick a registration service to register your domain name, be aware that there are some places registering domain names that keep the ownership themselves -- read the fine print in the agreement and/or ask. My server (with whom I've done business with since the days of BBS's) routinely registers themselves as registrant and contact so that they get the important set-up information. They had no problems with changing the info to my name. Other domain registrars may keep ownership as a policy. No telling what nightmares that could cause if you get really successful with your website. Once you are registered, you can check the information by simply returning to one of the domain registering sites and checking your domain name in their search engine (the one intended for you to see if a domain name you want is free to have). The site will tell you you can't have that name because it's already registered and offer to give you the information on who it's registered to. Click on that and see if it's you.

For a lot of information about domain names registrations, there is a richly informative page on the Internet Goldrush site -- Domain Name News and Information. There are a growing number of sites and a growing number of "dot-somethings" coming out to handle the overload from dot-coms. Take a look at Website.ws.

Registering your domain name can cost as little as $19.95/year (e.g., Verio Web Hosting Services, Interliant Web Site Solutions).

Free sites. There are many free sites available. You trade information or put up with advertizing banners and they give you a domain name and space to build a webpage. The rumor is that search engines don't take free sites seriously and may not even bother listing your site. Many of the affiliate management programs do not accept you as a seller, either, if you have a free site.

Domain registration, website hosting, webpage design help. There are some sites that offer to help you walk through whatever parts of the process you need -- registering your domain name, hosting the site, helping you put together a site, email addresses, storage and tech support. Some may also have a pre-fabricated web site for you to start with and edit. Check out Earthlink, Verio Web Hosting Services, NetNation, Interliant Web Site Solutions or WorldMall.

load time: Size matters!

Believe it: size matters. The most immediate way size will matter will be in the loading time of your webpage. The more stuff you have on it, the longer it takes to load. The more different graphics you use, the longer the load time. The bigger the graphics you use, the longer the load time. Generally, if you can stick to a very few graphics, you're going to be better off. People are known to lose patience if a site takes to long to load. It's an instantaneous world and it is deemed important to load in 15 seconds or less. (This page takes about 25 seconds. Did you get impatient?)

Recycling is good. Keep graphics to a minimum, but once you decide to use one, use it as often as you like. Load time is pretty much the same whether the graphic appears once or twenty times -- and whether it is presented the same size every time or different sizes.
 

optimizing graphics. Any graphics you intend to use should be optimized for internet. You can often get a graphic down to 1/3 or 1/5 of its original size. Optimizing may cause a degradation of the quality of your graphic, so be aware that it may be a trade-off of speed for sharpness of image. Most good graphics editing programs that come out now have a web optimization option. There are also some on-line services that will optimize your graphics for free. I've used both types. The best I found (NetMechanic) is on-line. It condenses your graphic and shows you 12 different versions (of increasing degrees of condensation) so you can decide how much of the clearness of the graphic you are willing to give up. NetMechanic has some very helpful services you can use free.

 

portal page vs. other pages.

To avoid monster size pages that take forever to load, most sites are divided up into multiple pages. Some like to have a simple introductory page -- a portal page -- that loads quickly. Be aware that search engines cannot "spider" (explore and record information from) graphics and will record less information on your web site if you have less information on the portal page. The search engines' spidering activities aren't designed to take responsibility to take a lot of time figuring your site out.

HTML, CSS

HTML (hyper text markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets) are means to put together your page with the paragraph indents, font changes, bells and whistles that make it look like you want so that browsers can interpret it. Like the basic text editing programs before Windows, HTML code can be easily learned with some practice. Since Windows, many people like to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs that simply show the finished product without showing code. I use HotDog 6.0 which allows me to tinker with the code. Many people use programs like Microsoft's Front Page or they use prefabricated pages offered on servers that use editing programs on the server (e.g., Earthlink.com. I find it much better to be able to tinker with the code. I frequently find that pages on the internet are not functioning properly -- usually because of incompatibility with my browser that the webmaster didn't know of because the page worked fine with their browser. When I send off an email to their webmasters, I often get back a response indicating that the webmaster actually relies on WYSIWYG programs that make problem solving pretty much impossible.

A great resource for details about HTML code is the downloadable, free, very easy to use "HTML Library" -- download it and check it out. Another good free resource, well organized, online and easy to navigate is the abakada web workshop, by kathang Pinoy.

If you are willing to pay more to have someone else deal with these hassles, check out services like WorldMall.

It is very important that the code be right. Some browsers may forgive little errors that search engine spiders do not. It is very easy to make a nice looking page that looks great on your monitor at home but that has multiple coding errors that might turn away a search engine.

CSS -- cascading style sheets -- are formatting information which is kept on a separate page. Cascading style sheets are intended to offer more control over the appearance of the webpage with greater readability for people with accessibility problems. If you haven't already designed your pages, look into cascading style sheets to do your formatting. Much of the formatting of webpages in the years to come will be expected to be on cascading style sheets as current on-page html codes are phased out to make pages easier to read by search engines and people with visual impairments.

Color-coding. When you add color to background or text, you have the option of naming a few colors by name. Otherwise, colors have 6-digit codes that are preceded with a "#." Green, for example, might be coded as "color=green" or "color=#007700." My understanding is that at least some of the search engine spiders don't like colors to be named.

Nesting errors. Nesting errors are HTML errors where one tag (tags direct changes in font, etc.) is opened and then another is opened and then the first one is closed and then the second one is closed (e.g., open TAG A, open TAG B, close TAG A, close TAG B -- ABAB). Tags are intended to encompass (e.g., open TAG A, open TAG B, close TAG B, close TAG A -- ABBA). Nesting errors can cause you problems with browsers and search engines.

Frames. Everything I read says to stay away from frames. Though nifty in many ways, they make adding a page to your Favorites or bookmarking a page impossible or unpredictable, they make browsing impossible for the visually impaired, and they confound search engine spiders.

Code checking, spell checking, etc. Once you get your page done, you need to be certain the code doesn't have problems. There are several ways to check your pages and I recommend you do them all.

First, I recommend taking a look at your page with both Netscape 4.x and IE 5.x. You can have both browsers on your computer and up and running at the same time. These, it is my understanding, are the two most popular browsers and versions, accounting for the vast majority of web browsers. Your page needs to be viewable by both.

Second, use any spell checking program you may have available. This is tedious if you use a regular text-editing program because the code will pop up as spelling errors. Microsoft Word checks spelling while ignoring code. HotDog 6.0 has a great spell check that takes code into consideration.

Third, use a code checking program. I use CSE HTML Validator. I've tried a few, but CSE does a very good job. It's also available in a "lite" version as shareware which you can try for an indefinite period of time.

Fourth, use an on-line check-up. There are several available. The two I have found most helpful are NetMechanic (#1) and WebsiteGarage.

Also, ask others to look at your on-line and check for errors using their computers at home or at work.

Validate your html. As another check, validate it using W3C HTML Validator Service. You have to remember to do this periodically, too, if you tend to make little changes to your sight (which you will).

Uploading your webpage to your server. This is also called "launching" your web page. You establish a place for your webpage on the internet with a server. The server houses your page and when someone types in your url, they go to the server it resides on and they download if from there. This is already done if you've established your webpage and edited it on-line. But for those of us who like to have our webpage on our computer at home or office so we can work on it off-line, we need to upload it to the server after making any changes. This is done with a launching program -- usually named something-FTP or FTP-something. The cheapest way to go here is with a program you download as shareware. I like WS_FTP, available from most shareware sites (i.e., Tucows, Sharewarejunkies). You need the program and you need the server to have a place for your web pages and you need to have your password and identification to get into that part of the server (password and id can be different from your logon).

Meta Tags

Meta Tags (AKA, metatags) are intended to be seen by search engine spiders. They're invisible to the surfer (unless viewing Page Source in Netscape or Source in IE). Meta tags are not essential to viewing by the surfer but may be required by the search engine to begin its categorization of your keywords, url's and content. Meta tags tell the search engine the title of your page, the description of your page, the keywords, the publisher and copyright holder and other things you might want the search engine to know. Meta tags can also be used to redirect a surfer to another page or authorize or reject viewing by the surfer on the basis of adult content or kid-safeness. the basis of adult content or kid-safe.

There are several sources of good information about meta tags.

keywords

Keywords are the keys to your site's success. Keywords are the "key" words that the search engines believe represent your website. These are the words that search engine users (surfers) will find your site with -- the words and short phrases that a surfer might put into the little search engine input box that starts the search process. If you sell widgets on your site and a particular search engine has your site url associated with the word "widgets," then anyone who types "widgets" into that search engine's input box will get a list of sites that will include yours. You may be the 37,000th url on the list, but you will be there. (Search engine ranking is discussed further down on this page.) If the search engine doesn't have your website url associated with the word or phrase that the surfer plugs into the input box, the search engine won't be offering your site's url.

Keywords are only "keywords" if the search engines decide they are. There are roughly three ways search engines decide what your keywords are: 1) Their spider program may read the list of keywords that you furnish in the meta tag at the top of your page, 2) you may be asked to furnish your keywords to some search engines when you submit your site to them manually, and/or 3) the search engine spidering programs decide for themselves what they think your most prominent words are. Though some search engine spiders may ignore the metatag keyword list or use it only as a guide, you should still carefully consider what you should list as keywords and list them in the metatag (see metatags above) and furnish them when manually submitting your site to search engines. You should also make sure you use a lot of supporting text on your webpages -- especially your home page -- that uses your keywords in coherent sentences.

With regard to the metatag keywords list, keep in mind that some search engines may not read past the first 200 characters, while others may read on no matter how long your list is. To be safe, have your most powerful keywords listed in the first 150 characters. Separate keywords with commas. They don't need to be single words (for example, "hypnosis tapes, stress management, relaxation" in the metatag would be considered to be three keywords) but I'm not sure how many words in a phrase it would take before the search engines would goof them up or they would be unlikely to ever be used in a search.

Avoid repetitions unless used in coherent sentences. Your keywords should be everything relevant but the list in your metatag or the list you furnish search engines when you manually submit should not have repetitions in them. It is my understanding that search engine spiders ignore repeated words. If, for example, you sell hypnosis tapes like me, you might think "hypnosis, hypnosis tapes, hypnosis cassettes, hypnosis for anxiety" would be good keywords -- but that's apparently a keyword list with a bunch of repetitions that might result in the word "hypnosis" being ignored. Better is "hypnosis, tapes, cassettes, anxiety."

The best keywords. A really nifty guide is to go to a search engine you like, put in your best keywords and see what sites come up in the top few positions. Then check their keyword list (once the page is loaded, go to the menu along the top of your browser, click on View and then click on Page Source or Source. This can be helpful in helping you generate more keywords you haven't thought of.

Another thing to do is utilize some of the services available on the internet. WordTracker is a cool service that offers several aids -- some for a small fee and some free. A nifty free service they offer is an emailed weekly list of the top 500 keywords used on the search engines. This is handy to see what kind of words and what kind of phrases are most commonly used by surfers. They offer, for a small fee, to help you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service -- many of which you might never have considered -- and to show you how popular these keywords really are. They'll also show you the chances of making it into the top 10 rankings on the major search engines. Another great little free online service is Search-Engine-Optimization-and-Website-Promotion.com's Web Site Analysis which analyzes your keywords and gives good advice about ways to optimize.

There are also computer programs that can help generate keywords by checking the web. Some of these are available on-line. So far, I haven't found one these that seemed helpful enough to remember, much less suggest or recommend.

Keywords and page content. As mentioned above, though you shouldn't have repetions of keywords in the metatag keyword list, you should have your keywords repeated in real sentences on your webpage. The search engines don't take keywords very seriously if they aren't found in the text on the page. The more verbal content you have on your webpage that restates keywords and keyword phrases, the more likely the search engines will categorize you appropriately. Search engines go to sites to categorize them, index keywords, and get a gist of the content. Their customers are the surfers who do searches through them. The better they are at determining what a site has and the better they are at boiling it down to a few words and one or two sentences, the more customers they can get and keep. Sometimes there is a human involved, sometimes only a spidering program, but either way it is very important to have lots of sentences and clauses -- not just single, no context words -- throughout your page.

Search engines' spiders do not view or in any way understand graphics, so it's worthless as far search engines go to have the important information about your site in a graphic. It's also close to worthless to have a portal page with only a few links to your meatier pages. If you go that route, be sure to also submit your meatier pages to the search engine sites manually or through some service -- and be sure those pages have good keyword lists in their metatags with good supportive text in the pages' content.

webpage design

Webpage design is going to be critical to your success in getting anyone to look over your site after you've accomplished the initial task of getting them to come see it. The webpage design says something about you, your product, your general level of success. You can have other design your webpage or you can do it yourself. When I initially put together my page to sell hypnosis tapes, a friend told me my site more or less said, "Just a guy with some tapes." I felt crushed. I looked into a few alternatives and decided they were too expensive and decided that, in fact, I was and am just a guy with some tapes -- and I plunged ahead.

 

If you decide to design your own page -- and you've probably decided that or are about to if you're reading this -- then the issues are basically 1) what do you want to focus on? 2) what do you want to say? 3) how do you want to organize it? 4) what colors and graphics will help? 5) what parts of what you want to say and do on your website should be on your main page (your home page) and what other pages should connect to it? and 6) do I use CSS, frames, tables, or what to organize it?

Resolutions. You need to design your page so it looks good and sells whether the viewer is looking at it at 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 or whatever. As of July, 2001, the data I've read about suggests that 61% of the browsers are browsing at 800x600. If it looks okay at 640x480, it will probably look okay, just smaller, at any of the other resolutions -- but the other way around is not the case. Its a good idea to check different resolutions every once in awhile to see what they do to your page. It's easy to lull yourself into thinking that you have a great webpage design with graphics and text looking great together -- and then find out that the graphics and the text do not stay in the same place relative to each other with different resolutions.

Browser compatibility. It's not enough that you have to worry about how things look at different resolutions, you also have to consider how things look on different browsers. Some browsers don't understand the code that others do or may interpret it in different ways. Most info articles site Internet Explorer 5 as the most popular browser and Netscape 4.x as the second. These two account for the vast majority of browsers with IE5 being 2-3 times more popular than Netscape. If you make sure you are compatible with those two browsers, you've covered most of the surfers.

If you don't already have Netscape, download it and install it. You can run both Netscape and IE at the same time. If you have both, you can check how your site looks on both as you work on it. Also, use a service like NetMechanic, which -- among other tasks -- reviews your pages on the basis of compatibility with Netscape 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x and IE 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x.

Counters allow you to determine how much traffic you're getting on your various pages. There are several kinds of counters. Counterguide gives what seems to be a good overview of the different kinds of counters available. I have found Jinko does a great job affording me 120 counters for a minimal fee.

Adding audio to your site can be an iffy idea. Many people find background music invasive. Many block audio because of fear of viruses, etc. If you do have a need to put audio on your site, the following may be helpful: nch.com.au, hitsquad.com.

Passwording pages. You can set up a sub-directory on your server that requires passwords for pages. This requires having a separate area for certain pages (easy to set up) that contains the pages you want to restrict access to. When someone tries to access a page in this area a box appears and asks for a user name and password. I found several links on the internet that briefly discussed setting up passwords but basically found that the assumption was that I had a lot of knowledge I didn't have (e.g., htmlgoodies.com, enteract.com, mirage.golden.net, alts.net). I ultimately found it was most effective to speak to tech support at my server. They set it up within a few hours.

Just who are you, anyway? In spite of all the issues about anonymity on the internet, if you're going to ask people to buy your products, believe your advice and/or give you their credit card numbers, you're probably going to have to tell them who you are. Even though credit cards are reasonably well-backed up by the companies behind them, very few people are going to trust a post-office box and a url. The conventional wisdom is that you need to offer a little background of who you are and where you can be reached if something goes amiss. (See Who is Dr. J?.)

Filters - ICRA Internet Explorer and several filter programs designed to keep kids from being exposed to pornography may refuse access to any internet page that don't have a meta tag labeling the site as kid-safe by the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA). It's free. Just visit the site for explanation, how-to's and code.

Page check-up services, programs. As already mentioned above, it is very important that your code is right, your graphics are as compressed as practical, your spelling is checked, your page is browser compatible and your load time is brief. Of the programs that reside on your computer, CSE HTML Validator has so far been very valuable while the others I've found aren't worth mentioning.

There are several programs IRA that check your page, but the best I've found is NetMechanic which, for a small fee, checks all my pages each week and sends me an email directing me to the results of the analysis. Weekly has been very helpful because I find reasons to tinker with and tweak several pages every week -- but you can get it to check your site for nothing (though not weekly) -- check it out. Another IRA service that seemed very helpful is WebSiteGarage.


 

Accessibility As with curb cuts and elevator lables of Braille, the internet can be browsed by individuals with visual impairments if the website makes itself accessible through an avoidance of certain coding problems, using ALT= with images, etc. These links can help you meet the standards: Bobby and Accessibility Guidelines.


accepting credit cards

There are several ways to accept credit cards on line. Some of these ways require a hefty fee up front and a hefty monthly fee and you take credit cards and deal with a bank. As a merchant, you have the software and connections to the credit card companies more under your control. These are called Merchant Accounts. For the tiny webster wannabe, however, there are very cheap, resonable alternatives. These are turnkey accounts which you set up through a service that handles the credit card processing for you. They notify you when someone buys something and then charge you is a little percentage of whatever money changes hands.

The turnkey solution can be a little risky. I was recently contacted by a crafts person I purchased some soaps from saying I should check my credit card for bad charges. She said that her credit card processing service had apparently charged a bunch of extra charges and vanished in the night. Though credit card companies insure users against mis-use of their cards, it can be embarrassing to have to notify all your customers that they need to check and make sure they didn't get over-charged by someone you thought you could trust. However, compared to the cost of several hundreds of dollars for a merchant account, for the little businessman this seems to be a small risk.

Below are brief reviews of some of the turnkey services I found. (As one can see from my website, I use two services -- PayPal and Verza. This covers the possibility that one service is down temporarily.) Also note that if you expect any international interest in your product, your credit card processing service should be able to accept credit cards internationally. Because this website is mostly focused on do-it-yourself webmasters with small businesses, I haven't collected anything about available merchant account services. (Merchant account offers can easily be found by doing a search or asking at your own bank. They're big money services and have lots of advertising and people hired to make them easy to find and connect with.)
 

PayPal - PayPal takes credit cards internationally and allows you to send or recieve money via your webpage or email. It pays interest on money in your account with them, allows you to transfer your money into a bank account of your choice, and offers an ATM VISA-connected debit card with which you can access your funds instantly and make purchases that you get small rebates on. They actually pay you $5 to set up an account and then charge 2.9% plus $0.30 on each transaction. PayPal seems to require a few more hoops to jump thru for the customer (they have the customer sign up as a member) but it's mostly how they present themselves. They don't really ask for much more information or clicks than any other service -- but they seem to because they make it sound like the customer is paying for your product and also becoming a member of PayPal. Paypal seems to have been around for some time. So far, PayPal has seemed very reliable.   Earn $5 for signing up with PayPal (whether you use this service as your credit card service or not).

Verza - Verza accepts international payments via credit cards or by direct debit from a bank account. They also offer a form of an affiliate program between Verza-using web sites. Their site is not the most easily navigated and support is not glaringly, easily found, but I get quick responses (same or next business day) by simply emailing support@verza.com. There is no set-up fee, no monthly fee. Verza takes 4.9% plus 99 cents per transaction. Verza transfers your money into the bank account of your choice twice monthly. Verza has a somewhat sketchy, "trust-us" sort of accounts management format on their site that has me quite baffled at times. There is no easy to find a detailed spread sheet available online, so it's tough to find details on exactly what they take as their commission sometimes or to track your money -- but so far Eva at customer service has been able to point me to the right places, answer my questions and/or reassure me about concerns sufficiently to quiet my mild, chronic paranoia.

ClickBank - ClickBank offers credit card acceptance and a form of an affiliate program between ClickBank-using websites where one website can earn 5% to 50% commission on referrals to another. They say the websites using their service get about 30% of their business through ClickBank. Clickbank has two types of programs for merchants -- one for merchants selling digital goods and services and another for merchants that sell goods that must be shipped to the consumer. The charges for the first type is $49 one time setup fee and $1 plus 7.5% per transaction. The second type is pricier at $100 setup, $50 monthly and $0.25 per transaction (for the first $1K of transactions per month).

BillCC charges 7.9% of plus $0.60 on each transaction. There are no start up costs, monthly fees, or annual dues.

eCharge - eCharge says they "offer two easy ways to make website purchases: eCharge Net Account and eCharge Phone. eCharge Net Account works like a credit card--without the credit card numbers or risk of fraud. With eCharge Phone, you can charge digital goods directly to your telephone bill." There are no set-up fees, no annual fees, and they say on their site that eCharge "offers competitive interest rates" but I couldn't find anywhere where these were detailed.

iBill - iBill is apparently a bit new. I found them a bit difficult to sign up with, slow to return phone calls and emails, and a bit problem-prone with regard to setting up my account so that it would work. They seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time making sure I was who I said I was and making sure my webpage code was right -- and too little time checking their own system. I tried using them and then gave up in late spring, '01. They contacted me months later with a generic email saying they had fixed some glitches in their system and apologized for any problems there may have been -- but I'd already long since moved on to other alternatives.

affiliate programs

Affiliate programs are arrangements made between two websites in which one website has links to the other website's products. The arrangement is that when people from the first site buy something from the second, the second pays the first a commission. Some arrangements are for "clicks" -- if the surfer surfing the first website clicks on a link to the second, the second pays the first a few pennies. The agreement usually includes some provision that the second site won't cut a check to the first site unless it is at least some minimum amount (for example, they might say they'll pay monthly unless the amount due is less than 25%, in which case the amount is carried over to the next month).

selling for others These links are to services that you sign up with for free and then apply to their various companies to sell their services and products off your website. There is no limitations on the number of these you can be signed up with. Each offers hundreds if not thousands of companies for you to make money with.
 

LinkShare Referral Program functions as an intermediary between web site's interested in selling and businesses both large and small. Some companies you can sign up for and get immediate approval, some companies want to check you out first. The system is very easy to join and use. The site is well organized and user-friendly. It's easy to link with programs and you pick from sometimes dozens of graphic or text links for any program you set up a linkshare with.

clickXchange offers impressive numbers of affiliate program opportunities.

AffiliateShop is a very polished service. As with the others, there is no charge to set yourself up to sell hundreds of products.

BeFree Reporting.net A quick and easy service to get set up with -- user friendly. Very large with lots of businesses to sell for.

Share-a-Sale offers free sign-up to sell for any of a large set of businesses.

others selling for you These are services that you set up with so that other websters can sign up to sell your products off their websites.
 

FreeFiliate is a program that allows you to offer affiliate programs to other sites. You can set it up for free if you don't mind freefiliate adding advertisement banners to some of your exchanges with customers. Otherwise there is a one time $89 start-up fee.

AffiliateShop is a very polished service. They charge $199 set-up fee and $45 per month fee for the first 1K affiliates you sign on. This is a little too pricey if, like me, you have only a handful of not-universally-sought-after items for sale (e.g., hypnosis tapes). Ideal if you have a product line that hundreds of other sites will want a chance to sell for you.

Share-a-Sale offers to track and handle affiliates for you for a $150 set-up fee and a $50 deposit to begin your account that pays affiliates.

LinkShare Referral Program functions as an intermediary between websites interested in selling and businesses both large and small. You have to provide a deposit against which they will draw payments to sites you sign on.

clickXchange gives another alternative. From their site: "There are no setup fees. An Advertiser's only service charge is 30% of their Affiliate pay out for "valid" traffic. Advertisers are required to spend a minimum of $19.95 in clickXchange service fees, prorated to the number of active days within any given month. The $19.95 service fee is accumulated from all programs under the same advertising account. Remaining portions will be billed on the 1st of each month for the prior month. New accounts are waived the monthly minimum for 30 days, however an overall account usage fee of $10 will be billed for early account closures. [EXAMPLE: An advertiser is offering $0.10 per click. An affiliate sends the advertiser a valid click. The affiliate earns $0.10 and clickXchange earns a $0.03 service commission, so the total will be $0.13. The $0.03 is the deducted from the $19.95 minimum service fee so the amount due at this point is now $19.92 and it is accumulated for all programs under the same advertising account.] In order to protect affiliates from nonpayment, we require that Advertisers open an escrow account. Minimum starting balances are as follows, per click $100, per sale and lead $250."

onto search engines

To be known at all to the search engines you must tell them you are on the net -- or they need to discover a link to you somewhere on another site (another site that the search engines already knew about). They don't scour servers for new listings. They need to be told.

You can go to most search engines and list yourself (search engines urls). Some sites will not let you tell them about yourself. They get their information through other services you can inform, though.

search engine submission

Search engines don't know you're out there on the web until they either 1) run across you from a link on another site or 2) are told you're out there by you "submitting" your site info to them. It's best not to just wait for them to discover you. Each search engine has its own procedure. Once submitted or otherwise discovered, the spider (and maybe a human) goes there and gets your keywords and a gist of your site to include in their search engine listings for retrieval when someone asks about one of your keywords.

You submit a site by going to the search engine's home page and look for something like "Add a Site" or "Submit URL" (search engines urls). It will usually be in the tiniest or almost the tiniest font on the page. You might glance at the search engine's criteria for submission, too, if you have anything that might be considered "iffy" on your site (like adult only content, colorful language, bomb-making recepies, etc.) -- or if you have a site on a free website server. Many search engines don't want anything off color or they want to list it very carefully. Some search engines don't want to list websites on free website servers.

Don't just submit the home page. You should submit each substantial page of your site as if it were a site by itself. This way each page becomes a potential doorway for surfers to enter your site from the search engines. But beware -- the rumor is that search engines will think you're up to something crooked if you submit more than 5 pages from your site in any given day.

If you like quick, submit your site to each search engine for only a mere little $199 !?!? When you go to most of the search engine submission pages, they offer to get you spidered and onto their databases within a couple of days for "just" a few hundred dollars. If you have the money to do this, you probably are way out of my league and are dealing with issues and opportunities that I can't even guess at -- and you shouldn't be bothering with this (the Wannabe Webster) website of information. For those of us who can't throw down several hundreds of dollars to get listed, they have a cheaper price. And for those who can't shell out that, they have a free submission option. (At least most do. You may find one that insists on a big charge. My reaction was to completely skip the one I came across and I later found my site listed there anyway.) Of the freebe submission options, they usually try to throw some cold water on the idea by telling you they aren't sure when they'll get to reviewing your site -- may be as much as 6 months. Frankly, I assume that any search engine that becomes famous for only listing sites that have paid big money to be on them will be treated with suspicion by surfers looking for either information or products. One would have to assume that somehow the sites listed there are expecting to vacuum out surfers' pockets to make their investments pay off. Such search engines would kill themselves with such a policy -- so don't be daunted by the threat to take some time -- unless you have WAY more money than time and feel a need to shave weeks off the whole process. Those threats, at least for now, are mostly marketting spin to get you to open your wallet.

You can also pay a service to submit you to multiple search engines. You will find all manner of little ads for submission services popping up when you submit your site. Some promise to submit you to hundreds of search engines around the world. Most of the search engines they are referring to are simply web pages that have a "search this page" program and most of them want your submission to turn around and use your email address. Remember that as noted just above, it's rumored that more than 5 submissions (five pages of a site submitted as if each page was a site itself) to some sites may be dismissed by the search engine as suspicious. Be clear about what the service does before you use it, too. The first service I signed up for seemed to stimulate an email flow of junk email back to me at the rate of about 100 an hour for the first three or four days, slowly tapering off over weeks to a mere 20 or so daily.

 

I manually submit my pages when I add one to the site, but I worry about not getting around to it often enough (they say it doesn't hurt to do it monthly to be sure you don't accidentally disappear. I also use Verica -- who impressed me enough to give such services another try (I had sworn such services off after that first one). Verica submits my site to a reasonably impressive list of sites and sends me an email report of successes and problems with any particular search engine site. (Some are probably not search engines at all -- but part of this whole search engine game is having your site listed on other sites.) Other submission services will promise to submit your site to several hundred search engines and never tell you if they ever tried. (You find out indirectly that they did submit your site to a lot of places that keep your site listed on some list for a week or a month. You find this out because those sites send you an email telling you that they are bumping you off if you don't resubmit -- OR they send you an email saying thanks for the submission, here's one to thirty ads for you to read, and don't complain because this isn't spam because you sent in your email address when submitting your site.)

Below is a page of search engine submission urls you can use to go to individual search engines yourself and manually submit your url -- and two pages of search engine submission information that I found very helpful in getting a little understanding of all this. (I'd be happy to include more submission urls -- or sites with really good info -- if anyone has any suggestions.)

Search Engine Ranking

Surfers are generally most likely to click only on the first 10 listings of a search. They are generally not likely to go beyond the first 30. It's therefore pretty much worthless to be ranked any further down the lists. So how do they decide how your site ranks?

Popularity and pay. Basically, search engines rank on the basis of how "popular" you are -- and in some cases on the basis of how much you pay the search engine for ranking. "Popularity" to search engines means how often they find your url listed on some other site on the internet. The search engines are constantly spidering through the web, going from site to site and recording keywords and links and keep track of how often they find each link. Bigger, more focused sites that list you are apparently given more "weight" than on obscure, unfocused sites -- but even if only obscure, unfocused sites link to you, if there's enough of them you can still get up pretty high in the rankings on many search engines. The more sites that the search engine spiders find linked to your site, the higher the search engines rank you.

POPULARITY:   Reciprocal links

Reciprocal links are a very potent strategy for getting rankings up. Reciprocal links are exchanges of links -- each puts the other's url on his links page. I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine -- or in this case, I make you a little more "popular"-looking, and in return you make me look more "popular"-looking. You can solicit reciprocal sites by visiting other sites and asking their webmasters if they would like an exchange. Start by going to other pages like yours or in some way pertinent to your site's topic. Look for their links page and see what's there. You can pretty much tell if it seems they there is a likelihood that an email offering to exchange links might be worthwhile. Many sites include only a few very links to mega-sites that are unlikely to bother with reciprocating links. Many more sites include a lengthy list of other sites -- some only have links to sites focused on a specific topic -- others have links to sites focused on a wide variety of themes. Often there will be a statement somewhere on the site briefly offering reciprocal links. Each of these sites that have such links pages are obviously interested in reciprocal links. Further, it is likely that all the sites on their links page are sites that are interested in reciprocal links.

This often seems like mining. You find a vein and work it till you have all the gold and then move on to further prospecting. It is a lot of work but it goes well with tv watching. I found that after working up a list of about 100 reciprocal links (check the page) -- which took many hours of emailing -- my head-cleaners site went from rankings of over 600 (I never found it listed even though I looked at the first 600 rankings) to rankings in the top 30's.

I would not expect reciprocal links to do much in the way of referrals, though they may. The percentage of surfers that go to sites from other sites' links pages is reportedly small. For reciprocal links to work as a referral source, you need to find a lot of sites that compliment yours and vice versa and the links need to be presented in a very prominent, attractive, engagine manner.

It is said that focused links pages -- links pages focused on your site's topic, are given more weight by search engine spiders. (That is, a hypnosis site with a link to my hypnosis tapes site would be a stronger vote that a quilting site with the same link.) However, a lot of links from non-similar sites are still a lot of votes for your popularity.

A recent piece of information I've come across is that at least some of the search engines process the text that accompanies a link on a link page -- giving greater weight to a link with text that reflects the keywords of the site it points to.

You should be aware that there are a lot of services and programs that say they will help you put together hundreds of reciprocal links. I keep running across articles, though, expressing concern that some search engines are beginning to think that if you use a a flaky links strategy for reciprocal links, your site might be banned from their search engine altogether -- so use discretion.

Programs and services that aid in gathering reciprocal links. Below are some programs and services that seem to be well thought of in some circles. These are likely to save a great deal of time (as compared to the way I've been doing it). I've just recently begun using some of these (I use the first three). Of the paid services, be mindful of free sites, big promises and agreements and if they maintain your links for you, be sure you understand what that means.

 

Attractive content to increase popularity is a way to get people to put your url on their website (not to mention buy your product). Information, articles, contests, bulletin boards -- anything that might make it seem like a good idea to put a link to you on a website -- is a good idea. Though this doesn't initially get surfers to your site, once they find you some of them will be adding your url to their I'D.

PAY: Paying for search engine ranking

Paying for search engine ranking is possible by paying a service to promote your site for you or by paying some of the search engines "per-click." These pay-per-click search engines either blend your url with those they have on the basis of popularity or place your link in a visually prominant place separate from the popularity-based sites.

I used the pay-per-click sites below for the first six months my site was up and am now seeing if I can fly solo. I have a small site and small selection of items and I didn't spend much once I narrowed my keywords down to the most important. My theory was that I could help my site along while I wait to establish popularity-based rankings. (Pay-per-click can level the playing field a little and get little guys a boost. HOWEVER, we should all watch out and make sure that pay-per-click doesn't get more popular than popularity rankings. That would ultimately result in squeezing out us little guys and resulting in a money- rather than info- dominated internet.)

You can experiment with pay-per-click for very little, depending on your product and depending on your competition. In some cases for only a dollar or so per day you might be able to have your site show up on the first page a surfer sees when searching for one of your primary keywords. I found that paying for high rankings for some keywords yeilded pretty good results. The better services give you statistics on how often a surfer is offered a chance to click on you and how often they do click to you. Be sure to take advantage of stats available to see if you're really getting anything for your money.
 

GoTo.com is widely considered one of the top pay-per-click search engines. My experience so far has seemed to suggest that, too. With GoTo, you bid from 5 cents on up for ranking on their site on each keyword you want your site to be associated with. Being on their search engine is fine, but the big value is in the fact that they sell their top three rankings to a number of other, bigger search engines. (Note that it's just the top three.) They have an easy-to-use interface. GoTo is currently offering $5 sign-up bonus. FindWhat.com Google.com Bay9.com GoClick.com AskJeeves ads

Pay-fer Services to Promote Your Site, Optimize Search Engine Placement

This is an alternative to spending many hours in trial and error experimenting and surfing and searching and emailing for reciprocals. You hire a service to handle this for you. I know little or nothing about trying this because my budget is smaller than my late night energy.

PositionGeek
Positioning analysis, site positioning, keyword marketing, postioning analysis company, positioning analysis report, site positioning techniques, site positioning company, site positioning prices, keyword marketing company, keyword marketing techniques. Check this site out.

Aardvark Web Site Promotion
Search engine optimization company. Leading edge web site promotion techniques can help you build up your web site traffic and boost those search engine placements while reducing your headaches for a fee.


Free checks of how you rank on search engines

Agent Web Ranking is free software that you install on your computer. It's very user-friendly, seems to work hard, offers a lot of helpful webmaster-oriented links, and does a very complete job of finding out how you rank on many search engines. RankPilot will check the search engines online for you for free. This is a quick and dirty little service and it is VERY likely to UNDERestimate your rankings -- but for free, it's worth the price.



keeping up, staying tuned

E-zines. Getting up and getting going is one thing. Keeping up with changes and issues is another. There are a variety of weekly e-zines that can be helpful and a bunch that can keep your e-mail cluttered up worthlessly. When you sign up for an email e-zine, accidentally or otherwise, be aware that unsubscribing can be difficult to impossible. With some of the less "self-assured" e-zines, it must be a marketing strategy to never let a subscriber unsubscribe. I wish I had started subscribing to e-zines using a dedicated email address so I could periodically terminate the name and start a new one and just re-subscribe to the ones I want.

Below are the e-zines I find very helpful and that I find myself regularly carefully reading. The advertizing that brings them to you for free is not the prodominant part of the e-zine, and the articles are very helpful in understanding the issues that relate to getting people to come to your site and enticing them to take advantage of its offerings.