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How do I make money with my website? Can I make money?

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

How do you make money with your website? We wish we knew!!! We'd do it, too!

In all seriousness, there are many ways. Most people sell things on the internet and make money from this.

Ultimately, a website is promotional. It's a way to be seen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even websites that "do stuff" are promotional. The fact that they additionally "do stuff" is a bonus! So, if you think about it in terms of promotion, the actual money comes from that which you intend to promote! This could be anything from catering services, to weed whacking, consulting services, etc. It can be used to promote a business of any kind.

There are two fairly common ways to make direct money from a website. Again, one is selling things. The other is selling ad space. If you think of your website as a stop along the information super highway, and yours is a particularly highly trafficked spot, then putting up some billboards for people to rent makes some sense; especially if it's something that complements the topics on your website!

For example, let's imagine you travel a lot and your particular method of travel involves a lot of outdoor travel, from hiking and camping to river rafting and spelunking. You could have a travel blog on your website. Now, initially, your website’s traffic may not come from much more than you, close friends and family. This isn't enough traffic to make any money, but it’s a start!

If youre an upgraded member of TalkSpot's services, you can tap into our SEO Tools (Search Engine Optimization Tools). This is a full suite of suggestions, tips, built in functions for adding keywords, page descriptions, and more. There are also extensions into two different tracking and traffic refining tools, through Google.com. Using these tools and concepts, you can really begin to drive traffic to your website.

HOWEVER, this only works if your blog is interesting and well written. You can't have a poorly written blog (or website) with sporadic and meager content and expect to make money. A good blog (or website) has fresh and compelling content on a regular basis.

If your blog is compelling, well written and has begun to attract an audience, then you can begin to sell ad space to other people. Try contacting companies selling things like hiking boots, tents and dehydrated water! Now, youre making money. It may not be a lot to start, but if your blog continues to attract repeat readers and you dont offend your guests with too many billboards, then you will begin to make real money. Try reading into Google AdSense, for example. You might find this to be a service that works with your future idea.

From there, perhaps you've generated enough content on your blog to package it into a book! Now, you've got your blog, which generates the traffic, plus a book for sale and increasing revenue from selling ad space!

Now, maybe consider selling something else from your website. Perhaps you make a nature video. Perhaps you sell green-painted-pine-cones as car interior decorations.

Really, where you take it from here is up to you and what feels right.

None of this will be easy, but if you take advantage of the SEO tools, newsletter options, the shopping system, etc. you can really begin to generate some money.

Now, if you step back and really look around, you'll see there are also many ways to sell things online.

What are your hobbies? What moves you? Lets imagine that you have a fondness for grilling. You really enjoy to cook. Why not set up an online store based on nothing but spice rubs and BBQ sauces? There are ways to set up a store where you never even need to touch the products. You make a connection with your purveyors, have them ship to a fulfillment center (Amazon has some great fulfillment services), and then you take orders for your Indonesian Spice Rub and Chinese 5-Spice Duck Sauce, pass the information along to the fulfillment center and begin cashing checks!

Again, this isn't as easy as my little mini-paragraph may make it seem. First, you need to have the idea, then you need to make the connections. Then, you need to research costs, processes, etc. Then, establish pricing. Then, set up the store. Then, begin selling!

Then, promote, promote, promote!

Send newsletters containing recipes and cooking tips. Make sure to mention how people can save time by using Bill and Ted's Organic Grease Cutter for Grills (50% off for the month of June!)

Write to a farm that sells their unique and high grade product online, and ask them to put a link to your website on their links page. Work with them!

These are all just seeds. Nothing more than thoughts and ideas for you to chew.

However, none of this matters without a good idea or topic to begin with; something you know and something you'd like to work with. If you have any good ideas, let me know! I need one, myself!

Good luck with it all!

DJ

Start your own blog now! Free!

Can I make my pages private? Yes! Yes you can!

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I'm frequently asked if some pages can be made private.

Yes. Yes, they can!

Let’s imagine you have a page called “My Photos” and you want to only share them with your family …

There is one thing you need to do, and then some other things you “could” do, but are totally optional.

Log into your website and go to the toolkit.
Pick “Visitor Control Panel”.
Option 6 is “6. Choose Secure/Public Pages”. Click “Click Here” to the right of this option.
Click the little pencil to the right of “My Photos” (or whatever page you want to keep private).
Click the little check box next to “Restrict this webpage”.
Press “Submit”.
Press “Done”.

That’s it! Now this page is private.

However, what’s “private”? Private to whom? How can you be sure that only your family sees your private page?

This is where it gets a little trickier. The good news is, you also have control over this!

Currently, with a “Private” page, like the one you have, all that needs to happen is someone needs to register. As a result, “anyone” can still see your “private” page, but they’re forced to register, before they can see it. This is ok for sites that want to collect information from their visitors, but it doesn’t really make the page “private”.

So, let’s make sure that only your family can see your page …

Go back to the Visitor Control Panel in the toolkit.
Click the first option, “1. Preferences”
In the first section of the Preferences page, click the option reading, “Locked down. I will approve every new member.”
- This means that you get to choose who is allowed in and who isn’t. People you don’t want in will never see your private pages.
2. Require email address verification?
- This is up to you. If it’s just your family, then chances are, you know their email. This sends an email to the people asking them to verify they can get emails from your website. It won’t let them in, until they respond to the email. This is optional.
You can upload a picture to put onto the front of the “Private” page, if you want to.
- Remember, we’re talking about a page called “My Photos”. I imagine it’s a page of your photos. Most people will go to the page and see a log in page, rather than your photos. Using this tool, you can add a “single” photo, if you want to. It will add it to the log in page.
You can also offer a welcome message of some kind. Something like, “Welcome to my website! This is for my family. If you are not my family, I’m sorry, there is nothing here for you to see. If you ARE my family, please register or log in! Thank you!”.
You can skip 5 and 6, but feel free to experiment with them, later.
Click “Save Preferences”.
Click “Done”.

That’s it! Now you’ve set it up so that you can control who get’s in! Let’s experiment with it …

Log out (sign out) of your website.
Go to the “My Photos” page.
Type in the big box, “This is a test. Let me into this website, please”. Then click “Email Administrator”.
Click “Join Group”.
Enter the log in information for someone like your father.
Press Submit.
At this point, you should see a message reading “*** You may not sign in until your account is activated by the website administrator ***”. This is good! That means it’s working!
Now, log back into the website as yourself.
Go back to the “Visitor Control Panel”.
Now, the 3rd option should show that you have at least 1 person waiting on activation. Click “Activate Now”.
You should, at minimum, see your father’s log in information. Click “Activate User” on his line.

That’s it! Now, email your father his log in information. He can now go see your photos, but no one else can!

It may seem like a lot, but it’s really pretty easy. Once you do it a few times, it’ll be pretty easy for you.

Good luck with it!

What can TalkSpot's Customization Services do for you?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

TalkSpot puts a lot of time and effort into creating a wide variety of website templates for you. We’ve really tried to consider most all possible uses for a website, and to have a visual and technical solution for it. We’re proud of our accomplishments and believe that any of our existing website templates can greatly serve your needs.

However, sometimes one’s needs can outgrow what is currently available. The need to be truly unique takes a more meaningful role than it once did. Sometimes there comes a need to rise above.

In addition to simply creating a website template and design, TalkSpot truly can be a one-stop-shop for all your design needs. With TalkSpot, we cover the following:

Website Templates & Development
Layout and Content Suggestions
Rich Media
TalkSpot Tools Training
Flash Demos
Logos and Branding
Online Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Print Design
E-Commerce (product placement)

Point being, with TalkSpot’s one-stop-shop approach to design, you can go from nothing, to a beautiful, meaningful feature rich website design, complete with print materials, increased search engine rankings and a plethora of ideas for future online marketing strategies.

To learn more about our customization services, contact our administrator (admin@talkspot.com), or contact Chad, the head of our design department (chad@talkspot.com).

Some Custom TalkSpot Examples

www.khaoskustoms.ca	www.thecoholodge.com	www.bajafire.com

www.nitetourslasvegas.com	www.bossashows.com	www.coastglobalsolutions.com

www.exposureclothing.ca	www.herveybay-whalewatching.com.au	www.threesixtyfg.ca

Why TalkSpot email is so great and what it can do for you!

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

TalkSpot’s email is much more than a “hotmail” account. There’s nothing wrong with a hotmail account, and I have one myself, but it’s a weird, hard-to-remember email address. Yes, everyone knows the name “HoTMaiL” (the name comes from HTML – the main programming language used to hold the internet together), but at this point, most email addresses look like this: Name-My-98279@hotmail.com

There’s no longer any personalization that makes a lot of sense. The amount of creative stressing that goes into a free, public email address isn’t really worth it. Plus, you’re missing out on some slick features!

First, let’s discuss the benefits of a domain name and customized email address.

The primary reasons for the domain name and email addresses were addressed in this post, but let’s discuss some hypothetical situations:

Situation 1: You don’t want to change your existing email address, and quite frankly, you don’t want to change anything about your email.

No problem! With email aliasing, you can create a customized email address for business, or just for fun, and then when any email is emailed to it, using forwarding, you can simply have all emails forwarded to your existing email account! This way, you still get the professional look of a customized email address, but have no need to tell everyone else you’ve changed your email.

Situation 2: You’re a small company, but you want to keep separate email addresses, but forward them all to the same email address.

No problem! With email forwarding, you can have something like the following:

You can simply forward all email addresses to the same email address. It appears as if there are many, but to you, it’s all just one!

Situation 3: You want incoming emails to go to a variety of places, so they are seen by many.

No problem! You can create groups within your email’s admin area. Imagine you have an Info@YourDomain.com email address, but you have a fairly large company. You can create a group that contains Sales, Marketing, Support and all Administrative Staff. A single email sent to that one address will be sent to everyone within the group!

Let’s say you have a family, and you want a single address to give all other family members. You could have a “Family” group. When anyone emails Family@YourFamily.com, Mom, Dad, Kids and the Family Dog will all get a copy!

In your admin area, you can set up individual email addresses, with our without aliases. Then, you can also set up a single email addresses intended to be the “group” email. Then, you create the group. Then, you set up an alias for the group, and forward all emails from the “group” email, to all the members of the group! A great, simple way to keep everyone on the same page. You could also have Parents@YourFamily.com and Kids@YourFamily.com.

You can make changes to any group, at any time, easily!

Email is a great way to market yourself, your business, and/or your cause or topic to be shared. Through newsletters and blogging, you’re effectively spreading information in “word-of-mouth” type fashion. The more prepared you appear, the more weight your “word” carries!

Look and be the part, and the results will take care of themselves!

Ok, now the technical stuff:

TalkSpot uses a company called MaximumASP to host our websites, including our email.

For more than six years, MaximumASP has provided Windows-based hosting solutions focused on security, reliability, scalability and quality support from a staff of Microsoft-certified engineers and developers. They currently host more than 44,000 domain names and were doing business in the hosting segment before it even was a segment.

MaximumASP has since become known as one of the premier Windows-based hosting providers in the world by providing customers top-notch support, reliable Dell servers, a scale-on-demand infrastructure and comprehensive network security protection.

They know their stuff, too.

MaximumASP provides reliable, protected shared e-mail services using the Hmail platform. With ample mailbox storage allocations, and the ability to grow from one to hundreds of users, the MaximumASP shared e-mail package provides an easy-to-use mail solution that is a great value to all of our Gold Members.

Tune in next time, where we'll discuss the benefits of our customized websites!

Pasting from MS Word, or other word processors creates problems. Can I avoid this?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I frequently get questions from people asking about weird formatting issues on their websites. Sometimes it’s just a lot of extra space that they can’t seem to get rid of, and sometimes it’s strange indentations, fonts, etc. In almost all cases, it’s because someone copied and pasted their text from a word processor, like Microsoft’s Word.

"Word" has a lot of invisible formatting information inside the document, that you can't see. It tells the text how to display itself, which font to use, the size, whether or not some of the text should be bolded or underlined. It uses a different language than the Internet, which uses HTML for formatting. It’s also very complex and takes up a lot of space, whereas HTML is smaller, more compact and more human readable.

When you copy from "Word" or another word processor, into the TalkSpot editor, it ALSO copies all the weird formatting. It should ask you, when you copy, if you want to "clean" the Word formatting. If and when it does, say "Yes". It will still add some of the Word formatting, but will remove most of it. All that will remain is the HTML portions of the formatting, but this is still a lot, and cumbersome, and almost entirely hidden from you, unless you choose to look directly at the HTML.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for “Hyper Text Markup Language” and is the primary programming language used to hold the Internet together. It’s essentially a series of what are called “Tags”.

A "Tag" looks like this: <a>

Tags are treated like bookends in the code. So, if you want to make a word bold, and you know what the different tags mean, you can bold a word by bookending the proper tag (start tag and end tag) around the word you want bolded.

Some quick examples:
HTML	Displayed in the Browser
<strong>Bold</strong>	Bold
<u>Underlined</u>	Underlined
<a href=”http://www.talkspot.com”>Build Great Websites Here</a>	Build Great Websites Here

Notice the end tag has a backslash in it, to indicate it's the closing tag. You can surround anything, even images, with a combination of tags to get different results.

There are other tags like <img> and <br> which don’t have a bookend, but there are only a few of those, and once you understand the "bookended tags" concept, the rest falls into place really quickly.

Your “Browser”, like Internet Explorer or Firefox reads the files containing the HTML then interprets the display on your screen, so you may navigate the web!

When I’m copying from a word processor, I first copy and paste into something like "Wordpad", which is likely found under accessories on your computer. This will eliminate ALL formatting, except for very simple things, and is very much compliant with the editor.

You can also use “Notepad” for pure text. Notepad will retain only text and page breaks, everything else will be eliminated. Then, if you want to re-add bolds, underlines,

Or
Bulleted
Lists

You can copy from Word, into Notepad, and then into your blog blob or text blob, where you can re-add some of your formatting (or "personal touches").

To see what formatting may have carried over, you can always click the "< >" icon in the bottom-left of the editor. This puts the editor into HTML mode, and then you can see all the code/tags, etc.

Special pasting with the editor
You can also use some of the pasting techniques used from within the actual editor. The TalkSpot editor allows for a variety of pasting methods. I prefer pasting into Wordpad or Notepad, but many swear by some of the pasting techniques allowed by the TalkSpot editor. In general, it's always best to try all options and then determine which options works best for you.

Click to dropdown the pasting options ------->

When you've opened a document and have copied something, it's copied into your computer's memory. This is commonly called "The Clipboard". While this text is on the clipboard, you can click the icon shown above from the editor (in the Text blob or the Blog blob) and drop down several options. Each tells you what the results will be. Just make sure your cursor is inside the editor in the location where you want paste the text, prior to selecting one of these options. Experiement with the option you like the best!

Format Stripping
You can also try the format stripper. This will remove extra formatting that you may not have intended.

If you paste a document and notice things aren't quite right, you can highlight the selected text, then drop down the format stripping options, by clicking the "format stripper" button in the editor (shown below). This will drop down a selection of options. The first would be to strip all "Word" formatting. This will remove all weirdness that the editor recognizes as specific to MS Word. If that doesn't take care of it, try the same body of text, but then strip the "Span" elements. Then, move up and up the list, until you achieve the desired results.

Click to dropdown the format stripper ------->

You may go too far and strip ALL formatting. In my opinion, this is simply the best way to handle it, and you should always start with perfectly stripped text, anyway. It's faster, easier to edit, quicker to load and search engines love it! Search engines do not like it when the instructions for formatting outweigh the actual text. They will penalize you for this and you'll get less traffic to your site (learn more about website promotion to understand this). In general, keeping it simple and straightforward is always the best policy.

Good luck! Next, we will discuss email and TalkSpot's email service!

Why you want to build a web site with TalkSpot.com and upgrade? HERE'S WHY!

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I’m frequently asked what the benefits are of upgrading, if TalkSpot is really free, etc.

"Can I create a web site with TalkSpot, for free?"

"I'm so happy with TalkSpot, but I'm always worried about my 'free' site. When will the other shoe drop?"

Yes! Yes, you can make your own web site for free, with TalkSpot. There are some limitations, to be sure. However, with a little creativity; you can squeeze a lot of website out of TalkSpot’s meager limitations.

Create a web page and you’ll see that you have a huge selection of tools and options at your fingertips. Make your own web page by clicking the “ADD PAGE” button in your administrator bar at the top of the screen. Then, click a “Greenie” (a small green circle), after pressing the “EDIT PAGE” button, and you’ll find that you have a huge selection of options.

You can create an entire online artist portfolio, for free, for example, with TalkSpot website design and development.

Do you want to create online stores? Sell your products online, or build a small business website? You can do all of this for free. You’re confined to 4 pages and your site will have some minor TalkSpot branding and the website address will have “talkspot” in it, but for free, these are pretty minor.

You will never be charged, and there is no requirement to upgrade, if you do not want to. You will always have your 4 pages.

So, why would you consider upgrading, for say, a business website? Lot’s of reasons!

There are little ones, like the “TalkSpot” tab on the right goes away and you can change that bar (we call it a “footer”) at the bottom of all your page, but the “BIG 3” is as follows:

Includes a Domain Name
Includes a whole email system and custom email addresses for up to 100 people.
Infinite number of pages, blobs, uploads, etc.

Let’s discuss the enormous benefit of these 3 things.

Why have a domain name? Why is that so important?

Build Trust with Customers
When visitors arrive at your site, they want to know that your website is legitimate and that it is there to stay. With your own domain name you reveal that you are in it for the long haul. This also sends a message of legitimacy to the search engines, who will give you a better ranking, sending more traffic to your website.

Help Maximize Your Promotion Efforts
When you secure your own domain name, you have complete freedom in your promotions. Many search engines, directories and other promotional sites will frown at "free" hosted sites with another site's address and marketing materials. When you use a free web page hosting service, your site pages are placed on a website along with many other types of businesses. The search engines will not recognize your site as being a unique entity. They might even lump your site into categories with other sites that are using the free service. This can hurt your promotional efforts tremendously, and you end up wasting time and money. You'll actually save money in the long run with your own domain name.

By securing a domain name and taking advantage of TalkSpot's tools, you can promote your site to the fullest.

This carries over into your email addresses, as well!
Imagine you have a new website devoted to Yoga. Let’s imagine the website is “DownwardFacingDog.com”, and the website lists a variety of email addresses, from “Katey1982@hotmail.com.mx” to “YogaBobby@OverlyLongAndHardToRememberDomainName.com”. This doesn’t send a strong message of professionalism to potential clients. There is a level of care and detail which is not being attended to. This would look much nicer to people visiting your site:

Thank you for visiting DownwardFacingDog.com!

For more information, feel free to write us at: Info@DownwardFacingDog.com

Or, to contact us, directly:

Katey@DownwardFacingDog.com
Bob@DownwardFacingDog.com

Even more interesting, with TalkSpot’s email set up, you can create email groups, so if someone were to email Info@DownwardFacingDog.com, an email could be automatically sent to both Katey AND Yoga Bobby, and anyone else they choose to add to their “Info Group”. It’s all very slick and easy to set up!

With an infinite number of pages, there’s no need to bog down or clutter your 4 free pages. You can have one single page dedicated to your Yoga Blog, discussing new trends in Yoga, and have a full page Google Map, or a page of videos, showing difficult steps for people to practice their poses, at home.

With an infinite number of pages, uploads and blobs, there are no limits!

Please check back soon, as our next blog will focus on “Why does copying and pasting from a Word Processor mess everything up!?”

How will people find me? They can't find my site!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As an administrator for TalkSpot.com, I get asked a lot of questions from our webmasters.

Probably the two most common questions asked are, “I built my website, but no one can find me! How do people find me?!” and “What’s the upgrade for? Why would I want one?”

There are many many questions asked. In time, we’ll cover them all, but for now, let’s just focus on how people find your site.

Your website has an address. This is the first step to being found.

The first thing to know about is the web address, more technically known as the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). It almost always begins with http:// and almost always ends with .com. What comes between those two bookends are the parts that are easy for humans to remember. TalkSpot uses a word that you make up and puts it in front of “TalkSpot” or sometimes “TalkSpotBlogs” or one of our other “Domain Names”.

So, a very common TalkSpot web site address would look like this:

http://YourMadeUpWord.TalkSpot.com

This is very much like a street address, where “YourMadeUpWord” is like “1212 Elm St.” and “TalkSpot” is probably most analogous to “Seattle” or the name of a city. The “.com” part is short for “company”, and originally was used to let people know this was a company. In time, however, it morphed into just the most common form of domain name. Many people have “.com” based website addresses, even though they aren’t really companies at all!

The http:// portion of the address is not really something you’re going to need to know, so don’t worry about it (note: It stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol”).

When someone enters a web address into their browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc.) the browser goes to that web address and displays whatever it finds there.

So, the first part of this is in knowing your web address, and knowing how to share that with people.

You can copy (Ctrl-C) it and paste it (Ctrl-V) into an email, where people can click on it. You can type it into an email, and others can copy and paste it into the location bar of their browser, and people can simply type it into the location bar of their browser.

Once it’s in the location bar and the “Enter” button is pressed, the browser will display your website.

When people look for me on Google, they can't find me!

Frequently, when people ask “Why can’t anyone find my site?”, they’re actually asking why Google doesn’t display their website in search results. Sometimes they mean Yahoo, or MSN, but the meaning of the question is the same.

“How come the Internet hasn’t told the world about me, yet? Where’s all my traffic? Why can’t anyone find my site?”

The quick answer is, your site is probably new and it takes time for Google to discover you. It can take upwards of a month for Google to find your website. Even then, chances are, your site will be at the very bottom of the list for similarly oriented websites. Pretty tough stuff, right?

Unfortunately, there are no real shortcuts for this. There are millions of people out there, and they all want to be at the top of the list, and they’re all doing “something” to get there.

You can speed this up by specifically telling the search engines you exist, rather than waiting for their little computer robots to find you.

You can tell Google that you exist, here: http://www.google.com/addurl/
You can tell Yahoo that you exist, here: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
You can tell Bing you exist, here: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

Those are the big 3 websites that people use for finding stuff online and specifically telling them is important for two reasons. One, it let’s them know you exist sooner than if you’d waited for them to find you. It also let’s YOU know that you’re serious about your own site and are willing to go the extra mile to get found.

As of March, 2009, there are over 100 million websites around the world, with over 25 BILLION web pages. There is only one most visited website (Google.com), and only ten websites in the top 10. Each of these 10 websites have entire companies backing them up to ensure they stay in the top 10.

Should this be discouraging? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

I think the rate at which the internet is growing and the shear numbers of people involved to make it happen is very exciting, and it’s an indication that it’s working. The way it’s come together has created a compelling resource for people to want to visit and find what they’re looking for …

… which leads me full cycle to you, and your website. Call it a hunch, but I firmly believe that just the simple act of creating a TalkSpot website already puts you above 90% of all these other websites. That puts you in the top 10 million. Still sounds like the bottom, but there are a further 90 million websites beneath you. Have you SEEN some of the sites out there? You’re in good hands with TalkSpot.com

Now, what you need to do is make a website worth visiting!

You have to be worth visiting. Now, many of you are just building websites for friends and family and being “found” isn’t important. It’s still valuable information, but it may not be relevant to your current pursuit. That’s fine, but it’s still handy to know how all this works. Someday you may be looking for something online, and you’ll be able to locate it that much more quickly, because you’ve seen, up close, how things are found on the internet.

Let’s assume that you’re a business and you’ve already submitted your website to the big 3. Now what? How do you get more people to notice you?

Probably the two most important elements of a successful website are creating compelling content written about a particular subject, and to keep the site fresh and frequently updated.

There a lot of tips and tricks highlighted in the following two documents, both of which were written for this exact purpose. I highly recommend both. They’re quick and easy reads and should help pave the road towards your online success.

Next week we will discuss the benefits of upgrading to TalkSpot's Gold Membership!