I came across a great article while surfing the Lifehacker.com site today. I like to browse around there from time to time…it’s always full of interesting topics. The article I found is called How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords, and it is very informative with regard to your passwords and online security.

Most people do not seem to realize the importance of good, strong passwords. I see it all the time with clients of the web host I work for. I see it with friends and family, and with other people I know online. They don’t realize it usually until it is too late. So that’s why I’m posting the link to that article, because if it helps even one person realize the importance of their passwords in protecting their personal (and often financial) information, then I have done my job.

Please check out the article and let me know your thoughts.

There are so many scams on the Internet anymore, it’s hard to keep track. But one of the latest ones I’ve had people ask about is the Domain Name Scam.  With this one, you get an email from someplace in Asia or somewhere telling you they are a domain registration company. They are writing to notify you that some other person or company wants to buy domain names similar to yours, but with alternate endings. They are then giving you the opportunity to buy those domains first, before they are sold to someone else…seemingly as some sort of favor to you.

This is a scam, people.

The sole point of this is to get you to buy domain names that you do not need, and in all likelihood, at very high prices. If you own the GreatStore.com domain, and if someone else wants to buy GreatStore.cn or GreatStore.asia domains, does it really matter? Do you really need those domains? Is it going to hurt your business to lose them? No. No.  And No.

Anyone around the world can buy a variation of your domain name at any time if it is available.  If you don’t want them to, in order to protect your brand or business name, you can purchase every single variant of your domain name that you’d like at any time.  And many business owners do purchase the more common variations of their domain name (.net, .biz, .org etc) in order to protect their brand. But this is not something you must do, and certainly not as a result of an email that uses scare tactics to get you to buy obscure (and worthless) variations of your domain. Stick to the common variations if you’re going to do this.

Don’t be fooled by emails like this. Think about it: did you even know there was a domain ending with .cn or .Asia? Most people don’t, because the .coms and .nets and .orgs are the most common. And even if you did know it, how often do you visit domains with those endings? Not very often, I’m sure.  And if your site is already on the .com, it’s highly unlikely that the obscure domain variation would ever be a threat to your domain.

But if you are truly worried and somehow convinced you should buy every conceivable domain possible related to yours, then at least go through GoDaddy or somewhere reliable and affordable. Don’t let a scammer or spammer trick you into buying anything they have for sale.

You can protect your domain just by understanding when  and why it’s necessary, and then take the correct measures to do so.

The latest issue of Creative Times Magazine is out and available for download. As always, our business article can be found in each issue.  The article for this issue is called, Giving Your  Customers Your Website 411. The magazine is always chock full of information, resources, patterns, and just good old crafty goodness! So check it out.

Creative Times Magazine

If your online business involves using a lot of photos, you might occasionally have the need to convert an image from one format to another. When I need to do this myself, I often use my Paint Shop Pro program. However, since I only have that on my laptop, and I work more on my desktop PC, I don’t always want to do the two-computer-tango just to convert an image. So I’ve found some online image converter resources that I have found to be handy, and equally as effective. So thought I’d share them with you, in case you might have similar conversion needs.

Go2Convert

CoolUtils Image Converter

Convert Hub

If you know of any other great converter resources, drop a comment and let me know.

Did you realize that your website looks different depending upon which browser you use to view it in? It does…and believe it or not, many online business owners/website owners do not realize this.  And what also you may not realize is that your website could be displaying improperly or with errors in other browsers that you don’t use. So when you’re working on your website, or just designing it for the first time, you should make it a habit to compare how your website looks in the most common browsers.

According to the Internet Browser Review for 2010, the top 5 browsers are as follows:

1. Firefox
2. Google Chrome
3. Internet Explorer
4. Opera
5. Safari

So, theoretically speaking, you should check and see how your browser looks in at least the top three browsers, just to make sure it’s rendering correctly in the most popular in the list. But how do you do that? I’m gonna tell ya! There’s a great website called Browser Shots, and it does just that: lets you see what your website looks like in any browsers you wish, just by entering your URL and checking which browsers you’d like to compare.

Since you want your customers and website visitors to have the best experience possible, be sure to do a regular check as to how your website is displaying in other browsers. If your website isn’t displaying correctly, you can lose traffic that you have worked all too hard to get, and that’s definitely not good for business!

We use the Google Friend Connect gadget here at OBJ. You can see it on the right side of the blog. If you click on any photo icon you see in our Followers list, a window will open that shows you a brief profile of the follower, along with the other blogs they follow, and their own website information (if applicable).  You can click on any of those links to visit those blogs and/or websites. You can add followers as friends, and you can also send them a message, if you like.

Google Friend Connect is a wonderful marketing and social networking tool. I highly recommend it! If you’d like more info, just follow the link below.

Google Friend Connect

One of the pitfalls of running a topsites list is the tendency of website owners to completely ignore their list site once it’s setup.  And to me, that’s just not good business. Your topsites list is a direct reflection of your website, and of you as its owner. As such, you should work to maintain that list and the integrity of your professionalism as a business owner. So below are some things that I see all too often on topsites list pages, and they are things you should work to avoid.

1. Broken Image Links: This is really one of the biggest things to avoid because it makes your entire topsites list page look sloppy and unprofessional. If your list contains a lot of broken image links where members’ banners should be, you need to either remove them, or email the members to request the correct URLs for their banners and update them. Make it a habit to check your topsites page at least once a month and get rid of those broken links.
2. Too Many Ads: A lot of topsites list owners sell ad space at the top of their list pages. That’s fine. But when you have too many ads, that’s a problem. I’ve seen topsites list sites with 30 or 40 ads at the top, before I even get the list members banners. Some have more ads at the bottom too! You want to have a well-populated and active topsites list membership, but why should anyone bother to join your list if their own ads will never get noticed? Keep your ads to a minimum–no more than 10 or 15 (less is always better).
3. Reset Never: If your list is set to never reset, that means that new members pretty much have zero chance of ever having their banner link make it to the first page. I visit lists all the time where the front page members have hundreds of  hits in, so this is the tip off to me that the list never resets. Once I scroll down to the bottom of the list, I can usually confirm this because it will say, Next Reset: Never. And guess what? I don’t join those lists. You  need to give ALL your list members a fair chance to reach the first page. What’s the point of having it otherwise? At the very least, your list should be set to reset every 30 days.
4. List Ambiguity: I have seen far too many topsites list pages without a clear explanation of whom their list is targeted to. If you’re promoting primitive or country sites, your list should say so. If you’re promoting WAHM sites,  or Jewelry sites or Doll sites, whatever it may be, your list should say so. Make it clear to potential members and shoppers exactly what kind of sites can be found on your list. Either make it clear in the title of your list, or add a descriptive paragraph at the top of the list page with this information.
5. Unreadable Fonts: Many topsites list pages have fonts that are extremely difficult to read. The fonts may be too small, or an odd color, or just too busy a font to read. Again, this just looks sloppy and unprofessional. If your goal is to help other website owners promote their business and get more traffic, then their website information needs to be readable. So choose fonts that are large enough, simple enough, and a readable color that is easy on the eyes.

And just two final points to ponder…if you join topsites lists. First, don’t put your voting banner links on the main page of your website. The reason is pretty simple: you work hard to drive traffic to your website, so why send it away to other sites as soon as it gets there?! Create a new page for your voting links, and just link to that page from your main page. And second, click on your voting links yourself on occasion! The whole point of joining the list is to get more exposure, and to do that, you need to try to get to the front page of the list (because that’s where it’s going to get noticed!). That won’t happen without votes. So help yourself out and vote for yourself once in awhile.

]]> http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/2010/03/tips-for-topsites-list-owners/feed/ 0 http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/2010/03/selling-from-your-blog/ http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/2010/03/selling-from-your-blog/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:00:29 +0000 admin http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/?p=685 There are a lot of people selling from their blogs these days, either as an additional way to generate sales, or as a means to replace web hosting that they may no longer be able to afford in our struggling economy.

If you are interested in selling from your blog, please check out my article in the latest issue of Creative Times Magazine. I offer information and advice on how to do just that within the article. Click the link below to be taken to the magazine’s download page.

Selling From Your Blog Article at Creative Times Magazine

Dropbox

Install this program and any time you add files to it, they are instantly backed up online. Install it on multiple computers and sync them, and then whatever files you add to your Dropbox on one computer will automatically appear on the other computer as well. This, my friends, will save ME a lot of work. Normally, when I want to transfer files from my laptop to my desktop PC or vice versa, I have one of three options:

1. Copy the files to a flash drive and use that to transfer.
2. Upload the files to a storage site online on one computer, then go to the other computer and snag them from online.
3. Email them to myself between computers.

Those methods all work, but they are much more time-consuming. Dropbox will speed up this process and move it right along! You can also create public folders to share documents between friends, family, or colleagues.

Their basic 2GB account is free. You can upgrade to various levels of paid versions, the cheapest being 50GB for $9.95 per month. I’m starting with the free version, because I think that will do me nicely for awhile. This is really one of the coolest file storage/backup sites I’ve seen for awhile, so I had to share it with you. And hey, you can get free extra storage space, simply by referring someone, OR by following someone’s referral link! Now that’s what I call a perk!