Website Building Biz

Hostgator coupons - 20% off

There are a lot of HostGator coupons out there and some of them are expired and out of date. Well, today is September 26th, 2008 and I have some current coupons & promotional codes to share with you!

Green at Hostgator

HostGator is going green, even if their gator mascot is blue! To help celebrate, they’re offering 20% off any new account registration. Use the Hostgator coupon “green” to sign up with this deal.

Wordpress with Hostgator

Use the Hostgator coupon “wordpress” to get the first month of hosting for just one penny! HostGator is a great host to use Wordpress on, they’ve got simplified installation for the software, and with most types of accounts you can host as many domains and blogs as you like.

Hostgator Hosting Plans:

Hostgator Hatchling

A small plan that allows hosting for a single domain. Accounts get 350 GB of online storage space and a maximum monthly bandwidth transfer of 3,000 GB. If you’re just building one website, this might be all you need. $4.95 per month

Hostgator Baby

The Baby hosting plan is one of the most popular options at Hostgator. Webmasters can host and develop as many domains and websites they like on the single account, and the resources are upgraded from the Hatchling plan. 600 GB website storage space, 6,000 GB of monthly bandwidth transfer for just $7.95 a month

Hostgator Swamp

The powerhouse of Hostgator’s shared hosting solutions. 1,000 gigs of online disk storage, no limits on bandwidth, and even anonymous FTP. The Swamp is available from $12.95 a month.

Hostgator Reseller

Why stop with your own web sites? Reseller hosting allows you to well, re-sell some of your server space to third parties. Build websites for your clients, and provide the hosting too! Find new customers and cut them deals based on your projections of their traffic usage to offset some of the cost of your own hosting. There are five levels of Hostgator reseller hosting, with server resources ranging from 24 GBs of space and 250 GBs of bandwidth to 100 GBs disk storage and 700 GBs of monthly bandwidth.

Hostgator Dedicated

Rent a computer - Hire someone to maintain it for you and keep it online! Obviously, dedicated hosting gets expensive, but an entire machine is the limit to the server resources your account can consume.

Regardless of the HostGator plan that suits your website needs, you can use the Hostgator coupons listed here to reduce the total cost of registration!

Can .biz Websites Rank Well?

Do top level domains matter in SEO? Can a .biz or .info website rank as well as a .com or .org?

As far as I can tell, it doesn’t really matter what top level domain you use for your website. My favorite pagerank checker is one I found through Google and it uses .info: Check PR

You can find PRChecker.Info under a variety of search terms, and the reason is no big surprise. Its a dang good tool. Its fast, its always online, and its one of the first ones updated when Google published a new PR push or changed the way it handles queries. People like it because it does exactly what it promises, and then they end up linking to it like I just did.

Are surfers biased against non-traditional domains? Maybe. Human psychology is a pretty wide-open field. Some people are probably convinced that a website is always worthless unless its .com or .org. Some people might like websites that use “different” domains.

I’ve found in my own experience that you can rank well on these “secondary” top-level domains (TLDs). This site right here is a good example, if for nothing else but because it can bring me traffic that converts into significant sales and revenue.

Heck, I even get searches related to the “biz” keyword! Is “com” one of your keywords? Probably not - it is much more likely that you’re posting articles about business and casually minded people will think “biz.” Maybe your site is informational - then there’s a good chance that “info” is one of your potentially traffic-generating keywords!

I say, get your keywords in the domain and keep it short. If you have to go Biz or Info to accomplish this, then go for it!

Bounce Rates, SERPs, and Quality Ranking

If you’ve been hanging around recently, you may have noticed that I’ve gone through about three website templates in the last week.  I’m analyzing Google Analytics like a hawk, and my main goal is to get people to look around the site for just a little bit longer when they land here from a search engine.

Why?  I’ve become pretty confident that bounce rate matters when it comes to a domain or URL’s final SERP positions.

The Evidence:

In Google’s Webmaster Tools, you can see a list of search terms and keyword phrases that bring traffic to your site.  For a week, I searched these phrases that correlated to my highest revenue potential, and I kept track of where they were located.

One phrase caught my attention in particular:  It was bouncing between #9 - where it brought traffic - to #23 where no one could find it.  A few mornings ago, I saw it at #9 again and quickly went to my web host’s latest visitor stats.  Within an hour, two people clicked on the link and viewed the page.  Unfortunately, both of them “bounced” back to the search engine in less than 30 seconds of looking at the site.

After this, I went back to Google and searched for the phrase.  My site was coming in at #34 just an hour after being on the front page!  This was the lowest I had seen it yet, and since then its been stuck regardless of link building efforts.

The Problem for Authors in Multi-Media Environments:

First and foremost, I consider myself and author and independent publisher.  I write my articles, I put them online where people can access them, and I promote the work.  Heck, I even have to go and figure out a way to monetize the writing - its a pretty wide-ranging process compared to authors who can just focus on writing.  Well, those writing jobs aren’t really available in that older, more traditional sense.  That’s the first problem.

The other major problem for writers is that the internet is a true multi-media environment, and people want compelling visuals to go along with their compelling prose.  Internet authors need to provide the visual experience that surfers want, and a bland template can force people to hit the “back” button on their browser without a second thought.  Its like an instinct, if a site looks cheap you can usually expect the content to be pretty cheap, too.  I like to think my content is better than my visual capabilities, but a lot of people will never stick around long enough to find out.  Thin sites with pleasing presentations seem to win every time! 

Just imagine combining quality with quality - who could compete!?

SERPs and Quality - the Final Verdict:

If you want the best SERPs, you have to have it all.  Your site needs to deliver the content people are looking for, or at least links to that content in a place people will see.  Surfers demand speed - and the search engines stay in business by giving the surfers what they want.  Sure you need backlinks and on-page optimization, but these factors are gradually declining as visitor-tracking by the major search engines increases.

The next frontier in SEO will be a bit better for surfers than older roles that have given SEO professionals a bad name.  Going forward, SEOs will need to combine functionality, professional design, and top-quality content.

Unlimited Bandwidth and Disk Storage on Dreamhost Before Coupons

Dreamhost has officially been in business for 11 years, and they are certainly celebrating the birthday in a serious way.

Usually, you need to use one of the Dreamhost coupons that provides extra bandwidth or disk storage if you’re not happy with the standard offer. The downside is that this can cut into your potential cash savings from a different coupon like Saves50 that gives you $50 off your total bill on any new purchase of a Dreamhost hosting account.

Here is our complete list of Dreamhost coupons, and here are a few Dreamhost coupons that will work well with the current September, 2008 promotion:

BizAndBlog - $30 off and a free domain registration for the life of your account

3Free4Life - Three extra lifetime domain registrations, in addition to the one that comes free with every Dreamhost account

BizCode - $20 off and 1 year of a dedicated IP address (great for online shopping cart solutions)

This deal won’t last forever, in fact they’re keeping with the theme of 11s and extending the promotional program until exactly 1,111 more people have signed up for hosting with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited online storage space.

Will it last for days, weeks, possibly even another month? I have no idea, but I know it won’t be around too much longer because the deal is just that good.

As always, Dreamhost offers a 97 day money-back guarantee so you can go in and check out what you think about the hosting, the control panel, and the response times you get from your servers. If you don’t think its worth the cost, you don’t have to pay! Just cancel any time before 97 days is up and they’ll completely refund your cash.

$50 off, Unlimited bandwidth & disk storage, and 97 days with a 100% money-back-guarentee. What else are you waiting for? Start building your websites today!

Beware of Refunds - or How to Count Eggs and Chickens

Just because a sale has gone through the initial payment doesn’t mean you should go and spend that earned commission or referral as soon as you can get access to it.  I’ve been dreading this day - my first chargeback - but at least I was expecting it and my account balance is prepared to take the hit.

From the anecdotes I’ve heard, most online businesses can expect refunds or chargebacks to be made for anywhere from 5-10% of the total sales made.  While this might be a useful baseline, you should also take into account the specifics of the advertising program and the consumer deal that the referral depends on.

In my example, Dreamhost offers all customers a 97 day refund for 100% of the cost.  This is great for new users who want to try it before they buy it, but if anyone does cancel before that time is up, then the referral bonus is reduced to a big round zero.  Totally fair - no sale, no commission!

However, I could have requested for that money to be paid out.  If my balance had been zero when the chargeback struck, I might have been in a little bit of a situation - possibly even triggering a withdrawal on my debit since its already on file with them and authorized for their use in renewals.

Hey, if I owed them money I’m gonna pay up, right?  This is why you gotta stay ahead of the game and not go around counting eggs as if they were chickens.  The initial sale may go through and be verified, but its still just an unhatched egg in my accounting book.

But its fine.  Patience is a big part of this online business game.  I’ve mentioned before that work you do today probably won’t pay off until at least a few weeks or months have passed, and you can almost never point to a single moment in time where you reached the critical mass that bumped your essential keywords to the next level of search results and traffic.  It can be tough if you’re relying on online income to pay the bills, just be aware of the risk involved with cashing out completely on these advertising accounts.

Just make sure you take this stuff into account.  Try to find out from someone else in the programs you use if the return rates are “average” and assume that 5-10% is the going rate of return unless someone indicates that a certain product is higher or lower.  So far, Dreamhost is a little lower.  My coupons have gotten more than thirty people discounts on webhosting with them, and only one member has decided they weren’t going to continue with the service.

Are Pligg Sites Good for SEO?

The short answer is:  Not really.

The longer answer includes “sometimes.”  First, I’m going to go through the attributes of the Pligg sites that are good for SEO - so you know what to look for.  Then I’ll explain the common problems that make 90% of Pligg sites a waste of an SEO’s time.

Qualities of SEO-Friendly Pligg Sites

• All links are “dofollow”
• Story titles link directly to URLs, not to an intermediary discussion page
• Link hypertext doesn’t spell out the URL
• Some sort of Pagerank makes it past the homepage, on at least a few categories or something!

SEO Advantage of owning a Pligg Site:

• Perfect niche matching
• Control front page, choose high-exposure articles
• Add sidebar links on related categories to your SEO target pages

Overall, its pretty hard to find a Pligg site that fits all of these criteria.  Anyone can create a Pligg site in just a few minutes at Dreamhost or a lot of other shared website hosts, and the total cost is literally like five to ten bucks a month.  Its really not hard to give it an attempt, but its pretty hard to get right.

Common SEO Problems in Pligg:

• Pligg sites crash a lot if they aren’t kept up to date.  Since a lot of functional code is in the templates and there really is no “stable” release to date, it can be challenging for part-timers or amatuers to keep any customized visual themes “up to date” as far as the latest security codes.
• The newest default template puts “nofollow” on every link.  “Out of the box” installs and Pligg admins who “start over” with the theme to keep up with security can undo all of the link value of your backlinks.
• Unmoderated Pligg Sites contain a lot of links to “bad neighborhoods.”  (check out this webmaster tool for all your sites and the sites you’re trying to get backlinks from!)

Getting the Most SEO Benefit out of a “Good” Pligg Site

Participate!  Don’t just submit your own links and then disappear.  I know I’m guilty of this myself at a few places, but it really is in your best interest to get involved with these bookmarking communities that have relevant themes and niches.  Popular members can get high PR profiles, and people are more likely to check out your articles and links.  Of course, the key to any successful submission is that the content fits the need of the group.  It is a democracy after all, and any good SEO needs to keep that in mind when working with web 2.0.

Popular Free Website Hosting

Now, I usually don’t recommend free website hosting, at least not as a primary project location. At the very least, I think webmasters should purchase some shared hosting and own a few domain names. There are a lot of benefits to shared hosting with a reputable hosting provider, but it can be pretty much summed up as “increased control.” As long as you abide by the terms of the contract, you’re free to do what you like - and shared hosts give webmasters a lot more freedom in those terms.

Anyway, sometimes the project calls for a free web host. You don’t have to convince me of your reasons because I still use some free website services, too. Here are the best ones (and even if I don’t like them, the popular ones too):

Blogspot -

Google’s Blogspot is no doubt one of the best free webhosts you can find.  Its functional:  you can easily add components to a template, allow or disable visitor commenting, and even get your own ads and monetize your blog posts.  In fact - Blogspot is pretty awesome for a free host.  I’ve made many many blogs myself, I just haven’t found enough time to see how far they can go.

Squidoo -

Squidoo lets you build single page lenses that can incorporate a lot of text, images, other embedded media, or even cool blogging technology like comments, polls, and RSS syndication.  There’s a great community At the Squidu.com forums and a lot of Squidoo-specific resources to help out newbies and veterans alike.  Some of these resources can help analyze your lenses, some of them are good sources of backlinks for your Squidoo lenses.  As far as monetization, Squidoo is pretty good.  Squidoo runs on advertisements like Adsense, and everyone gets a cut of that based on the number of lenses one has and how the lenses rank.  In addition to that, users can add affiliate links and even modules for online stores like Amazon that include easily-configured media links.

Wordpress -

Wordpress is the best free blogging software I’ve ever seen, but Wordpress blog hosting is a little bit of a disappointment - at least in comparison to other free hosts or even the benefits of hosting Wordpress on your own shared server.

See, the problem with the free hosted version of Wordpress is that you can’t monetize your blog in any way.  Even linking to other blogs you own might get your account banned and data sacked if the second website you’re linking to is in any way commercialized.

So what’s the point of free Wordpress hosting?  I guess if you didn’t want to monetize your site at all it would be a good service.  Wordpress software is a great way to build websites, and the community seems very active and supportive.  Heck, the domain even has a tagging and inter-linking system that helps pass pagerank along to related blog posts.

But this lack of monetization seems like such a huge opportunity cost compared to the amount you can potentially earn from publishing online.  Even without the income, you’ll still be writing, producing content, and marketing your blog project, so why not earn some money for that time by at least offering related products that a few visitors may be legitimately interested in?

I don’t get it, but I’m an economist at heart - this is why I have to put Wordpress at the bottom of the list for free hosting.  Definitely check out Blogspot and Squidoo.  These are useful resources for webmasters whether or not they have their own domains, too.

You’re Working to Make Someone Rich. Is it You?

If you’re like the vast majority of people, you work to earn your living.

The way the economy is these days, you’re probably working very hard to make those ends meet. That’s the American way: We work more hours than most “developed” nations, we spend a lot of years in college learning to work smarter, and we like to try to reward creative solutions with promotions that essentially mean more, harder work.

Despite the positive work ethic and all the international comparisons that show how much wealth we generate, there’s an inescapable economic fact that more of that money is being diverted off the top before it ever gets to the guy or gal at the bottom who actually has to punch a time-card every day. Measures of the total money supply show a large growth, but hourly wages and salaries simply haven’t kept pace.

Source

Now look, I’m not even trying to make a moral judgment about the state of the macro economy, I’m just stating a fact about who is getting paid for all this hard work and who isn’t. Even small-time investors are getting their share of the pie cut to shreds, and the problem is that people are letting too many people get in between their work and their money.

What does that mean exactly? Well, think about how many people you are theoretically accountable to at work. Every one of them is claiming some ownership of your efforts, solutions, and yes - even mistakes. The investors are above the managers and supervisors, and these days its clear that the CEOs are at the top of the hierarchy, even above the other common stock holders.

Chances are, there is a long line of people passing the money down before you get your cut. Part of this is a necessary component of teamwork, but these days one really has to start to wonder if the chain of financial interests is a little bit rigged.

I’m not going to tell you that starting a website is going to give you instant riches and wealth beyond your wildest dreams. You’re probably going to have to work for months and possibly even years to get to a point where you can quit your full time job and retire. I will say that if you’re intelligent, hard working, and willing to take some relatively small risks (like $100 for a hosting account? some time after hours building your own investment vehicle?) it is completely possible.

The harder you work, the smarter you work - the sooner building a website pays off and the more you can reasonably expect to earn.  Its just like any other job, you need to accomplish something to get paid.  There’s just a lot fewer people to report to and a lot less people taking a cut of the wealth you create.

Omnis Network Web Hosting - Omnis Coupons and Discounts

Omnis Network Web Hosting is a relatively low-profile website host that is more well-known for its reliability and high quality service than its promotional strategies. I’ve done a lot of research and read a lot of reviews to find the next best shared web hosts out there, and Omnis ends up near the top of the list every time.

Omnis is a shared hosting company, and a fully accredited ICANN domain name registrar. In addition to high quality hosting at a cheap price, they offer cheap domain name registrations starting from just $7. This might be a little higher than some other specialized domain registrars, but that’s a dang good price for registration from a shared website host.

Omnis hosting coupons

15% off any hosting deal:
The following discount is currently available to reduce your total bill.

Save 15% on Hosting Packages with the code “15off”

Omnis has been around for a while, and they’ve established themselves as a reliable and quality provider of website hosting services.

But as always, make sure you do some research and read some reviews for yourself. No one knows better than you exactly what you’ll need to turn your website plans into a business reality and every host has features and limitations that may affect you differently.

Creating a Strategy to Monetize a Blog or Website

At some vague level, we all understand that websites somehow make money. Obviously the ads are involved somehow, but what exactly creates a success blog or website monetization strategy? You can’t simply begin blogging about their daily commute & what you had for dinner then slap a few advertisements and expect to get rich. But if you’re serious about making money online, you can research & create a strategy to monetize a website or blog that will pay off and allow you write about things you’re interested in.

Identify your Website Topic:

Identify the subjects and topics you enjoy: The first step to take inventory of your interests. You can’t be an effective writer about a topic that simply doesn’t interest you. See more about this in “Write what you love”

Identify busy and valuable keywords within the topic: Busy keywords are ones that people search for a lot. The more often a keyword on your website is searched for, the more often you will get a visitor. A tool like Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool can show you approximate monthly search totals, and it can even show you in a relative sense how much advertisers are paying for these keywords.

Find the “Hot Product:”

Use Keyword Analysis and Sales Research: Study the keywords with high search traffic and high advertising competition. Find out what the advertisers are selling, and look for direct-sales programs that allow website publishers to monetize their websites with referral links and compensation tied to sales. Ideally, the “hot product” is something that is actually useful to the customer. If you try to sell snake-oil, you won’t be able to build a long term business out of it.

Create the Website or Blog:

Write content expanding on the valuable keywords: Establish the website and you, the author, as an expert worth reading on the topic. If you picked the right topic, you’ll already have the niche-knowledge required to accomplish this, so you just need to build up the site with content and back links.

Write content related to “hot product” keywords: Once your monetization options are open, do some more keyword research for the actual product you’re trying to sell. Find out what long-tail versions of this product name are common searches, and which ones indicate that a surfer is more inclined to make a purchase. Write content related to the product keywords.

This isn’t exactly rocket science, but no one really spells it out either. I’ve been figuring out this path and stumbling along it for a while now, and after a lot of hard work I can finally call it a full-time occupation. It can be tough making the transition to relying fully on a website or blog’s income to pay bills, but a little creative effort, focused planning, and a lot of late nights can make it happen.

Limited Supply Dreamhost Coupon Codes

Dreamhost is always offering various discount coupons and promo codes as an incentive for new account sign-ups (as well as to track who gets credited with a sale). Typical coupon codes are usually worth $50 or a little bit more in equivalent account upgrades, but once in a while they come out with discounts that are limited in supply and/or time-frame of eligibility.

Want the inside scoop? Here’s the biggest Dreamhost coupon you can get in 2008:

DreamHost Invitation codes:

• 540088984739
• Are each good only one time!
• Up our shared hosting plan features to 2TB disk and 20TB bandwidth!
• Get $150 off a 5-year signup or $200 off a 10-year signup!

Are you considering a long term hosting plan? Then this is probably the Dreamhost coupon you’re looking for. Here’s what I’ll do…

Since these codes are in limited supply, I’m going to post one until someone uses it and then I’ll post the next one until I’ve run out.

I have a total of five (not sure if I can get anymore after that) and two are already gone within just a few days. This particular offer won’t be around for long!

Dreamhost Coupon Code for 2008:

• 540088984739

(Click on the link or copy and paste the promo code to be re-directed to Dreamhost’s signup page with the coupon pre-populated for your convenience)

Check it out! Remember, Dreamhost always offers a 97 day money-back guarantee. If you’re not sure you want to make the huge long-term commitment up front, you can always go in and look and test things and make the decision from there.

If you are looking to pay monthly or yearly, make sure to check out our other Dreamhost coupon codes to get big discounts on even short term accounts. There are codes for cash off, free domains, dedicated IP addresses, increased bandwidth, more GBs of storage, and combinations of all of the above!