Web Development

Abacci > Bazaar > Webmasters > Web Development

While the Abacci Bazaar is not focused on the web development process, I thought a short note wouldn't be out of place here. There's a ton of stuff on the net about web development, marketing and search engine optimisation; but finding the pearls can be difficult, so here are a few pointers...

CSS Templates

If you're in a hurry to build a site, or lack that graphic designer flair, here's a great site to visit: Basic Templates. These folks offer quality, professionally designed web templates for only $5.00 USD each.

Featuring:

• A fully functional HTML website template with graphics in .gif or .jpg formats.
• Each template is designed using an "external" style sheet (CSS) for high performance and maximum design effectiveness. External CSS eliminates the many redundant HTML font tags, color tags, and other cosmetic properties that slows down the load time of your web pages and makes maintenance to your site a living nightmare with simple HTML or "internal" CSS. You simply edit one file and it changes those properties on every page of your website. It's like magic! The only reason not to use External CSS in your web design projects is because you did not know how until BasicTemplates.com came along to help you to design your site the very first time.
• You are not limitated to the number of sites you may use the template on. In other words, you do not have to purchase it again if you use it on 2, 3 or more of your clients' sites.
• No link back to their site is ever required. Therefore, your clients will never know the source of the original design unless you tell them.
• There are no extra fees for web designers to use them on their clients' sites.
• A tech support ticket system and knowledge base relative to the use of their templates is available to all customers. Just because you purchased a $5.00 template, does not mean that customer service stops after the sale!
• Many of the elements within each of their templates are interchangeable with each other which further extends the value. For example, use the header image of template #10, the style sheet from template #400 and navigational bar from template #555 and you can quickly assemble a new layout customized for your site or your clients' web site within minutes.

Content and Income

The Affiliate Masters Course (570KB), written by Ken Evoy, tells you how to combine the two. A free 10 day course on becoming a affiliate marketer by building income through content. It's packed with useful information interspersed with the occasional bit of promo material. For the price (nothing) it's great value. Ken's angle? He'd like you to purchase his product: Site Build It which automates a lot of the site planning, building and hosting process. You can get some idea of the style and content of his course from its TOC:

Affiliate Masters Section One
Business Basics
Income and Expenses
Traffic, Click Throughs, and Conversion Rates
• PREselling Why
• PREselling and Your Visitor’s Mindset
• PREselling How

Affiliate Masters Section Two
Brainstorming Concepts for Your Site
Picking the Concept With the Most Profit Potential
Developing HIGH-PROFITABILITY Topics for Your Site
DEMAND, SUPPLY and BREAKOUT tools, and the MASTER KEYWORD LIST
The CUSTOMER END vs. the KEYWORD END
How to pick the HIGHEST-PROFITABILITY topics
Analyzing (and using!) the competition

Affiliate Masters Section Three
Finding Affiliate Programs for Your Concept
How to Reduce Risk by Diversifying
Picking the Best, Safest Programs
Refining Your Concept to Just the Right Scope...
The “Valuable PREselling Proposition”
Creating and Protecting the Perfect Domain Name
Preparing for Your Own Mini-Vertical-Portal

Affiliate Masters Section Four
Building Your Site... Two Kinds of Visitors
OVERdelivering High-value Content to Readers Who Deliver HIGH-PROFITABILITY to You
How to Please the Search Engines
The WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN
“FIND-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-kaCHING”
The Structure of Your Site
The Content of Your Site

Affiliate Masters Section Five
Traffic-building for Content sites
The Free Major Search Engines
Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
The Major Directories
Word of Mouth
E-zines -- Market via your own opt-in newsletters
Other traffic-building techniques
Traffic Analysis... What’s Important
Click IN Analysis
Click Through Analysis
Your Road to Success... Action Steps

All-in-all a pretty comprehensive guide. I'd like to think that the Bazaar will be a useful tool for folks working through the master's course, so if you do try it let me know how you get on.

Search Engine Optimisation

Will submitting to hundreds of engines cause traffic to pour into your Web site? The short answer is no, but the folks at webposition think they know the real secret to driving free traffic to your Web site.

Of course it involves using their product: WebPosition Gold, which you can download and evaluate for free. I've used WPG for quite a few years, and have to warn you, you can get obsessed with it to the detriment of your other development activities. Used in moderation however, it will give you some very interesting insights into search engine optimization.