Samir Kamble

The popular search engine Google indexes over 8 billion websites. Is one of them yours, or is your website just floating around in cyberspace and you’re hoping your customers will just find you? Is your website a benefit to your organization or company? Is it just an expensive showpiece or is it of true value?

These are some of the many questions that can be asked when launching a new website. With so many different websites being published (some amazing, awful and otherwise), it would be safe to assume that most current business plans underway include the utilization of a website, and that most active companies are utilizing the Internet to some degree. If you are interested in publishing a website, or already have, here are some key elements that may help towards its success:

1. Domain Registration: Be sure to register your domain name (www.yourdomain.com) yourself or have it done within your organization, as opposed to letting a third party register your name. Without control of your domain name registration, you can expect to run into some unnecessary delays if the third party becomes unavailable, which is surprisingly common. You also run the risk of having the registration setup incorrectly or even losing the domain. Purchasing a domain is very easy and available at less than $10 a year, so it is a very inexpensive yet potentially valuable asset.

2. Hosting: After domain registration is complete, you will be in control of where to host your website. Your website will be hosted on an Internet server, a computer that will house your website files and process any functionality such as shopping carts, email, databases, etc. Shop around for hosting options, they vary from inexpensive do-it-yourself options, to managed hosting plans, to exorbitantly expensive plans that are unnecessary. What you need to accomplish with your website will determine what your hosting needs are. I have seen small, compact sites be very effective, so beware of purchasing 500MB of hosting when you may only need 10MB.

3. Design and Development: When it comes to website design, less can often be more. Your website should load quickly and yet be visually stimulating. Try to maintain a consistency of look with any pre-existing marketing material you have in place. Avoid bombarding your visitors with tons of miscellaneous information and links, keep your content precise and to the point, and be sure all of your links work properly and that information is presented in an organized manner. Further development can allow you to take online orders, process payments, store customer info in a database, etc. The type of development you need will depend on what your company wants to accomplish with the website. The bottom line is that even a simple website should be beneficial to your organization when well designed.

4. Caution: Keep in mind that anyone, anywhere in the world, can access your website, so take caution with what you make public. The Internet offers wonders of information exchange, but sadly that can sometimes work against us, depending on who accesses the information and for what reasons. One very bizarre and extremely sad case was the young pregnant mother that was murdered and her baby stolen, after her killer saw a picture of the pregnant woman on the Internet (selling dogs) and then setup a meeting pretending to have an interest in a dog. Focus on publishing informative content related to your products and services only, and keep personal or sensitive information private as much as possible.

5. Marketing: Once your website is designed and hosted you will be ready for visitors, but how are you going to get them to visit your site? Make sure a major search engine indexes your website. If the website is coded correctly, this will be automatic but may take a few weeks. Be sure your website address appears on all of your marketing material, and direct customers to your website for specific reasons, ie. coupons, specials, additional info, etc. Also, explore the many online marketing opportunities as well as traditional print ads.

6. Maintenance: Be sure to pay all domain registration and hosting fees on time. If you would like to be able to update and edit your website yourself, some professional website designers may offer this service. You may be surprised how easily it can be done and being able to do self-maintenance allows you to get the most out of your website.

Good luck and have fun publishing!

So, you are considering taking the step of adding Adsense to your blog in order to make some extra money. It can be a wise decision. By using your blog to display contextual advertising, you have created a great opportunity, not only for the blog in question but for future pursuits, as well. Many bloggers enter Adsense without a great deal of experience in online advertising and its terminology. However, in order to better understand exactly what will be happening, it is important to get a firm grasp on some of the unique terminology used when discussing Adsense and blogs. Here are some important terms, their common abbreviations, and meanings:

Terms of Service (TOS). All participants in the Adsense program are required to abide by Google’s Terms of Service. This is basically the “rule book” for Adsense. Those who fail to conduct themselves according to TOS may be banned from participation and/or have their account suspended. Every participant should carefully read the TOS.

Publisher. That’s you. Anyone operating a site displaying Adsense ads is considered a publisher.

Pay per click (PPC). Google Adsense operates predominantly on a pay per click basis. That means the advertiser pays for each time someone clicks upon their ad. It also means that you will get paid for every click.

Click through rate (CTR). This represents the percentage of page impressions that result in a click on an ad at your site. For instance, if your blog gets 100 impressions and 17 of them result in a click, the CTR for your site will be 17%.

Ad unit. An ad unit is a displayed block of Google Adsense ads. There are a variety of ad units from which to choose. They are usually expressed in terms of their size in pixels. For instance, a 120 x 600 tower ad unit will be 120 units wide and 600 units long–tall and skinny.

Ad placement. This refers to where your ads are placed. Publishers may place their Adsense units anywhere on a page consistent with the TOS. There are a variety of online guides, charts and recommendations demonstrating the various location options and how successful they tend to be in producing a high CTR.

Channel. You can set up channels to track the performance of individual Adsense ad units or to track earnings on particular sites. Channels are established in the Set Up area of your Adsense account.

Competitive Ad Filter. Google gives you the option not to display certain advertisements via the competitive ad filter. This allows you to avoid inadvertently advertising someone with whom you are in competition, for instance.

The world of Adsense brings with it a new vocabulary that must be mastered in order to achieve maximum success. Terms like those above become second nature in a short period of time for most Adsense units. By knowing and understanding these terms, you will be better able to understand your performance charts and will be better able to learn more about succeeding with Adsense.

I am a person who hates to keep flash in a web page as it reduces the website loading speed drastically.Hence i am writting some of the resons for not including flash in your web pages.Please do have consideration on them and decide yourself.

1. You can’t use the browser’s Find command to find a word on a Flash page.
2. You can’t cut-and-paste text from a Flash page.
3. You can’t use the browser’s “back” button to go back in a Flash file.
4. To create a Flash website, you need to buy the $500 Flash application from Macromedia; to create an HTML website, you can do so with any free text editor.
5. It tempts designers to prioritize using Flash over making an easy-to-use and useful website. In the hands of 95% of designers, Flash is used to create websites that would have been better made as HTML.