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Favicon.ico – What Does It Do?
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
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SMS Marketing To MMS Marketing – WAP Billing Solutions
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
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Payment Processors – Advice And Information
For many, the first step in launching a successful pay site is to find a billing processor that can adequately and efficiently handle all levels of the membership payment process. The processor must also have the technical savvy to grow with your site.
One such payment processor, iBill, is currently the premier provider of such solutions worldwide. They handle the payments in real time and all of the back-end services that enable you to run your business.
Of course, there are many issues to consider when deciding on a payment processor apart from their commission rates on your sales, including the following:
How do they handle the billing itself? Is it processed in real time? If your customers do not have immediate access to your site, they may decide not to join.
How do they supply your account reports? You may want to know at 3 a.m. the number of members you have and how they are rebilling. iBill allows you to access detailed, real-time reporting 24 hours a day, so you know exactly who is a member of your site and, more importantly, what their username and passwords are. No one wants to find a member has posted a username and password on a trading site. If this occurs, iBill’s real-time reporting tools give you the ability to stop this immediately.
How comprehensive are the payment options? Do you want to use credit cards, or do dialers or check transactions suit you more? The best way to maximize sales is to accept a full array of payment options. The more options you offer your members, the better the chance you’ll keep them rebilling month after month.
How good is customer service? Does your payment processor offer access to live representatives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? If so, you’ll resolve customer issues quickly and effectively, which reflects well on you and encourages loyalty from your members.
How good is the fraud protection? Internet fraud is a constant threat. Your payment processor should have state-of-the-art fraud protection systems to guarantee the integrity of every transaction.
Are there multilingual features for international members? Due to the global reach of the Internet, you must find solutions for foreign customers. Ideally, your payment processor’s website should be multilingual and easy to navigate in several key languages, such as German, Spanish, French, and Japanese.
Choosing the right payment processor is a long, arduous task that, if done right, will result in a long-lasting working relationship. In turn, your members will feel confident in your site and stay with it. We hope this article has given you insight into finding the right billing party for your membership or online store. If you need any further assistance please feel free to contact us directly using the form on our site (URL below).
Article provided by Internet Billing Company
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Guaranteed Marketing – Power Words
How many webmasters do you think actually pay attention to what they are writing so far as their sales copy go? Furthermore, if you actually think about it, how much time do you put into choosing the words in which you use on your websites? With the help of this brief article hopefully, you will start to choose the words in which you use a little more carefully, let me explain.
Power Words – What Are They?
Power words are a set of roughly 10 words that can invoke interest in a person, object or, in our case, a product which we would like to sell however, they are also much more than that. When used in the correct manner power words can become a webmasters greatest selling tool. However, everyone has their own unique set of power words that will appeal to them over everybody else, the good thing is, for the most part there are at least 25 words which almost everybody will look positively towards.Power Words – The List.
The following list is compiled from research at Yale University consisting of the most popular power words amongst a demographic of 1000 individuals of mixed sex. The words are, Discover, Easy, Guaranteed, Health, Love, Money, New, Proven, Results, Safety, Save and, You. By using these words in a variety of ways when writing our sales text we can almost be certain that we will keep the surfers attention and enable us to put the power of our marketing to good use.Power Words – Uses.
As already mentioned, the best use for the most common power words on our sites is to use them within our text links either at the start of the sentence or, the absolute end. Take a look at the following example to see what i mean.1) High Converting Affiliate Program.
2) Guaranteed To Convert Your Traffic.
3) Turn Your Traffic In To Cash – Guaranteed.You can see from the three examples above the the first example doesn’t really catch your attention whilst examples number 2 and 3 somehow seem to pull you into the ‘spirit’ of the site itself without even knowing what affiliate program it is.
By using this power word marketing technique as often as possible on your text links you can not only give your site visitor information but, compel them to click on your link.
Power Words – An Overview.
Hopefully you have seen from this brief article the ways in which power words can improve not only your text links pulling power but also how with the right marketing combination you can also use them to increase your sales.Article written by Lee
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Domain Name Registration Services What To Look For
Once upon a time, if you wanted to register a domain name, you could only do it by visiting Network Solutions at http://www.networksolutions.com/ and paying them whatever they asked for, about $35.00 per year.
Then ICANN, http://www.icann.org/, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that is the non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions previously performed under U.S. Government contract by IANA and other entities, decided to change the rules.
The initial testing phase of the new competitive Shared Registry System for the .com, .net, and .org domains quietly began to take place in April of 1999.
It started with five participants who were the first to implement the new system for competition in the market for .com, .net, and .org domain name registration services.
Previously, registration services in the .com, .net, and .org domains were provided by Network Solutions, Inc. under an exclusive contract with the United States government.
In the two years since this program began, things have really changed.
Just this last week, ICANN reported that two of their registrars, Tucows and New York-based Register.com, had recorded more new registrations for Top Level Domains (dot-com, dot-net and dot-org) than VeriSign’s Network Solutions.
This marks the first time ever that VeriSign’s Network Solutions was out-sold by any of the registrars and signals that their past dominance of domain name registration is certainly fading.
Why?
Because besides others being allowed to make domain name registrations, these new registrars are also cutting prices.
The Rules have most certainly changed.
The Shared Registration System (“SRS”), ICANN’s accredited registrars program, allows people to submit application to become a registrar along with a non-refundable $1000 filing fee.After someone is accepted into the program then they must pay a yearly fee of $5000 to maintain their status as an accredited registrar.
This situation has created a very competitive environment which can only be beneficial to all of us as the price to register a domain name has fallen like a rock from a very tall building.
However, if you plan to register a new domain name using a virtual unknown registrar, make certain they do indeed have the legal accreditation from ICANN by visiting the ICANN web site and viewing their posted list of ALL accredited vendors:
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.htmlIt will only take you a few moments to make sure you are dealing with a reputable vendor of domain names. Those few moments will make the entire process legal and worry-free.
Article written by Lee
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Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?
One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.
But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.
Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”
But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:
According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.
According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.
In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.
And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
“Top Ways Websites are Discovered”Banner ads: 1%
Targeted email: 1.2%
TV spots: 1.4%
“By accident”: 2.1%
Magazine ads: 4.4%
Word-of-mouth: 20%
Random Surfing: 20%
Search Engines: 46%
You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.
Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.
Think About That.
They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).
Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.
If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.
How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?
1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).
3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.
Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.
Article written by Lee
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Everything You Need To Know About Meta Tags And More!
Everything You Need To Know About Meta Tags And More!
There’s a plethora of different META Tags that you can make use of on your site. Because there are so many, it’s impossible for me to cover all of them in this article. However, I will describe the most common ones. But let’s start from the beginning, shall we?What Are META Tags?
META tags are similar to standard HTML tags. However, there is one big difference: You have to insert all META tags between the <head> </head> tags on your page(s). META tags are used primarily to include information about a document. The META tags will be invisible to your site’s visitors, but will be seen by browsers and search engines.For The Search Engines.
Several of the major search engines make use of the META Keyword tag, and virtually all of them make use of the Description tag. These tags help the search engine spider determine the content of your web site so that it can be indexed properly.This is what they look like:
<META name=”keywords” content=”Webmaster Resource Site”>
<META name=”description” content=”Online Webmaster Resource Site”>You can also instruct the search engine robot/spider how to index your site using the robots META Tag. This is what it looks like:
<META name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
What the tag above does is tell the spider not to index the page that it appears on, and not to follow the links on that page. Here’s a complete list of attributes for the robots tag:
index – the default, the page is added to the search engine database
noindex – the page is not added to the search engine database
nofollow – the spider doesn’t follow the links on that page
none – same as “noindex, no follow”
To use any of these attributes simply replace the “noindex,nofollow” text in the example above with whatever you want to use. If you need to use more than one attribute, separate them with a comma.
Client Pull.
Have you ever seen a page that automatically refreshes to another URL after a few seconds? Did you ever wondered how it was done? I’ll tell you. The page made use of one of the http-equiv META Tags to automatically “pull” you to a different page after a few seconds. Here’s what the code looks like:<META http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1; url=newpage.htm”>
The value of content denotes how many seconds will pass before the new page is called for. If you want it to happen as soon as a person hits that page, then set the value to “0”.
Prevent Caching.
If you want to prevent a page being saved in your visitor’s cache you can do so by inserting the following three tags:<META HTTP-EQUIV=”expires” CONTENT=”0″>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Pragma” CONTENT=”no-cache”>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Cache-Control” CONTENT=”no-cache”>Why would you want a page not to be cached? If your site is updated frequently and you always want your visitors to see the newest content/changes, or if you want to ensure that a new banner is loaded each time from your server when a page is accessed, you’ll want to use the tags above.
A quick note here on banner caching: In addition to using the tags above, you’ll want to append random numbers at the end of the tag calling the image.
Rating Your Content.
By using the rating META tag on your site, you can specify the appropriateness of your web site for kids. The tag looks like this:<META name=”rating” content=”general”>
In addition to the general rating, you can use three others. They are:mature
restricted
14 years
Misc. Tags
Below I’ve listed several other popular tags that you may have seen around the web.
The generator META tag is used to specify what program was used to create your web site. Many HTML editing tools automatically insert this so that a company can gauge their market penetration. The tag looks like this:
<META name=”generator” content=”program name and version”>
The author tag is used to identify the author of a page. Simply replace “author’s name” with your name or email address.
<META name=”author” content=”author’s name”>
The copyright tag identifies the individual or company that holds the copyright to a particular page. This is what it looks like:<META name=”copyright” content=”This page and all its contents are copyright 2003 by Lee Windsor. All Rights Reserved.”>
I hope this article gave you some insight into the usage of Meta Tags and how they can benefit your day to day business.
Article written by Lee
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Everybody’s Going Gay
The past few months in the online adult industry have seen some rather dramatic changes happen from Visa charging additional fees to accept their credit cards online, Paypal no longer processing adult and, several large companies going out of business. However, one thing that also seems to be changing for the better is the amount of webmasters looking at new niches to promote. Surprisingly, the one niche that many webmasters are looking at is that of the gay niche.
Where The Money’s At.
For years, the adult webmaster community has been split amongst themselves, those that are only focused on straight niches and, those that focus on gay niches however. As of late, more and more of those webmasters from the first group are looking to make additional income from the gay niche. With this inevitable surge in gay adult sites coming online, there are bound to be some knock-on effects, and those webmasters just starting to look at the gay niche, will return to what they know. However, for most, i think this is going to be a fruitful encounter with one of the industry less socially accepted markets. Many of the webmasters who have been concentrating solely on the straight market for their income are going to realize just how much money they have been losing out on for all these years. And with this realization, comes its own set of problems for the industry as a whole.The Gay Market.
Whether you are a straight webmaster or a gay webmaster the one thing that will become apparent is that your sites are going to reflect you in both, how they look and, the marketing techniques you use. More importantly, the attitude you have towards your gay surfers will in fact show through. Many of the straight webmasters whom, perhaps are not as tolerant towards this niche will, almost certainly fail before they can really get going. Marketing gay adult sites is far different than marketing straight adult sites. You have to know the surfer, understand what they want and, more importantly, know the terminology in the gay market. Many times a post can be seen on various message boards belittling those webmasters who are openly gay – often accompanied by terms such as ‘fag’, ‘queer’, ‘homo’, etc along with with images being posted that, quite frankly, would turn most people’s stomach.The gay niche is much more than just a single online market, it is a whole lifestyle unto itself. While this lifestyle is affluent (having an abundance of readily available money to spend) it will take a lot of work and perseverance to ensure you get your share of this market.
Starting Points.
As I mentioned above, the main thing many webmasters are going to have to learn are the terms of the gay market, what is a twink? A bear? A cub? What products work well on gay sites? Despite what most people think, you cant just throw up some banners with naked men on them and turn a profit. Match your content to a niche and then, match your advertising to your content, what use is it having bears on a site if, the paysite you are promoting features Teens ‘n’ Twinks?Similarly, your text links, ‘Click Here For Hot Gay Action’ might get you a few clicks but, by targeting your surfers even more, you will see how some of the gay niches can really turn a profit. The trick is this, get the surfer to your site and actually give them something that you think will suit their desires. This may mean making a 10% commission on a sex toy sale as oppose to a $35 commission on a pay site membership. And so be it. Those 10%’ers start to add up after a few sales.
In Summary.
To summarize, the gay niche will make you money however, to make money you will need to invest something that, perhaps isn’t for everyone – a lot of time and understanding. Marketing the gay niche isn’t for everyone, we have seen this too many times. However for those who are, spending time adding a gay market portfolio to there straight, with a little time increase your overall income significantly.Article written by Le
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European Surfers – Porn High On The List!
Adult web sites were visited by 3.8 million home Internet users in the UK in June 2001, according to Internet monitoring company Net Value. This accounts for more than a quarter of the entire UK home Internet population.
UK visitors to adult websites spent more than 45 minutes on these sites each in June. Adult sites make up 41.2 per cent of all the sites visited in the UK with a significant audience. Students (23.2 per cent), manual workers (15 per cent), and professionals (12.8 per cent) are the largest groups of UK visitors to adult sites.
However Germany has the largest audience for online porn in Europe with more than 5.3 million Germans visiting an adult site in June. They also spent more time on these type of sites than any other nationality – each German visitor spent almost an hour on adult sites in June. Net Value data also showed that more than half (52.3 per cent) the websites visited in June by a significant number of German users were of an adult orientated nature.
Spain has the greatest proportion of visitors to pornographic sites – 40 per cent of Spanish home Internet users visiting a pornography site in June 2001.
“Pornography has become a lucrative online business, with many companies now recognizing it as a valuable additional revenue stream,” Net Value’s Alki Manias said. “And this would seem to be a stable business area – the popularity of online pornography continues unchecked.”
Adult sites are also popular amongst the earliest adopters of the Internet. People who first got online at home before 1997 account for 18.5 per cent of visitors to adult sites, though they only make up 14.1 per cent of the whole UK online population.
In the UK, Lastminute.com has just introduced an auction for adult toys and aids, whilst in Germany, Freenet.de and T-Online are also moving into the adult business.
The following charts detail various demographics relating to European surfers usage of adult sites:
Number of adult websites visited, June 2001
Number of adult websites visited Total number of Websites visited* % of websites which have adult content Germany 4,140 7,909 52.3 Norway 3,847 7,756 49.6 Denmark 3,675 7,661 48.0 Italy 3,131 6,579 47.6 Sweden 2,419 5,231 46.2 Spain 3,069 7,019 43.7 UK 3,879 9,411 41.2 France 4,348 11,845 36.7 * Sites with a significant reach
UK visitors to adult websites by occupation, June 2001
As you can now see, we, as adult webmasters, have a considerable chunk of the online adult industry sitting in our laps and, we should concentrate on tapping into this market as more and more American companies are realizing the importance of these figures we will inevitably reach a stage where the European market will be passed across to our US counterparts.
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Undeveloped Domains – Put Them To Use
Often when searching for new domain names, i come across what should, in theory be a golden opportunity only to find, the domain itself has already been registered and, whilst this in itself is annoying, what is even more annoying is that the domain 404’s when typed into the browser window.
The mere fact that someone else, a webmaster no less, has thought about purchasing the same domain as what you may have means there is already value in that domain and, more importantly, you have potentially lost a sale.
So how can we capitalize on this potential lost traffic from the off-set? That is what we will look at in this brief article.
The first thing we need to do in order to start making some additional potential profit from our domain is to create a ‘generic’ holding page until such time that we have the time or, funding, to develop the site we had intended to place on our new domain name.
This holding page can take many forms depending on the type of traffic you are hoping to target with the domain itself. Ideally, you will want to have as much choice for the surfer (or webmaster) on this holding page as you can so, you need to assess the nest types of sites to use, the best use of the traffic no matter how small it could be and, more importantly, the best way to maximize your sales potential.
One good way of doing this is to split the page into three sections, two equal sized sections at the top portion of the page and, one smaller portion towards the very base of the page designed, almost like a footer.
In the two top portions you should equally distribute both surfer orientated and, webmaster orientated links both of which need to be clearly separated.
For example, the left side of the page take all of your top converting paysites and list them by niche, they don’t have to have fancy or heavy graphics, text links will suffice for now as this is only a ‘temporary’ page.
On the right hand side of the page place some of your webmaster referral linking codes with a brief description, remembering that not only surfers could hit this page but webmasters themselves.
On the ‘footer’ portion of the page, the most important section, you should put your contact details, ideally an email address and, if the domain warrants, details of how you can be reached by instant messenger. The reason for the email and instant messenger details is a simple one, if a webmaster REALLY wants the domain that you have, he, or she, might just make you an offer on it and, if they have no way to get in touch with you then, you have just lost an offer on a domain that you might not get around to using for months.
of course, in addition to utilizing the traffic you have on the domain you can also use this holding page to generate more traffic, for example, placing a banner or button exchange code on the site or, perhaps a counter. The possibilities to generate traffic to these pages are limitless depending on how you use the holding page itself.
Well, that’s the basics of domain holding pages explained and, hopefully you will have realized that no matter what you plan on doing with your new domains, after your host has added them to your server, the next thing you should do is to create a generic holding page that you can upload into the rot of the domain name and, who knows, you might end up making some money a little sooner from that unused domain name.
Article written by Lee
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