NetFlint Website Services» websites

Is It Okay to Use a Free Domain Name?

Sparky — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:54:02 +0000

A lot of web hosting providers offer free domain names as a lure to draw in customers. This can be an enticing proposition to the novice website owner. There are some circumstances where this kind of arrangement may be worthwhile. However, before you leap at such a deal, consider the pros and cons of a “free” domain name. As with anything, you get what you pay for.

Why would a host offer a free domain name?

Let’s cut to the chase. The reason web hosting companies offer free domain names is to make it very difficult for their customers to switch to a new hosting company later. For about $10 a year in savings, the customer gives up control of their domain name and the flexibility to switch hosts if problems arise. By locking in the customer, the hosting company is guaranteeing a recurring monthly payment that nets them much more than that $10 a year they are giving away.

Are there any benefits to a free domain name?

For some people, loss of control and flexibility is worth a savings of 83 cents a month. If you are running a personal site or a site with a temporary lifespan, that kind of savings may be appealing.

Another benefit often touted with free domain names is the “ease of setup”. With the host controlling the domain, they are the ones responsible for making sure it is pointed to the right place. Of course they don’t tell you how simple this configuration really is. Don’t let fear drive you to give up the control you need.

What are the cons of a free domain name?

The biggest problem with getting a free domain name with your hosting contract is that generally the name is registered under the name of the hosting company. When you consider how much time and money you may invest in this name, you really want to make sure there is no doubt it is actually owned by you. Most hosting companies are sincere and honorable, they will live up to their vendor client relationships. But what if something goes wrong? What if there is a disagreement? What if they succumb to the current economy? If something should happen, or you simply find a better hosting deal, do you want there to be any questions about ownership of the domain name?

The next major problem with the hosting company controlling the domain name is that it is harder to make changes when necessary. Most hosts provide simple tools to do basic things, but will require a support request for anything else. This takes away the flexibility you get when you register your own domain name.

Many hosts will transfer your “free” domain to you on demand, but then you must pay for the transfer and renewal. Now it is no longer free. Given the time and trouble required to make the change, it seems better to start out the right way. Every hosting company is different so it is important to check out the fine print of their offers and freebies.

Should we avoid hosts that offer free domain names?

No. It is not necessary to avoid them. Many offer great deals. Just understand what you are getting into. Use the “free” domain as a secret or throwaway domain, and register your “real” domain name that represents your identity, brand, marketplace, idea, product, or organization under your own name. Only develop the domains that belong to you.

Better yet, use NetFlint Website Services. We offer a hybrid approach. We give you fantastic prices if you use us to register your domain names. This gives you control over all of your domain names, but we don’t require that you use us for hosting. Use anyone you like for hosting, we’ll even recommend some of our competitors.

However, if you do use us for hosting, you can get your domain name for as little as $1.99 for the first year. The domain is registered under your name, giving you complete control and flexibility, but you still get ease of configuration because it is automatically pointed to your hosting plan and website. If you choose to change hosting plans later, you have the flexibility you need to do that and there is no question about ownership.

How Do I Make Money from a Blog or Website?

Sparky — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:09:18 +0000

Whether you’re starting a website to make money or you want to make money with the website you already have, there are a number of options, strategies, and styles for making income from your blog or website. In this article, I break down the possibilities and list some of the more popular services available to help you in each area.

How Much Money Do You Want to Make?

This isn’t a trick question. Do you simply want to earn enough money to pay for your website expenses? Do you want to make enough to cover a daily latte or buy a nice dinner out once a week? Do you expect to offset your salary and work less for someone else? Do you expect to make this your new career. Or do you want to hit it big, quit your day job, and sit on the beach sipping rum punch while your website churns out money for you?

The answer to this question matters for a couple reasons:

I am not selling any get rich quick schemes here. (The rum punch scenario will take some work.)
Knowing your goals will help you decide how many of the following options you want to implement.
Knowing your goals will also help you understand how much effort you want to put into implementing them.

Choose to Be Successful

All of the following are valid, legal, and well-supported ways of getting income from your blog or website. However, your success with each of them will depend on your site’s topic, style, traffic, audience, and the effectiveness of your implementation.

If you choose to add one or more of these revenue streams, choose to do it right. For example, if you decide to run ads, place them where they are effective. Don’t hide them in the bottom corner off the beaten path. If you choose to ask for donations, don’t beat around the bush or hide the “donate” button. Directly ask your audience for donations and tell them why you need them. Hope is not a strategy.

Direct Methods of Making Money from Your Website or Blog

This section covers the direct methods of adding a revenue stream to your website. When done successfully, direct methods produce immediate measurable income streams.

1. Directly Selling a Product or Service

Directly selling a product of service online is a common method of making money. It is the obvious choice for people that already have a product or service to sell and it is a great way for people with a bricks and mortar store to expand their revenue opportunities. People without existing products or services can create products in the form of merchandising, eBooks, or consulting.

Directly selling products or services gives you more control over the product, pricing, and its delivery. However, you need to set up a fulfillment system that includes the inventory control, shipping and handling of physical products or the scheduling and delivery of services. The logistics of product delivery can be done in house or outsourced, but it must be managed and can add to the amount of work required. Your profit is the difference between your selling price and the cost of goods, fulfillment, and overhead.

2. Affiliate Sales

If you don’t have a product, service, or store and aren’t interested in carrying an inventory, or figuring out how to get products to customers, you can still make money selling other people’s products. Affiliate sales or affiliate marketing is also known as Pay Per Action (PPA). The goal is to induce your audience to perform some prescribed action, like clicking through a specific link then buying a product or signing up for newsletter or service. When the action is completed, the Affiliate earns a fee in the form of a percentage of the sale or flat rate. These are known as commissions or bounties.

The key to success with affiliate sales is in selling and marketing. Consider yourself a freelance sales person or marketer. Recommend the products or services, persuade your audience to sign up or buy, explain the value proposition and make it easy for them to successfully perform the action that nets you a commission. Passive use of affiliate links is rarely successful and often discouraging. A good strategy is to become an affiliate for products you really believe in or that are tailor made for your audience. Fortunately, you can become an affiliate for nearly any product or brand out there.

The pros and cons of affiliate marketing are the same, you don’t have to worry about the logistics of the sale and delivery but that means you have no control over the sale and delivery. You also have little control over the size of the commission. Program terms can change on a regular basis and programs can end with little or no warning. It can be frustrating to build a nice PPA campaign and then lose the product for which you developed it.

Here are some common PPA programs that will give you access to a huge variety of products and brands:

3. Advertising

If you are not interested in sales (and let’s face it many of us are n0t), there are always opportunities to earn money from advertising. In this case you, the website owner, provides information or creativity on the topic of your choice. You build an audience that is interested in that topic or your take on it. Companies pay for the opportunity to communicate with that audience.

Advertising comes in many forms. It can be text, banner, video, or audio. It can appear in designated areas of the website, incorporated in the content, pop up or under the website in a new window, or appear before content is made available like trailers, interstitials, or full page ads.

Payment can be based on pay-per-click, pay-per-impression, and flat fee or some combination of them. Pay-per-click is like pay for performance. You only get paid if your audience member is interested enough to click the ad and leave your site. Pay-per-impression is sometimes called CPM or cost per mille which is the amount you are paid per 1000 views of the ad. Flat Fee advertising is an agreed upon rate to show and ad for an agreed upon time regardless of the clicks or impressions. Flat fee advertising allows the advertiser and the publisher to lock in a rate giving them a known revenue or expense but can be risky if the popularity of the site increases or decreases during the advertising period.

Some people dislike advertising because they think it looks cluttered or makes them look like a sell out. Depending on the implementation, both of those impressions can be true. If you sell too much advertising it can scare away your audience, limit the effectiveness, and reduce the future revenue stream. If you don’t sell enough or you hide the advertising, you may not make enough money to keep the site running. There is a balance with advertising that depends on your topic, your audience, and your style. When you find that balance you will see why advertising has been so widely used to provide free content to the public.

4. Donations

The tip jar is alive and well on the internet. There are some sites that are run solely on donations. Others use donations as a supplemental income stream. They seem to work best when you ask directly for them and specify what the donations are for. Some people put a donation request at the end of each post. Others have a specific goal and use a progress bar to measure the success of the drive.

Some people use donations because they find advertising distasteful or because they want to show that they are impartial when they review products. It can be an effective strategy depending on your goals. Just understand that you will get more donations when you ask for them.

PayPal
Amazon Payments – For 503(c) Non-Profit Organizations.

5. Grants

Grants are like donations. You ask an individual, organization, or foundation to give you funding so you can accomplish your goals. Grants are available for many topics including artistic, civic, social, and health causes. I didn’t bundle grants under donations because you must apply for grants and there are usually strings attached. Also, the group funding you usually wants to see results for their grant funding. Grants are not for everyone, but they should definitely be considered if your website is dedicated to a specific cause. In addition to funding, the providers of grants are also willing and eager to help you publicize your work and website.

6. Subscriptions

With donations, you make your work available to all and expect that some people will be generous enough to cover the expenses. With subscriptions, you only allow access to your content to people that pay the toll. On the one hand, paid content goes against the early “information should be free” creed of the internet. On the other hand, capitalism rocks!

For subscription services to be successful, the content must be top notch and provided on a regular basis. If you don’t provide the expected value for the subscription price, refunds and word of mouth will destroy your business model quickly. However if you do have something valuable to offer, the exclusivity of a subscription service can increase that value by limiting the number of people with the information or increasing the perception of value. People love to be in the cool kids club.

PayPal offers subscription payment services. If you choose to offer subscription services you will need to impose security on your content.

Indirect Methods of Making Money from Your Website or Blog

This section deals with indirect methods of making money from your blog or website. Indirect techniques do not result in an immediate or direct income stream but they do increase the value of yourself, your organization, your product, or your service.

1. Provide Useful Information

People go to the internet for information. Make sure that they get that information from you. If you are selling a product, service, association, or idea, you must have a website to let people know about it. Even if you do not take advantage of any online revenue streams, the information you provide on your website can contribute to the value of your offline products or the amount of those products people buy.

Here are some common pieces of information your website should contain:

Contact Information – How do people reach you?
Map – How do people find you?
Product or Service Information – What do you offer? How does it work? Why should they get it from you?
Specifications – What are the details, functions, features, dimensions, etc of the product of service?
Testimonials – Do people like your product or service?
Community Forum- Who else uses your product or service? Do they like it? How do they use it? What questions do they have? What are the answers to those questions. Cultivating an online community of your clients and customers can increase the value of your products.
White Papers – What are the best practices around using your product? What are the consequences of not using it? How does your product compare to competitors? Are there alternate ways to use the product?
History – People like to know the story behind the person or organization with which they are dealing.

2. Image Building

Whether your website represents a person, organization, product, or idea, the implementation of that website and the quality of information conveyed there directly affect the image or brand of the website owner. If you are researching and writing on a specific topic, you are probably or soon will be an expert on that topic. When people recognize that expertise your image improves. As the image or brand improves the perceived value of the person, organization, product, or idea improves. A product can sell at a higher price point, a consultant can get more gigs or charge more per hour, an association can bring in more members, and an idea can be adopted by a larger number of people.

3. Increased Opportunities for Offline Revenue

In addition to higher perceived value a good website can increase the opportunities for offline revenue opportunities. Following are some options that open up after you create value for an audience on your website:

Speaking Engagements
Book Deals
Magazine or Journal writing
Events for your audience or customers
Job Opportunities
Business Opportunities
Training

What Next?

After reading the above article, many will be excited to start a website or monetize the one they already have. Others, will not see anything that gets them excited. Either response is okay. You have to do what is right for you and your website. Starting a website is dirt cheap these days. If you are creating or updating content because you love it, please continue to do so. However, if you believe you should be compensated for your work or wish you could be paid to do what you love, you may want to try out some of these techniques.

This page is updated with specific services and opportunities as they become available or proven. If you recommend any that I have left off, please leave a comment.

What is a Blog?

Sparky — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:32:23 +0000

This may seem like an obvious question, but there are many people who don’t understand what a blog really is and how it can help them and their organizations.

The simplest answer to the question is that a blog is a website. Many people out surfing the web don’t want or need to know any more than that. However, if you plan to have a presence on the web you should know more so you can decide if a blog style website is right for you.

Evolution of Blogs

Blog is short for Web Log. Early definitions of a blog described it as a personal journal or diary on the web. This conjures up the not so serious image of a collection of frivolous, rambling, or random stories. While some of the early blogs started this way and you can use a blog for that purpose, if you focus on the topic or content to define a blog you are really missing the big picture.

A blog is a type of website that consists of a series of posts. Posts can include but are not limited to text, pictures, videos, audio, or any other type of content. Blogs frequently allow comments which creates an interactive quality to the content.

Software like Open Diary, Live Journal, Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress was developed to easily create this style of website. This software did its job well and made creating blogs really easy. It became so easy that lots of people did it. As lots of people did it, the software and the characteristics of a blog evolved.

Two Definitions of Blogs

These days there are two ways to define a blog:

1. A blog is a website with some or all of the following characteristics:

A series of posts frequently in reverse chronological order
Has an interactive quality due to the ability for readers to comment on posts
Usually one but often more than one author
The ability for readers to subscribe to RSS feeds
The ability to notify other blogs that are linked in posts
The ability to receive notification from other blogs that link back
Organization of posts with archives based on time, categories, tags, and authors

2. A blog is a website created with blogging software.

Blogging software is a specialized form of Content Management System that allows someone to publish a website with the characteristics of blogs.
Blogging software separates content from design and code so that publishing to the web is simple and quick.
Since blogs typically contain timely content and are generally interactive, most blogging software is designed to automate the process of commenting and of notifying other sites of new content.
Most blogging software can be customized with new designs and new functionality.
Popular modern blogging software includes WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger, and many others.

Who Publishes Blogs?

Blogging software has made it so easy to publish to the web that anyone can do it. People of all ages and walks of life can blog. Writers, business people, artists, scientists, photographers, journalists, musicians, academics, students, film makers, hobbyists, poets, children, retirees and anyone else that has a desire to communicate can and do blog. Blogs can be simple or complex. Online newspapers and magazines are often created with blogging software.

Why Blog?

Many people blog because it is an easy way to publish to the web. Because it is easy, blog content tends to be timely. Because it is timely, blog software has developed many features to notify people of new content. Because of quick notifications, readers tend to react and interact. Because of this interaction, blogs tend to generate buzz. If you have an idea, product, service, or something to say, you want to be part of that buzz. If you want to be part of that buzz, you need to blog.

Should I Create a Blog?

Here are some good reasons to create a blog:

You have a product, service, or idea.
You want to communicate with a group of people.
You want a presence on the Internet.
You want to create a website that can be updated easily without knowing code or html.
You want to publish new material frequently or infrequently.
You want to edit existing content easily.
You want an interactive website where people can comment on your posts.
You want to have software that automatically reaches out to websites you reference.
You want software that reaches out to people or services that are interested in you.
You want to be able to categorize, tag, and otherwise organize website content.
You have something to say.

What Blogging Software Should I use?

There are many options out there. Some are dedicated blogging platforms. Some are comprehensive CMS systems. Some are free and open source. Some cost money and include support.

Choose WordPress

If you are just getting started and don’t really know what you want or need, I recommend starting with WordPress. I am a big fan of WordPress. But don’t take my word for it, it happens to be the most popular blogging platform on Earth. If you are just starting out, there is no reason you can’t start there.

There are two ways to get WordPress:

Download it from WordPress.org and install it on your webserver. (Or install it automatically at the vast majority of web hosts. This is the recommended option.)
Sign up for a free account at WordPress.com and try it out for free. (Just try it out at WordPress.com. Do not start your “real” blog there for these important reasons.)

Choose Other Blogging Software

WordPress is free, simple, extensible, well documented, and well supported. However it is not for everybody. If you know that WordPress does not meet your needs, you can try any of the hundreds of CMS and blogging platforms out there. A comprehensive (and frankly intimidating) list can be found at CMSMatrix.org.

I’ve built sites with Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, and Community Server. They are powerful and popular content management systems with good blogging capabilities and more. I just find that WordPress is much simpler and handles 98% of my website needs.

What is Website Hosting?

Sparky — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:46:37 +0000

Website hosting is the service that gives your website a safe place to live and be seen (and sometimes heard). More specifically it is when a computer is configured to store the data and files that make up a website and allows them to be downloaded over a network when requested. Computers configured for web hosting are called web servers. If you want your website to appear on the internet you must host it on server that is accessible to the internet.

What do I need to know about web hosting?

Configuring a computer to host a website can be very complicated. The operating system, services, applications, and scripts must all be set up properly. The server must be kept up to date and secure from viruses and hackers. Everything must be tuned to maintain excellent performance and reliability and the hardware and software must be monitored so you know when to fix anything that goes wrong. Fortunately there are many people out there that are experts at this and will do all this work for you. They work hard to make it very easy for you.

These days it isn’t too hard to get feature rich, reliable web hosting for very little money. Most services have wizards, automated setup scripts, and tutorials that make the chore of setting up a web server simple. In addition, most web hosting companies provide entry level plans that let you try them out and then upgrade to beefier plans as the need arises.

The bottom line is that you don’t need to know the nitty gritty details of configuring and supporting your server. You simply need to understand what you are paying for and how to use it effectively.

What do I get when I purchase web hosting services?

When you buy web hosting services, you are paying for space on a web server, the bandwidth your audience uses to download content, and the services, scripts, and other features available on that server. You are also paying for the support, maintenance, and reliability of that server. Some hosting plans allow you to host a single website. Some plans allow you to host a bunch of websites that share the allotted resources. Web hosting can be as simple as a small bit of storage space for static HTML web pages accessible on the internet. It can be as complicated as fault tolerant, fully redundant, enterprise class systems that host dynamic e-commerce enabled pages powered by massive databases.

Most entry level plans will include space for your website, a certain amount of monthly bandwidth your audience uses to download your website, a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) service so you can upload the files that make up your website, a number of email accounts, access to a database server, statistics programs, basic security, support for a number of programing and scripting languages, and scripts that let you build dynamic web content easily.

How do I get web hosting?

NetFlint offers fantastic website hosting deals. Start off with one of our shared hosting plans. We have a plan that lets you run a single website for less than $4 a month. Do you want to run a bunch of websites on the same account? Get a deluxe or unlimited hosting plan. When you you outgrow shared hosting, we have virtual and dedicated server plans that can handle the most popular websites.

Feel free to check out the competition’s prices and services. Here are some popular choices:

NetFlint Website Services
Yahoo! Web Hosting
iPower.com
ServerPronto.com
Bluehost.com
Host Gator Dedicated Server