Information Portals
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Thanks for visiting! See you again Soon!!!If you are a web developer, one of the best ways to create a highly successful web site is with an informational portal. Informational portals are a little different than normal web sites. An informational portal ties several web sites on one subject together and uses the portal as a way to easily navigate a subject with each major subcategory having its own page. Here are some tips on informational portals.
An easy way to think of an informational portal is to think of a large category such as cars. You can have an informational portal on cars, and then have a main page that can connect your portal with subcategories such as convertible cars, family cars, sports cars, exotics etc. This way you grab people that are looking for broad information as well as focused info.
Another great reason why informational portals can be very successful is that similar web sites that are tied together through links and content can be of more value to search engines and rise high in the search indexes. By creating separate sites, hosted on different servers, you can create a community of profitable sites all fitting into one major category.
If you have lots of web sites, an informational portal is one of the best ways to interconnect all your web sites and give your web visitors access to information on a wealth of topics associated with your portal. If you are looking for a great way to connect your web sites and build profitable web sites, take a look at developing informational portals.
Finding the time
I have been running into a new problem recently, and that is finding time. Having a full time job as a junior engineer and having to write journals and also being a volunteer really eats into the ME time. On top of that my older websites are running into security problems that have to be plugged before the flood gates open and all of the script kiddies out there find them.
So in other words it seems like my E-Commerce enterprise is never going to get to sell a product. People are still telling me that this might be a good thing, not that I will never get it off the ground, but rather that I go slow at it. they say, “remember the tortoise and the hare”, and I think that they are right. Taking it slow will mean that I will make fewer mistakes. I know that when I started my first fewer websites I had no finiancial plan, I just went full steam ahead and didn’t make one red penny. For this adventure I am planning the money from the start, I also think that I may have a partner too 
For everybody else that is reading this and also can’t find the time, just remember that if you stick to it you will get it done. You may look on the forums and see people raking in the dough from the latest fad, but that money will dry up. You should take it slow and promote for the money and the long term money. Another thing that must be done is budgeting your time. If you have 1/2 an hour a night to work on you online ventures, then make sure that you make the most of that 1/2 hour. Take one of those 1/2 hours every week and plan out what you are going to do the following week, and then STICK TO IT. Without this you will only do the “fun” stuff, and depending on your personality that may be the programming, marketing, etc….. So make sure that you plan out your time fairly and do what you plan on.
Finially, it may be a while before you finially get a site online, but at least when you do it will be ready, and not done half-assed.
Picking a Check-out software
This is another problem that I am continually running into, what is going to be the best Shopping Cart software to use. The first one I was thinking about was OScommerce, however there is another one that I am being pushed about. It is “My Shop Kart”, of course I have never heard of this one so have been looking into it. Another one that I have found that I like for any virtual products it is Zen Cart, I have played around with it for a couple of evenings and think that it has all of the options that you need.
However I think that OS Commerce is going to be the one that I pick to use for my main store, with Zen Cart being my choice for my future script or eBook store front.
Effective Advertising Through Ezines
Effective Advertising Through Ezines
By David Bell
Everyone knows there’s a world of information and services on the Internet. So what does that mean for your business? Do other businesses or consumers that are looking for a service or product that your business offers discover your service? The answer might be a big “NO” to you. Just like us, you have placed advertisements in newspapers and magazines and the results were not as good as you expected.
We once we placed an advertisement in a magazine that claimed to have over 1.5 million subscribers nationwide. We spent nearly a thousand dollars for the ad and only got a few responses. What went wrong? The answer is very simple!
Our ads were buried among dozens of advertisements, and it was not targeted to the right audience. We learned to advertise smarter and now we are getting good responses from our Ezine ads.
As businesses are shopping around for the right publication in which to advertise, they are learning that the Internet online newsletter, or Ezine, often provides a better chance for online advertisement. Internet businesses find they can communicate with customers and market their services more efficiently via the online publications. A key advantage of Ezine advertising is that it is more targeted and much more cost-effective.
What are Ezines? Ezines are content-rich and informational online publications that are delivered to subscribers with permission through email. Most Ezines are free to subscribers. Individual Ezines may focus on a particular topic or subject. For instance, our own B2B Ezine covers news and the latest trends in business-to-business markets in cyberspace.
Each Ezine usually displays classified ads or feature advertising placements. More and more businesses have come to realize the importance of advertising on Internet Ezines and newsletters. Here are some of the main reasons why you should focus more of your budget towards Internet Ezines advertisement:
Cost-efficient
Print publications such as magazines and newspapers usually charge $15 to $25 dollars per word for classified ads, or $200 to $300 per inch of column space. Needless to say, these are very expensive options to small business operations. Most Ezines are able to deliver at a much lower cost because of their low overhead for production and delivery.
In a print magazine you will see full color glossy ads that were produced for thousands of dollars. In Ezines, even feature advertising can be found between $300 to $800, much cheaper than traditional advertising.
Traffic Equals Sales - Learn the Secrets to Heavy, Explosive Traffic!
Traffic Equals Sales - Learn the Secrets to Heavy, Explosive Traffic!
By Keith Wellman
What ways do you know to bring more traffic?
-Pay Per Click
-Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
-Forums
-Joint Ventures
-Tell a Friend script on your website
-Blog n’ Ping
-Real Backlinks
-Affiliates
-Safelists
-Paid Ads
-Offline postcards, flyers, posters, etc.
Ok ok I’ll stop there. As you can see there are many ways to get a ton of targeted traffic. Today I will focus on a couple of my favorites.
Tell-A-Friend
First the tell a friend script. If you have your own website this will work great for you. If you don’t have your own website you need to get one
First download a free tell-a-friend script. You can easily find one by searching on Google.
You will need to follow the directions to edit the script but it is fairly simple to use. Make sure you have an autoresponder system that you can have the email addresses and names sent to.
When you set this up on your website you should not just throw it in. No one will ever use it if you do not do it right. Here is what you do…
Offer the visitor something of value for filling out the tell-a-friend script!
Once they fill it out then you can send them their free gift. This works incredibly well especially if you really offer something of good value. It doesn’t have to be much, just useful.
Back-links
Yeah I know a lot of you don’t like spending the time with these but really I have gotten so much traffic from just asking people if they would link to me. There are right and wrong ways to go about this so I will give you a few tips that have really helped me.
First off do not mass email potential link partners! They hate it. They also hate getting an email that sounds cut-n-paste. So take the time to write out personal emails and talk a little about their site. Then kindly ask if they wouldn’t mind linking to your site.
How do you know if they are a good link partner? Well you can download the free Google toolbar to get their pagerank (1-10). Anything 2 or higher is good. 4 and 5 are awesome and 6 and more means you just found an avalanche for traffic
Ok so you find them and get them to link to you…easy enough right? Well not really. The task can be very daunting and take up a lot of time. I recently found a program that not only automates the process to a great level but also does a whole lot more. You can find many products like this by searching for SEO optimization through Google.
Finally I am going to talk a bit about another favorite of mine and that is affiliates. Some of you may not think this is a valid traffic avalanche and I assure you that you are absolutely mistaken.
