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This page describes numerous resources for webmasters and would-be webmasters, with links to each and every one of them. It is updated on a regular basis. You may want to study it in following steps:
Because this page is constantly updated, it could easily grow to unmanageable size. To prevent that, often only a brief summary of more detailed topics appears on this page. In that case, you will find a magic wand, just like this one, displayed at the left of the summary. Wave the wand, kids—I mean click on it, and you will technomagically whiz to the more detailed discussion of the topic. |
This banner was supplied by SAFE Audit
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Many of us run several web sites with different topics. Typically, we started by building them with the freebies, and later got a more business-oriented site. But we still keep the free ones for non-business purposes. Why? Because, I can tell you one thing: Being a webmaster, is FUN! |
First of all, of course, you need a web site. If you already have one, good. If not, it is a good idea to test your skills using one of the free services offered. If this applies to you, go ahead and check out FortuneCity (see the banner above). You will get a FREE 20 MB web site and an e-mail address.
But PLEASE, follow the rules. One of the rules common to just about ALL free web site services is no advertising. This is a very reasonable rule. Please, do not try to bypass it.
Why? Well, while the web site may be free to YOU, someone else is paying lots of money for the service. They, of course, need to recover their cost, or else they cannot afford to continue providing these free services. Their main source of income is advertising. That is, THEY advertise, so YOU get something for free.
This is truly a great deal. So, please, do not try to compete with them or cheat them: You would be biting the hand that feeds you, and cutting the branch you are sitting on!
Once you have gained experience, and feel you are ready for a web site with your own ads, there are many ISP’s (Internet service providers) all over the world, all competing with each other. This spells “good news” for you: Because of the fierce competition, you can easily start a basic web site for under $10/month. Even so, if you are just starting, I suggest you cut your teeth on a free site.
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Use Web Site Garage for a thorough tune-up of your site. They will check your HTML code, run a spell check, test your site for dead links and much more. Then they will offer useful suggestions on how to improve it. All that for free. Simply enter your URL in the box and press Go!, no appointment is necessary.
Click on the banner above to obtain some very useful CGI scripts. Make sure to click on the free button: You will be able to find several free scripts. They also offer some very interesting and useful scripts for sale.
 | Want to learn CGI programming on your own? Take a look at The CGI/Perl Cookbook, by Craig Patchett, Matthew Wright, and Peter Holfelder. Click on the link for more information about the book. It has received four and a half stars (out of five) by readers who left comments about it at amazon.com. |
Very notable is Rob Young’s SUPERB CGI TUTORIAL FOR NON-PROGRAMMERS on his web site. You do not need to know Unix, CGI or Perl, to study it. You will soon learn hot to create your own CGI scripts in Perl.
Last, but certainly not least, make sure to visit Whiz Kid Technomagic’s own CGI PROGRAMMING IS SIMPLE! This is a hands-on tutorial which allows you to learn by experimentation.
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The Search Engine Book - Net Traffic has helped several fortune 500 companies get their site to the top of the engines and is now sharing its knowledge through the search engine book. The Search Engine Book gives you all of the secrets to get your site in the top of the search engines. |
It is essential to submit your web site to search engines. You also need to keep track of various search engines. Just because your site has been listed in a search engine does not mean it stays listed forever!
You may think that you could take care of your submissions yourself, but there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of such engines around the Internet. Fortunately, submission services are available. Most of them offer a free submission to a small number of engines, and will submit your listing to hundreds of engines for a small fee.
Which one of the services you choose depends on your needs. For example, if your site is large and contains many pages, you may want to choose a service that will offer a discounted price for the submission of multiple pages.
Several such services are listed below. You should probably visit them all and compare their prices and what services they offer. You may even decide to use more than one such service, again, depending on your needs.
 This link provides a wide variety of promotional services, some of them free. |
POSITIONAGENT, monitors where your web site is ranked on leading search engines for selected keywords and reports all listings and positions to help you get more hits. |
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If, for some reason, you were to submit to only ONE search engine, it should probably be AltaVista. For one thing, it is the easiest search engine to submit to: All they are asking for is the URL of the page you want to submit. But, more importantly, many other search engines will send you to AltaVista if they cannot find you. For your convenience, you can submit your site to AltaVista right from here: When done, you can click the Back button of your browser to return here.
Wave the wand to submit to more search engines now. GUESS WHAT: One of these will technomagically make you appear on Netscape Web Directory! This is quite important considering Netscape users are always only a click away from it! |
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Just as it is important to be promoted by search engines and resource sites such as this one, it is vital to promote your web site offline, that is to say, in the real world. After all, most of your potential visitors do not live on the Internet.
This topic is so important that it requires a separate page. Just wave the wand to whiz to it.
Use a counter on every page to keep track of the number of visitors you had. You can get a free counter from LinkExchange, just like the one at the bottom of this page.
If you have CGI access on your site, and your site runs on a Unix-style server (such as FreeBSD), you can also design your own web counter in Graphic Counter Language. Having your own counter is better than using any of the services. Reason? The external counter servers get so much traffic that they will skip many times. In my experience, the external counter services have often recorded as few as 10% of visitors to my web site (compared to my web logs)!
Net advertising can work for you two ways: You can pay others to place a link to your web site to increase your traffic. Or you can accept ads (banner ads—like the one above, buttons, plain text ads) from others and get paid for it.
Of course, trying to find advertisers for your site, or trying to find sites to post your ads would be a tedious process. After all, the number of web sites is increasing geometrically.
Fortunately, just as there are advertising agencies for the printed media, radio, and television, you can use online services that handle both sides of advertising for you. Here is the link (yes, it is an ad!) for one of the biggest:
The above ad also summarizes how payments are handled: Most ads pay a few cents for each click-through. That is every time a user clicks on the ad and transfers to the advertised web site the advertiser pays several cents. Some ads are commision based: the advertiser pays either a fixed amount or a percentage of proceeds only after a sale is made. Finally, some advertisers combine both methods.
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If you are trying to sell anything on the Internet, you simply must accept credit cards. This topic is so important that Whiz Kid Technomagic has a separate page dedicated to the topic. Please click here, or wave the magic wand, to whiz to it.
You may also want to take advantage of the reseller programs most merchant account providers offer. Just click on the various banners you will find in the credit section mentioned in the previous paragraph and look for an affiliate program link. Then fill out an online application. In most cases you will instantly receive an e-mail message telling you what link to place on your web site.
All of these programs work pretty much the same—it almost seems like the same person designed the programs and even the HTML code for them. Nevertheless, ONE such program stands out of the rest. The MerchantAccountsPLUS+ program offers many pages of USEFUL and PRACTICAL marketting information, which includes suggestions on where to get banners, how to get listed on search engines, and other resources for webmasters. It is worth joining this program even if you may decide not to link your site to theirs (although, I do not see why you wouldn’t).
Add Crosswords To Web Sites - Free Java system provides interactive crosswords for online game play. Add entertaining content to bring readers back using promotional scavenger hunts!
To find out what other sites link to yours, go to AltaVista, and type your URL (e.g., www.whizkidtech.net) into the search engine.
Electronic Business Marketting Kit. This site discusses marketting information on the web.
Interview with Internet Marketing Success Story: Corey Rudl. Marty Foley, publisher of ProfitInfo Email Newsletter, interviews Internet marketing guru Corey Rudl. For many savvy online entrepreneurs, Corey needs no introduction. For the rest of us:
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Web Site Banner Advertising (Mark Welch's web sites) - Information about ad networks, brokers, reps, pay-per-click ads, pay-per-sale / partner / commission programs, ad serving software, banner exchanges, counters and trackers, log analysis, and MUCH MORE!
Promotion Software - Software for all your web promotion needs, from meta tags, to search engine submission, to search engine tracking.
The Internet Marketing Associates Program - This program has been consistently rated as the #1 associates program on the web. It pays a very generous commission with no involvement from you (except for signing up and setting up a link to their site, of course). It is definitely worth taking a look at!
More added regularly (sometimes several times a day)!
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Copyright © 1998 G. Adam Stanislav
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