Direct Debit Payment Explained

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

Something that is very rarely spoken about as a means of payment is Direct Debit, this is a popular payment method across Europe and, especially in the United Kingdom. Direct Debit can offer your surfers a cost effective, easy way to pay for products and services from your site especially, if they have a ‘recurring’ cost associated with them.

Direct Debit – What Is It?

Direct Debit is quite possibly one of the simplest ways to collect funds from your surfers basically, a form is filled out by the surfer, where they enter their bank payment details, account number, name, sort code. Then, the form is signed either electronically or, in person by the customer, in this case, electronically by the surfer.

Once you have the direct form filled in by your surfer, you may continue to deduct funds from the bank account on the Direct Debit form until such a time whereas the surfer cancels the Direct Debit agreement.

At the present time, around 45% of the population in the UK currently choose to pay their utility bills online by Direct Debit and, around 75% of the total population in the UK have used Direct Debit at least once in addition Direct Debit is also an alternative method of payment in the vast majority of European countries and, it is also used (although not as much) in Australia.

Direct Debit – What Are The Cost?

Direct Debit payments cost around $0.5 for you as a merchant to process, however, this charge, rather than happening on the processors side of the transaction, happens when the Direct Debit request hits your banking account.

This in itself is god news after all, you now ensure that if a membership or product costs $35 per month, you will get virtually the full cost of that membership until such a time when the surfer cancels the direct debit at their bank.

Direct Debit – An Overview.

All in all, Direct Debit is probably one of the only payment solutions that allow you to collect the full price from your surfer at the point of sale and, furthermore, because the Direct Debit method of payment is trusted, this offers your surfers something that no other form of payment can – Peace of mind. There is however one major drawback to this method of payment, it is very hard to find processors that will allow you to utilize Direct Debit on your sites in fact, to date, the main use for the Direct Debit payment method has been payments of utility bills, Gas, Electricity, Water Supply, etc however, many financial institutes will let you pay for goods and services using Direct Debit on ‘credit’ terms which can vary from 1 day to a year interest free or, not as the case so often is.

I strongly feel that within the next 12 months this method of payment could become advantageous to the adult webmaster however, the current online payment processors need to be pushed in order for this to become as widespread as credit and debit card processing is. That said, there are a few online adult companies already accepting Direct Debit as a form of payment so, at least the ‘DD’ revolution has already started.

Article written by Lee

SMS Marketing To MMS Marketing – WAP Billing Solutions

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

MMS Billing (Multimedia Message Billing) is going to be one of the next huge leaps forward for the online industry’s, with more and more surfers firing up their cell phones to visit our sites and properties we need to start looking at the ways in which we can ultimately bill these types of customer and this is where MMS Billing comes into play.

MMS Billing – What Is It?

MMS Billing is a method of charging surfers using cell phones for access to your sites and services. Much like how the SMS Billing model works however, rather than solely billing for text or images, you can utilize MMS Billing on a wide range of rich media applications including movies, sound and, flash applications.

MMS Billing – What Are The Costs?

The costs for MMS Billing can vary greatly depending on your MMS Billing provider however, as a rough guideline, you can expect to pay anywhere between $0.10 and $0.50 per purchase through the MMS Billing method.

MMS Billing – An Overview.

MMS Billing is still in its infancy across the internet however, with more and more sites becoming WAP enabled and, more and more surfers turning their cell phones on to browse our websites this billing model will soon grow to what the current SMS Billing model is today.

Article written by Lee

Using Basic Server Side Includes (SSI)

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Server side includes are what their name sounds like.  A way to include the contents of another file into your current web page BEFORE the web page gets sent off to the surfer.  Not only does this include contents of a static file but you can also include the results of a CGI program and on some web servers, you can even have it display the current date and time.

Now, many web hosts do not normally have server side includes turned on. You will have to ask your host if they have SSI turned on and if they do, what is the file name extension for SSI.  By default, SSI files have an .shtml extension.

Sometimes, you can turn SSI on yourself.  If you host doesn’t have SSI turned on for you already, you can try adding the following two lines to your .htaccess file.  Then create a file with the .shtml extension, include a SSI command and see if it works.

AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

When you use SSI commands, you place them exactly in the location within your web page where you want the output of the SSI command to appear when you finally browse the page.  If you have SSI, then you can use the following command to include a file.  When you include a file, you can either give it a path name to the file or you can give a URL to the file. I’ll list both here.

<!–#include file=”/some/path/above/my/web/to/my/header.html” –>

This is an example of how to include a file based on its path name.  Now,
here’s the same file put included with its URL.

<!–#include virtual=”/to/my/header.html” –>

And this is an example of how to use a URL.  With a URL however, it cannot be a complete URL such as http://www.somesite.com/somefile.html.  It has to be within your current website.  You can also use the URL method to run a CGI script!  Here’s an example of that:

<!–#include virtual=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″
–>

As you can see, we can even pass arguments to the CGI script just as if you typed it into your browser!  There is also another way of running a CGI script but this is not as widely used any more and you should use the #include virtual method instead.  Here is the same example so that you will know what it means when you see it.

<!-exec cgi=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″ –>

As I mentioned earlier, you can use SSI to display the current time and date. Here’s how:

<!-echo “$DATE_LOCAL” –>

This will display the current date and time. SSI is usually used when you  want to have a standard header or footer on each page.  It’s also used for displaying rotating banners or page counters. As you see above, you can also  use it to display the current date and time or the date when the page was  last modified.

SSI has also been used for cloaking and some tracking  software uses SSI to track each incoming hit to the web page.  If you would  like more information about SSI, go to
http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_include.html.  This is the definitive guide on SSI on the Apache web server.

Most other web servers that use SSI also follow these conventions.

Article written by Lee

Adding Images To Your Web Pages

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

The Basics

Adding Images To Your Web Pages – The Basics.

So you have just got into the online adult business but don’t know your ass from your elbow, you have the simplistic stuff relating to HTML down but, you want to find out how you can start adding banners and images to your pages here is a quick guide to help you on your way.

What Is An Image?

The answer, is, believe it or not simple, An image is a picture on a page of your website. There are however, many way to display images on your site from the size of it to the overall effect you want the image to have on your HTML page and from borders around the image and many other things.

However, I don’t want to blind you with information at the moment considering you need to actually know the basics of adding images before you can start using fancy styles and the likes.

Adding A Basic Image.

The HTML code to add an image on any HTML based page is a straight forward one however, before you can use this HTML tag you need to know where on your page you want the image to appear.

Now that you have decided where you want your image to display you need to use the image tag, the HTML coding to place an image on your page should be IMG. Also, you will need to tell your page where you want the image to come from or, in other words, you need to tell it the source of the image you want to use the HTML tag to do this is SRC.

For example, lets say you have an image called porn.gif (you need to include the extension in your SRC coding) you would display this image on your page using the following code:

<IMG SRC=”porn.gif”>

Simple huh?

Well, actually, maybe not, for example, what do you put if the images you are linking to is NOT in the same location as the page you want it to appear on? That’s not a problem, all you need to do is use the FULL location of the image in your IMG HTML tag like this:

<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif”>

You should now be able to include images on your pages without any problems.

Image Sizes.

Ok we can now include an image on our pages but, what if we want to make this image fit the feel of the rest of our page / site, how do you manipulate the graphic to ‘look’ right?

There are a number of ways images can be manipulated for example, if you want the image to be 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high you can add the WIDTH and the HEIGHT tag to your HTML coding like this:

<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″>

That will now resize your image into a square that is 100 pixels wide and high.

Now we have the image on our page in the right size we require what else can we do with it? Read on..

Borders + Colors.

In addition to placing the image and resizing the image on our pages we can also add a border and, a border color to the mage to make it stand out if needed for example:

<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDER=”2″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

As you can see we have now added the two tags ‘BORDER’ and ‘BORDERCOLOR’. The first ‘BORDER’ tag tells your HTML what size of border you want around your image and, this can be any size you want to make the image stand out on your page. The second ‘BORDERCOLOR’ tag tells your HTML code what color you want the border to be again, this can be any color you like to match the rest of your sites pages.

Linking An Image.

In addition to resizing, adding borders and colors we can also link our image to a specific URL (the most common form of this is with banner advertising) and, if you want to link your image to a URL you would use the following coding:

<A HREF=”http://www.sponsorsurl.com”><IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” BORDER=”2″ WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

This will create an image that is 100×100 pixels in size, with a border size of 2 pixels in the color FF0000 that is linked to http://www.sponsorsurl.com

Also, the order of the HTML tags we use is not important however, you should try to get used to arranging them in a certain way to make your work easier if it ever comes to editing your images.

Hopefully this has been of use to you and you can now see that adding banners and images to your sites isn’t as daunting as you first thought.

Article written by Lee.

How To Claim Back European V.A.T

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Billing Solutions, General | Response: 0

With the recent legislations requiring US businesses to charge Value Added Tax to EU Member state customers for purchases of digital product / image downloads there are many new questions going around enquiring how companies and small business owners can claim the VAT back this is what we will look at in this brief article – The basics of claiming back your VAT from Europe.

What Is V.A.T?

Value Added Tax (VAT) is a consumption tax levied on goods and services in many countries across the globe. Over the last decade, legislation in the tax systems of Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea allow for a refund for the majority of non resident entities, worldwide to a refund of VAT in most instances however, especially in the business world, registration must be achieved prior to claiming back your VAT and, preferably before the purchase of Vat able goods takes place.

Who Is Entitled To A VAT Refund?

Most businesses will be entitled to receive a VAT refund however, as the laws vary from country to country, the best way for you as a business owner to find out the laws as they affect you is to contact your company accountant who, should be knowledgable enough to inform you of what you need to claim back from each of the EU member states where V.A.T has been charged.

What Products Can I Claim V.A.T Refunds For?

Most typically value added tax recoverable expenses can take form as one or more of the following items:

Business Property Expenses.
Transportation Costs.
Inter-company Billing.
Marketing + Promotional Services.
Exhibitions, Conferences + Business Meetings.
Importation V.A.T.
Digital Downloads (Business Related).

How Do I Register For V.A.T?

When a company inside the domestic US conducts transactions in the EU countries where value added tax registrations may be required the registration for the VAT refund should be done prior to the transaction taking place however, on occasions which vary from individual EU member states this registration process may be done retroactively. By becoming registered to claim your VAT back the company is legally required to d the following:

1) Register for the VAT in the EU country where the transaction takes place.
2) Account for VAT on all invoices or receipts issued to your European customers.
3) Deduct the V.A.T incurred from your European suppliers of goods or services.

Value Added Tax – An Overview.

When all is said and done, other than the obvious need to increase your pricing structure for certain global markets registering for and, charging value added tax actually has a great deal of benefits. You now get to claim addition refunds from any expenses that you incur from the day to day running of your business, your promotional activities become vat’able so you can now increase the level of global marketing you do and, claim full value back from the EU member states (where applicable). basically, registering in the EU member state will enable your business to grow on a global scale and, at the same time, afford you the luxury of being able to market your goods and services to a greater client base at virtually no cost to yourself this is a good thing especially when you take a look at the growth that international internet usage is making each month.

Article written by Lee

Domain Name Transfer Agreement

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Domain Names, Forms & Contracts | Response: 0

Domain Name Transfer Agreement

For most people, buying and selling domain names is a fundamental income provider for their business model, as such, you should ensure that when buying or selling domain names you should have a legal contract to assist in the transfer of sale.Domain Name Transfer Agreement.

This Agreement is made on the Day of 2001 between:

(1) [Your name and address goes here]. (hereafter referred to as the assignor) and;

(2) [The buyers name and address goes here]. (hereafter referred to as the assignee).

RECITALS:

(a) The parties have been in discussion concerning the transfer to the assignee of the registration of the designations ‘[full domain name goes here]’ and ‘[further domain name goes here]’ (whether in lower or upper case) hereafter referred to as (the “domain names”) as website addresses on the internet.

(b) The parties wish to reach a mutually acceptable arrangement in relation to such discussions.

Now therefore, in consideration of the parties’ mutual covenants and undertaking, the adequacy and sufficiency of which are acknowledged, the parties agree as follows:

1. The assignor hereby agrees to assign, and/or cause to be assigned, to the assignee the domain names. The assignor shall do such things and execute such documents as reasonably requested by the assignee at the assignees expense to perfect such assignment and shall comply with the standard requirements of [insert domain name registrar here] as in force at the time of this agreement.

2. In consideration of the parties mutual obligations under this agreement the assignee agrees to pay the assignor the sum of $$ [Amount in words goes here] [currency goes here, Dollars, Sterling Etc] immediately following notification that all of the domain names within this agreement have been recorded at the relevant registries as in the ownership of the assignee thereby evidencing the transfer of the domain names to the assignee.

3. The assignor, whether through himself, any alias and/or his servants or agents shall immediately cease and desist from and shall not resume using the domain names or any other designation whether a trade or service mark, trading name or domain name that contains words colourably similar to that of the assignee.

4. The assignor further agrees that he shall not, directly or indirectly, individually, through any alias, or in conjunction with any person, firm or corporation, apply to register any trade mark, service mark and/or any other word or words colourably similar to any such trade names or marks.

5. The assignor further agrees that he shall not, directly or indirectly, individually, through any alias, or in conjunction with any person, firm or corporation, apply to register any trade mark, service mark and/or any other word or words colourably similar to any such trade names or marks, cause enable or assist any third party to do the same.

6. The assignor represents and warrants that it has not, directly or indirectly, through any alias or in association with any other person or entity, filed, reserved, received or granted a transfer of license of any domain name that contains the trade marks or any word or words confusingly similar thereto in any country or federal, local government, region or state authority, or with [insert domain name registrar here], or any other internet registration agency. The assignor covenants that it will not, whether through himself, any alias, through his servants and/or agents undertake any such registration, filing, or reservation or cause or assist any such registration, filing, or reservation to be made, by itself, or in connection with any other person or entity.

7. The assignor represents and warrants to the best of its actual knowledge, as of the date of its execution of this agreement, that:

(a) The assignee has the right to dispose of the domain names;

(b) The assignor has not received notice of any existing or threatened claims or proceedings by any third party other than the assignee relating to the assignors use of the domain names;

(c) The assignor has not received notice that the domain names are subject to any outstanding order, decree, judgment, stipulation, written restriction, undertaking or agreement that would prevent the assignor complying with this agreement;

(d) The domain names are not subject to any lien, charge, security interest, mortgage, third party interest or other encumbrances;

(e) The assignor has not granted any licenses to or authorized any third parties (including any affiliate of the assignee) to use the domain names or any other confusingly similar domain names; and

(f) The assignor, does not own directly or indirectly through any alias, third party or likewise any other domain name containing words similar to that of the assignees.

8. Each of the parties hereto warrants and represents that the person (s) executing this agreement on its behalf has full authority to execute this agreement and bind it as a party to this agreement.

9. The terms and conditions of this agreement shall be maintained in confidence. No party may disclose such terms and conditions to any third parties other than to the attorneys, accountants, officers or members of the boar of directors of the assignee or assignor or otherwise without the express written permission of the other party.

10. This agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the parties hereto and their respective heirs, clients, licensees, representative, successors, predecessors, and assigns. In this agreement words denoting persons shall include bodies corporate and unincorporated associations of persons and vice versa.

11.This agreement incorporated herein constitutes the entire agreement of the parties. It may be modified only in writing signed by both parties. This agreement may be executed in one or more counterparts, all of which shall constitute a binding agreement when one or more counterparts have been signed by each of the parties.

12. This agreement shall be construed in accordance with the laws of the [Your country goes here, United Kingdom, United States, Etc], and the parties hereto submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the [Your country goes here, United Kingdom, United States, Etc].

13. Both parties acknowledge that if either party violates all or part of this agreement the other party may seek legal remedies to restrain any further violation of this agreement and in such a case, the violating party will be wholly liable for the cost of any such order.

Signed by: ……………………………….. Date: ………………………..

For and on Behalf of [Your company / legal name].

Signed by: ……………………………….. Date: ………………………..

For and on Behalf of [Buyers company / Legal name].

Article written by Lee

Designing Your Site With Link Popularity In Mind

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic, WebDesign | Response: 0

To get good traffic, your website needs to be popular, to be popular, your website needs links, to get links, your website needs to be popular. Annoying isn’t it

Almost everyone agrees that link popularity is critical for your website’s visibility, traffic, and thus successfulness. It is something you need to have. As I pondered the ways of establishing and improving one’s “popularity”, eventually all come back to one central issue, your website must be designed to be popular.

Link popularity is a basically the measure of links pointing to your website and is meant to be a measure of the best websites. Theoretically those websites that have the most links pointing to them must be important and thus worth the visit. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that have created programs to “boost” your popularity artificially and all they have done is create Spam and muddy the overall picture. The search engines and directories are keeping a close eye on these programs.

Design: When getting a request or thinking about making one for a link exchange with a website, look thoroughly over the website first. The website’s theme or topic and general layout is the first thing to look at. Sites with themes or topics that are related to or compliment yours should be your main link partners. You do this to get targeted traffic.

Just as you evaluated someone’s website, others will be doing the same to yours. Make sure you know what your theme or topic is and that it clearly encompasses the whole website. Stay focused; do not try to cover everything.

Next, check out the links page or resource area. If they do have one, is it easy to find within the site? Does it seem to be part of the site or just a page off to the side? Are their linking rules available, clear, and easy to follow? Do they accept links from any website or are they choosy? Being part of someone’s well constructed links program, no mater what size, can be a very beneficial thing indeed.

Again, the same goes for your website. You want to let other webmasters know that you want to exchange links and which type of website you will accept requests from. Make it easy for others to link with you.

The last set of questions to ask yourself about any website is:

Is it easy to navigate
Does it have too many graphics (slow loading)
Is it pleasant to the eye
Does the information seem to be organized in a logical fashion

What has been covered so far deals with what the visitors see; if visiting the website is a pleasant experience then people will stay and look and possibly come back. The final area to cover is what the search engines see.

The underside (the source code) of the website is just as critical when designing or linking with a website. The search engines are the ones that read this and if it is not done properly then the website can not succeed. Below are a few things you need to consider in your source code and any potential site that has asked to be linked by you.

Does the website contain frames
Does it use the headers, titles, meta-tags, and alt tags properly
Do the keyword location(s) and density seem appropriate and “optimized”

The latter two issues mentioned above are critical, for they are the backbone to traffic production.

Content: The information you have is just as important as how you set it up on your website. The more popular websites or the ones with good link popularity are those that have valuable information or resource(s) for its audience after all, they fill a niche! People will visit, stay, return, and recommend a website if it has the content they want or need.

“Content is king.” A well-designed and organized website might look good but if it does not deliver anything of value, it will not be successful. Whatever subject matter you have on your site, make sure you have something of interest and importance to add to the subject, if you do and you promote it well, you and your site will be successful. In this context, it (content) does not just refer to images, why not add some stories or interesting links to news articles to improve your sites ‘popularity’.

In addition to information, resources like mailing lists, surveys, polls, classified ads, forums, etc. are all things if used appropriately can add value and fresh content to your website which, in turn will assist you in interacting with your sites visitors.

In conclusion: Take the time to design and optimize your website properly for the search engines. Make sure you have something of value or importance to add to whatever area your website is in. Provide resources and other tools, which your visitors could use and will make them come back. Be proactive and interact with your visitors. Websites that are dynamic and active are the best ones. All of this might take a little more time to get your website up and running, but it will be worth it.

For yours or any website to be popular, it needs the links and to get the links, it needs to show the other webmasters that it is worthy of a link. It seems everyone today has a website, but not everyone has put together a website that adds value to the Internet community. Take a critical look at your website and any website you might link to and ask yourself…………….

Would you bookmark it?

Article written by Lee

Golden Rules For Finding A New Domain Name

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Domain Names | Response: 0

We all know by now that domain names are being registered at an unbelievable rate and, whilst the vast majority of ‘decent’ domain names have already been registered there are still some god domains to be registered and, this article will give you some insight into how you can choose an effective domain for your business purposes – regardless of what they are.

Avoid Play On Words.

Whilst sitting at a bar you come up with an idea for a domain www.4play.com and, at the time this might seem like a great domain name to buy however, before you head to your favorite register and purchase the domain stop to think about the long term implications.

Let me explain this a little more using the example www.4play.com lets think about this, every time you mention the domain in a conversation people are more likely to head across to www.foreplay.com or www.fourplay.com first as a type-in. This is also true of the other abbreviation styles of ‘internet slang’ remember the days of the ‘dot com’ registrations, you know domains such as www.dotsex.com looking back now, these seem ridiculous to have been registered however, at the time they were popular but they died their death years ago.

Think Investment.

A good ‘commercial’ domain must be able to distinguish itself from the competition, there are several ways to achieve this for example:

Consider Your Target Audience.

Aim your domain at a specific, yet broad market audience. use tools to narrow down what your customers (surfers) are looking for, narrow this list down to a select few domains and then, narrow the list down some more.

Follow Trends Or… Create Them.

If you are serious about picking a good domain name or two then be prepared to invest the time required to get a good domain name. Research the latest trends on the internet, see what products or services are ‘hot’ and will be around long term and also see which domains are just a flash in the pan.

A good example of ‘long term’ domains would be www.europeanwebmasters.com which i registered several years ago when, in all honesty, the foreign markets were not even thought about however, you cant go to any forum nowadays without someone asking about the international marketplace.

Act On A Whim.

In complete contrast to my opening statement in this article, if you think you have a solid business idea, act on it, the chances are someone else will also think of the same idea as you and, if you don’t get the domain name first, they will.

Alternative Buying.

So you have decided that you do want to buy www.4play.com before you make your purchase have a look at what other variants of this domain are available, for example, you might like to check registrations of www.4-play.com, www.for-play.com, www.forplay.com, etc etc.

If you have a great business idea, make sure you have all of your bases covered, just because you are starting a new craze, that doesn’t mean the domains will be available for registration tomorrow or next week.

By purchasing all the variants of the high quality domain you have thought of you are, in effect, eliminating all of the competition you could face long term.

Don’t Cyber-Squat.

If you are a serious domain buyer, avoid tailgating on other peoples domain names unless of course, it has enormous potential for example, if someone has registered a generic domain such as www.123456.com but failed to register www.123-456.com why not register the available domain? You are not impeding on anyone’s property rights and, you might benefit from some mis-typed traffic at the same time. As with any type of mis-typed domain, before you register it, seek legal advice, a few dollars spent before registering the domain could save you thousands afterwards.

Fools Rush In.

Don’t automatically buy the first domain name you think of, think on it some more, sleep on it if you have to, ask your family and friends on their opinions. Although the really good domain names have virtually almost all gone, its better to carefully think out each and every domain name purchase you make and save yourself some money long term than to rush in and buy a domain that wont be any use and have to register a new domain to take the place of the first.

In addition to the above don’t sit on a really good domain name idea forever because, forever comes a lot sooner than you may think.

Hopefully this article has given you some useful information in respect of registering new domain names and you can put this information to good practice when buying domains. Article written by Lee

Favicon.ico – What Does It Do?

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Favicon.ico is the name of the graphic Internet Explorer 5+ uses in the address bar and when someone views their favorite bookmarks. There should be one beside the address of this page now if you are using IE5+. If you want to see favicon.ico in action among your favorites bookmark our site now by right clicking and selecting ‘Add to favorites’.

Internet Explorer looks for this file in the same directory as the HTML page currently being displayed, if it cant find favicon.ico it will then display the default Internet Explorer icon in the address bar. As for viewing of favorites, IE will check its temporary folder to see if favicon.ico is there again, if it is not located it will display the default white background with a blue ‘e’ icon.

For a webmaster there are three main advantages to using the favicon.ico ‘trick’.

The first, is that it helps to brand your site with a nice little icon that is easy to recognize.

The second, is that it makes your website more professional.

The third, is that your entry will stand out in surfers bookmarks over the others. This is especially good as, if you can get a surfer back to your site then you have another chance at making a sale.

Many internet users have a multitude of site bookmarks so, you need to use favicon.ico to give you an edge. I highly recommend using it and, now I’m going to tell you how.

First, you will need to create an icon file which is exactly 16 x 16 pixels. If the icon is larger or smaller IE5+ will just ignore it. As for the colors in it, 16 is standard. You can use more colors if you want but, the more colors you use, the larger the .ico file becomes and, the longer it takes to load.

You now know the standards the favicon.ico file has to be, now to actually create this file you can take one of two routes.

The first is to convert and existing 16 x 16 BMP or GIF graphic with 16-32 colors into an .ico file using converter software making sure to save it as favicon.ico.

You know the standards the favicon.ico file has to be, now to actually create favicon.ico . The easiest way of creating a favicon.ico file is to convert an existing 16 X 16 BMP or GIF graphic with 16 – 32 colors into a .ico file using converter software making sure to save it as favicon.ico.

Once you have created your favicon.ico file all you need to do is to upload it to any directory on your server that contains html pages. This way, when IE5+ searches for favicon.ico it will be bale to find it regardless of which page you are on.

That’s nearly all the areas of favicon.ico covers apart from, what if you want different icons for different parts of your website? Can this be done? The answer is yes it can. All you have to do is place the following HTML code between the <head> and </head> tags of your web page.

<LINK REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”differenticon.ico”> (SHORTCUT ICON should be kept in uppercase).

Now when someone adds a web page with that code to their favorites, IE5+ will not look for favicon.ico but will look for differenticon.ico and if it’s there it will display it, if not the default icon will be displayed.

Using favicon.ico or the SHORTCUT ICON code is nice way to add a unique touch to your site, and of course will result in more repeat visitors than if you were not using it – which is always good for any webmaster.

Article Written By Le

Basic Bookkeeping For Adult Webmasters

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Forms & Contracts | Response: 0

Knowing how much you are spending on expenses for your online enterprise each month can be a very powerful tool. Taking out that shoe box at the end of the year and giving it to the Accountant is one way. But a very simple bookkeeping system can provide you with exactly how much you made each month after all expenses. In this article I will provide you with the knowledge to setup a simple system to track your revenues and expenses. Not only will you then know exactly what your Net Income or Loss is each month but at the end of the year you will have a nice neat little package to hand your Accountant. Which will result in lower accounting fees at tax time.

The first thing you need to do is find a way to file all receipts. Your receipts are the backup for all your transactions. Go to your local office supply store and buy an accordion file labeled with monthly slots. Each time you receive a business related receipt, file in correct month. Remember you need to file all your receipts for your numbers to be accurate. When you receive an email receipt for content or hosting print it out and file it. File sponsor cheque stubs, credit card receipts, ISP bill, etc. At the end of each month take out all your receipts and divide into revenue and expenses. Remember you must have a receipt in order to claim the expense. The receipt should show the detail of the purchase, vendor, amounts and date. Ensure that the expenses are needed or used to generate revenue for your business.

Now the next step depends on how much detail you would like.
Revenue-Expenses=Net Income or Loss. For a quick snapshot of the month add up the revenue receipts, staple all receipts together and put the total on the front either adding machine tape or handwritten. Repeat with all your expense receipts. You can put a quick summary of the month in a spreadsheet program. Or for a very small investment you can setup a computerized tracking system. I recommend buying a very inexpensive software such as Quicken. Most major banks, credit cards and even paypal are setup to download transactions to Quicken. You can purchase the Personal Finance version of Quicken for around $70. There are several other inexpensive personal finance software packages that you can purchase that will work as just well. But I personally prefer Quicken. The software you choose will have a list of business accounts already setup. For an adult enterprise you will need to customize the account names. This is very easy and quick to do. Add in accounts for content purchase, hosting, isp, traffic purchase, etc.

Once a week you will open up your program download your transactions from your bank account, credit card, paypal etc. If you have an expense that you pay cash for you will need to add that transaction in. I am assuming that all your sponsor cheques are being deposited into a bank account or paypal. If you receive a check and cash it, manually add the transaction in. After you have finished entering your transactions for the week ensure that the receipts that you have balance to what you have entered in the software.

You will be amazed at how simple it is to use a software package such as Quicken to track your revenue and expenses. These software packages come with pre-made report tools. Such as income statement, analysis of expenditures, cash flow projections. You can even setup budget numbers for your business.

If your business consists of a lot of transactions in a month you might want to consider using a bookkeeping/accounting service. There are many online and locally owned businesses that charge a very low rate for doing small business bookkeeping. Remember you don’t need an Accountant to do general bookkeeping. Many small business owners think they need an Accountant to do the monthly bookkeeping. This could result in unnecessary fees. Depending on the size of your enterprise and your passion for numbers sometimes employing a bookkeeper to do the data entry can be a blessing! Most bookkeeping providers will even provide customized reporting based on your needs.

Article written by Lorna