May 18, 2008 | Posted by BobbyT
The web gurus have already revealed the secrets to building successful websites ages ago: attractive design and good content.
However, apparently, most of them neglected the need to mention other small but important details or factors which might make or break an ultimate website: for example, uniqueness of content, website promotion and whether there is any contact information on the website.
I will like to discuss here about the importance of having contact information on websites. I shall leave the topics of unique content and website promotion for another articles at other times.
Have you ever used an online service or visited a website where the information or help pages provided are unclear at best and you have no choice but to seek clarification from the support or webmaster? I have personally experienced a recurring system problems with a major free email provider, and I have no means of contacting the support because its support ticket system was faulty as well. I bet you can imagine my frustration, especially when I try to think of the possible reasons why a major free email provider is afraid to list its email. Is it afraid of spam? I am not going to mention the name of this free email provider here, I just want to get my message across…
Now, the absence of any contact information whatsoever on a website will not only frustrate the visitors and turn them away, it will also possibly attract some unfavorable allegations and presumptions will be made about the webmaster or the website itself:
- the webmaster is paranoid and anti-social
- the website or blog is a spam website or blog (splog), hence no contact information is provided and commenting is also disabled
- the webmaster is a newbie, which explains the unclear information which is expected because he couldn’t even list down his contact information
Before the more experienced webmasters and black-hat webdevelopers flame me for writing this post, I will like to state here that I know some websites deliberately left out contact information as part of their marketing strategies. These people know what they are doing and are obviously profiting from their unusual web strategies, but for the rest of us, especially for those in the service industry, should follow common sense and do that which is highly recommended: provide at least 1 way for your visitors to contact you. Not all web users are super geeks who like to do Whois lookup just to find out the webmaster’s email address. There are also other problems to consider like Whois privacy protection and webmasters who use free providers’ subdomains.
What are the advantages of listing your contact information on website?
I could probably write another article, elaborating about the advantages you could expect when you list your contact information on your websites but I want to keep this article short, just to raise awareness about importance of contact information on websites, so here I list down the advantages in a simplified form:
- visitors can submit feedback, error reports, broken links, etc.
- prospective advertisers can contact you to buy an advertisement space, review or link
- other webmasters might want to contact you for joint venture, sponsor deals and link exchange
- some visitors are interested to know more about the person behind a website and to make new friend
There are many ways to include your contact information on your websites but you will have to consider the possible risk of spams. Therefore, it is recommended to display your email, address and telephone number in images rather than easily copied texts or even better, integrate a contact form into your website or blog. In upcoming articles, I will show how to integrate a contact form into blogs (Blogger and WordPress) and websites (HTML/PHP). If you are interested in the upcoming articles, do consider subscribing to The WebMaster Blog feed now for them to be delivered direct to you.
So, what is your opinion about this issue? Could you live your webmaster existence without providing contact information on any of your websites? Or do you prefer to interact with as many people as possible, minus the spam visitors?
BobbyT is a 23-year-old blogger, freelance writer and internet marketeer wannabe. You can visit his blog at http://bobbytoat.blogspot.com
Categories: Uncategorized | 
Tags: contact, contact form, contact information | 
2 Comments »
May 17, 2008 | Posted by Zac Davis
Domaining or Domain Flipping has been a very profitable business for a number of years, now. It has been going through a bit of a recession as of late, but that’s probably due to the influx of newbies and scammers to the business. As long as you present yourself well, and show that you are not a scammer, then you will have no trouble in the domain flipping business. Also, since everything in this business is done online, after you’ve flipped your first domain, you can be like “Yeah, I make money online!”
Domain flipping is in and of itself, extremely simple. All you have to do is register a new domain that is available, and sell it for more than you registered it more. For a registrar, I recommend Namecheap. Namecheap allows you to transfer funds for a PayPal account that does not have a credit card attached to it, unlike GoDaddy, or some other registrars. As a bonus, I will tell you Namecheap’s coupon code for this month; It’s MAYFLOWERS. Now, what I just explained is the very basis of domain flipping, but it might only make you $1-$30 depending on the domain you get.
If you’re wanting to make more than $30 a pop, they you’re going to have to invest time, resources, and maybe even some money into the business. First of all, people want domains with some sort of traffic. There are a variety of ways you can obtain traffic, but there are two good free options. These two free options are, PPC websites, and StumbleUpon. PPC websites are easy, but they take up some of your precious time, but they are a viable option for the domainer who isn’t lazy, and has a lot of free time. Basically, you click on ads, and/or view other people’s websites in exchange for credits, which you can use to put your website in the site viewer. This will guarantee that people will view your website for at least 30 seconds, and can bring some significant traffic to your website. Most people know what StumbleUpon is, but just in case you don’t know, it is a social bookmarking site, where you submit websites and people vote thumb up or thumbs down and can give reviews when they “Stumble” onto it, which means they clicked the Stumble button which gave them a random website according to their interest. Another good way to advertise the website and get free traffic is to put the link in your signature in any forums you are active in. Now, this link will appear under every single post you make, and if you are active on forums like I am, then that is a lot of links, and a lot of potential visitors.
Putting good original content on your site is also a good idea. This will increase the value of the site, which will allow you to sell the content with the domain to increase your profits. You can hire a freelance writer like myself to write the content for you, or you can save the money and just do it yourself. See Jacob’s post on Hiring and Running Effective Content Writers if you are looking to hire freelancers. Doing it yourself is a viable option in this case, even if you are not the best writer, because as long as it is original and SEO friendly, meaning keyword rich, it will serve its purpose of driving free traffic from search engines. You can also include links to other privately owned websites in your content. The private website owners are almost always curious as to who is linking to them, and will most always visit the site that is linking to them, which in this case i s yours. Even if they just visit one time, that’s more than no one visiting you site. Also, think of how many links you can include in one page or article; that’s exactly how man back visits you can expect from other webmasters, who will be unknowingly helping you flip domains.
Now that you have the domain, and its getting traffic, you’ll need to track it. Otherwise, you’ll have no proof that it is receiving traffic, and you won’t be able to sell the domain for what it’s really worth. I recommend Google Analytics for this, as it is completely free and completely comprehensive. The reporting takes a little while, but you shouldn’t mind because the service you are getting is great, and it’s from Google, so you know it’s reliable. On the subject of selling, there are two types of places I suggest that you sell domains. There are forums such as DigitalPoint and SitePoint, where you can buy and sell domains that are on the cheaper side. Then they are domain auction sites like Sedo with listing fees and commissions similar to eBay. Obviously, Sedo is going to be better for domains that are going to cost more money, where the listing fees and commissions won’t wipe out your profits from your domains. Forum selling and buying is completely safe so long as you are cautious. I got a domain for only $6 on there that I plan to develop and then flip, I just always make sure the person has iTrader, or I have seen them do successful deals before, or hopefully both.
Now that you know everything you’ll need to do to start flipping your domains, go out and do it! Let me know how my guide helped you, and if you have any more questions, I’ll try to answer them.
Categories: Domains | Tags: domain, domain flipping, domaining, Google, make money online, webmaster | 4 Comments »
May 14, 2008 | Posted by Kat
The great thing about being a webmaster or a blogger is there are no age limits. Young and old can do great things and become wildly successful. Here is an article about those who achieved amazing internet success at a very young age.
read more | digg story
Categories: News | Tags: Blogging, internet success, webmaster | No Comments »
