Soropa Blog

Do you regularly buy goods online? Does this experience sound
familiar.. you go to an e-commerce website, only to find, to
your annoyance, an excruciatingly slow response. You wait over 5
minutes for the next page to load. In the end you give up, and
never make that purchase. Presumably many other people also give
up, causing the loss of many other purchases.

Now imagine that you own that website, and run that online
business. You set everything up properly, but you find that many
people face the situation described above. You lose customers,
and eventually you lose your business, and all this principally
because you chose the wrong web hosting plan.

You see, when you set up any online business, I cannot over-
stress the importance of choosing the right hosting company and
plan.

In choosing a web hosting plan, you must decide whether to go
for shared or dedicated hosting. With a shared hosting plan,
your website co-exists with other websites on a computer, known
as a server. With a dedicated hosting plan, your site, and your
site alone resides upon just one server. You can get a good
shared hosting plan for under $10 per month, whereas dedicated
hosting plans can cost from $50 to over $100 a month.

For shared hosting, one server handles the traffic (visitors)
coming to all the websites it accommodates. So if your site
shares a server with other high-traffic sites, then it could run
slow because the server works extra hard. Maybe the site will
run slow at peak times during the day, when you would expect
most customers to come and buy, causing the nightmare scenario
above. However, hosting companies usually use many servers, with
only a limited number of sites on each, thus spreading the load.
I therefore advise you to read reviews on hosting companies to
see whether people complain about sites slowing down due to
overloading. I will say more on reviews later.

For dedicated hosting, your traffic does not compete with
traffic to any other web sites. However, this costs much more,
so I do not recommend dedicated hosting unless absolutely
necessary.

When choosing a hosting plan, you must consider bandwidth. I’ll
give you a simple explanation of bandwidth. If your hosting plan
allows you 10GB of monthly bandwidth, it allows you 10GB
(10,000MB) of data transfer from your site each month. If each
visitor to your site accesses pages containing 300kB (0.3MB) of
data on average, then your plan allows you 10,000 / 0.3 = 30,000
visitors a month, or 1000 visitors a day. Ask yourself, do I
need more than that?

Imagine the scene: your site averages 2000 visitors a day. Two
weeks into the month, with your monthly bandwidth quota used up,
your site “goes offline” until the beginning of next month, or
until you buy more bandwidth. How devastating for your business!
Take my advice: get enough bandwidth before you start.

Most importantly, you must know the effectiveness of your
hosting company’s customer support. Many companies offer 24/7
phone support, where you can ring them up any time day or night
with a problem. But imagine this scenario:

You created a database on your site for storing all your
customers’ details. One day, the data gets corrupted, and
everybody accessing your site sees an error message. Trust me,
it happens! You need an administrator to tweak the database at
their end. You must get this sorted out immediately but the
hosting company gave you only an email address, so you send an
email. Then you could wait two days for a reply. Many companies
would actually email you back within the hour. However, a
company with 24/7 phone support allows you to talk directly to a
real person. He or she could then keep you informed of the
situation as it progresses.

Always look at the hosting company’s “uptime guarantee”. Many
guarantee 99% uptime for their servers, which sounds quite high
at first, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1%
of the time: over 7 hours out of each month! If you can, choose
a host guaranteeing 99.7% uptime.

When you decide upon a hosting company, always look at what
other people say about them. Go to Google.com and type the web
hosting company name, and “reviews” or “testimonials”. This will
give you a very rich list of sites where you can read other
peoples’ reviews, testimonials, reports, etc. so you can form an
educated opinion. A word of warning, you will always find
someone who says something negative about even the best web
hosting companies.

So finally, before settling for a specific hosting plan and
entrusting your precious online business to them, ask yourself
these simple questions:

* Do they provide 24/7 phone support, not just email support?

* Does their bandwidth allow the number of visitors that you
expect?

* Does the hosting plan enable your site to avoid going slow?
What do the reviews say? What do the testimonials say?

* What uptime do they guarantee? Would your business survive
your site going down for the remaining percentage each month?

* And can you find plenty of good reviews, and testimonials of
many happy customers, and no too many complaints?

If you can answer yes to all these questions, then go for it! I
wish you every success with your online business.

Salehoo: Wholesale Boxing Rings
They have great educational tools with top notch e-books and software and excellent research tools and they don’t charge extra for these services like other companies do. I found the user forum absolutely priceless. You can get all your questions answered by people who are actually doing this for a living and have already gone through the learning curve . Their customer service is top notch and they will help you in your dealings with the individual suppliers especially when you can’t find a supplier for a particular product that you are searching for. For starters I fail to understand why anyone would want to pay to have access to a list of suppliers? I mean we live in an age where anything can be found with a little research online there are dozens of free directories that will give you the same information as a premium list if not more so why pay for it? Do a bit of ground work and you will be able to find all the information you need.

With thoroughly reviewed suppliers’ and amazing deals at Salehoo you can successfully run your own business with ease which is the real benefit of Salehoo dropshippers. Just because a wholesale publication or site attracts wholesale buyers does not mean that it will work for you and also the Salehoo Suppliers. They also provide uninterrupted effective and efficient connectivity in between buyers and suppliers

Salehoo Wholesale Temporary Tattoo Distributor:
This is just the same when you have printing needs. There are instances when you would need to print posters with multi-colored or intricate design in hundreds or thousand copies. When this is the situation, perhaps it is better if you order them in bulk as bulk purchasing can significantly reduce the price of printing. Business and organizations alike that have a large workforce or many branches can save big on posters or any promotional material if they order them on wholesale. This is because of high-tech printing machines that can handle more runs at the same time. Additionally, these printers have access to wholesale materials which means greater savings for you. Ebay powersellers trust Salehoo dropshippers and Salehoo prices.

What you come across a fair bit is wholesale membership sites, so try to join the Salehoo forums. The only difficulty the risk involved using non-secure payment methods such as Western union and Wire Transfer, which will be the Salehoo customers. See Salehoo Review.

When you’re self-employed, choosing a website designer is a crucial decision, as a good website can bring you more business and a bad one can drive away prospective customers. Below are some important things to consider when selecting a website designer for your new site or site redesign.

What Types Of Websites Designers Are Out There?

I don’t think there is an “official” definition, so I’ll give you MY definition:

• A Website Designer helps you to determine the page layout, graphics, text location and colors of your site, as well as the navigation and how pages will cross-link to one another. He may also do the actual computer programming and graphic art work for the site, or may hire out that work to a programming specialist. A Website Designer is the project manager for your site design or redesign.

• A Website Programmer takes the design from the Designer and creates the code to make the site run. She is also responsible for all the technical stuff that happens behind-the-scenes to make sure the site works properly for your visitors.

• A Graphic Designer creates the graphics for the site, including your logo and buttons. A Graphic Designer may also create the overall look and feel of the site.

• An Internet Marketing Specialist helps you to determine how your website fits into your overall marketing strategy, and how to get more traffic and sales from your website.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can get all four of these skills from the same person. You may find a designer who can also help you with the text for your website but don’t count on it. Be prepared to write the text yourself, or hire a professional copywriter.

Who Is A Good Designer And How Much Do They Charge?

I don’t recommend specific designers, as much of it depends on whether you want to work locally with someone, or whether you are willing to work remotely with them over the phone. Here are some things to think and ask about when hiring a website designer:

• Talk to some of their current and recent clients, to see how smooth the process was.

• Look at sites they’ve designed to see if you like their style. Is there a certain feel to ALL their sites, or are they flexible in their designs?

• Ask them if they did the actual graphic and layout design of the site, or if they just did the programming.

• Ask them if they have a structured planning process that leads you through the design phase, and if they will document all the discussions that you’ll have together. If they have a Website Planning Guide that you’ll work through together, it’s helpful.

• Ask them what they know about internet marketing and search engine optimization. Be sure that they’re creating a site for you that meets your larger marketing and business goals.

• Ask the designer for their fees (expect to pay between $60 - $200 an hour, depending on their skill and their location), and what is the estimate of cost for the site you want. They may not be able to give you a good estimate until you discuss content and features of the site.

• Ask them how they bill you. Will they invoice you monthly, or when certain milestones are reached? Do you have to make deposits?

• Pay attention to how much they ask you about YOUR BUSINESS. They should want to get to know you and your business intimately. How else can they design a site that reflects you and your business, unless they spend time to get to know you?

• Pay attention to whether they’ll try to stick within your budget, or whether they keep suggesting new add-ons that increase to the cost of your site. Remember, designers aren’t responsible for your budget, you are.

• Ask them whether they will maintain your site after the initial design, and how much they’ll charge for that. Some designers want to create new sites but don’t want to maintain them. Someone like a virtual assistant (VA) may be able to maintain your site for a lower hourly fee, as long as the VA is skilled in website programming. The more bells and whistles and complicated programming in your site, the less likely that an average VA will be able to maintain it for you.

• If you’re going to maintain the site yourself, ask them if they’ll design your site in a software package that’s easy for YOU to use, like FrontPage. Many professional website designers look down their noses at FrontPage or Macromedia Contribute, but guess what? If you want to maintain your site yourself, then you have to use a software package that’s easy for YOU to use, regardless of the website programmer’s preferences. (And don’t let a programmer tell you that they can’t design a good site in FrontPage. There’s a difference between can’t and won’t. I’ve been designing sites since 1997, and have designed over 40 sites in FrontPage that are clean, modern, visually-appealing, and visitor-friendly.)

• Do you LIKE the designer? Do you believe they’ll act ethically? Do you enjoy speaking with them? Do they stay focused to the task at hand, or do they ramble and waste your time? Do you feel you “click” with their personality and values? Do they offer you invaluable insight and advice about your site design?

• Tell each prospective website designer what your deadline is and ask if they can meet it. If you don’t have a specific deadline, brainstorm with the designer to create a good working deadline that you can both meet.

By doing extensive interviewing of potential website designers, you’re more likely to pick one that can do the work you want, is willing to really listen to you, can create a site that reflects you and your business, and keeps within your budget.

Karyn Greenstreet is a Self Employment expert and small
business coach. She shares tips, techniques and strategies
with self-employed people to boost clarity and focus, create
sustainable motivation, and increase sales and profits.
Visit her website at http://www.PassionForBusiness.com

It has now become apparent that the most valuable skill that a
would-be webmaster should have is not necessarily the technical
know how to set-up the site, but a winning idea.

The proof is clearly visible in the hundreds of technically
oriented webmasters who have sites that are struggling and some
that have had to shut down. In fact many of the Internet success
fairy tales we have all heard are mainly about people who had a
great idea and found the technical back-up to execute it. Jeff
Bezos of Amazon.com fame for example simply had a good idea
about how to sell books online, the rest as they say is
history.

Recent developments are taking us more in the direction of
easy-do-it-yourself web building. In fact some of these services
are of such design and professional standards that you would
have to spend hours convincing others that it is actually a free
site.

More and more it is becoming easier and easier for a total
beginner with little or no knowledge in HTML or any other web
language to create a site of world standards with very little
sweat.

One such site that continues to help many beginners build a
professional-looking sleek site is SiteKreator. The advantages
here do not just stop with the building of the site. A wide
array of extremely useful features are available once your site
is up and running. It ranges from state-of-the-art and efficient
tracking tools to useful marketing features that allow easy and
regular emailing to visitors to your site.

As a result several sites have started off as free-hosted sites
at SiteKreator and graduated into paid services and bigger
things.

All this is more than enough evidence that if you have some
useful ideas or are capable of generating them, you should not
waste another moment in embarking on the creation and building
of your own popular website, whether or not you have the
technical background to achieve this.

While the demand for Web site creation or maintenance is constantly on the rise, the number of skilled designers available is just not there. The lack of skilled designers has prompted technology companies to develop Web design software that can be used by anyone. This Web design software is an effective tool that allows for the creation of professional Web sites with ease, control and efficiency. There are different types of software depending on the complexity of the Web site. There are specific software for designing various types of web pages such as online brochures, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, shopping carts, online stores and personal sites.

The most commonly used Web design software products are Web browsers. Web browsers are software that allows users to access the internet. Web browsers display the text and graphics available on Web sites and enable users to access audio and video files and animations. They allow users to navigate interactive links and move from one web page to another and to open additional windows and Web pages.

The most commonly used language for Web pages is HTML. The Web browser interprets this language. Web site software provides tools such as builders, publishers, key word generators, Web site optimizers, shopping carts and e-commerce solutions. These help in making the process of Web site designing a simple task.

Most software provides a complete solution that enables a company to design a Web page in a very short time. This makes Web designing economical and also helps avoid the usage of complicated html editors. With a little practice, the software can be used to make Web sites that would have otherwise cost a lot of money. Web design software is of great help for non-technical people as they can design their own sites without dependence on a Web designer.

Today, thousands of small businesses, organizations, universities, schools and individuals around the world are using software to create Web sites for marketing, information processing, online shopping, employment and admissions. It is important to use licensed software to avoid the legal complications that could arise from anti-piracy laws.