Design Your Own Web

What the heck is Free IQ?? It’s Brad Fallons latest baby. For those of you who don’t know who Brad Fallon is, he started a little ecommerce store about 3 1/2 years ago and turned it into a million dollar business in his first year. Only 3 years later he’s expanded and now is on track to do $30 million this year alone ONLINE. Not bad.

So Free IQ is probably something you want to check out. It’s a bunch of educational and training videos about a variety of business related ideas and products, most are completely free. Hence the ‘Free’ of the IQ part. If you have any interest in online marketing, making money online, or just want to check out a new educational tool, then I’d suggest that you visit Free IQ and sign up today. It’s free to join, free to watch. Some of the programs do cost money and those are mainly on the right hand side of the pages.

Oh yeah, and if you have a good idea for a product, then you can post your product on their yourself and start making money and getting traffic to your site from this business YouTube-like site of his.

Increase your IQ with Free IQ.

Today, I randomly checked the ‘order page’ from one of my websites and up came a box saying that this is a ‘suspicious website’ and that Microsoft does not recommend trusting this website. Huh?? My beloved site that is several years old, has tons of customers and is ranked #1 in the search engines for numerous keywords??

Who the hell is Microsoft to tell the general public on my ‘order page’ (not my home page, or my free lesson page, but my ‘order page’ of all places) that this is a suspicious website?? What right do they have to do that?? In the United States, we are innocent until proven guilty. And putting fear into people about an innocent site is CRAZY!!!

Now to put fear into people about a suspicious website (with absolutely no f#@cking reason or proof) on my order page BEFORE they go to pay money – That’s COSTING ME MONEY!!! Microsoft is in all liklihood costing me sales. Because of a filter on their new Internet Explorer 7.0 that checks each website to see if it’s safe according to their rules.

I have NOTHING on my ‘order page’ that is suspicious, or phishes for personal information of any kind. The only thing I have on my order page is a link to Paypal and a Paypal buy now button.

So I checked my other sites, and my clients’ sites that use Paypal. And guess what?? They all came back as suspcious according to Microsoft. On the ‘order’ and ‘checkout’ pages of NUMEROUS websites using the Paypal ‘add to cart’ button, a POP-UP box built into Microsoft Internet Explorer ver 7.0 says that these are suspicious websites and you should not trust them, because we don’t.

SHAME! SHAME on Microsoft. They are causing undue fear and a potential loss of renenue. In fact I have had ZERO U.S. sales since I saw that filter pop up. And God only knows how long it’s been there. I don’t check my order now pages all that often. I could have lost TONS of money because of Microsoft’s wreckless paranoia.

They think they are doing a public service? Give me a break. Personally I don’t need Microsoft to be a police for the internet. It’s a company, not a ruling body. And to tell the general public NOT to trust my site is f#cking INSANE! My site doesn’t have any viruses, any spyware, any phishing bullsh%it, nothing. It’s clean and safe and I want people to know that.

So there is a link on that pop up from Microsoft saying don’t trust this site and if you click on that link you can fill out a form saying that you are the owner and that this is NOT a phishing website. So I did that. I had to fill out a f#cking form giving Microsoft PERSONAL INFORMATION and then had to explain to them why my site is NOT a phishing site. As if it were any of their f#cking business. How unbelievably hypocritical is that. And it gets worse. I called Microsoft customer support, they wanted to charge me $35 to talk to a customer service rep. UNBELIEVABLE.

About an hour later, I get an email from Microsoft telling me that they have changed the status of my website and AGREE IT’S NOT a phishing site. Well no f#cking sh$t. But, to make matters worse, that changes could take up to 24 hours to take effect.

24 HOURS??? That could cost me A LOT OF MONEY!!!! Waiting 24 hours and losing sales because Microsoft is telling each visitor who actually clicks through to my order page that this is a SUSPICIOUS site is, to me, bordering or way past the border of libel. If only I was an attorney. The damage they have caused is wreckless and really pisses me off, in case you couldn’t tell.

Now I have actually always liked and used Microsoft products, but not now. This whole thing is just a HUGE waste of time and my money.

This new bullshit Microsoft Phishing filter gets an ‘F’ in my book. ANd in 24 hours it had better NOT be telling the general public that my site is “SUSPICIOUS”!!!!!!

FOR THE RECORD – January 10, 2007: Microsoft has ammended my site’s rating and is no longer saying that it is suspicious. I am in the clear on that one. Having said that, Microsofts new tool has been upgraded to a D- in my book. Because, another friends site using Paypal is still being called suspicious on their checkout page. NOT good!

About a year and half ago, I starting absorbing anything I could from these 2 guys making MILLIONS online with very simple websites and a very simple strategy. Their names are Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins. Since then I recently finished my second course with Brad Fallon and after consulting with him privately, I have literally started making THOUSANDS online. It’s crazy really. I can probably at this point quit my day job if I wanted to.

And it gets better. I was hired to create a web site about a year ago by a small start up company, they wanted an ecommerce site. That site is now doing a ridiculous amount in sales each month. All in less than a year, and thanks to the fundamental internet marketing principles I learned from Brad and Andy. That small company has since put me on retainer to continue optimizing their site and continuing to increase their sales. Since hiring me on retainer (using some very simple techniques) I have practically DOUBLED their income. They are very happy to say the least.

So what’s the simple strategies? What are the secrets to my and their success? Well Brad and Andy made a FREE video (doesn’t cost a dime) that shows you some things you can use on your own site to improve sales. These guys are so methodical and knowledgable in their approach to making money online, ANYONE can and should learn from them. And if you want to make money online, then you MUST know what these guys are up to. The video was released last week and since then 50,000 people have already seen the video.

And there is an update to that this week. There are now 2 videos available. This one talks about latent semantic indexing. OR in english, how search engines ‘read’ your webpages. Very worthwhile and some gems in there if pay attention.

Best of all, they are both very good and very FREE. Check it out here.

A lot of people have wanted to know how to add audio to a website. And recently I ran across a great tool that makes that process ridiculously easy. It’s called Impact Web Audio by Gary Ambrose. In just 5 minutes you can be adding audio to your site. With this easy to use software, which sells for only $37 (and includes resale rights), all you need is a microphone.

To add audio to your site, simply record the audio, pick whether or not you want to add a sound loop (sound at the beginning and end of your audio), choose what color and style you want your audio buttons to be and it creates the audio and the button for you. All you have to do at that point is copy and paste it to your site.

It literally will take you about 5 minutes to add audio to your website. You can add it to a web page, a blog or wherever. All you do is copy and paste the files to make it work. It creates all the buttons and code for you. This software makes adding audio so simple, it’s a heck of a deal. And for only $37, you also get resale rights, which means you have the right to resell the software and keep the profits should you decide to sell it yourself. There are no hidden fees and never any monthly or yearly fees. You can create as many audio recordings as you want. No catches, no gimmicks, just a good, affordable, quality product.

Check it out today! Impact Web Audio

I own a bunch of websites. Seems to be a fun hobby, building more sites. On one of my sites I sell a certain item and it’s really good, high quality and actually pretty cheap. But I couldn’t figure out why I was hardly getting any sales. I was getting tons of traffic. The people who bought the thing loved it, I didn’t know what the deal was. So I started looking at my traffic logs.

Now, I am visually oriented person, I like to SEE things conceptually, get the big picture. Sure numbers are helpful, I use Google Analytics as my traffic logs as well. But about year ago, I ran across something called VisitorVille. It’s a visual representation of your web sites traffic. It’s very cool. It shows your website metaphorically and graphically as a city. And it uses buses (to haul people from specific search engines) to show you which people are visiting which pages. And what page they go to next. What literally happens is wehn someone comes to your site from Google, for example, then VisitorVille shows them as riding a ‘Google’ bus to their destination web page or ‘landing page’. This page is shown as a city building. The person literally gets out of the bus and walks into the building. If they go to another page, then they are shown leaving that building and walking or taking a cab to the next webpage on your site. You can easily see the entire flow of traffic on your site and get one big picture.

After a few hours of watching this entertaining flow of traffic, it dawned on me something was really wrong with my site. Lots of people and little sales. So I redesigned my site, improving flow and changed the text and reduced the columns to just one column and my sales literally doubled almost instantly. I tweaked it some more based on some of the stuff VisitorVille was showing me and sales went up even more. Amazing to think, if I had only done that months ago, I could have made more money in the meantime. Live and learn.

The moral of this blog is that it’s helpful to ‘see’ what people are doing at your site. How long are they staying on each page, which pages do they like to go to, etc. VisitorVille has lots of other tools, besides just the map. It has tons of statistics, logs, live chat on your site, and much more. Now, it is a monthly service, but pretty affordable. I truly like it and use it regularly. In fact, it’s already paid for itself many times over. Check it out for yourself.

Thought I’d pass this one along to those of you who don’t know about it. This tool is now my favorite tool on my computer. It has saved me so much time and made my life so much easier, it’s ridiculous.

If you’re like me, keeping track of passwords and user login information is a challenge. At last count I had 70 different usernames and different passwords for various websites. Trying to remember them all was silly. But I started using a tool that makes it very easy to keep track of ALL your login infromation and passwords – securely. It’s called Roboform. And to keep track of your usernames and passwords for up to 10 websites, it’s FREE to use!! If you have different usernames and passwords for more than 10 sites then you’ll have to buy a license ($29.95), but it’s SO worth it. Why?

2 reasons why I like Roboform so much:

1) It’s a toolbar that runs on Internet Explorer and Firefox and it remembers ALL your username and all your passwords automatically. If you go to login to Google for example, Roboform recognizes it and can fill out the form and login for you. And to make it even easier, you can just go to the logins button on the Roboform Toolbar and it will show you a list of all the websites you are a member of, and you can just click the one you want to go to. It takes you to the site and logs you in with only one click.

2) It can automatically fill out forms for you. If you’ve ever had to fill out a form more than once, Roboform makes it a snap. It even has custom fields so special form data can also be stored.

So for only $29.95, it’s a no brainer. Also there is an option to put roboform on a USB key, which means if you have more than one computer, you can take roboform with you. And to top it off, they even offer tutorials for how to use it, although it’s very easy to use (because it’s mostly automatic).

Anyway, as you can tell, I am a big fan and highly recommend it (not to mention it was PC Magazines Editors choice and CNET’s Software of the Year winner), it will save you time and typing…

Click here for more about Roboform

Because of the numerous websites I’ve done over the years, I like to place different sites on different web hosting companies for many reasons. This allows me to try new companies out and see what their service and special features are. Also they will be coming from different IP addresses, which may be beneficial in the search engine optimation world.

I just recently started a new web site with a company called 1and1.com Web Hosting. And I gotta say, I like them. I have sites hosted with Yahoo!, Optimal Web Hosting, GoDaddy, and the latest is now 1and1. All are good. And they all have their own key features.

WIth 1and1.com, they had several features at the $9.99 per month level which I found to be nice to have. For example, they offer plenty of room for bandwidth (1000 GB) which is good, cause this new site will have some videos on there. You can store 100 GB of data on your site at the business level (the $9.99 per month offer). That’s alot of video space.

Some other nice features I like about 1and1.com was they had the ability to set up blogs, send out monthly newsletters (up to 1000 people per month), their control panel is very user friendly and easy to understand. They also have some other cool stuff like a live chat script you can add to your site to chat with your visitors, a form building tool to help you easily create forms to gather data, CRON jobs and more.

So in addition to the list of web hosting companies I would suggest, I also recommend this company – 1and1.com.

We created a simple site a few months ago using 1and1. A friend of mine is a psychologist (who actually has a rather legendary reputation of being one of the best in his field) and just for fun we created a site that allows people to send out free ecards. The site is called thehappyanyday.com and allows people to send funny simple e-cards for no particular reason. And using 1and1.com to host this site, we’ve had no problems installing any of the scripts or managing the site. It’s been very straight forward, fast and reliable.

So overall, I gotta say it’s a good deal. They have millions of satisfied customers and considering their current offer (some great software), it’s highly worth checking out… 1and1.com – keep it in mind the next time you start up a new site.

Need to make a logo or some cool looking text?

For those of you interested in graphics design, there is another open source program out there called InkScape. Inkscape allows you to draw scalable vector graphics (or svg).

Vector graphics are made of points, lines, curves and polygons. They are generally composed of shapes put together. This is different than something called ‘raster’ images, which is shown as pixels (.jpg compressed for the web). For example, digital photographs are considered to be a raster image.

Most logos, most cartoons, a lot of the clip art are all ‘vector’ graphics. The advantage of using a vector graphics editor is that you can resize and reshape the vector image you are working on without losing any quality. You can change the size, shape, and color very easily. In other words, it’s scalable.

As I understand it, Internet Explorer doesn’t yet the ability to display .svg graphics (there is a plug-in available though). Considering most of the world still uses Internet Explorer, it’s a probably a good idea if you are going to be creating .svg graphics for use on the web to convert them to .gif or .png files. Firefox. however, can display .svg graphics.

There are numerous and costly commercial alternative vector graphics editors out there. The most common are Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand.

Inkscape is a good resource for creating logos or custom shapes. Check it out…

I recently saw someone claim to be an expert in the ‘right’ way to build a website.

My response was…Really? I didn’t know there was a right way?

If we are going to limit ourselves into being right or wrong, then I simply don’t want to play. To me web design might be thought of as art. And the last time I checked there was no right or wrong way to be an artist. It’s whatever comes out that counts.

The last thing we need, in my opinion, is to have another set of ‘rules’ telling someone they are wrong. To me, if the site looks good in a browser and the creator of the site is happy about it, the users are happy, then that’s what counts, ultimately.

Otherwise, you get into other-peopling. Which in this case is a group of people who you don’t know, never met, telling you your web design is all “WRONG”. That you don’t have a doc statement , or you used tables instead of CSS, or you didn’t use alt tags. Give me a break already AND go get a life. Really.

If you want to build a website using tables, then go for it. If you want to make your entire site flash oriented, then screw what everyone else thinks. It’s your site, do what you want to with it. If you want to use text that doesn’t match the color scheme, then great. It’s your site. Do what you want.

Here’s what I have noticed recently. Some of the most popular sites on the net are not ‘compliant’ with the standards. Most of them aren’t even close. Does that stop them from making millions? No. Does that stop them from coming up first in the search engines? The answer is no. Not from what I have seen. So what’s the point?

The real problem, in my opinion, is that CSS really SUCKS. There, I said it. And I don’t mean that to be nice. It truly sucks. Why? Because it’s not visual. Not even close. I haven’t seen a decent visual CSS editor yet. The company who makes a drop and drag, truly WYSIWYG, visual CSS standards compliant web page editor, ought to be given the Nobel prize in usability. And will change the face of web design and probably make millions along the way.

But in the meantime, to have a beginner start with using tables or CSS? It’s a no brainer. Start visual. Drawing a table is visual. Coding in CSS is not. CSS is very left brain and if you like designing websites and like making sites, then evenutally you’ll want to go through the BS of learning CSS. But be warned, it’s not a point and click sort of deal. It’s a measure by the exact number sort of deal. It’s probably great for knit-pickers. You know the definition of a knit-picker? That’s someone who looks for the flyshit in the pepper. That’s a knit-picker.

So hey, for people who like following the speed limit, counting pixels on the screen, obsessively doing math in your head, then go for html compliance. If you’re a detailed oriented person then you’ll love CSS.

Otherwise, just have fun designing. Ultimately there really are no rules, because the rules are just made up as we go along anyway.

Robert

I don’t know how old this is, but I just saw this tool. So either I have been surfing the web on complete auto pilot, or this is a fairly recent addition by Google. In either case, I will now have to start a new category on this blog just for Google, cause they are coming out with some cool FREE stuff.

Last time it was sketch-up, now it’s Web Accelerator. Apparently made for high speed connections, it can actually speed up your browsing experience and ultimately save you time.

Finally, if you haven’t had a chance, head over to the main page and check out the updates to useful products and helpful ebooks. I have started listing (don’t worry I am just getting started…) resources that you’ll find invaluable as you begin and continue your web design adventure.

Happy Designing…

Robert