How To Generate Web Site Traffic For Free?

How To Generate Web Site Traffic For Free?
by: Lil Waldner
Traffic is essential for every ecommerce enterpreneur and website owner. The best way of getting traffic is by achieving a top 10 or top 20 position in a famous search engine as Google. There are more than 8 billion websites indexed by Google. Only a small fraction of them get a high ranking.

It is not difficult to generate a lot of internet traffic with a high advertising budget. Big companies can afford millions of Dollars for advertising. Some brands only get traffic because of their famous name.

Most of the website owners have to calculate with a few Dollars. How can they succeed in generating traffic?

Some tips how to generate web site traffic for free:

1. Display your URL on everything

The public has to know about your website. The first step is to spread out your websites URL everywhere: on your business cards, on your online and offline letters, on your mailbox, in the telephone directory etc.

2. Submission to search engines and directories

You can submit your URL in most of the cases free of charge to search engines and directories. Important are directories that relate to the topic of your website. If your website deals with golf, submission to golf related directories or golf related pages in general directories might bring some traffic to your website.

3. Free classified ads

Classified ads are free of charge. You can place as many ads as you want. You can get a better exposure through featured ads to moderate costs. If you decide to pay for featured ads, it’s recommendabe to give priority to classified ad websites with a high Alexa traffic rank. You find out the Alexa traffic rank of a website by typing in it’s URL at the alexa.com website.
4. Ads in ezines

It is also worthwhile to place ads in ezines that are related to the topic of a website. This can be done with moderate expenses.

5. Expose your website in newsgroups, forums

You may sign up in newsgroups and forums that relate to the topic of your website. You can give your advice to the audience and show solutions by your website. A lot of people surf on this kind of websites in order to find a solution for their problems.

6. Traffic Exchange

You may sign up at the different traffic exchange websites. You earn credits by surfing on these websites. The more you surf, the more credits you earn. Your website receives traffic according to the credits that you achieve. Of course, you cannot sit surfing all the time. This programs offer you the opportunity to refer other surfers to their website. Your website can gain credit from all the surfers in your downline in this MLM-like system. Traffic to your website could explode, at least theoretically.

About the author:
Lil Waldner is a business economist. She is experienced in project management and marketing. She has worked as editor of newspapers and she has written booklets and essays with economic and public issues. Related web sites: http://affiliatechain.com/GetASite.asp?ID=51105or http://www.ts25.com/index.jsp?ref=lilianew


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Is Your Website Credit Card Friendly?

Is Your Website Credit Card Friendly?
by: Tim Knox
In my last column I discussed the process of credit card enabling your brick-and-mortar business. I pointed out that research has shown that accepting credit cards can help increase revenue and enhance cash flow. I also pointed out that you may have to look beyond your local bank for help in getting things set up. This week we will look at setting up an online payment system for your business website. If you think hooking up a brick-and-mortar location with a credit card system stymies most bankers, try asking them how to do it on your website.

If you'll recall, the question that spurred this topic came from a lady who went to her local bank for help in setting up a credit card acceptance system for her business and her banker wasn't very knowledgeable on the subject. I pointed out that her banker's ignorance of the subject probably wasn't a reflection on his skills as a banker, but a reflection on the compartmentalization of the credit card aspect of banking.

The fact is, most banks can provide you with the merchant account needed to accept credit card payments, but beyond that have little to do with the process. Even larger banks may only have a single person on staff who is tasked as the "credit card expert" and if that person ever goes on vacation, you're pretty much out of luck (voice of experience talking here, folks).

I have helped many clients set up online credit card processing systems and more than once I've had to sit down with the bank issuing the merchant account and educate them on how online payment systems work. Don't believe me? This is a direct quote (here's the Bible, here's my hand) from the bank employee who was in charge of processing internet merchant account applications, "When someone pays online how do they swipe the credit card in their computer…"

Much like a brick and mortar credit card processing system, you will need the following to accept credit cards on your website: (1) an electronic shopping cart system that allows the customer to select products and checkout when ready; (2) a payment gateway service to get approval or declination of the credit card; (3) a credit card processor who will process the transaction; and (4) an internet merchant account issued by an acquiring bank in which processed funds are deposited.

We covered most of these elements last week. Here's a quick refresher for those who missed the basics, then we'll talk about a shopping cart system.

Payment Gateway Service: The payment gateway service comes into play when a customer submits their credit card information to the webpage form. Think of the gateway service as the middleman in the process. The website's shopping cart checkout system electronically submits the credit card to the gateway service who then routes the information to the processor for approval. Depending on the reply from the processor, the gateway service will return an approval or declination for the purchase. This entire process takes just seconds to perform.

Credit Card Processor: The credit card processor is an electronic data center that processes the credit card transactions coming from the gateway company, ensures that the charge is valid, then settles the funds in your merchant account.

Internet Merchant Account: An Internet merchant account is a bank or financial institution account in which funds from online sales are deposited. Merchant accounts are usually issued by banks who are associated with the major credit card services like Visa and MasterCard. Be aware that many banks will not grant merchant accounts to Internet merchants as they are often categorized as "high risk ventures." This policy varies widely and in the end, the granting of the merchant account will come down to economics from the bank's point of view. If the bank sees even the smallest iota of risk, you will not be granted the account. Fortunately, the growth of online sales has given rise to an entire industry of merchant service bureaus that will grant you a merchant account and everything else you need to accept online payments. The fees are usually higher, but it's better than not having an online payment system at all.

Shopping Cart System. To accept online payments you must have what's called a "shopping cart system" that allows your customer to choose and purchase products. Adding a shopping cart system to your website can be simple or complex, cheap or very expensive. It depends on the product you're selling and the options you wish to offer your customers. As in everything, you get what you pay for.

A shopping cart system typically consists of three components: a product catalog, the shopping cart, and a checkout/payment system. The product catalog is your inventory component and displays the items you have for sale on the website. The checkout/payment system is the part of the program that allows your customers to "add this to my cart," and the checkout/ payment system is the component that allows the customer to checkout and pay for their purchase.

There is a wide variety of shopping cart software on the market and the price is dependent on the features you want. Shopping cart systems range from simple HTML form insertions to full- blown catalog and inventory systems like those used by Amazon or Dell.

You can spend from zero to tens of thousands of dollars. Some of them you can set up on your site yourself while others should be set up by someone who knows what they're doing.

You can get a free Paypal.com shopping cart system which is the most simplistic in nature, but the easiest to implement. Using Paypal also alleviates the need for a bank merchant account because everything is handled by Paypal, for a fee of course. You insert HTML forms into your website code and when an item is purchased.

There are also numerous online companies who will assist in the setup of your ecommerce / credit card system. These companies charge several hundred to several thousand dollars for their services, so it would be wise for you to have an idea of exactly what you need before calling them into play.

Customer submits credit card. The site sends the transaction to the gateway. The gateway sends the info to the processor. The processor contacts the issuing bank of the customers credit card. The issuing bank returns the result of the processor. The processor routs the result to the gate. The gateway passes the result to the website. The website displays the result.

One thing to remember when setting up an ecommerce system on your site is this: online it's all about security and privacy. Though online credit card processing has been around for years there are still many people who are uncomfortable giving their credit card number online. These are the same folks that do not hesitate to give their credit card number over the phone to a complete stranger or hand their credit card to a waiter who disappears with it for ten minutes. Online credit card processing is much less susceptible to fraud and abuse than either telephone processing or giving it to a waiter.

Eighty-five percent of internet users surveys said that a lack of security made them uncomfortable sending credit card information over the Web.

It's up to you to instill a sense of security and make the customer comfortable shoving their card into their computer.

Here's to your success.

About the author:
Tim serves as the president and CEO of three successful technology companies and is the founder of DropshipWholesale.net, an online organization dedicated to the success of online and eBay entrepreneurs http://www.prosperityandprofits.comhttp://www.dropshipwholesale.nethttp://www.30dayblueprint.com


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What Is Electronic-Data-Interchange?

What Is Electronic-Data-Interchange?
by: Noel Matthew
Electronic-Data-Interchange, or EDI is a method of computer to computer exchange of various types of information. While many people know of the internet and the World Wide Web as communication methods, the electronic-data-interchange is much similar. It allows the transfer of data from one place to the next with very minimal need for people to get involved.

Today, the Electronic-Data-Interchange is regulated. It offers specific interchange methods that transpire overseas and nationally as standard bodies when it comes to moving information and business transactions from one place to the next. For example, this is the most common form of communication in the process of purchasing goods and services. Communication for the location to the financial institution to deliver a message of the amount of funds required, in this case, is what data will be transferred.

In most cases, the information that is transmitted in an electronic data interchange is done so that companies can communicate. They can provide information to allow business transactions or the passage of very important information. For example, in the healthcare industry they can be used to help communicate through the network about a patient allowing for a faster method of receiving information. This technology is still being developed in many areas, though.

In fact, more and more so, people are turning to Electronic-Data-Interchange as their means of communication especially with more people turning to the Internet. The Electronic-Data-Interchange allows for networks of all sorts to communicate and this is helping ecommerce as a great way for companies to buy, sell or trade information and services. In fact, ANSI has just approved a set of Electronic-Data-Interchange standards. They are known as the X12 standards. Nonetheless, you will see more and more people using them because more and more people are getting online to do just these things.

About the author:
For more information please see http://www.electronic-data-interchange.co.uk


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Online Backup: The Simple Value

Online Backup: The Simple Value
by: Sandy Baker
There are many reasons to use online backup. The simple fact is that your computer could get invaded or destroyed in minutes and it can happen completely and suddenly as well. The fact is that more and more people are falling victim to this type of occurrence every day. What happens is that it leaves you without all that you know and need and leaves you without any way of fixing it. Online backup is the perfect solution though because it allows you the ability to save whatever it is that you need to without thought or worry about anything happening to it.

Online backup should be thought of as a file cabinet for all of your important information. By using online databases to store this information, you are safeguarding it from anything that may happen to your computer’s hard drive or memory. You can store just about any type of information that you need to and it is completely and utterly safe. Most information that is saved in this manner is safeguarded from other people as well. You can make sure of this by not providing your personal information nor your username and password to retrieve it.

Why do you need online backup? Well, there are many reasons. And, there are many things that you can store in there. For example, you may find that there are business clients as well as a number of corporations that store their information on their computers. In these cases, a crash can be awful. In the case of the personal ecommerce entrepreneur, important contact information for clients as well the product lists and availabilities are all necessary and yet they too can fall victim to a crash if they are stored on the computer. Online backup systems can help avoid all of this information loss as well as much more.

About the author:
For more information please see http://www.online-backup-help.co.uk


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CRM and Customer Life Cycle

CRM and Customer Life Cycle
by: Bruce Zhang
Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a combination of enterprise strategies, business processes and information technologies used to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. CRM software systems automate many customer-related business tasks. CRM applications are traditionally developed as client-server software which incurs higher initial cost of ownership. The proliferation of the Internet and the Web has fueled the rapid growth of Web-based CRM or online CRM applications ( http://www.sysoptima.com/crm/web_based_crm.php ). Web CRM systems are widely deployed for web based call center, contact management, trouble ticket, personal information manager and scheduling.

The life cycle of CRM consists of three phases - customer acquisition, customer relationship enhancements and customer retention. CRM software streamlines CRM activities at each phase of customer relationship management.

Customer Acquisition

Contact management module and direct marketing module of CRM allow companies to effectively promote and market their products and services to prospects. Those modules help speed up the acquiring processes and reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.


Customer Relationship Enhancements

CRM helps companies better understand existing customers' needs and behaviors and enhance the profitability from existing customers by cross-selling. They can customize their products and services to individual customers' needs and preferences.


Customer Retention

Customer service module of CRM system gives the organizations the edge in customer support and call center services ( http://www.sysoptima.com/crm/call_center_management_software.php ). They can increase customer satisfaction while reducing the cost of support. Customer retention is critical to the overall profitability of an organization. A customer you spend hundreds of dollars and months to acquire may leave you in seconds as a result of poor customer services.


About the author:
Bruce Zhang has over 10 years experiences in developing and implementing ecommerce and ebusiness systems in various industries. He has created a news aggregator http://www.sysoptima.com/newsbot/crm.phpthat automatically extracts CRM news and new articles from over 50 sources daily to help corporate executives, IT professionals and consultants to keep up with the latest development in enterprise software market. The website offers a knowledge base http://www.sysoptima.com/crm/for understanding CRM software from a systems perspective.



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Are Drop Ship Directories Really Worth The Money? Here Is A Guide...

Are Drop Ship Directories Really Worth The Money? Here Is A Guide...
by: Brad Beiermann
By Brad Beiermann Ph.D., Hienote Inc.



This question is often asked by many people hoping to start a new ecommerce site or simply adding to an existing one. The answer to the question can be simply answered with another question: How much is your time and online business worth to you? The more experienced ecommerce site owners will often ask the question a little differently: How do I find a useful, and legitimate, drop ship directory? The answer to this question is not immediately straight forward without doing a little homework. However, when you find a great directory, it can be worth the price of admission a thousand times over. So, in this article we are going to present a couple of important pieces of information that can help you answer some of these questions and guide you through the forest.



First, let's get on the same page together and define what a drop ship directory is supposed to do (or contain). These directories are supposed to contain the names and contact information for companies that drop ship their products to your customers for you. They offer you the lowest wholesale pricing. They are able to ship single quantity items to your customers. They do not require minimum orders and the drop shipper will not ask you to pay any association fees. The drop shippers in the directory are usually one of two types: 1) They are the manufacturer, or 2) They are an import distributor with a warehouse. So, these folks are a key business ingredient when it comes to supplying and shipping product to your customers without you carrying the inventory.



How hard can it be to actually find a drop shipper?

The best way to answer this question is to try and find one yourself. If you have actually tried this in the past, then you know this can be a very time consuming task that requires some research. This is particularly true if you are trying to find a specific niche of products the general public has not seen often. These products typically do very well on the Web with a niche type of ecommerce business. So, finding the wholesale supplier to drop ship the items can be a very time consuming challenge, and sometimes you might not find anyone. One of the biggest values a drop ship directory brings is the ability to save you all the time searching for a drop shipper. The time saved can let you concentrate on other parts of your business. Another value a directory can bring is the possibility of finding new product ideas for your business.



What should I be evaluating?

Let's now turn our attention towards what you should be looking for in a drop ship directory. The drop ship directory business has been plagued in the past by many scam artists. Today, there are still some directory scams out there, which is to be expected. Virtually any line of business has, or has had, it's share of scams. A little bit of education is key in spotting the real directory companies from the not so real directory companies. With a little bit of knowledge and a trained eye, you can spot them fairly easily. For purposes of this article, we are going to focus on evaluating a directory and the company offering it. Again, this should help guide you through the forest.



There are ten key parameters you should consider when considering a drop ship directory:



1. Balance - You want to find a directory rich in many different categories of products rather than the quantity of products available. Many of the directories try to advertise how many products are available in their directory (i.e. 500,000 products). Why is the number of categories important? A directory will not serve you well if it has hundreds of thousands of products, and none of them are in your product interest category. A directory with a good balance has focused on their categories of drop shipper products rather than the quantity. This gives you a better chance of finding something for your line of business.



2. Uniqueness - You will want a directory with uniqueness amongst its drop shippers. The drop shippers should offer a wide array of unique products that are not necessarily mass marketed. Why? Web sites offering unique and unusual products often do well on the Web versus sites trying to sell big brand name products that you can find with a mega retailer. A directory offering a bunch of big brand name product drop shippers could land you in the highly competitive commodity market against the mega retailers.



3. Selection - A directory with a good selection of drop ship categories is important. The number of drop shippers or the number of products a directory carries should not be the goal. The goal and question should be, "Do they have a drop shipper that would fit my line of business." A common mistake for many folks is getting fixated on the quantity of products a directory might offer with its drop shippers. The question they start to ask is, "A directory with over 700,000 products ought to have something for me to sell." Wrong! Be sure to remember the first parameter we mentioned. Balance.



4. Search Method - The directory must explain the methods they use to find drop shippers. Be careful of directories that do not publish their search methods. If they do not explain their search methods, they may not have a solid search methodology. The directory could be full of a bunch of middlemen. At that point, the directory would be worthless to you. Directories using search methods such as trade show searches and foreign government agency searches are preferred over directories only focused on Internet searches. Why? Not all drop shippers and importers have a Web presence. A directory based on a bunch of Web searches could be missing some of the best hard-to-find drop shippers.



5. Sample - A sample of the directory should be made available to give an idea of format and information provided. The actual names of the drop shippers will not be given in a sample, but you will get an understanding of the type of information provided.



6. Price - This is a subjective parameter but there is something to consider. As an observation, most legitimate directories on the Web today are sold between the $60 and $80 price mark without any markdown. If you find one good drop shipper in a directory and you sell their products on your site, you could find your directory investment paid off quickly with just a sale or two.



7. Education - The Company selling the directory should have a website fairly resourceful with FAQ’s and articles written by its own research staff or owner. Topics should include drop shipping, ecommerce, importing and general FAQ’s about drop shipping. Watch out for directory sites only containing FAQ’s about their directory and not drop shipping.



8. Custom Search - Find out if the company offering the directory will do a custom search for a drop shipped product. A custom search can sometimes be done under certain conditions with the directory's parent company. As of this writing, Hienote is the only directory company advertising this type of service.



9. Toll Free Number - You should be able to talk to the folk's offering the directory without paying for the call. Contact by email only is not acceptable! Also, be leery of directory sites without toll free numbers or only a cell phone number given as this could be a suspicious con artist.



10. Customer Service - Any online business that cares about its customers should have a section dedicated to customer service. A company that offers a drop ship directory is no exception. It should have a section of its site dedicated to customer service. At a minimum it should have a toll free number, mailing address (not just a P.O. Box number!), email address, hours of operation, money back guarantee, and a phone number for calls outside of the country.



With these ten parameters you should now have enough knowledge to get started in the right direction for evaluating a drop ship directory. In addition, hopefully this has given some food for thought in terms of considering a drop ship directory for your online business.


About the author:
About The Author:

Brad Beiermann Ph.D., is President of Hienote Inc., Crystal Lake, IL 60039. Dr. Beiermann is one of the leading experts in business technology and e-commerce. Hienote Inc. specializes in assisting businesses locate unique wholesale drop shipping companies. You can visit their site at www.hienote.comor call 1-800-342-0386.






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Are Drop Ship Directories Really Worth The Money? Here Is A Guide...

Are Drop Ship Directories Really Worth The Money? Here Is A Guide...
by: Brad Beiermann
By Brad Beiermann Ph.D., Hienote Inc.



This question is often asked by many people hoping to start a new ecommerce site or simply adding to an existing one. The answer to the question can be simply answered with another question: How much is your time and online business worth to you? The more experienced ecommerce site owners will often ask the question a little differently: How do I find a useful, and legitimate, drop ship directory? The answer to this question is not immediately straight forward without doing a little homework. However, when you find a great directory, it can be worth the price of admission a thousand times over. So, in this article we are going to present a couple of important pieces of information that can help you answer some of these questions and guide you through the forest.



First, let's get on the same page together and define what a drop ship directory is supposed to do (or contain). These directories are supposed to contain the names and contact information for companies that drop ship their products to your customers for you. They offer you the lowest wholesale pricing. They are able to ship single quantity items to your customers. They do not require minimum orders and the drop shipper will not ask you to pay any association fees. The drop shippers in the directory are usually one of two types: 1) They are the manufacturer, or 2) They are an import distributor with a warehouse. So, these folks are a key business ingredient when it comes to supplying and shipping product to your customers without you carrying the inventory.



How hard can it be to actually find a drop shipper?

The best way to answer this question is to try and find one yourself. If you have actually tried this in the past, then you know this can be a very time consuming task that requires some research. This is particularly true if you are trying to find a specific niche of products the general public has not seen often. These products typically do very well on the Web with a niche type of ecommerce business. So, finding the wholesale supplier to drop ship the items can be a very time consuming challenge, and sometimes you might not find anyone. One of the biggest values a drop ship directory brings is the ability to save you all the time searching for a drop shipper. The time saved can let you concentrate on other parts of your business. Another value a directory can bring is the possibility of finding new product ideas for your business.



What should I be evaluating?

Let's now turn our attention towards what you should be looking for in a drop ship directory. The drop ship directory business has been plagued in the past by many scam artists. Today, there are still some directory scams out there, which is to be expected. Virtually any line of business has, or has had, it's share of scams. A little bit of education is key in spotting the real directory companies from the not so real directory companies. With a little bit of knowledge and a trained eye, you can spot them fairly easily. For purposes of this article, we are going to focus on evaluating a directory and the company offering it. Again, this should help guide you through the forest.



There are ten key parameters you should consider when considering a drop ship directory:



1. Balance - You want to find a directory rich in many different categories of products rather than the quantity of products available. Many of the directories try to advertise how many products are available in their directory (i.e. 500,000 products). Why is the number of categories important? A directory will not serve you well if it has hundreds of thousands of products, and none of them are in your product interest category. A directory with a good balance has focused on their categories of drop shipper products rather than the quantity. This gives you a better chance of finding something for your line of business.



2. Uniqueness - You will want a directory with uniqueness amongst its drop shippers. The drop shippers should offer a wide array of unique products that are not necessarily mass marketed. Why? Web sites offering unique and unusual products often do well on the Web versus sites trying to sell big brand name products that you can find with a mega retailer. A directory offering a bunch of big brand name product drop shippers could land you in the highly competitive commodity market against the mega retailers.



3. Selection - A directory with a good selection of drop ship categories is important. The number of drop shippers or the number of products a directory carries should not be the goal. The goal and question should be, "Do they have a drop shipper that would fit my line of business." A common mistake for many folks is getting fixated on the quantity of products a directory might offer with its drop shippers. The question they start to ask is, "A directory with over 700,000 products ought to have something for me to sell." Wrong! Be sure to remember the first parameter we mentioned. Balance.



4. Search Method - The directory must explain the methods they use to find drop shippers. Be careful of directories that do not publish their search methods. If they do not explain their search methods, they may not have a solid search methodology. The directory could be full of a bunch of middlemen. At that point, the directory would be worthless to you. Directories using search methods such as trade show searches and foreign government agency searches are preferred over directories only focused on Internet searches. Why? Not all drop shippers and importers have a Web presence. A directory based on a bunch of Web searches could be missing some of the best hard-to-find drop shippers.



5. Sample - A sample of the directory should be made available to give an idea of format and information provided. The actual names of the drop shippers will not be given in a sample, but you will get an understanding of the type of information provided.



6. Price - This is a subjective parameter but there is something to consider. As an observation, most legitimate directories on the Web today are sold between the $60 and $80 price mark without any markdown. If you find one good drop shipper in a directory and you sell their products on your site, you could find your directory investment paid off quickly with just a sale or two.



7. Education - The Company selling the directory should have a website fairly resourceful with FAQ’s and articles written by its own research staff or owner. Topics should include drop shipping, ecommerce, importing and general FAQ’s about drop shipping. Watch out for directory sites only containing FAQ’s about their directory and not drop shipping.



8. Custom Search - Find out if the company offering the directory will do a custom search for a drop shipped product. A custom search can sometimes be done under certain conditions with the directory's parent company. As of this writing, Hienote is the only directory company advertising this type of service.



9. Toll Free Number - You should be able to talk to the folk's offering the directory without paying for the call. Contact by email only is not acceptable! Also, be leery of directory sites without toll free numbers or only a cell phone number given as this could be a suspicious con artist.



10. Customer Service - Any online business that cares about its customers should have a section dedicated to customer service. A company that offers a drop ship directory is no exception. It should have a section of its site dedicated to customer service. At a minimum it should have a toll free number, mailing address (not just a P.O. Box number!), email address, hours of operation, money back guarantee, and a phone number for calls outside of the country.



With these ten parameters you should now have enough knowledge to get started in the right direction for evaluating a drop ship directory. In addition, hopefully this has given some food for thought in terms of considering a drop ship directory for your online business.


About the author:
About The Author:

Brad Beiermann Ph.D., is President of Hienote Inc., Crystal Lake, IL 60039. Dr. Beiermann is one of the leading experts in business technology and e-commerce. Hienote Inc. specializes in assisting businesses locate unique wholesale drop shipping companies. You can visit their site at www.hienote.comor call 1-800-342-0386.






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Network Monitoring for Serious eCommerce

Network Monitoring for Serious eCommerce
by: David Leonhardt

By David Leonhardt

In the real world, businesses come in every size, from self-employed entrepreneurs like me to mega malls like Wal-Mart.

On the Internet, companies come in every size, too, from a stand-alone ebook sales page with webmaster and owner all in one, to 300 pound gorilla like Amazon, with over a million pages requiring the entire population of a small country to serve as webmaster.

If your site is a single page, it is its own network. But if your site is any bigger, and you have plans to grow, it is a network or is fast becoming one. You need network monitoring.

Most ecommerce webmasters are at least somewhat familiar with website monitoring. Many use a website monitoring service or software to keep track of "uptime" and "downtime".

At your local shopping mall, serious business requires more than just knowing when the front doors are open and when they are closed. Serious ecommerce needs to know more than just when the site is accessible. That is what network monitoring is all about.

Chances are, your e-business owns one of the following, or uses one of the following remotely:

DNS servers: These are used to translate your site name, like www.mycompany.com, to the numbers called "IP addresses" that computers understand. If DNS servers are not working properly, end-users will not be able to find your site and will get an error. Usually only an external or remote monitoring service will detect such a problem.

An FTP server: File Transfer Protocol servers are used to help you
exchange files with remote users. If you use FTP, a monitoring
service can make sure it is always up and running.

POP3 and SMTP servers: These are used for exchanging emails. If you are using email, chances are you are using SMTP and POP3. If your SMTP server is down, everyone who sends you email will receive an error, stating that your mail
server is down and cannot accept incoming email. To say that the impression this leaves your customers is bad would be an understatement. If your POP3 server is down, you will be unable to retrieve email from your mailbox. Once again, only external monitoring will prevent such a problem.

Firewalls: Many businesses use firewalls to protect their internal network from un-authorized traffic, such as spyware, viruses and sabotage by competitors. Furthermore, a firewall is your first line of defense. If your firewall goes down, your whole network may actually become inaccessible from outside. In other words, if you host your own web site and mail servers, those will become
inaccessible to the outside world if your firewall goes down. Once again, remote network monitoring is required to detect that a problem exists and quickly get it repaired.

Internet connections: Users come to your network from multiple backbones, depending on the company they use to connect to the Internet and their location. It is important to ensure that your connection performs well for each user. A remote monitoring service can ping your networks from multiple locations around the world, thus testing most major routes to your web server or network. Before hiring a network monitoring service, check to see that they have both your customer geography and the Internet backbone layout covered.

Very few websites of any size and functionality are anything less than a complete network, and many networks rely on servers in different parts of the world.

A good network monitoring service can ensure, as a base, that all servers are properly functioning, that data can be sent to and received from each server, and that each function sharing the server responds as required. An advanced network monitoring service can even remotely monitor the temperature of your servers.

What you need to monitor depends on how extensive your network is. A network monitoring expert can help you determine what needs monitoring. If you own the servers, or are remotely hosted on dedicated servers, you most likely need everything monitored. If your site is hosted on shared servers, you might need fewer functions monitored.


About the author:
David Leonhardt is a freelance writer and SEO consultant. Contact him at
http://www.SEO-writer.net
He wrote this article for Dotcom-Monitor:
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com
Read more on network monitoring:
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/network-monitoring.asp
Read more on website monitoring:
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/website-monitoring.asp



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Ecommerce Hosting - How To Choose A Merchant Account

Ecommerce Hosting - How To Choose A Merchant Account
by: Stanley Spencer
For a number of e-Businesses, discovering the best way to accept payments is a frustrating task. As the Internet is an instant medium, it is highly recommended that a ecommerce website must accept credit/debit cards and online checks as modes of payment. In order to accept credit card transactions, you require setting up a merchant account with a merchant bank. As soon as you set up a merchant account, an online processor can provide you with the software or gateway you need to transact.

Selecting a suitable merchant account is considered to be one of the most tough business decisions you make as their existence has almost doubled and are now into more than hundreds. At the time of choosing a merchant account, you should be aware of the cost involved in setting up the account. Refer to the list below and don’t forget to ask about each of these items before agreeing to an account.

Application Fee
The application fee is compulsory so an agent or bank can "research" you as a potential customer. Few firms are more likely to repay this fee if your application is not accepted while others won't. It is always advisable not to pay an application fee that will not be refunded in case you are rejected.

Minimum Account Billing
This fee requires you to do a least amount of business with a merchant bank. A majority of banks require a monthly minimum of at least 25 dollars in transaction fees. Anything less than 35 dollars minimum is satisfactory.

Statement Fee
In case there is a considerable minimum-billing need, then there should be no statement fee. Still, a number of banks charge this to cover administrative costs. If you are assessed a statement fee, it shouldn't exceed 10 dollars per month.

Charge back Fee
In case a customer is not satisfied with their purchase, can't get a refund, or is just looking for something free, you may be faced with a charge back attempt. Under this, the bank will return customer’s fund and debit your account for the full amount. Always make sure to ask about your bank's charge back policy. Most banks tend to be more loyal to cardholders than merchants so protect yourself by preventing charge back fees.

Transaction Fee
This fee, which is usually about 2-3 percent of the purchase, is assessed on every transaction. If a product costs US$100, the bank would receive US$2-3 for their services. While rates are relative to the nature of your business, anticipated volume and your credit history, you should never pay more than 3 percent.

Setup Fee
This covers administrative work necessary to establish your account. In case you're charged an installation or programming fee, there shouldn't be a setup fee. There is a considerable amount of work completed to create merchant accounts, so fees of US$50-500 should be expected.

At the time of approaching banks or an intermediary about a merchant account, always keep in mind the following tips:

1. Read the terms, conditions and anticipated charges carefully. Don't sign anything until your questions are answered to your satisfaction. Take time to understand exactly what you are getting and how much you are paying to get it.

2. Do you require a reserve account? It shouldn't be, but if you are a start-up Internet business, have poor to marginal credit, anticipate low volumes or run a "risk" business, it may be required.

3. How long before funds are available to you? Ideally it should not take more than 72 hours from the time an order or transaction is processed.

Given below are some of the options available with whom you can setup your merchant account.

Paypal: With a free PayPal account one can accept credit cards on your website immediately
Click bank: It offers distribution of digital products and has an instant affiliate network promoting your business.

North American Bancard: It is a full service payment solution provider of Credit, Debit, EBT, Check Conversion and Guarantee, Checks by Phone & Net.

About the author:
Copyright ฉ Active-Venture.com's (http://www.active-venture.com) ecommerce hosting service. This article may be reprinted freely online or in print, provided an active link is made to http://www.active-venture.com


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Finding The Right Log Analyzer

Finding The Right Log Analyzer
by: Sandy Baker
A log analyzer is an essential part of many websites. It basically tells you what is happening on your website. Do you want to know where your website’s visitors go and what they do? If you are an ecommerce merchant it can be quite important to know which ads and which set ups the public likes and more importantly what they react to. But how can you find this information when you do not have a log analyzer? You can. So, take some time to purchase one!

Here is one of the reports that many log analyzers provide. They normally provide a report that tells you what paths visitors to your websites have taken. That means that it will tell you which page they arrived at and where they went form there. While that doesn’t seem all that important, it will give you a good amount of information about your website that you can later use to expand or recreate it to be even more powerful. For example, if your log analyzer told you that nine out of ten people that visited your website saw your ad for bubble gum and clicked on it, then that ad was either very powerful in its message, located in the right location, or had the design and style to attract their attention enough to get them to click through. This is how you make money.

The good news is that these log analyzers can do much more than that as well. They can provide you with invaluable reports far more important than just that. In fact you can choose the log analyzers that fit your needs the best and purchase those. This will help you to incorporate the marketing tactics as well as the maintenance and effectiveness of your website so that you can make it just that much better. Log analyzers are powerful tools to count on.

About the author:
For more information please see http://www.log-analyzer-help.co.uk


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Microsoft Great Plains Customization Tools – overview

Microsoft Great Plains Customization Tools – overview
by: Andrew Karasev
Former Great Plains Software Dynamics/eEnterprise, and currently Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains was initially designed in the earlier 1990th as the extendable and modular application with its proprietary tool: Great Plains Dexterity, written in C programming language as a shell. This was popular tendency those days –compare with SAP ABAP or Navision C/Side. Great Plains has additional ideas – database platform independence and graphical platform independent interface (initially targeted to both Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows with good chance that one of them will take market over – and it did happen, including the acquisition of Great Plains Software by Microsoft). In this small article we’ll give you revised overview – you can find previous publication in the last year posts.
• Great Plains Dexterity. Dexterity is the architecture of Great Plains and it is very difficult to take it out of the picture. So we’ll say that if you plan on creation GP module or custom piece for reselling it on the market – you should first consider Dexterity as a tool. Dexterity requires deep training and some experience – you can not begin programming in Dexterity over night. So-called fat client of Great Plains is pure dexterity application, however database itself since version 8.0 is MS SQL Server with some Dexterity specifics (DEW_ROW_ID column, for example).
• Old Tools. These tools were popular in 1990th and relate to such now legacy technologies as OLE, VBA scripting, etc. Please note that even if C was considered as universal language – custom scripts were targeted for light customizations and both C and VBA were targeted to modify fat client – thin client and web interface were not known those good old days.
1. VBA/Modifier. Microsoft introduced VBA as scripting for light customization of Microsoft Office products – Excel, Word, etc. Great Plains adopted it for its own needs. It tried to produce Dexterity/VBA hybrid and allowed Dexterity forms to be modified via Modifier (Dexterity application) and enabled modified screens to adopt VBA for its fields.
2. Continuum for VB/Dephi. Borland was strong on the customization market – this is why it also includes Delphi. In Continuum you can program Great Plains workstation as OLE server. For example – you can have Great Plains Integration Manager integrate several companies data one-by-one with automatic logging in and off without operator intervention – over night for example. Also – you can deploy Continuum to switch Dexterity modules (such as Intellisol APOP or Project Accounting) and include Dexterity Sanscript code into VBA scripts.
3. ReportWriter. We placed RW in this section because it is Dexterity application and is now actively replaced with new tools, such as Crystal Reports, SQL Reporting, XML & HTML web publishing
• New Tools. In XXI century development world begins to bias toward thin and web clients and SQL scripting. eCommerce is a must for retail and wholesale nationwide businesses and Microsoft Business Solutions come with these tools:
1. eConnect. As good instrument for eCommerce developer – it allows to create, modify and delete Great Plains objects – customers, invoices, purchase orders, payments, inventory items. It has certain restrictions – it can address core Great Plains objects (not something in former third party modules – Collection Management, Customer/Vendor Consolidation, etc.). Also eConnect can not post SOP, AR, AP, POP documents – posting should be done by operator in Great Plains. However you can deploy posting stored procedures, available on the market (through Alba Spectrum for example)
2. Extender. Let’s see it in action in the following year. The idea is really nice and it allows non-developer to modify Great Plains screens and place custom logic
You can always appeal to our expertise. Give us a call: 1-630-961-5918, 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com


About the author:
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.
We are serving USA Nationwide: CA, IL, NY, FL, AZ, CO, TX, WI, WA, MI, MA, MO, LA, NM, MN, Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Middles East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, OAE, Bahrain), Asia: China, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South & Central America: Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico



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Fast Web Design For The Skint Webmaster

Fast Web Design For The Skint Webmaster
by: T. O' Donnell
About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive, about ฃ500 for a month's run.

Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where clients of the calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought ฃ300 was a lot for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to know and loathe.

This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised how.

So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!).

1. Mambo Content Management System http://www.mambo.com

I wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box becomes a mini HTML editor.

If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site.

To get it running you need to know how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package.

You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users.

The only criticisms I have of this software are:

1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem!

2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are more restrained ones out there.

These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is essentially a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once you get familiar with it.

To add ecommerce to your site:

Oscommerce Shopping Cart http://www.oscommerce.com

Again, this is a full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional shopping cart.

Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the default cart files. When you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in, thus creating errors.

The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than overwrite them) or that require minor alterations to existing files.

What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is complex, I chuck it.

Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to integrate them! Hyperlink from one to the other. I've tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh!

*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ...

It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up twice at your site, but you'll thank me for this sage advice later. Remember KISS is the basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).

About the author:
T. O' Donnell ( http://www.tigertom.com) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on conservatories, available at http://www.ttconservatories.co.uk.T. O' Donnell freeware may be downloaded at http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk.


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Website Buying Guide Checklist

Website Buying Guide Checklist
by: Joel Walsh
Can you really get a website even without knowing anything about code, and without paying a fortune? Find out.

The days when websites were primarily distinguished by their code are long gone. Nowadays, the web is a true publishing medium that favors well thought-out ideas. You can get a professional-looking website online in minutes with many website building services and software. But what should you look for? What are the features you really need and which are just clutter?

Content Editing

Some website authoring software packages only allow you to entire plain, unformatted text. Some of them allow you to entire HTML tags. Others provide a WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") interface with options for font, links, and image insertion much like a word processor's. Some will allow you to use more than one, or even all of these options so you have a choice on how you want to format your text.

Template Designs

Every website builder ever invented came with at least one or two templates for creating the graphical look of a website, so you don't have to design the look of the site yourself. But some packages have very large libraries of templates, some have only a few. Some will let you mix and match elements of the design templates, while others will lock you in to one setup.

Ecommerce Functions

Many ready-to-go websites created by website builder software feature built-in shopping carts. Some even come with credit card processing. This is of course necessary if you're going to be selling stuff direct online. But if you're not going to be selling anything, ecommerce functionalities may just complicate the administration of the site and pad the price for the software or service.

Blogging Functions

Blogs are "web logs," but blogging software involves more than just a simple online journal. Blogging technology allows you to send your new posts directly to subscribers via RSS, without them having to visit your site or receive an email from you. Still, unless you plan on updating your site regularly (at least once a month), your website's blog will just gather cobwebs.

Email

Some hosted web authoring systems provide email accounts at no additional charge, while others do charge separately. Some web builder systems even come with modules for creating email newsletters.

Support

It is very likely that you will encounter a technical difficulty at some point while owning your website. Make sure you know in advance of paying whether the company provides only paid support, and if any included support is over email, a web ticketing system, or the telephone.

Photo and Image Management

For many, if not most, people who want personal websites, displaying pictures online is a primary motivation, if not the only motivation. If you want to display pictures on your website, make sure to choose a website builder system that makes it easy to upload and publish images.

Renting vs. Owning

You can buy website authoring software upfront for a flat fee, or you can "rent;" i.e., pay a company every month to use a hosted service. The choice is up to you, but remember that the hosted service will likely charge you much more in the end: averaging around $20/month, hosted the typical hosted website builder will cost you $240/year--far more than most desktop software.

In short, you don't need to know how a website is coded to make one, any more than a book author needs to know about printing ink. Don't burden yourself with learning how to do web design. Having fun with your website starts with choosing a website builder software that will make it fun.

About the author:
Joel Walsh recommends you check out http://www.ezgenerator.com/documents/167.html?%20web%20authoring%20software[Publishthis article on your website! Requirement: live link for above URL/web address w/ link text/anchor text: "web authoring software" OR leave this bracketed message intact.]


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Anti Spam at the Enterprise Level

Anti Spam at the Enterprise Level
by: Richard Keir
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir

Every one of us knows how spam impacts us. Every day we either get a ton of spam - or if we're fairly well protected by spam filters - only a few pieces.

Like a large number of people, I don't use any spam filters. Ah. You think I'm insane. But wait. My problem is that I get a lot of email from marketing types which I want to receive. And the spam filtering software is not very sensitive to my needs. Even white-listing doesn't always work. So, I prefer to get all that spam and just delete it.

Now this solution can work for me despite the time it takes to delete my daily overdose of spam. However, at the enterprise level, it's a whole different story. If you have a relatively large internal network with even a modest number of email users, you're looking at a major problem. And the more users you have, the worse the problem is.

Sure, you can put up software on the mail server. Works, kind of. But pretty soon you may find you need to upgrade the mail server. And that's after you already put it on a stand-alone machine.

Rather than continuing to buy ever more expensive software to run on a machine that keeps needing to be upgraded, you might want to think about a dedicated anti spam appliance.

To give you some idea of what's possible let's take a look at Barracuda Networks dedicated anti spam appliance. All you need to do is put this baby in front of your mail server. I say baby, advisedly because this one will learn by doing and by training provided by your users.

Dean Drako, CEO of Barracuda Networks said, "Bayesian filtering is still one of the most accurate defenses against spam. The new plug-ins allow users to directly train the Bayesian filter, making the Barracuda Spam Firewall even more accurate based on the users individual email preferences. Viruses and other threats can infect the network quickly if they are not stopped at the network edge. With Intent Analysis our customers have an advantage over these threats because the Barracuda Spam Firewall is able to block them real time. Consequently we have consistently been a first responder when some of the most malicious virus attacks have hit, saving our customers from potentially devastating damage to their networks."

This is one beautiful little machine. A Barracuda Spam Firewall can support from 1,000 to 30,000 active users. It can usually be installed in less than five minutes and receives automatic hourly updates for new forms of spam and viruses. It has a 10 layer defense system beyond the use of open source anti spam and anti virus solutions: denial of service and security protection, IP block list, rate control, virus check with archive decompression, proprietary virus check, user specified rules, spam fingerprint check, Intent Analysis, spam rule-based scoring, and Bayesian analysis. Plus it also does both inbound and outbound email filtering with the inclusion of sophisticated outbound email filtering techniques (just in case you've got a spam zombie on board or somebody's got an infected PC).

However, it isn't exactly cheap. Still, when you consider the time, bandwidth, user frustration and potential hardware upgrade costs, the price may look a lot more reasonable. You can check it out at http://www.barracudanetworks.com/

If you are in the market for an anti-spam appliance, the Barracuda Spam Firewall isn't your only choice. The impact of spam on internet businesses - even those who primarily use it for just email - is so great that a simple search for "anti spam appliance" will find you a number of alternatives to examine. Even McAfee is getting into the anti spam hardware game.

I'm hoping that it won't be too long before I can pick up a Bayesian multi-level anti spam, anti virus firewall appliance for my home PC that keeps me safe and cuts my need to delete without deep-sixing the email I want or costing me more than I can afford. I suspect it's on the way.


About the author:
Richard writes in a variety of areas involving eBusiness and the internet. For more on spam visit http://anti-spam.werkz.organd for general eCommerce go to http://building-ecommerce-websites.com


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Use Your Hobby To Launch A Successful Website

Use Your Hobby To Launch A Successful Website
by: Lois S.
When you study the really successful websites, you will quickly notice that many are based on seemingly strange subjects, many of which may not easily pass for a serious business.

This clearly underlines the fact that when it comes to online enterprises and ecommerce, the possibilities are endless and you can actually succeed at virtually anything. There seems to be just one condition. You need to be passionate about whatever it is your website is about.

Jeff Bezos had a passion for books and that is one of the reasons why he borrowed money from his parents and launched Amazon.com. The rest is history and today Amazon earns Bezos and his associates millions of dollars.

This is precisely the reason why the first place you should look for an idea for your online enterprise and website, is your hobby. What are you passionate about? Or what do you really care about?

Establishing a successful online venture is hard work and it helps a lot if the subject matter that you are dealing with is close to your heart. It helps transform your chores from work to having fun. The facts are that people usually become wildly successful doing things that they enjoy doing. The more fun you have at your business, the higher the chances of success.

Having selected the hobby you want to turn into a business, It will help tremendously if you carefully analyze the potential online demand for the various businesses related to your hobby. This is easily done by studying popular keywords statistics and is a very important thing to do before launching any online business or website.

For example your hobby could be golf. By studying keywords, you may find that Golf stretch exercises are a very popular subject. This would be a pointer that the right business to start would be something to do with golf exercises. You can, for example, sell golf exercise equipment at your website.

This is the way to cash in on your hobby or passion and birth a hugely successful website or online enterprise.

About the author:

Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.





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Virtual Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

Virtual Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting
by: Stanley Spencer
Why do some organizations choose to host their own Web site on their own managed servers, while others contract with a Webhosting company or purchase their ecommerce hosting services through an ISP (Internet service provider)?

While cost (including risk) and flexibility are often the two primary considerations when choosing how to host a website, understanding distinctions among Webhosting options and the pros and cons of each will help you pare down the list to something considerably more manageable, ensuring that you make the best decision.

Webhosting plans can be categorized broadly into two types: virtual server hosting and dedicated server hosting. Small to medium-sized businesses typically choose a virtual server plan where multiple ecommerce web sites are hosted on space within a single server. This service allows you to share a server with others, but your site is further protected or isolated with its own server resources including processor, memory, and disk storage. This arrangement works well for small sites that rely on dynamic generation of content from a backend database, small ecommerce sites, or for customers who wish to manage several separate web sites.

The reason that vendors can offer low-priced domain hosting for virtual private servers is because the customers look the same and require a set of web services that are essentially identical from site to site. Webhosting vendors who are able to package similar services across a huge volume of customers most effectively are generally the most successful since they can capture substantial economies of scale.

Dedicated hosting on the other hand is an option for mid- to large-sized businesses that require or desire the flexibility that comes with dedicated servers. While more expensive, this type of plan generally provides a higher level of security, support, and maintenance with a guaranteed level of availability. Offering this type of guarantee generally reflects a level of redundancy within the vendor's data-center operations that severely decreases the chances of downtime or removes the risk all together. Depending on the vendor's plan, flexibility means you can write and run your own custom scripts or applications and even use a content management system to manage the web site but not worry about managing the network, server hardware, or operating system.

The easiest decision will likely be whether you intend to host the site yourself or contract with a webhosting vendor. Scale is the primary decision-making factor. Going it alone takes money and the willingness to assume the activities and risk associated with managing the server hardware, software, and connectivity. For organizations that already have a dedicated IT staff and data center, hosting may be an affordable option. The IT department may, in turn, offer a shared server arrangement where organizational entities such as the organization's library are provided space on the server. But for those who are unable to tap into existing resources or who are working for companies without IT resources, contracting with an external webhosting provider is the only cost-effective option.

Narrowing the choices down can be difficult since there are so many vendors from which to choose. The first step is to list your requirements for developing, managing, and offering a web site to your users. For very simple sites, the vendor may provide tools for creating and managing your site along with available services to extend your site's offerings, such as online form capabilities. Alternatively, you can use your own HTML authoring tool and upload pages as needed.

Vendors try to make choosing plans as easy as possible by packaging most-requested services together into specific webhosting plans. Doing so allows customers to more easily select what they need; they also benefit from a cost structure that can be kept fairly low. Most plans require an upfront set-up fee along with a monthly fee covering the plan you choose and any additional services (extra e-mail boxes, additional storage, etc.) that you request.

Finally, choosing a webhosting vendor can be confusing due to the array of options. A winning approach includes developing your list of requirements along with a plan for current and future growth to allow you to substantially clarify how your needs map out against your domain hosting options.

About the author:
Copyright ฉ Active-Venture.com's (http://www.active-venture.com) virtual webhosting service. This article may be reprinted freely online or in print, provided an active link is maintained to our website at http://www.active-venture.com


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Manufacturing Outsourcing: Microsoft Great Plains implementation, customization & reporting – overview for consultant

Manufacturing Outsourcing: Microsoft Great Plains implementation, customization & reporting – overview for consultant
by: Andrew Karasev
Manufacturing in the USA is far away down from mid 20th century top of the hill or its golden time. However we are in very competitive business environment and we have to do what market tends us to do. Nowadays competitive offshore manufacturing labor cost outweighs custom clearance fees and forces us to have not full-size manufacturing, but rather final assembly facilities here in the US distribution centers, such as Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles. We’d like to give you successful implementation/downsizing/outsourcing scenario of mid-size machinery manufacturer.

• Downsizing need. US recession of 2000-2004 decreased monthly crane trucks order from 200 per month to 50. Company laid off manufacturing and assembly workers. ERP system had full-featured manufacturing (Kewill manufacturing) and the annual maintenance fee to Kewill was about k$50 plus company had more employees in accounting department to enter manufacturing related data than it had manufacturing workers Kewill was serving just manufacturing automation, Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL 2000 was in place of General Ledger (GL), Sales Order Processing and Account Payables module (AP)
• Switch to light Manufacturing. Great Plains Dynamics Bill of Materials (currently Microsoft Great Plains Bill of Materials) can serve light manufacturing and the cost of ownership is relatively low – you pay 16% annual maintenance fee and this includes free new version and discounted Great Plains technical support from Microsoft Business Solutions directly. Client did purchase Great Plains Inventory Control module, Purchase Order Processing with PO Generator to replenish spare parts automatically. Great Plains Customization partner developed light Great Plains Dexterity customization to automatically build several blocks in Bill of Materials on SOP Sales Order allocation.
• Internet Ordering. eCommerce is very popular for apparels and general merchandise. For custom machinery assembly it will come in the next decade (we are not talking here about GM or Chrysler). Microsoft Great Plains SOP module tables, however allow you to develop ecommerce ordering via eConnect or custom stored procedures. Consider eOrder – this is sale on account over the internet – however it is ASP application, not ASPX or .Net
• Reporting. Crystal Reports is reporting maestro if we are talking about Microsoft SQL Server based System.

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the author:

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in
California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia



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Web Hosting Strategy for Managing Multiple Websites

Web Hosting Strategy for Managing Multiple Websites
by: Bruce Zhang
If you are making a comfortable living from the Internet and the Web or have a plan to achieve that goal, it's likely that you are running more than ten websites. The websites are your virtual offices. You want to your sites to be up and running 365 days, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Managing multiple websites is a daunting task if running one website is a hobby.


Proposed Hosting Strategy for Managing Multiple Websites

The hosting strategy we propose is to host your multiple major websites with 3-4 different hosting companies, and open a reseller account with another hosting company for 1) small and new websites, 2) web development and 3) backup. Hosting with too many hosting companies will significantly increase the time and the difficulty of managing sites, and using a single hosting company isn't a smart choice either.


Justification of the Hosting Strategy

Cost - Cost of the Web hosting isn't an issue for running a single web site whether it costs $5 or $25 a month. The difference is only a few hundred dollars or less a year. It's always nice and smart to get the most out of every single dollar in doing business. At least, a few hundred dollars difference wouldn't make or break a business. If you run 10 or even 50 websites, the cost of Web hosting alone will define the success or failure of your online adventure. To cut the hosting cost, the option is to use a reseller hosting account to host as many small or new sites as you want for about $15 a month. You host one or 2 major websites with one hosting company. Shared hosting account costs under $10 a month, and dedicated server will cost $50 or more a month.

Uptime - If your bread-and-butter maker website is down for a few hours, you'll lose hundreds of dollars and more. Even though most hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime, it's not common to see a website down for a few hours. A site could be down for a half day or even more if a hosting company is doing a major update. The hosting company may do the update in a weekend or a major holiday, but that's when many family-oriented and travel sites generate their revenues. If you could afford the loss of revenues, many websites owners can't bear the psychological loss and pressure. Hosting your sites with a few hosting companies will reduce the risk of downtime.

Application Development - For simple web application, webmasters will do development on the same production hosting site. If your ecommerce applications are complex, doing development on the production site may bring down the live site especially if you're in the process of changing configuration files or install customized applications. The option is setup a website on your reseller account for development and testing, and move the applications to production account on another server after the completion.

Backup - If you're not happy with a hosting company, a hosting company is out of business, or the servers will be down for a day or two, you can easily temporarily or permanently switch from one hosting company to other since you're familiar with the site managing tools already. If you have a backup or secondary copy running on another server, all you need for the switch is the transfer of the domain, which will take no more than a minute.


Shop Before You Buy

There're too many hosting plans to choose from a large number of hosting companies - ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates ( http://www.web-site-hosting-n-tools.com/hosting-with-templates/ ) , Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting or Co-location Hosting. Compare the cost, hosting features, tracking records of hosting companies before making your commitment. Good luck with your online adventures.

About the author:
Bruce Zhang has over 10 years of experience in web development, database design and managing web servers. He currently manages dozens of websites using ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting ( http://www.web-site-hosting-n-tools.com/ecommerce-hosting/), Managed Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting for web hosting needs.




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A1 Technology Launches its independent SEO division A-1 Internetdesign

A1 Technology Launches its independent SEO division A-1 Internetdesign
by: john parker
A-1 Technology Inc., a US based Offshore outsourcing firm launched its SEO division as a separate company, A-1 Internetdesign Inc. Having established itself in the field of software and website development, the company expanded to provide vertical services covering all domains of Online Marketing.

Established in 1999, A-1 Technology has been providing web solutions to companies across industry sectors with special focus on Finance, Real estate and Health care Industries. The company has its headquarters in New York and other locations include New Jersey, Chicago, London(UK), Stuttgart(Germany), Singapore, Chandigarh and Delhi (India), thus ensuring a global presence. Two years ago, A-1 Internetdesign was started as a division in the company to provide search engine optimization as a complimentary service to its existing clients. As the importance of the search engines grew in doing business over the internet, the requirements of the clients also grew to include other marketing techniques to the portfolio. Ecommerce Maintenance projects were also being accepted that included SEO as a central task. In order to give greater independence, it was decided to turn the division into a separate entity.

The new company under the name of A-1 Internetdesign Inc. would provide Ecommerce maintenance services including Search Engine Optimization, Blogging, Email marketing, ongoing development and design alterations. The offshoring advantage will ensure that the prices are competitive. All the services can be seen at the company’s corporate website www.a1internetdesign.com






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About the author:

The author of this article is John Parker, A-1 Technology, Inc, an offshore outsourcing company



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Ecommerce Hosting Considerations

Ecommerce Hosting Considerations
by: Eric Lester
Website hosting can be a complex undertaking. Determining how much space you need, how much transfer, finding a reliable host, and getting everything online is no simple task. Add ecommerce to the mix and things become even more complex. This article will deal with some of those additional complications to finding a host for an online store. All of the same considerations to finding general hosting can be applied to ecommerce hosting, there are simply a few additional ones that need some attention.

Basics- Disk Space and Transfer
The core states of any kind of hosting, ecommerce or not, remain space and transfer, or traffic. Generally measured in monthly increments, your space and transfer will place a crucial role in determining just what size plan you need. Ecommerce sites will, generally speaking, require more space and transfer than an equivilant sized site without ecommerce. This is due to the presence of the shopping cart upon which the online storefront is based. Shopping cart programs are installed to the account on which they operate, requiring space, and their scripts for running the store will require additional transfer to handle customers as they browse, add items to their cart, and check out. Will there be a tremendous amount of extra transfer required by the cart? That depends on how many use the cart and on the cart itself. This is why its best to start small and having a clear upgrade path to handle future popularity.

Prospective online merchants will generally have a good idea how many products they'll be selling initially. This will vary wildly from merchant to merchant, and many merchants don't put their entire stocks online. It is wise to start with a considered selection of products first, especially if you wish to initially keep your hosting plan small and upgrade as the store prospers. Those with a great deal of products need to be aware they will probably be facing a bigger monthly fee for a larger hosting plan. Once the decision is made regarding the products, attention can be turned to finding a suitable shopping cart program to contain them.

Shopping Cart
The choice of shopping cart can be a personal one. Those entirely new to ecommerce will probably not have any experience with any kind of shopping cart software. There are a number of popular choices, and most hosting companies will provide one, if not a variety, from which you can choose. It is important to find a shopping cart that suits the individual user, as attempting to change your shopping down the road can be a long process that will, most likely, bring your store down during a transitional period. Don't immediately jump at the first cart a host offers. Ask if they have demos and try them out. Be sure it's a program you can learn and use, as it is the primary way you'll be doing your online business. Even if you have a large business and have a design firm setting up the cart, a rudimentary knowledge of the cart's processes is highly recommended.

Learn as much about your prospective shopping cart software as possible. Make sure it supports SSL, a common site security protocol that will help keep your customer's credit card numbers safe when ordering online. It will need to support your merchant account and payment gateway. In many cases a host might bundle these services, so compatibility isn't an issue. If you secured your merchant services separately from hosting, be sure they are compatible. Find out if the cart has a recommended maximum product limit and, of course, try not to exceed it. The store may slow down and perform poorly if there are too many products in it.

Finally, make sure it will do everything you want it to do. Some merchants sell services and downloadable items that don't conform exactly to the order-product-ship-product flow. If your cart doesn't support these features by default, there may be 3rd party add-ons that will provide this functionality. Miva Merchant is one such shopping cart with a very active 3rd party developer community providing a wide range of add-ons, or "modules" to extend the feature set of the original program. The merchant will have to buy these add-ons and have them installed on their own initiative, though, and the hosting company will not be able to support them.

Reliability and Support
Perhaps of greatest importance is reliability in your chosen host. Think in terms of a "brick and mortar" storefront. If someone locks the front door during business hours, then no customers can come in and nothing is sold. Similarly, if an online store is down at any hour, no customers can come in and nothing is sold. You want the most reliable hosting for such a mission-critical site. Never just take the word of a hosting company's site in regards to their uptime. Do research and look for customer reviews of your prospective host. Online merchants should always be willing to pay more for a reliable hosting company with good uptime and support. A good rule of thumb is to stay away from free or "bargain basement" hosts, since support and uptime are usually the first things to suffer with this kind of hosting.

Conclusions
Finding the right ecommerce hosting company requires a few additional considerations. Decide on your products, your shopping cart, and then shop for your hosting company. You will need more space and transfer than an equivalent site, but start small with your product selection and you can still save money on your hosting. Find a shopping cart that's easy for you to use and understand, as switching at a later date can result in downtime and a lot of work transferring your products. Finally, make sure your host has solid uptime, as an online store that's down isn't generating any sales.

About the author:
Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for http://www.apollohosting.comand previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.


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Web Ecommerce: Where To Begin?

Web Ecommerce: Where To Begin?
by: Noel Matthew
In web ecommerce, you are going to find a wealth of information about what it is and what it can do for you within minutes of looking on the web. The problem with this is, it is hard to sort out the good from the bad and the worthless from the maybe-worth-something options. Relying on the bad stuff will leave you broke and everyone is in search of the best options to make them a ton. So, where do you begin when it comes to web ecommerce?

In order to help you get started with web ecommerce, here are some of the things that anyone on the web selling can do to make their business more profitable and more potentially interesting to their buyers.

• Provide quality and something that is user friendly to the client. If you want to sell, you need to convince them that you have something that is better than what is out there or something that isn’t out there at all. You need to provide for them a good experience as well.

• Sales and promotions work as they would in the retail setting of a store. To get people in and buying, offering incentives can definitely help.

• Provide a great looking website for them to visit. Make sure that it is user friendly and that it is easy to navigate as well. Things like photos and graphics that are exciting and appealing are great tools to use as well.

• You can also do well by offering things like chat rooms and blogs that keep up the readership to your website. Allow them to play a role like this and they will likely book mark you and come back for more web ecommerce action!

Web Ecommerce can be a remarkable tool when you use it well. So, as your first step, take the time to explore what ways you can create a great place for your customers and how you can make sure that they come and come back.

About the author:
For more information please see http://www.web-ecommerce-shack.co.uk


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Create Worry-Free Sales With Secure Shopping Cart Software

Create Worry-Free Sales With Secure Shopping Cart Software
by: Tia Rodriguez
Succeeding in business can be a hassle and a headache without the right tools. This is especially true when dealing with ecommerce. Regardless of the market, service, or goods being offered, the one tool that is essential to the success of every online ecommerce business is a reliable ecommerce shopping cart.

The online shopping cart is your one stop container for placing and receiving orders online. A basic shopping cart will allow the customer to specify the quantity of the goods wanted, take the customer’s credit, billing, and shipping information, and actually allow the customer to place the order. However, a good shopping cart software solution will do all of this and so much more.

Many ecommerce shopping cart solutions offer customizable templates and design tools for your shopping cart and sometimes even your website. There are also several web hosting shopping cart solutions that will not only handle the order placement and transactions, but also handle the hosting needs of your website.

Other tools and features included in shopping cart software packages are affiliate system management programs, search engine optimization tools, and advanced shipping options. There are also several ecommerce providers that offer secure encrypted credit card processing along with other merchant account tools as a part of using their shopping cart solution for your ecommerce needs.

Almost all reputable shopping cart software providers also offer full telephone, email and live internet chat support in case any questions may arise after purchasing their service. All of this is done to allow you to focus on growing your online business. By automating the backend of your website, you don’t have to worry about manually taking each order that comes in. Ecommerce shopping cart software handles all of this for you.

Make your online business profitable, secure, and reliable with an affordable shopping cart software solution. It is one of the best investments you can make in the operational aspect of your ecommerce venture.

About the author:
Johnny Kay is author of “Making Technology Work for the Small Business” and “Marketing Solutions Made Easy.” For additional information on how your ecommerce company can benefit from secure shopping cart software, go to http://www.1-shopping-cart-software.info


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The ClickBank E-Commerce Solution

The ClickBank E-Commerce Solution

ClickBank.com can offer you multiple solutions for your e-commerce business. Here are some of the advantages of using ClickBank.

1. Accept Credit Cards Without a Merchant Account

If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or software), ClickBank may be an excellent solution for you. For a $49.95 initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales.

2. Start Your Own Affiliate Program

With ClickBank, you have your own built-in affiliate program. You decide what commission (from 1% to 75%) you would like to pay your affiliates.

To learn more about ClickBank.com, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/buy/clickbank.html

3. Receive Free Advertising

You receive additional exposure through free listing on the ClickBank website and through the search facilities of other websites, such as CBMall.com.

To learn more about CBMall.com, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/buy/cbmall.html

4. Obtain Referral Commissions

Even without applying for ClickBank credit card processing, you can earn referral commissions on thousands of ClickBank Marketplace products.

To learn more about ClickBank Marketplace, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/buy/clickbank-marketplace.html

5. Eliminate Sales Tax Problems

Are you registered for Value Added Tax (VAT) for online transactions for European Union (EU) countries since July 1, 2003?

Are you collecting the appropriate state or provincial sales taxes?

If you are a Canadian, are you aware of your obligation to collect Goods and Services Tax (G.S.T.) and Harmonized Sales Tax (H.S.T.) on Internet transactions?

Again, ClickBank may be your solution. ClickBank is registered for EU purposes and adds the appropriate VAT to each transaction.

As well, to deal with ClickBank, you must agree to sell your product to them. ClickBank then resells your product to their customers. Thus, ClickBank becomes the retailer responsible for collecting sales taxes -- not you. Obviously, ClickBank will not be subject to sales taxes in most jurisdictions.

Since ClickBank is located in the United States and can only sell or use the products it sells from there, it would appear that Canadian G.S.T. and H.S.T. would not be applicable to them.

Of course, this is not legal advice. To determine your liability for sales and similar taxes, consult your lawyer and accountant.

To read more about sales taxes on Internet transactions, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/e-commerce-tax.html

Considering its many advantages, ClickBank may well be your e-commerce solution!

Resource Box: J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., http://www.popeconsultinginc.com/ has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years.

For valuable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/