Choosing Domain Names

S uccessful internet marketing may involve many factors, and the choice of a domain name is a huge part of that process. There are additionally several aspects of what makes a strong domain name choice. Here are the most important details to keep in mind when choosing domain names.

A strong domain name will be short, sweet and to the point. Not only should you keep this in mind with choosing domain names but you’ll also want to remember to check out domain name extensions with which you can supplement your primary website.

Ensure the name you choose is directly related to your actual business activity. Choosing a domain that is as close your business name as possible makes it super easy for people searching the web to find you. If they are able to type in your business name and immediately see your website, that’s an absolute plus. If your business name is already taken, you’ll want to select a URL that is as close as you can get. (Read More)…

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Web Hosting

M any people settle on a domain name at the same time they choose web hosting services, purchasing their domain from the same provider from whom they select hosting service. GoDaddy hosting is a prime example of this, as GoDaddy sells and auctions domain names in addition to providing several types of hosting.

There’s nothing wrong with getting your domain name from the same company you choose for web hosting, as long as you put sufficient thought and planning into that domain name. Your URL influences how easily people remember your website as well as how efficiently search engines are able to rank and index your website.
There are many types of hosting plans available from GoDaddy hosting and other service providers. Some companies find that a single hosting plan will serve their purposes, while others must select multiple hosting methods in order to achieve their long term marketing and business goals.

Choosing web hosting can be an intimidating prospect when you’re not certain what your business needs are. The best hosting providers will help you make the selection of a hosting plan based on your true business needs and your allocated hosting budget.

Choosing web hosting can be an intimidating prospect when you’re not certain what your business needs are. GoDaddy will help you make the selection of a hosting plan based on your true business needs and your allocated hosting budget.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an essential part of any successful internet marketing campaign and utilizing a strong email marketing service provider is also advisable. While it’s possible to put together your own email marketing communications, including auto-responders and other convenience practices, the process can be very complex and time consuming. This is the reason that services like AWeber are so widely used by website designers and internet marketing professionals.

AWeber is one of the top email marketing service providers used by businesses of all sizes. It is a subscription based program which allows website designers and operators to create opt-in features on their websites. Such features allow users to subscribe to newsletters and other communications. Opt-in features can also be included in email messages in order to allow those who receive email forwards can easily and quickly sign up to receive future mailings.

AWeber allows you to quickly and simply setup your initial subscriber list. The easy to use account setup tools make quick work of the process. You’ll also setup the opt-in button on your website which makes it possible for new subscriber information to automatically be added to your AWeber subscribers list.

This shortens the time necessary for sending out email marketing content and also prevents the need for you to maintain the mailing list. The AWeber system makes it possible to save a great deal of time and effort. You can create a single message and have the auto-responders mailed to every member of your mailing list. You can also create time-delayed communications, setting up a schedule on which communications are sent to various subscribers.

Turn One-Time Visitors Into Active Subscribers with AWeber Email Marketing

AWeber actually offers website owners the opportunity to test drive the program for just one dollar. The trial run of the program allows you to take advantage of all AWeber’s tools for thirty days. Get Started Today For Only $1! – AWeber Communications.

How I Developed My First e-Book

By John Lufadeju

Featured, Superstar Blog

Creating your first e-book can be a very daunting task – and rightly so. But with a bit of structure and a clear approach it's not so bad. I would start off by identifying your purpose. Why are you creating an e-Book? I decided to create one for two reasons; 1. To inform my readers about blogging from a business standpoint. 2. To create my first information product. Originally, the content of the e-book was meant to be a series of guest posts on other blogs, but decided package it as my first product. As a result my email subscriber opt-in rate exploded. The Story Since the e-book was blogging based, I needed to have a story. People generally relate well to stories and practical examples. I simply incorporated my interest which was music to the everyday blogging practices. This brought about Build a superstar blog. The book looks at blogging from a music angle and they are some great analogies in this book - That was my story. I was not interested in putting out regurgitated stuff. I wanted to do something different. The Approach I approached this e-book by jotting down all my ideas on papers. At the end I ended up with a story board that illustrated flow of events. From this exercise, I drew up chapter titles that relates to the story, action points, backstage access for further learning e.t.c. Start Writing They best way to start is in small chucks. I broke the story down to chapters, so in a given day, I would tackle a chapter. I used voice recognition software to help transcribe my voice into words, a product called Dragon Naturally Speaking. In each chapter, I spoke from three different angles, from the bloggers, Musician and a Superstar angle. This meant recording three times. Since this isn’t a blog post but a takeaway e-book, I adjusted my writing approach slightly. Although I wanted to maintain a conversational style of writing, I felt it needed to be less chatty and a little bit polished – only slightly. Flow of events It’s important to keep the reader interested. I tried to make the chapters interesting and progressive. I was also keen on keep the book short and to the point. Based on my initial survey a larger majority of readers would be reading from screen – I didn’t want to bore them. Based on the number of pages I had initially I was quite impressed to have brought it down to 25 pages, there many pages and chapters that I had to sacrifice. Proof reading Make sure the material you are putting out is of good quality. It may seem good in your eyes but probably not in the eyes of others. In my case, I gave it to a few people to proof read – It was the best move ever. They were able to point out things I had missed and gave me new ideas too. Time taken: It took just over a month to put together after the idea was given birth to four months prior– procrastination is a killer The book was in a half complete state for a long time, moving further and further down my priority list. I finally took action by setting myself a deadline, which I announce publicly on the blog. I even installed a countdown for all to see and it worked - I got it done Story and Concept: On going Book Design: 0.5 days Writing: 3 weeks Proof Reading: 5 days Micro-site and Aweber configuration: 2 days Tools I used: Book Design: Adobe InDesign Transcribers tool: Dragon Naturally speaking Micro-site Design: Click covers Google Docs used for proof reading collaboration

PopUp Domination

By John Lufadeju

Featured, Tools for your blog

You know the saying, build your list, money is in the list…. Well, for the past couple of days, I have been playing around with a fantastic Wordpress plugin called PopUp Domination. It is a very slick looking popUp opt-in box which is guaranteed to boost your opt-in rate significantly. It’s being created and developed by a fellow blogger Michael Dunlop over at Income diary, which uses on his own blog. What’s different about this tool is the ability to customise its look and feel to match your blog. Plus it has a high impact feel about it – which means more subscribers. There are 4 templates to choose from which can be altered to suit your taste. Popup domination is also compatible with the major email marketing providers such as Aweber and many more. The plugin provided the following configuration options: Look and feel - Choose template - Pick buttons and layout colours, Mailing list HTML - Choose your Email marketing provider i.e. Aweber Template fields - Input your content List Points - Highlight important messages using bullet lists. Schedule - control PopUp timing sequence. …and more There’s a video tutorial of this plugin. See it in action >> Start converting your readers into email subscribers using PopUp Domination. You can pick up this amazing plugin for only $37 – a complete bargain if you ask me. Get yours now!

Reasons Why Many Blogs Fail

By John Lufadeju

Blogging, Business Blog

Blogs can be a great medium to express and share views to the big world. They are also a fantastic platform for building and assisting online businesses. However, due to several reasons many blogs fail to take off. In this post, I will be highlighting some of the reasons and how to steer clear of them. Bad content First up is Bad content. This is usually information or service you are offering. If the information inaccurate or poorly presented, this could be a big turn off. You can improve your writing skills by researching, reading or even getting someone to proof read your stuff. You may wish to read my post on this subject. (more...)

Rolling back WordPress 3.0 to 2.9.2

By John Lufadeju

Platforms, wordpress

Couple of weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my blogging platform, the wordpress upgrade was from version 2.9.2 to 3.0. The install was smooth as expected, but things started to go pear shaped as most of my wordpress plugins decided not to work. It got so bad that must-have plugins were crashing my site. At this stage it was quite obvious that my plugins weren't compatible with the new version of Wordpress. After spending some time offloading some of the plugins and a bit of faffing around, I decided to rollback Wordpress to version 2.9.2. Here what I did (1) Back up database using PHPAdmin and plugin (2) Downloaded and extracted Wordpress version 2.9.2 (3) Using an FTP client, I simply uploaded and replaced existing Wordpress files with version 2.9.2, preserving wp-config.php (4) Refreshed my admin (5) That's it I was quite surprised that this method worked - took about 10 mins to do. I'm sure there are better and more systematic ways to approach this. But in my case, I simply wanted to get the task done in record time. I'm sure I'll eventually upgrade to 3.0 in the future, but for now 2.9.2 does the job for me. Have you had any issues with Wordpress 3.0?

Review of Build a Superstar Blog eBook

By John Lufadeju

Business Blog, Superstar Blog

I would like to share with you latest review of Build a Superstar Blog e-book. This time the book has been reviewed by Mariam over at V.O.I.C.E a great blog that focuses on e-book reviews. I am super impressed by her review style and approach. She was able to breakdown the book into following categories Cover design, Content, Format and Styling, Ease of read and overall rating. Right, I’ve done enough talking for now, head over the to Mariam's blog to read this review. http://voicemp.com/review-build-a-superstar-blog/ Blogger: Mariam Blog: http://voicemp.com Twitter:@mariamcisse

Get parameters from URL using Javascript

By John Lufadeju

Domain Names Advice and Tools, Resources

During one of my consulting projects, I had the task of extracting a tracking/campaign ID from a URL and displaying it on a page. Something along the lines of http://www.buildasuperstarblog.com/work.html?track_id=12345&page=work This test URL contains tracking id "12345" and a page titled "work". For campaign and data gathering purposes, you may wish to extract these parameters. To achieve this, I have embedded a Javascript function within my html page. (more...)