There are many third party products that help online business owners maximize their website’s pre-selling marketing campaign. When these are added to a website, it is important to observe a few guidelines.

First, make sure they are not designed to steal users. Each should be a support tool for the website – not their own advertising website. They should not ask users to sign up for a third-party newsletter, or register in their community.

Second, always add the HTML code so that the website opens in a new window. This is easily done. All the code you will ever need is available in easy to follow tutorials at http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp If you do not understand this tutorial, then there is an easy-to-follow tutorial at http://www.goldcoastwebdesigns.com/8.shtml#a

One example of a resource that might be useful is a directory. This company offers a directory hosting service http://www.adpages.com/welcome.html This would be a great third-party tool for an online business that focused on the local entertainment scene, or a regional dating site.

Another resource would be the newsletter creation tool at www.amazines.com.

Professional web hosting sites have dozens of scripts available, and are often cheaper than the local sites. For example, www.siteground.com offers professional hosting for only $70 USD a year. Your hosting service will come with Content Management System software, newsletter, mailing lists, auto transponders, web analytics software, life chat support software, shopping carts, FAQ (facts and questions), polls and surveys, mailing lists, wiki, classifieds, auction scripts, and even a template wizard for people who want a quick ‘fill in the form’ website.

Another way to add webmaster tools to your online business is through a service like http://www.webpasties.com/overview.html For a nominal fee of $8 USD a month, you can add great tools for any site that wants to have chats, workshops, or other online events.

Podcasts – Podcasts, streaming audio feed, are fast becoming one of the #1 sticky sites. Some websites use them to offer audio tutorials. Others run full time radio stations from their sites. Podcasting is not easy, and it is not for the faint of heart. But, if you have the guts to try something new, visit this site: http://www.podcastingnews.com/

Flash Animation – Have $25 and the time to learn how to make flash animation for your site? http://www.mix-fx.com/ is one of the many software packages that are easy to use.

Video Streaming – You’ve seen those videos on myspace. You can make your own web videos. OR, if you don’t have a video camera or a flash generator, you can turn a PowerPoint presentation into a very flashy web video – audio included. These can be used as presentations, introductions, tutorials, and even invitations.

Web Seminars – These are usually 1 hour chats that take place via java script chat software, much like MSN messenger. They can also take place via teleconferencing. Some free services like http://www.freeconference.com/ are great for newbies to get their feet wet and learn the basics without wasting their money.

RSS Feeds – Whether you want to add the daily blog from a famous actor, a lecture series from a Harvard professor, the blog of a famous singer – you can find it in text to add to your website, or a podcast at http://www.feedster.com/ is popular but http://www.syndic8.com/ is easier to use. Syndic8.com will also hook you up with all the main social networking directories. Just use the links in the left hand column.

This content appears on your website. Of course, the free services have a link back to their site.

If you have great content, and want to capture other website’s visitors, then burn your own blog into a feed that other websites can publish and then submit it to syndic8.com, http://www.2rss.com/, and other ‘find feed’ sites. The best, and only feed burner to consider is www.feedburner.com – it has everything you need to customize, optimize, and track the performance of your feed.

Directories – There are millions of directories on the web. Directories for niche websites, newsletters, podcasts, courses, tutorials, stores, auction sites. If you can think of it, someone has already made a directory. All online business owners should submit to the search engines, but they should also set aside a couple hours each week, or month, to submit to these directories.

Polls and Surveys – These are the most overlooked and under-rated tools on the Internet. Businesses pay marketing companies tens of thousands of dollars to run marketing surveys just to learn the same information they could find if they posted a few polls on their website

With literally thousands of web hosting companies in the industry all vying for your business, carefully consider these key points to ensure you make the most well informed decision possible.

Server Disk Space

First, think about how much space your site will take up on a server. Unless you are planning on running a software repository or an image gallery, the files that make up your website will probably only use between 1 and 5 megabytes of disk space. Many companies will offer several hundred megabytes of disk space for a very affordable price in an attempt to out perform their competitors, but ask yourself “Do I really need that much space?” Though it’s true that you should allow your site “room to grow”, don’t opt for what seems like a great deal on a massively sized account if you’ll never use all of the space offered. Chances are you’ll find an even better deal on an amount of space more suitable for your site size. But make sure you think ahead. Will you be running a forum, an article repository or a multimedia marketing campaign? You have to at least think about these issues before abandoning that mega-deal.

Bandwidth Allowance

This assessment should be based on the same factors as above. Though you may be thinking that your business web site will be the next phenomenon in Internet marketing and garner millions of visitors a day, you really shouldn’t need an exceptionally high bandwidth allowance unless, as previously stated, you’re running a software or info product download site. Even extremely popular sites usually only use a few gigabytes per month in bandwidth. Don’t go hog wild just because it seems like an amazing deal. You may also want to be suspicious of companies that offer “unlimited” data transfer as there are usually some fine-print conditions that make this promise illegitimate. Be sure to read the legal terms and conditions very carefully before deciding on this type of host. A five or ten gigabyte bandwidth allowance is usually plenty enough for a small to medium sized business or personal site. But I must reiterate. If you are planning a business that sells software and e-books that are available for immediate download upon purchase, then you must take that into consideration.

Support

A critical issue to think about when choosing a web host is the types of technical support offered by the company and how easy they are to contact when you need them. Optimally, a company should offer 24×7 toll-free telephone support and email. I have seen companies that do not even offer a telephone number on their website. I was actually ripped off by one of these companies in my early days as an Internet marketer. You should look for a company that is extremely easy to contact and deal with in your time of need. Nothing is more exasperating than being in the middle of working on your site and needing an essential nugget of information to finish the job and not being able to get any support from your hosting company.

Script Access

No matter what type of site you are developing, chances are you will ultimately need to install some type of CGI script. Whether it be a mailing list management script, contact form processor, or maybe even a fancy credit card processing script or shopping cart, your hosting account will need to allow you to install and run them. This requires access to special CGI-bin folders on the server. Some hosting accounts will only allow you to use “pre-installed” scripts as a security measure. These are scripts that the hosting company have installed and configured so that they know that they will work properly and not adversely affect their server’s performance. That may be all you need, but if you have the knowledge, it’s great to have the capability to install your own scripts and configure them to suit your personal situation. You should also be sure that the account you choose supports the language in which your scripts are written, such as PHP, Perl, etc. Most good hosting companies that I have dealt with offer all the script support and languages you will need.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Another significant issue in assessing the value of a hosting company is how often and for how long their servers go down. No matter how good a deal you get on server space or bandwidth, or how wonderfully the company’s tech support takes care of you, your site can’t entertain visitors or generate revenue if the machine on which it is hosted is not up and running. Obviously you want a company that can guarantee the highest up-time percentage possible. Servers are taken down for a short time occasionally for maintenance or upgrading, so no company can guarantee 100% up-time, but you want your site to be hosted on reliable, well managed and maintained servers that are not continuously having problems which require them to be down for long stretches of time.

E-mail Accounts

Again, like bandwidth allowance and disk space, some companies will offer you loads more email accounts than you will ever use. Some offer hundreds or even unlimited email accounts as a selling point. This is an important factor if you are IBM and have tens of thousands of employees, each needing their own e-mail box. But it’s not a big deal if you’re just one person or a small company. You should be fine with 10 or 20.

Reputation

This is probably the most critical aspect to consider when choosing a web host. Do your homework. Pay attention to any negative feedback you may hear or read about a particular hosting company. There are several sites around the Internet that offer discussion forums that encourage people to chat about and evaluate different hosting companies. Ask precise questions about any company you might be considering. See if anyone else has had any bad experiences with them. Dig into the hosting company’s web site and read everything that they offer about themselves. Read their policies, terms and conditions. Check out their contact info. How responsive are they? Does the founder tell you anything about him or herself or are you left to deal with a nameless, faceless stranger? It sounds like a lot of work, but the alternative can be very expensive.

Starting an online business agenda can be appealing easy, but if you accept no clue of breadth and how to alpha again by annual this commodity it will advice you to get started.

Step One:

The aboriginal affair you charge to apperceive about starting a business agenda online is what is your ambition bazaar activity to be, in added words what affectionate of businesses do you eventually appetite to accommodate in your fresh business directory.

If you already accept a accepted business online or offline again you will already apperceive your ambition market, and you can move advanced to footfall two in this article.

However, if you accept no abstraction what your ambition bazaar will be, again you will charge to do some research, I would acclaim starting a business agenda about article accepted and which is activity to acquire you an assets bottomward the alley or. That will gradually advice abound your accepted business.

Here are some actual accepted and assisting niches for an online business agenda you could start.

1: RealEstate Directory

2: Travel Agenda

3: Online Dating Directory

4: Automotive Agenda

5: Fashion Directory

There are so abounding added and to acquisition them aloof go to eBay.com or Amazon.com and see what is accepted on those sites, or you could go to Google and do a chase for keyword agreement like “Hot Niches” or “Popular Niches” or “Popular Business” get the idea..

Then afterwards you accept absitively on the alcove for your fresh business directory, you will charge to either shop for or annals your breadth name.

Step Two:

Buying or registering the appropriate breadth name for your fresh online business agenda will be the best important thing, so you charge to accomplish abiding you get this actual from the start.

A acceptable breadth name should be no best than two to three words, and it should accommodate the name of the alcove and the chat agenda in it and should consistently be a .com if you can advice it added astute you should go for the .net breadth if the .com for the breadth you appetite is already taken and is not for sale.

Therefore, for archetype if I was activity to alpha a fresh business agenda about the alcove absolute acreage the ideal breadth name would be RealEstateDirectory.com or RealEstateDirectory.net but all acceptable breadth names like this accept already been taken, but they may be up for auction so aloof appointment the website and see.

If you acquisition the breadth name is not for auction again you could additionally try abacus a birr amid the two words.. Like this RealEstate-Directory.com or RealEstate-Directory.net and see if they accept been taken or not, and if they are taken see if they are for sale.

If you accept to go with a three chat breadth name you could access article like your boondocks or burghal name in advanced of the breadth so it could be.. Like this NewYorkRealEstateDirectory.com or NewYorkRealEstateDirectory.net and see if it has been taken.

A abundant chargeless online ability I accept begin to advice academician storm a fresh breadth name and see if they accept been taken or not is RegistrarStats.com, accord them a try.

Once you accept begin the breadth name for your fresh online business agenda it is time to annals it, I acclaim Godaddy.com for this as they are the cheapest and action the best services.

Step Three:

Now that you accept got your breadth name for your fresh online business agenda it is time to acquisition a hosting company, and I accept approved abounding and the best I accept begin is SeoHosting.com which is endemic by HostGator.com, and they accept been about for a actual continued time and they accept bags of blessed customers.

Step Four:

Now that you accept got your hosting annual for your fresh online business agenda it is time to body the directory.

Now you could do this a cardinal of altered means but it all comes bottomward to the bulk of money you ambition to spend.

If money is not an advantage for you, again I would acclaim hiring a PHP coder from a website like RentaCoder.com or ScriptLance.com or eLance.com and get them to body a custom band-aid for you, this way you will accomplish your fresh business agenda angle out from all the added cookie cutter directories that are online these canicule application an off the shelf PHP agenda script.

Don’t get me amiss there is annihilation amiss with these types of scripts, and we use one our cocky for our own Articulation Directory, but we accept gone a footfall added and accept had a custom arrangement created for our agenda which has angry out to be a actual acceptable investment.

The agenda calligraphy we use and acclaim if you are on a actual bound starting account is PhpLinkDirectory.com.

Step Five:

Now we appear to the final footfall and which is announcement your fresh business directory, this can be done with or after spending money.

I will account bristles chargeless options and bristles paid options beneath you can alpha to advice get the chat out about your directory.

Free Options:

1: Join online forums and altercation groups accompanying to your fresh business agenda and accomplish a column agreeable business owners to account their website/business in your agenda for chargeless or at a discounted rate.

2: This one is accompanying to 1: accomplish abiding you add a Sig band bond to your agenda in all the posts you accomplish in the forums you accept joined.

3: Abide your business agenda to added chargeless articulation directories online, aloof do a chase in Google for the key chat Articulation Directory.

4: Articulation to your business agenda from your added websites that you already own or run this way the chase engines will acquisition your agenda and basis it.

5: Send out and email to accompany or barter and ask them to articulation aback to your business agenda and in barter articulation aback to their website from your agenda if it is relevant.

Paid Options:

1: Alpha a Google Adwords attack to instantly alpha active cartage to your business directory, but be accurate because if you do not apperceive what you are accomplishing with Adwords you could end up spending a lot of money after any results.

2: Shop for some paid links from added websites or directories that are agnate to your own business directory.

3: Abide your business agenda to the Beast agenda at a amount of $299 per year. Being listed in the beast agenda will accomplish your agenda added admirable in the eyes of the chase engines and your visitors.

4: Shop for some announcement in offline account affidavit if your agenda targets businesses in your bounded area.

5: Shop for banderole ads on added websites that chronicle to your business agenda and try and to accommodate for a 6-12 ages aeon because your can abundantly abate you’re over all banderole announcement costs.

Written by: Tom Dahne

Website: http://www.livemoneymachine.com and http://livemoneymachine.com

There is no small organization or large corporate network remaining in business for longer without an adequate customer support service for troubleshooting. Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software are useful aids to manage your communications with both actual customers and potential clients. This type of software help you centralize email inquiries, live chat sessions, and online issues among other activities. A typical Help Desk Software package often includes a convenient way to record issues received by phone, as well as those submitted via online support ticket system. Help Desk Software also contributes to enhance interaction between staff and customers, providing them with top-notch technology that usually comprises knowledge and problem management, workflow, data analysis and reporting of issues submitted each day. It does not really matter if your business is as small as less than three people working hand in hand, Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software will create the necessary aura of professionalism that your business needs. Detailed reports and analytics are basic to tackle effectively all those issues handled by your Help Desk Software on a daily basis, but the software itself contributes also to develop teamwork efficiently. Taking advantage of modern technologies, Help Desk Software enables Staff to Staff live chat, and it can also be configured as add-on package for other compatible Customer Support Software. When it comes to determine which is the most adequate software for your company, experts recommend evaluating your present technology and consider an upgrade if necessary to make sure your chosen Help Desk Software is compatible with your business system. There are software packages expressly developed to work under certain native operating systems that run on personal computers, such as Windows, Linux or MacOs. However, numerous Help Desk Software packages are developed as scripts that run basically over an Internet Server, while others combine both,a server-side Customer Support Software, and a Help Desk Software client running from your PC or used for remote administration. Furthermore, doing a research on a comparative basis among the different customer support solutions available in the market you will find that many of them are compatible with software that you already use, including Microsoft Outlook, Word, or Excel. This characteristic allows a seamless integration of new Help Desk Software into traditional software applications you are familiar with, making easier updating contacts, sharing task, events, and bits of information already recorded elsewhere. Just by adding Customer Support Software or Help Desk Software to your business, you are adding value to your products and services, promoting tacitly trustworthy and customers’ confidence. While Customer Support Software is focused to provide assistance to your clients whenever they have a trouble or need something to ask for, Help Desk Software is aimed to offer a global solution to manage different aspects of you relationship with clients and staff interaction. Help Desk Software improves productivity of your business and efficiency of your workers, increasing also customer satisfaction and improving communication and troubleshooting. There is another fact to keep in mind talking satisfaction of your customers. The Internet has literally diluted geographical frontiers so if your business is online, it’s more likely that international customers approach you. Whether national or worldwide, the implementation of Help Desk Software is an excellent strategy for any business, reducing the need of toll-free hotlines, and saving money in long distance calls between offices, or those calls placed from customers located abroad. In the other hand, if you are running a conventional telephone support, the installation of Help Desk Software onto your system will lead you to identify those areas requiring more attention or substantial changes to improve performance and boost your sales. Customer Support Software is also a convenient way to obtain feedback from users of this system. Afterwards, the information obtained can be added to your Help Desk Software database for further analysis and improvement of your business affairs. Act now and let that your Help Desk Software reveal you the secrets of customer satisfaction contributing to your success. There is no small organization or large corporate network remaining in business for longer without an adequate customer support service for troubleshooting. Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software are useful aids to manage your communications with both actual customers and potential clients. This type of software help you centralize email inquiries, live chat sessions, and online issues among other activities. A typical Help Desk Software package often includes a convenient way to record issues received by phone, as well as those submitted via online support ticket system. Help Desk Software also contributes to enhance interaction between staff and customers, providing them with top-notch technology that usually comprises knowledge and problem management, workflow, data analysis and reporting of issues submitted each day. It does not really matter if your business is as small as less than three people working hand in hand, Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software will create the necessary aura of professionalism that your business needs. Detailed reports and analytics are basic to tackle effectively all those issues handled by your Help Desk Software on a daily basis, but the software itself contributes also to develop teamwork efficiently. Taking advantage of modern technologies, Help Desk Software enables Staff to Staff live chat, and it can also be configured as add-on package for other compatible Customer Support Software. When it comes to determine which is the most adequate software for your company, experts recommend evaluating your present technology and consider an upgrade if necessary to make sure your chosen Help Desk Software is compatible with your business system. There are software packages expressly developed to work under certain native operating systems that run on personal computers, such as Windows, Linux or MacOs. However, numerous Help Desk Software packages are developed as scripts that run basically over an Internet Server, while others combine both,a server-side Customer Support Software, and a Help Desk Software client running from your PC or used for remote administration. Furthermore, doing a research on a comparative basis among the different customer support solutions available in the market you will find that many of them are compatible with software that you already use, including Microsoft Outlook, Word, or Excel. This characteristic allows a seamless integration of new Help Desk Software into traditional software applications you are familiar with, making easier updating contacts, sharing task, events, and bits of information already recorded elsewhere. Just by adding Customer Support Software or Help Desk Software to your business, you are adding value to your products and services, promoting tacitly trustworthy and customers’ confidence. While Customer Support Software is focused to provide assistance to your clients whenever they have a trouble or need something to ask for, Help Desk Software is aimed to offer a global solution to manage different aspects of you relationship with clients and staff interaction. Help Desk Software improves productivity of your business and efficiency of your workers, increasing also customer satisfaction and improving communication and troubleshooting. There is another fact to keep in mind talking satisfaction of your customers. The Internet has literally diluted geographical frontiers so if your business is online, it’s more likely that international customers approach you. Whether national or worldwide, the implementation of Help Desk Software is an excellent strategy for any business, reducing the need of toll-free hotlines, and saving money in long distance calls between offices, or those calls placed from customers located abroad. In the other hand, if you are running a conventional telephone support, the installation of Help Desk Software onto your system will lead you to identify those areas requiring more attention or substantial changes to improve performance and boost your sales. Customer Support Software is also a convenient way to obtain feedback from users of this system. Afterwards, the information obtained can be added to your Help Desk Software database for further analysis and improvement of your business affairs. Act now and let that your Help Desk Software reveal you the secrets of customer satisfaction contributing to your success.

There is no small organization or large corporate network remaining in business for longer without an adequate customer support service for troubleshooting.

Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software are useful aids to manage your communications with both actual customers and potential clients. This type of software help you centralize email inquiries, live chat sessions, and online issues among other activities.

A typical Help Desk Software package often includes a convenient way to record issues received by phone, as well as those submitted via online support ticket system.

Help Desk Software also contributes to enhance interaction between staff and customers, providing them with top-notch technology that usually comprises knowledge and problem management, workflow, data analysis and reporting of issues submitted each day.

It does not really matter if your business is as small as less than three people working hand in hand, Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software will create the necessary aura of professionalism that your business needs.

Detailed reports and analytics are basic to tackle effectively all those issues handled by your Help Desk Software on a daily basis, but the software itself contributes also to develop teamwork efficiently.

Taking advantage of modern technologies, Help Desk Software enables Staff to Staff live chat, and it can also be configured as add-on package for other compatible Customer Support Software.

When it comes to determine which is the most adequate software for your company, experts recommend evaluating your present technology and consider an upgrade if necessary to make sure your chosen Help Desk Software is compatible with your business system.

There are software packages expressly developed to work under certain native operating systems that run on personal computers, such as Windows, Linux or MacOs.

However, numerous Help Desk Software packages are developed as scripts that run basically over an Internet Server, while others combine both,a server-side Customer Support Software, and a Help Desk Software client running from your PC or used for remote administration.

Furthermore, doing a research on a comparative basis among the different customer support solutions available in the market you will find that many of them are compatible with software that you already use, including Microsoft Outlook, Word, or Excel.

This characteristic allows a seamless integration of new Help Desk Software into traditional software applications you are familiar with, making easier updating contacts, sharing task, events, and bits of information already recorded elsewhere.

Just by adding Customer Support Software or Help Desk Software to your business, you are adding value to your products and services, promoting tacitly trustworthy and customers’ confidence.

While Customer Support Software is focused to provide assistance to your clients whenever they have a trouble or need something to ask for, Help Desk Software is aimed to offer a global solution to manage different aspects of you relationship with clients and staff interaction.

Help Desk Software improves productivity of your business and efficiency of your workers, increasing also customer satisfaction and improving communication and troubleshooting.

There is another fact to keep in mind talking satisfaction of your customers. The Internet has literally diluted geographical frontiers so if your business is online, it’s more likely that international customers approach you.

Whether national or worldwide, the implementation of Help Desk Software is an excellent strategy for any business, reducing the need of toll-free hotlines, and saving money in long distance calls between offices, or those calls placed from customers located abroad.

In the other hand, if you are running a conventional telephone support, the installation of Help Desk Software onto your system will lead you to identify those areas requiring more attention or substantial changes to improve performance and boost your sales.

Customer Support Software is also a convenient way to obtain feedback from users of this system. Afterwards, the information obtained can be added to your Help Desk Software database for further analysis and improvement of your business affairs.

Act now and let that your Help Desk Software reveal you the secrets of customer satisfaction contributing to your success.

This tutorial applies primarily to “Newbie” resellers using
the cPanel hosting platform.

How to Set Up Your Backend

What is a backend?

I’m sure many business people and “scholars” have much better
definitions of this than me, but I like to think of it as the
guts of the business that make things run behind the scenes.
When I think of a backend as it pertains to web hosting, I
consider the following elements:

-Billing system

-Order processing

-Support system

-Accounting and recordkeeping

Billing system

As you contemplate your billing system, the first piece of
information you should look at is what types of payments are you
going to accept. Hopefully, you’ve already outlined this in your
business plan. Will you take Paypal, or will you accept credit
cards through your own merchant account, or will you accept
checks and money orders by mail? Accepting payments by mail
significantly complicates your business, so I would suggest not
accepting payments by mail, or if you do—only accept annual term
payments.

The easiest payment system to implement, and my recommendation,
is to use a third-party payment processor such as Paypal or
2Checkout. These third-party payment processors allow you to
accept credit cards, debit cards, and e-checks securely through
their web-based system. They also allow you to create
automatically recurring billing, which is the most powerful
billing tool that all resellers should implement. Rather than
having to bill your customers each term (month, quarter, etc),
the third party payment processor will automatically bill your
customer on their due date, based on the terms of the
subscription that you created. In other words, if you create a
$10/month subscription, it will automatically charge your
customer $10 on the day they sign up, and then it will charge
them $10 on the same day of each subsequent month. This is a
huge timesaver, by automating the billing process you can
eliminate the need to bill your customers at all.

If you do wish to send your customers a formal bill, or if you
aren’t using automatically recurring payments, there are several
software programs that can help automate the process for you.
The ones specifically designed for web hosting that I would
recommend are WHMautopilot, Lpanel, and Modernbill. There dozens
of other billing programs available, but I recommend those ones
because they also have auto-setup scripts and various
client-management features built in to them, which we will
discuss next.

Order processing

This part of your backend can basically be broken down into two
options: manual processing, or automated processing. Manual
processing is pretty much self-explanatory. Your customer places
an order and pays using one of your available payment methods.
When you receive the order and payment, you go into your Web
Host Manager (WHM) and set up the client’s account, and then
send them a welcome email with the pertinent information. Using
this method there are a few different ways you can set up your
order form to collect the information you need. The most
important piece of information you need is the domain name. If
you use only Paypal as a payment processor, Paypal has a form
tool which will allow you to collect up to two form fields along
with each order.

For example, you could set up your form so that the customer
types in their domain name and username along with their order.
When you receive the order confirmation from Paypal, this
information will be included. Another method is to simply use a
form mail script. This is easily implanted using a two-part
order form. In the first part, they type in their applicable
information and click “submit”, thus emailing you the form. When
they click submit, they are then redirected by the form mail
script to your payment page. The third method is to use a
shopping cart application which integrates the collection of
data and payment processing. The advantage of manual order
processing is it can help reduce the possibility of fraud and
abuse because each order is screened by you as you process it.

Automated order processing saves a lot of time for the
reseller, and also creates a smooth ordering process for the
customer. Automation is a huge key to building a successful
online business, and this is one form of automation that I would
highly recommend. An automated order processing program collects
the pertinent data from your customer, directs them through
their online payment, and then interacts with your web server to
set up the account and then sends out a welcome email to your
customer.

The programs I would recommend are WHMautopilot, Lpanel, and
Modernbill. I am certain there are several other equally viable
software programs available as well. The risk of automated order
processing is the potential for fraud, and abusers such as
spammers signing undetected. However, I would say the benefits
of automated order processing typically outweigh the risks. If a
customer on the other side of the world orders at 3:00AM, they
don’t have to wait for you to wake up and check your email. Your
program will go to work for you and set up the account. On top
of performing all of these tasks, it also creates a nice
customer database which can be used for billing and a number of
client administration tasks such as suspending accounts,
performing server checks, etc. Just make sure you manually
review each order after it has been set up. This will help catch
fraudulent customers before they have a chance to run their
malicious activities (like spamming) on your server.

Support system

Your solution for a support system depends largely on your own
aptitude and preference. If you are familiar with the web
hosting platform (such as cPanel) and with basic server
administration tasks, you may wish to support your customers
yourself. This is especially true while your business is in the
startup phase with only a few customers, or if you intend to
keep your customer base small. If you choose not to be your own
support tech, there are a few alternatives. The obvious one is
you could hire a support tech to work for you. While this is
often the most ideal situation, most startups can not afford to
hire an additional person initially.

A more affordable solution may be to outsource your technical
support to a company who specializes in providing support for
web hosting companies. Many outsourcing companies are located in
technologically advanced areas in low-cost countries such as
India. Outsourcing to an overseas company can be a very
cost-efficient solution, but can also result in additional
problems and challenges so you want to make sure you adequately
research your solution before making any commitments.
Outsourcing companies typically offer one or more pricing
solutions including per-ticket, per-customer, per-server, flat
fee per month, or per representative hired.

There are also other creative support solutions available. One
solution I’ve seen work with success is creating a community
forum where customers can help each other, guided by more
experienced moderators and administrators. A host can offer free
hosting to moderators in exchange for their help in running the
forum. Other forms of bartering have been done successfully as
well. For example you could provide free hosting in exchange for
5 hours a month of answering trouble tickets in your helpdesk.

As for the support options themselves, again hopefully you’ve
outlined this in your business plan. Are
you offering email only, or a helpdesk, live chat, or telephone?
Email and telephone are self-explanatory; if you’re even
considering starting your own business I’m sure you know to use
email and the telephone. Live chat is a nice option if you
decide to use it, however you need to be diligent in being
available or it could be counteractive. Have you ever seen a
site that offers live chat, but the operator is never available
during business hours? I think it shows a lack of
professionalism, and I rarely buy from such companies. On the
other hand, if you run it properly it can be a valuable tool
that helps you get customers problems resolved in one chat
session rather than a back-and-forth email or support ticket
conversation. To run live chat you could simply post your IM
screen name (handle) for one of the popular IM platforms such as
AIM, MSN, or Yahoo. The other method would be to use a web-based
chat client from a free download, or on a subscription basis
from a chat provider.

Regardless of whether you offer any other methods of support,
the one method I will strongly suggest is an online helpdesk
where customers can submit trouble tickets. There are several
free helpdesks available, as well as more powerful applications
available for purchase. The helpdesks I would recommend are
Kayako or Perldesk, both available on a monthly or yearly
subscription. Some client management programs such as Lpanel
also have a functional helpdesk integrated into them. It is best
to choose a helpdesk that supports email piping. In other words,
you can send an email to support@yourcompany.com and it
automatically opens a helpdesk ticket. Then when you answer the
ticket, it also sends an email reply to the client, who can then
reply from within their helpdesk account or by replying to the
email.

Accounting and recordkeeping

This side of the business can easily be overlooked by
enthusiastic startups, and is often the less-favorable task for
creative entrepreneurs. However, a solid accounting and
recordkeeping system is essential to the long-term survival of
your business. If you use an automated system such as
WHMautopilot, Lpanel, or Modernbill, it will automatically keep
track of much of your financial information which is a useful
tool and database.

However; regardless of whether you use one of those programs, I
would suggest keeping an offline record of your customers and
financials. This could be done through an accounting application
like Quicken, or with a customized database in Access, or using
a simple spreadsheet (which is my preferred method) in a program
like Excel. I personally prefer Excel for its simplicity. Your
records should include the following information at a minimum:

-Customer name

-Domain name

-Billing Due date

-Subscription ID number

-Price

-Size of plan

-Email address

In addition to your customer information, it is good to keep
track of your overall finances using at a minimum a general
ledger and P&L (profit and loss) statement. These documents are
much simpler than you may think; in fact if you know how to
balance your checkbook you’re almost there. Your general ledger
is basically a list of all the expenses and revenues for the
month. Again this can be a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Your expenses would include any expense related to the business
such as your reseller account, advertising costs, support costs,
Paypal or merchant fees, etc.

Your revenues are the money that you receive from your hosting
clients.

You can then add up your expenses and revenues for the month,
and if your revenues exceed your expenses, you made a profit! A
P&L statement simply summarizes the information from your
general ledger in a format used by most businesses to gain a
good overview of a company’s financials in one page. I’m not
going to give you an Accounting 101 class here in this e-course
because you can easily find a lot of information about P&L’s and
accounting on the web.

If you’ve done your accounting each month, your taxes should be
a breeze, especially if you remain a sole proprietor with no
employees. All you need to do is take the information from your
year-end P&L statement and fill out a schedule C (profit or loss
from a business). NOTE: This is NOT official tax advice. I am
not an accountant, and you should consult your tax adviser
before filing your tax return.

Regarding business status, the simplest type of business with
the least amount of paperwork is a sole proprietorship. Another
way to simplify your business and paperwork is to avoid having
any employees. You can avoid hiring employees by only using help
on a contractual basis (in other words they are a contractor vs.
an employee). There are several restrictions in this regard (you
can’t set a contractor’s hours, etc.), so it would be best to do
some serious research and/or consult an attorney before making
any contractual or employment arrangements.

Are you looking for some extra money? Are you looking for a smart second job? Are you looking for a perfect online business opportunity? If your answer to any or all of these questions is yes, then you should consider starting your own online dating business. Online dating business is definitely one of the most popular online businesses in the recent days.

It is not that difficult to establish an online dating business, however you need good amount of dedication and passion to make it a success. Unlike most of the online business opportunities, an online dating business doesn’t need huge investment nor does it need an offline office. You can continue with your present job and can take over this business opportunity as a second job.

Some of the most important things that you should keep in mind while you start an online dating service business are listed here. If you want to make a successful business, you should order great dating service software. It is definitely in the hands of the dating service software which you purchase to take your business above the standards set by your current industry competition. Regular features like profile registration, uploading feature of a picture, online message boards, online chat facility, member search, and so on should be included in your dating software.

If you follow a few basic and simple rules, you will definitely be able to create a great online dating business from your dating service software.

Getting a proper domain name:

If you have a meaningful and easy to remember domain name, then half battle is won. Take for example friend finder, match or Yahoo Personals. The domain name itself tells about the web site and the purpose of that web site. You don’t need even a tag line to establish the vision of your online dating business on the minds of your prospective customers. You will even get a great amount of quality traffic from organic search engines and inorganic search engines, if you have a qualified and apt domain name. Hence, if you have enough budgets you should go a head and recruit an online consultancy to get proper domain names for your online dating business which you are looking to establish with the dating software. This ill ultimately prove as a great investment idea.

Choosing the right dating service software:

Dating software will add personality to your site. Hence you should not compromise while choosing good dating service software. Normally PHP dating software will be the cost effective and feature rich solution. Also, as they will be open source softwares, you can play with the code and get as many added features as possible if you have the right technical skill set.

Get a quality web hosting provider:

You should find a quality web hosting provider who can support almost all the available technologies and who can guarantee at least 99% uptime unconditionally. Get the feedback from the al ready existing users of the service provider. You should also look at his capability of providing with data security and the future required enhancements.

Installation of your Dating service software:

It is time to install the dating software on your domain. Normally, most of the vendors of dating service software will provide with an option of free installation. If your vendor offers it, don’t hesitate to grab that option. If not, try to find a good programmer who has installed the same dating service software before. You should normally find a list of recommended freelance programmers on the vendors site itself. If not, you can try on open source forums to find a qualified freelancer for your job.

Customization of dating software:

Finally, you should get the design customized so that it meets the requirements of your business. Try to keep the dating service software very simple at least in the first few months. Try and get the feel of dating software as well as the online dating industry before putting huge investments in technology development or in marketing and advertising of the dating web site.

Start the dating site as a free service and encourage all of your friends to use the service so that they can act as the beta testers for your online dating web site. Get regular feed back from them and make a possible wish list, on which you can make further investment when feel comfortable and confident of making some money through your passion of building a sustainable online dating business.

Today I’m sharing some important aspect of great customer support which helps your business grow online. These days market is customer-oriented and we can not afford to loose our customers. Customer service is one of the most important factors in determining industry success in the fierce competition. We should adopt new techniques to grow our business.

Communication plays a vital role in growing a business and live chat software helps in many ways. In order to enhance communication with your customers, it is very wise to make full use of all the on-line communication solutions. Your clients can contact you anytime by sending an e-mail or filling out a contact form. They no longer have to bother themselves with pushy phone consultants, waiting in lines or recording messages. You can respond to these e-mails whenever you want.

Live Chat customer support software is economical and advantageous. A phone operator can handle only one customer at a time, which can drive away those customers who make several, unsuccessful attempts to call. If there is another customer on phone line, he have to wait and there is a chance that customer change his mind.  With the help of live chat software you never loose your customer; you can handle more than one customer at a time. There are so many features available in live chat software which is not available in the phone. You can see the referral pages from where your customer  come, you can also see the old chat with a particular customer, it means no need to write any thing regarding your customer, just save the chat and see when you want.

If you request information from your customers via phone you have to write on paper and store it, you can now do that from your website. This will save both yours and their time and money. You can easily receive the feedback from your customer about your services and this will definitely helpful in resolving the problems. Live chat software support is 24*7, so there is no restriction of time. You can easily convert visitors to customer which is not possible without having live chat software support.

There are many software companies which are providing live chat software for many languages, so there is no boundary of language and no loss of business. You will get informed when someone visits your website and in which page he shows interest. You can also see off line message.

Most of the companies providing live chat software are having almost same feature, but I must say few of them are very good .They are having few good features which are not available in many software. There is no specific requirement for live chat software, only you must have a computer and internet connection. No need to install this software on your computer, it works online. Just apply for an account in website, get code and paste it onto your site, and then your site is ready for live chat.

Enterprises can upload their own branding logo in live chat, as well as customize the chat button, chat window, sound alert, auto-invitation, invitation button, pre-chat question form, offline message form and so on. With the full chat, offline message and navigation history, Enterprises can have a 360 degree view of their website visitors. The navigation history includes the complete history of how many times a visitor has been to the site, when and which page visited.

This is how you can increase traffic for your online business and boost up your online sales. Hope you find my article useful and have a great success in your online store.

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Monday, August 31, 2009;

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Surf) and I was surprised to see this kind of advertising, So I picked my self a small website or affiliate site and added it to as many surf sites as possible and I would spend hours with as many windows open as possible jumping from site to site trying to surf as many as possible in return for my site to be seen and receive hits (with out much success), then I seen this other site something about these safelists, So I jumped on board the safelist craze, I luckily found some of the better safelists and signed up to about 5 and I was bombarded by offers”make a million” “email 700 000 000 members spam free” “blast 2000 000 blogs”  “your ad’ seen by millions”  after reading all these great emails I jumped on board a few and purchased a few websites, “I was going to be a millionaire in NO TIME, after all that was “Promised”, so I started using all these great blasters and safelists (surfing was over now).
I am/was a couple hundred dollars down now and had nothing to show, apart from 100s of ebooks, a few blasters and some websites, so I purchased some scripts and set up multiple websites, BUT still no traffic from all these blasters and apparent “millions of emails sent”.
So I stooped and thought what a crock and then came the “email blasters” I subscribed to 5-6 different email blasters (each one bragged a total 0f 2000 plus safelists and millions of combined members) I was spending hours upon hours signing up to safelists and confirming addresses, finding larger email boxes, This time I was set to make money (apparent Millions as promised) after all I was sending apparently close to a BILLION emails and blogs a day, BUT still no response.

So here I am today a little wiser and subscription free, promoting my new website based on all free products, sites, software, hosting, domain names, websites, add ons, scripts and of course a lot of free advertising, trying to see what I can do for free and only using freebies gathered from the net.

Of course traffic is building up and I may have to invest in an upgrade to handle the traffic, so I may have to dip into my pockets after all.

Conclusion:

Safelist Blasters:
End up getting spammed daily or more by Safelist Host.
Most email ends up in trash by auto cleaners.

Assorted “million email blasters”
Go to no-one and waste of cash.
Who are those millions of recipients?

Blog Blaster.
Claimed to reach 2 million blogs, but only reaches 500 max’ per blast.
Most/all blogs require registration and confirmation anyway.

Classified Blaster.
Required the same as above.
Most/all Classifieds require registration.

Written by Jason Godwell.

Did you find this article helpful? visit http://www.effiliatecity.info/

A relationship between customers and a business is very valuable. In online terms, there is a critical value to that time spent together. Trapping users on our sites with compelling content also allows us to market advertising space to other businesses. This can allow you to get an actual return on your marketing investment. The best quality content people can find on our websites, is the ability to chat with them, answering their questions, resolving their concerns, being a listening ear, assisting them in finding parts, products or services, all builds a great connection with our potential buyers.

Nothing pins a user to our sites longer than using chat software. We can allow users to chat with people from our companies. The more social contact that circulates around one of our businesses, the more people trust our brands. Trust is always the biggest key when it comes to business. Mistrust grows where communication fails. Most consumers want to express themselves, emotionally. While getting exactly what they want from someone might be a novel ideal, it is not the rule. More often they want to know that their feelings are being heard. A chat software empowers those who are not strong verbal communicators. Also, people who do not have time to travel to a brick-and-mortar store but hate telephone calls love to use chat software.

It is also much easier to manage numerous chat sessions simultaneously with less manpower. A typical customer service employee can keep 3-5 chats going on at the same time.

Using a chat software gives people the ability to contact us on their terms. Some people actually have phobias about telephone or in-person communication that do not interfere with internet chat.

Trust is about speaking in the consumer’s own language. This is truly crucial. We want to reach people the way they choose to be reached. They will appreciate the rapport. We should aspire to create more vibrant communication with the consumer as internet technology grows. This will benefit both parties immensely. Our reward will be our profits.