• Cascading Style Sheet Basics

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) have been around for a while now, and act as a complement to plain old HTML files.

    Style sheets allow a developer to separate HTML code from formatting rules and styles. It seems like many HTML beginners’ under-estimate the power and flexibility of the style sheet. In this article, I’m going to describe what cascading style sheets are, their benefits, and two ways to implement them.

    Cascading What’s?

    They’re what chalk is to cheese, what ice-cream is to Jell-O they complement HTML and allow us to define the style (look and feel) for our entire site in just one file!

    They get their name from the fact that each different style declaration can be “cascaded” under the one above it, forming a parent-child relationship between the styles.

    They were quickly standardized, and both Internet Explorer and Netscape built their latest browser releases to match the CSS standard (or, to match it as closely as they could).

    So, you’re still wondering what a style sheet is? A style sheet is a free-flowing document that can either be referenced by, or included into a HTML document (Kind of like using SSI to call a file but not, if that makes sense). Style sheets use blocks of formatted code to define styles for existing HTML elements, or new styles, called ‘classes’.

    Style sheets can be used to change the height of some text, to change the background color of a page, to set the default border color of a table the list goes on and on. Put simply though, style sheets are used to set the formatting, color scheme and style of an HTML page.

    Style sheets should really be used instead of the standard , < b >, < i > and < u > tags because:

    One style sheet can be referenced from many pages, meaning that each file is kept to a minimum size and only requires only extra line to load the external style sheet file

    If you ever need to change any part of your sites look/feel, it can be done quickly and only needs to be done in one place: the style sheet and furthermore, it is done globally.

    With cascading style sheets, there are many page attributes that simply cannot be set without them: individual tags can have different background colors, borders, indents, shadows, etc.

    Style sheets can either be inline (included as part of a HTML document), or, referenced externally (Contained in a separate file and referenced from the HTML document). Inline style sheets are contained wholly within a HTML document and will only change the look and layout of that HTML file.

    Open your favorite text editor and enter the following code. Save the file as styles.html and open it in your browser:

    Cascading Style Sheet Example.

    h1
    {
    color: #636594;
    font-family: Verdana;
    size: 18pt;
    }

    This is one big H1 tag!

    When you fire up your browser, you should see the text “This is one big H1 tag!” in a large, blue Verdana font face.

    Let’s step through the style code step by step. Firstly, we have a pretty standard HTML header. The page starts with the tag followed by the tag. Next, we use a standard tag to set the title of the page we are working with.

    Notice, though, that before the tag is closed, we have our tag, its contents, and then the closing tag.

    h1
    {
    color: #636594;
    font-family: Verdana;
    size: 18pt;
    }

    When you add the style sheet code inline (as part of the HTML document), it must be bound by and tags respectively. Our example is working with the tag. We are changing three attributes of the ’s style: the text color (color), the font that any tags on the page will be displayed in (font-family), and lastly, the size of the font (size).

    The code between the { and } are known as the attributes. Our sample code has three. Try changing the hexadecimal value of the color attribute to #A00808 and then save and refresh the page. You should see the same text, just colored red instead of blue.

    An Example Of An External Style Sheet.

    External style sheets are similar to internal style sheets, however, they are stripped of the and tags, and need to be referenced from another HTML file to be used.

    Create a new file called “whatever.css” and enter the following code into it:

    h1
    {
    color: #a00808;
    font-family: Verdana;
    size: 18pt
    }

    Next, create a HTML file and name it test.html. Enter the following code into test.html:

    External Style Sheet Reference Example.

    This is one big H1 tag!

    As mentioned above, you can see that the actual code in whatever.css is exactly the same as it was in the inline example. In our HTML file, we simply place a tag in the section of our page. The rel=”stylesheet” attribute tells the browser that the link to the external file is a style sheet. The type=”text/css” attribute tells the browser that whatever.css is a text file containing CSS (cascading style sheet) declarations. Lastly, the href=”whatever.css” attribute tells the browser that the actual file we want to load is whatever.css.

    Conclusion.

    Well, there you have it, a quick look at style sheets and how to implement both an inline and external version. Checkout the links below if you’ve never worked with cascading style sheets before. You will be surprised at some of the things you can do with them!

    Article written by Lee.

  • Protecting Your HTML Code With JavaScript

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Scripts, WebDesign | Response: 0

    We all know that source code theft is wrong and covered by copyright never the less some webmasters will inevitably try to steal the work that the honest ones amongst us create.

    Unfortunately, there is no sure fire way to stop people from stealing our HTML code but, we can make it hard for them.

    The following JavaScript coding, when placed in your <body> tag can make it harder for the opportunistic webmaster to steal your coding.

    Simply copy and paste everything below into your body tag and change the text in the var message=”” field.

    <!–Start Copy–>
    <SCRIPT language=”JavaScript”>
    <!–
    var message=”Copyright 2000 by Your Site. WARNING ! All content contained within this site is protected by copyright laws. Unauthorized use of our material is strictly prohibited.”;
    function click(e) {
    if (document.all) {
    if (event.button==2||event.button==3) {
    alert(message);
    return false;
    }
    }
    if (document.layers) {
    if (e.which == 3) {
    alert(message);
    return false;
    }
    }
    }
    if (document.layers) {
    document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
    }
    document.onmousedown=click;
    // –>
    </SCRIPT>
    <!–End Copy–>

    Whilst this is not a sure fire way to stop the occurrence of HTML theft as mentioned already it will deter those webmasters who perhaps were there for the simplistic reason of viewing your source code.

    Article written by Lee

  • Using .htaccess Effectively

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    The .htaccess file is an ASCII text document that can be placed in any directory on your site. It can be used to control access to files and directories, and customize some server operation in your site. A .htaccess file can be created in any word processor but must be saved as text only. You must use FTP software in ASCII mode to upload or edit your .htaccess file. For the examples provided here, place the .htaccess file in your root directory.

    There are a variety of functions that you can control using .htaccess some of the more useful of these are explained below:

    Custom Error Messages.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file::

    ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

    After “ErrorDocument” specify the error code, followed by a space, and then the path and filename of the .html file you would like to be displayed when the specified error is generated, each specific error code is detailed below with the recommended codes to be used in the .htaccess file in bold :

    200 OK
    206 Partial content
    301 Document moved permanently
    302 Document found elsewhere
    304 Not modified since last retrieval
    400 Bad request
    403 Access forbidden
    404 Document not found
    408 Request timeout
    500 Internal server error
    501 Request type not supported

    Using the codes above your error section of the .htaccess file should look like this:

    ErrorDocument 301 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 400 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 403 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 500 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 501 /notfound.html

    Redirect to a Different Folder.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^/oldfolder(.*)$ /newfolder/$1 [R]

    This redirects the user from /oldfolder/anyfile.html to /newfolder/anyfile.html, when the .htaccess file is uploaded to the otherwise empty “/oldfolder” directory.

    Denying User Access.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    <Limit GET>
    order allow,deny
    deny from 000.00.00.
    deny from 000.000.000.000
    allow from all
    </Limit>

    This is an example of a .htaccess file that will block access to your site to anyone who is coming from any IP address beginning with 000.00.00 and from the specific IP address 000.000.000.000 . By specifying only part of an IP address, and ending the partial IP address with a period, all sub-addresses coming from the specified IP address block will be blocked. You must use the IP addresses to block access, use of domain names is not supported

    Redirect a Machine Name.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    RewriteEngine On
    Options +FollowSymlinks
    RewriteBase /
    # Rewrite Rule for machine.domain-name.net
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} machine.domain-name.net $
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !machine/
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ machine/$1

    This will redirect requests for the machine name machine.domain-name.net to the directory machine on the site domain-name.net.

    Different Default Home Page.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    DirectoryIndex filename.html

    Then a request for http://domain-name.net/ would return http://domain-name.net/filename.html if it exists, or would list the directory if it did not exist.

    To automatically run a cgi script, add the following to the .htaccess file:

    DirectoryIndex /cgi-local/index.pl

    This would cause the CGI script /cgi-bin/index.pl to be executed.

    If you place your .htaccess file containing the DirectoryIndex specification in the root directory of your site, it will apply for all sub-directories at your site.

    Preventing Hot Linking.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    # Rewrite Rule for images
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} <URL of page accessing your domain>
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://<same as above URL>

    You would replace the <URL of page accessing your domain> above with the domain name and path of the page that is referring to your domain. For example: www.theirdomain.com/users/mypage/

    The RewriteCond directive states that if the {HTTP_REFERER} matches the URL that follows, then use the RewriteRule directive. The RewriteRule directive will redirect any reference back to the referring web page.

    Using the above you should, safely be able to publish your sites on the internet knowing that you will not be privy to bandwidth thieves via hotlinking and also, that you will not lose any traffic through pages that are ‘not found’.

    Article Written By Lee

  • Traffic Brokers – Buying Additional Traffic

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    For many adult webmasters traffic is the one thing they can get and, good converting traffic it would seem is hard to find in bulk. For those webmasters who simply can not or, will not work towards getting a good converting traffic base you now have several options. These option come in the form of the Adult Traffic Brokers that have seemingly multiplied over the last 12 months.

    Traffic Brokering – The Basics.

    So what is traffic brokering? In layman’s terms, it is the process used when one company sells / buys their traffic to / from another in order to turn the traffic they are selling / buying into a profit. Often webmasters will purchase traffic from a broker for several reasons, the main one being that they simply could not have generated the same amount of traffic they have purchased by any other means.

    Traffic Brokering – The Costs.

    The costs for purchasing brokered traffic vary greatly from traffic broker to traffic broker however, as a rough guideline, you could spend anywhere between US$1 and US$3 for each thousand (1000) unique hits that the traffic broker sends you. The cost of this traffic however can change for many reasons as do the rules for where you can actually send the purchased traffic to.

    Brokered Traffic – The Uses.

    There are many uses for brokered traffic as those webmasters who do it on a consistent basis will tell you. However, by far the most popular method of using purchased traffic would seem to be sending it to a central ‘hub’ site or a gallery page. From this point on the traffic can start to filter itself even more.

    In addition to this, some webmasters choose to send their brokered traffic directly to their sponsors pay sites if they have purchased niche specific brokered traffic.

    All of the above methods have their pro’s and con’s involved however, for most webmasters, the fact that they have purchased traffic at a relatively low cost will mean they can turn a profit. That said, purchasing traffic from a broker does not guarantee you a profit on your investment.

    Traffic Brokering – Overview.

    In overview of this article i would say that for webmasters who are unable to gain mass traffic through conventional methods, the traffic brokers offer a service of value and, whether the traffic that you are buying is profitable to you is an outcome that no one can say until the traffic has been used. one thing to consider though when purchasing traffic is that you need to have a clear, concise plan of what your needs for the traffic are, do not just send it blindly into the proverbial unknown but build up a solid plan of what you ultimately want to achieve.

    Also, before buying traffic ‘en mass’ you should always spend a few dollars in the first instance to run a small test of the traffic, this way, you will be able to send thousands of hits to your sponsors or hubs and judge for yourself which broker will offer you the best traffic for your money.

    Article written by Lee.

  • What Is The Golden Ratio?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

    Its a little known marketing technique that say that, as long as the longest side on any oblong is 1.6 times the length of the shortest side of the same oblong people will be more likely to prefer that shape over any other shape.

    Why do they prefer this size? Because it occurs naturally and, subconsciously EVERY LIVING PERSON is attracted to this trait.

    An example of this is as follows:

    1) Stand Up
    2) Measure the distance from your head to your feet and write this measurement down
    3) Measure the distance from your Navel write this figure down.

    The length of your ENTIRE body is 1.6 times longer than from your Navel to your feet!!

    The same is also true for the length of your arm from shoulder to finger tip, then from elbow to finger tip.

    The same is true for credit cards, the longest side is 1.6 times longer than than the shorter side!

    Think about this for a second, banner ads, what shape are they? Oblong except, they don’t employ the ‘golden ratio’ what if, just what if, you used some banner ads that employed this ‘golden ratio’ who says banners have to be 468×60 in size?

    Why not try making some ‘basic’ banners in paint or a decent graphics program utilizing the 1.6 rule and see if your click thru’s increase, personally, I will bet my earnings last month that they will.

    On the same way of thinking towards marketing, table ads, money bars, etc, why not incorporate this idea into them also? It cant hurt and who knows it may just work.

    the math to work this ‘golden ratio’ out is as follows for Image a above:

    shortest side (60) x 1.6 = (90) Longest side

    You don’t even need to be a genius to make your own ads using this method as the people at Microsoft supplied you with a calculator.

    Article written by Lee

  • Doorway Pages

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Traffic, WebDesign | Response: 0

    A doorway page is built to rank high for a particular keyword or search phrase. When your doorway page is visited by the searcher it simply has a “click me” button which links to your web site. The major search engines accept these pages as long as the end result does provide what the searcher is looking for. If you are discovered to be using doorway pages for irrelevant keywords you can expect to have your entire domain unlisted. For instance, one of our doorway pages is built to rank high for the search term -Adult Content—which is quite acceptable because when the searcher gets here he can find links to adult content providers from our site. If however, he couldn’t find links to adult content then we would risk the wrath of the all powerful search engines.

    Once you have selected your keywords and phrases (about 50 would be the normal) you need to build a doorway page for each keyword and ideally, for each major search engine. All the major engines look for different keyword density in the text, title and description so you need to do some research by doing a search using your chosen phrase or keyword and studying the top 10 results at each engine (if you can spot them, study high ranking doorway pages).

    Make notes of how many times the phrase or keyword is used in the title, description and body text. Is it used in header text etc? Once you have built a picture of what your doorway page should look like you can build it using your favorite html editor. Once you have done one for a particular engine the other 50 or so pages can be done by simply replacing keywords for keywords. After you have done a page for each keyword move on to the next search engine. Remember that your body text is not important but make each page unique or it may be considered spamming. It is your keyword or phrase density that you are attempting to get right. The page, when visited by a person, will be recognized for what it is, simply a link to the real content so don’t worry too much about what it looks like. When a search engine spider visits the page it is only interested in counting the keyword density in your body text.

    As you have probably worked out there is quite a lot of work involved. 50 phrases or keywords=50 pages X the top 8 search engines= 400 pages. In reality though, you are only creating 8 doorways, 1 page for each search engine. For all the other pages you simply have to substitute the keyword for the next and alter the text around so as not to finish with 50 identical pages. OK, nearly finished but the next step is crucial if your doorways are to work.

    Put all your pages in a folder on your server e.g. Mydomain/doorways/. Then create 2 more pages that have a link and a small description to each of your doorways (200 on each) and to each other. These are called corridor pages because the spider travels down them, visiting each page linked off them. Call these 2 pages index and home and place them in the folder with your doorway pages. Then place links to these two pages from your main index page so that a spider will be able to find them and list all your doorways. Submit only your index page and your 2 corridor pages. Do not submit your doorways to the engines.

    Ideally, and if you can afford it, you should set up a new domain and host for your doorways. This isn’t essential but it does have benefits. These are: If you do get over zealous with your doorways and an engine does ban you for spamdexing at least your real site will be safe. Engines rank sites higher if they have lots of links to them from other domains. You can put your most important keywords in your new domain name, which will increase the ranking of the doorway pages containing those keywords.

    Now all you have to do is wait for the engines to update their databases. We have had the best results with Google.

    Article written by Lee

  • Using SSI For Auto Updates

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    We all realize the benefits of being able to save time when building sites so, I got into thinking, how can I make my sites look as if they are continually updated without the need to go in and update them manually? Enter the world of SSI.

    SSI is actually a nifty little tool, not only can you include files from a central location but, you can include them at specific times of the day, days of the week or even months of the year, very handy indeed if you are building any type of site that needs updating periodically.

    Once the main burst of work has been completed you can pretty much use the same files over and over again to help you out.

    So onto the auto updating SSI, the following SSI coding will enable you to update a page or pages based on which day of the month it is. It will check the day the page has been accessed and display the relevant information again, this is a handy thing to have should your sponsor be running a promotion over several days, all you need to do is update a selection of SSI files and all of your sites are updated instantly.

    <!–#config timefmt=”%d”–>
    <!–#include virtual=”/yourdirectory/$DATE_LOCAL.txt”–>

    What you need to do is create 31 text files named 01.txt right the way through to 31.txt take the SSI call above and edit the location of the SSI files on your server, you may like to have a central folder named /SSI/ for this purpose so the location would be changed to /domain.com/SSI/$DATE_LOCAL.txt

    I the 31 files you created you could have a table ad with eight of your sponsors links, an article in each one or even just a simple text link, anything that you may want to update can be included in these files.

    As I mentioned above you can base the time, date and even month of rotation to whatever you like to alter how the files are rotated and ultimately viewed on the web you should change the %d in the timefmt field to one of the following:

    %d : Day of the month requires 31 files named 01.txt to 31.txt
    %w : Day of the week requires 7 files named 0.txt to 6.txt
    %j : Day of the year requires 365 files named 001.txt to 365.txt
    %u : The week of the year requires 52 files named 00.txt to 53.txt
    %m : The month of the year requires 12 files named 01.txt to 12.txt
    %H : Hour of the day requires 24 files named 00.txt to 23.txt
    %M : Minute of the hour requires 60 files named 00.txt to 59.txt

    As you can see from the above there really are no limitations to the uses of updating using SSI and, apart fro the relative ease of use and the time saved using them should one sponsor not be converting for you all you need to do to swap sponsors is alter your central set of SSI files and you have instantly changed sponsors over all of your sites.

    Article written by Lee

  • Straight From The Horses Mouth – Get Googlized

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Many webmasters wonder how to ensure their sites will be included in Google’s index of web sites. Although Google crawls more than a billion pages, it’s inevitable some sites will be missed. When Google does miss a site, it’s frequently for one of these reasons:

    * The site is not well connected through multiple links to others on the web.
    * The site launched after Google’s last crawl was completed.
    * The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl its content (excessive frames, tables, etc).

    Google’s intent is to represent the content of the Internet fairly and accurately. To help make that goal a reality, we offer this guide to building a “crawler-friendly” site. There are no guarantees a site will be found by our crawler, but following these guidelines should increase the probability that your site will show up in Google search results.

    Do…
    Provide high-quality content on your page – especially your home page.
    If you follow only one tip from this page, this should be it. Our crawler indexes web pages by analyzing the content of the pages themselves. Google will index your site better if your pages contain useful information. Plus, your site has a better chance of becoming a favorite among web surfers and being linked to by others if the information it contains is relevant and useful.

    Submit your site to the appropriate category in a web directory.
    Listing your site in the Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org/ or Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/ increases the likelihood it will be seen by robot crawlers and web surfers.

    Pay attention to HTML conventions.

    Make sure that your <TITLE> and <ALT> tags are accurate and descriptive. Also, check your <A HREF> tags for errors since broken or improperly formatted links can prevent Google from indexing your page.

    Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server.
    This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block our crawler. Visit: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for a FAQ answering questions regarding robots and how to control them once they visit your site.

    Ensure that your site is accessible through HTML hyperlinks.
    Generally, your site is crawlable if the pages are connected to each other with ordinary HTML links. If certain areas are not linked, you may be excluding older browsers, differently-abled users, and Google. Google can crawl content from a database or other dynamically generated content as long as it can be found by following links. If you have many unlinked pages, you may want to create a jump page from which the crawler can find all of your pages.

    Build your site with a logical link structure.
    A hierarchical link structure is not only beneficial to you, but also to Google. More of your site can be crawled if it is laid out in with a clear architecture.

    Don’t…
    Fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler only” pages.
    If your site contains pages, links or text that you do not intend visitors to see, Google considers them deceptive and may ignore your site.

    Feel obligated to purchase a search optimization service.
    Some companies “guarantee” your site a place near the top of a results page. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics to try and fool search engines. Be careful – if your domain is affiliated with one of these services, it could be permanently banned from our index, we have found search engine optimization software like Web Position Gold works best but, again use it in moderation.

    Use images to display important names, content or links.
    Our crawler does not recognize text contained in graphics.
    Use ALT tags if the main content and key words on your page cannot be formatted in regular HTML.

    Provide multiple copies of a page under different URLs
    Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the graphic-enriched version of the page. While Google crawls these pages, duplicates are removed from our index. In order to ensure that we have the desired version of your page, place the other versions in separate directories and use the robots.txt file to block our crawler.

    Article written by a Google employee

  • Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage Two

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Tutorials | Response: 0

    Ok, in stage 1 of this tutorial we learnt the basic ‘setup’ for our multisite generation now we have to start putting the rest of our puzzle together.

    At this stage in the tutorial we should now have a 50 pic free site, all of the images are in the appropriate folder on our HD along with the HTML in their own folder. If you have not already done so, you need to ensure that when you add/added the links to your individual HTML pages that you call the images like this:

    /FreeSite/Images/pic1.jpg

    The Thumbnails like this:

    /FreeSite/Images/Thumbs/thumb1.jpg

    The gallery links like this:

    /FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html

    And the FPA from the warning page like this:

    /FreeSite/FPA/fpa.html

    Why are we calling the links like this and not like, http://www.mydomain.com/FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html I hear you ask, well the answer is simple, in order to use this site TEMPLATE over and over again, we need to ensure that there is a standard way of calling the links, this way, once we decide duplicate this site on a different domain, all we do is upload the folder to our server with a different set of images and we have another set of sites built.

    Ok, we now have our free site but, we have some empty folders that need filling up, here is how we are going to achieve that.

    What we now have to do is re-open the Gallery Pages, DO NOT change the image calls or the thumbnail calls however, what you will need to do is select 15 TGP’s that you would like to submit to, download the recip buttons for these TGP’s and save them in the /FreeSite/Images/Recips/ folder.

    Now we have the gallery pages open we need to modify them like this..

    Take the top text link that you created and replace that with a 3 cell table. In this table for the first gallery, you need to call the first 3 recip links for the TGP’s you want to submit to and link them to the appropriate recip url for each of the TGP’s again, calling the recip images like this, /FreeSite/Recips/recip1.gif. Also, you will need to modify the text link at the bottom of your gallery pages, I would suggest creating an 8 cell table, containing 8 niche text links, four of which should go to your Single-Site FPA’s (as created for the surfer trap) and the remaining 4 text links should go directly to your sponsors site tour page.

    Now save this newly created page as tgp1.html in the /FreeSite/TGP/ folder. Do the above again for the remaining 4 gallery pages but calling a different set of recip links each time. each time you modify a gallery page save it in the /FreeSite/TGP/ folder so gallery2.html would be renamed to tgp2.html, Gallery 3 would be called tgp3.html and so on.

    What you should now have is a single 50 pic free site with 5 galleries of 10 pics, all pics going to the larger image on a HTML page and, 5 TGP galleries.

    This is as far as we go with the tutorial today however, in the next stage we will continue to fill in the rest of the puzzle pieces.

    Article written by Lee

  • Building Your Brand – Business Basics

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Branding | Response: 0

    Many online businesses have a good solid brand name attached to them already for example, ARS (http://www.adultrevenueservice.com), Webair (http://www.webair.com) and, WEG (http://www.wegcash.com). These companies have worked long and hard to build up their own brand name on the internet and, specifically, in the adult industry where, it almost seems that everyone is out to make a name for themselves so, how do you as a small business owner get a piece of this branding pie?

    Branding Basics.

    The word ‘Brand’ or ‘Branding’ can refer to several items when used as a noun to describe a company name, product, service or, trademark. Branding started centuries ago when cattle ranch owners used to place their unique insignia on their cattle so that surrounding ranch owners knew who the cattle belonged to and, so that the owners of the brand knew if their cattle were being stolen by others.

    Starting The Branding Process.

    From the very first site you build you should start working on your own inimitable brand name or logo, perhaps it will consist of a small logo on top of every page you build or even a simple text link for your sites domains, either way, the one thing that is important in recognizing a brand is being able to place it to a product instantly.

    Building Your Brand Name.

    Now that you have started the branding process how can you continue to grow your businesses brand name or product even further? This is what we will take a look at next.

    Domain Name Registration.

    Buy the domain name that is representative of your ‘brand name’ if your brand is going to be 123pornosex then go and register 123pornosex.com be cautious though, just because you think of a brand name, you should ensure the domain is available to register BEFORE you start using that brand in detail.

    Getting The Word Out.

    This may seem like the hardest of tasks at first but, once you make a start in branding your site or, yourself this is relatively easy to keep up on an ongoing basis.

    Visit the boards, use your tagline as often as possible and, either mention your brand name in the tagline or, link to your brand names website. This is especially easy to do if you run a TGP or some other site that needs to attract webmaster traffic in order for it to succeed.

    Start your own newsletter, this may seem an odd way to build your brand up but, if you name your newsletter the same as your brand name for example you might have a text link saying:

    Join the BRANDNAME Newsletter.

    This keeps the branding process alive and well. The next step you should take it to ensure that the sender address of the email is something like brandname@brandname.com again, even though you have collected the email addresses by sending out mailings from an address like the one above you have more of a chance of your brand name actually staying in the mind of the newsletter recipient.

    In addition to a newsletter, you might also like to consider having a designer make you a logo or button you can use on your site/s this will come in handy for several uses for example, if you own a traffic site you can use this logo as a reciprocal link, you can use it in your signature on message forums and, you can even include it on sites you build.

    You might also like to consider writing articles for other sites to use, usually the sites that publish your articles will place a link or a small bio to you or your site, this is another way to increase the ‘exposure’ of your brand.

    Branding Overview.

    All in all, building a brand name for yourself or your business need not be a hard and tedious task in fact, if you start off almost immediately building up name recognition for you and your sites. Regardless of what type of product, service or site you operate getting your brand name recognized by both webmasters and surfers can lead to a lot of money long term, start now and reap the benefits later in your career.

    Article written by Lee.

Premium Sponsors















Categories

Site Links