How to Monitor your Website Uptime
Whether your creating your first website or looking to improve upon the one you have, you’ll have to choose or review where to host the website. Website hosting can be thought of as an online file cabinet that is used to store your website files and data. Not all website hosts are the same, and it can be difficult to find a host that is both low in price, but great with customer service.
There are many different hosting providers out there
If your website experiences frequent downtime, it could affect your Search Engine Rankings. Thankfully there are some tools available to monitor your website uptime and ensure your getting that 99.9% uptime!
You can track your websites uptime using the FREE tools below.
Twitter Basics
- What is Twitter?
- How to Use Twitter
- Desktop Clients
- Cell Phone Apps
- Sending Photos on Twitter
- Search Twitter
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? You then reply using up to 140 characters. Twitter will automatically shorten any long URLs that you enter.
How to Use Twitter
You can begin to post updates & find friends using the Twitter website. If you use Firefox, you can install an addon that will allow you to use Twitter from within the Firefox browser.
Desktop Clients
Mac OS X
Download Twitterrific
PC
Download Digsby
(MAC / LINUX Support coming soon)
Cell Phone Apps
IPHONE
Windows Mobile 6.0
Download ceTwit
Sending Photos on Twitter
Twitpic is a service that will allow you to share your photos on Twitter using your cell phone, API, or using their website.
View Image
http://twitpic.com/hvdc
Search Twitter
You can use Twitter Search to lookup news, politics or any other topic.
Happy Tweeting!
Get More StumbleUpon Traffic
StumbleUpon is a Web 2.0 site that allows users find and rate Websites, photos, and videos. Many website owners have found an increase of traffic from using StumbleUpon.
Follow the tips to below to get more traffic from StumbleUpon:
- Create a detailed Profile
- Produce Unique Content
- Participate in the Community
- Thank those who give you a Thumbs Up, or Review
- Do Not SPAM the site or it’s members
- Tag pages correctly
- Install Toolbar
EBAY purchased StumbleUpon in May of 2007 and have since put it up for sale with Deutsche Bank (Sept. 2008). What does the future hold for Stumbleupon? The number of registered users has been increasing, but the number of visitors has declined from 4.4 million to 1.3 million between July 2007 and July 2008.
What do you think will happen to StumbleUpon in the Future?
Choosing a Phone Number
Choosing a phone number is an important step in business planning.
Sites such as www.phonespell.org can help you come up with combinations that are easily remembered.
Vonage has unlimited local and long distance call plans strating at $25.00 /month. One thing to keep in mind though is if your Internet connection goes down, so does your phone line.
Vonage allows you to tack on an 800 number to your local plan for an additional $5/month.
Using an 800 number in advertisements, and on your website can help increase conversions.
Real Estate Agents – Making the most out of your downtime
Although the Real Estate market has gone downhill in Michigan, there are still a great number of experienced agents that don’t want to give up on their chosen career path. 5 year ago agents were busy on the phone, replying to emails, faxing, & driving all over town meeting buyers/sellers. I learned a lot about the Real Estate market from my Macomb County Realtor.
The market has since changed, but this doesn’t mean their won’t be a need for a Real Estate Agent. Squidoo has put together a website which allows realtors/brokers to establish themselves as local experts in the areas they service.
Real Estate agents are able to post information about the city/county they want to target most from a Real Estate standpoint. They can include information such as prime neighborhoods, school district information, other general information that would be informative to a current/future buyer.
This will establish a relationship with potential new clients. Whether buying, or selling people would much rather use a Real Estate agent they can trust.
Next steps if your a Real Estate agent or Broker.
- Become the online Mayor of your zip code
- Create website
- Create blog (host this on same domain as your website, i.e. contemedia.com/blog instead of contemedia.wordpress.com)
- If you already have a website, revamp it to meet the current markets needs
- Monetize your success after you’ve established yourself as an authority in your field
Use this downtime as an opportunity to use your knowledge in a field that is getting a lot of negative attention. People are still buying and selling houses, maybe not in the numbers they were once were. But, I think more effort needs to be put in, if you intend to be in the Real Estate business for the long haul.
Communicating more effectively with your website visitors!
Before website owners had to rely on older methods of communication such as phone, fax & email to communicate with website visitors. This made it difficult for website owners to take full advantage of what the Internet offers.The Internet offers a way to present your business to the world without restrictions of physical location, hours of operation & holiday breaks. Your e-commerce storefront is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Some newer methods of communicating with website visitors
- Live Chat
- Animated Speaking Characters
- Forums
- Blogs
- Chatrooms
In the past website visitors would place a phone call, or send an email to the storefront owner with their question. Next, after the phone call, or email was placed they would continue to move onto further comparison shopping. You now have the opportunity to immediately respond to a customer.
Providing livechat on your website is another tool for communicating with your customer.
Live Chat Software
- LivePerson – Cost $50 per month, per operator
- Dot Net Live Help – Cost $200, 1 time fee, unlimited operators
It’s easy to see if your competitors are already using this tool, the live help icon will be displayed prominently on their website.
5 Reasons to Implement Live Chat on your website
Free Classified Sites
There are so many FREE classified sites online that want your listing.
Placing an ad on the sites listed below is a great tool. The traffic you will receive from the classified sites won’t be monumental, but the traffic they do send will be highly targeted. This will increase your chances for better conversion, depending on what type of listing you place.
Before you will able to start posting you should create an account on each of the free classified sites below. Creating your account will allow you to receive stats about your listing, as well as making it easier to stop/renew your classified listing. I recommend setting up a new email account for all of your online marketing ventures. This will keep your main email account inbox from being flooded with unimportant emails.
Real Life Scenario
I placed a help wanted ad on craigslist.org & backpage.com and within 3 hours I had to remove them. The client had already received an overwhelming number of phone calls/emails about the position. The best part was is the online classified listing was the only type of classified we could place in such short notice.
Free Classified Sites
adlandpro.com
adpost.com
backpage.com
bestadforum.com
caklassifieds.com
chooseyouritem.com
ClassifiedAds.com
classifieds.myspace.com
ClassifiedsForFree.com
craigslist.org
domesticsale.com
epage.com
ezilon.com
freeadpost.freeforums4u.com
freeads.biztop.com
FreeAdvertisingForum.com
freeadvertisingzone.com
google.com/base
hoobly.com
inetgiant.com
isell.com
itsmymarket.com
kijiji.com
livedeal.com
loot.com
morefreeadsforum.freeforums4u.com
olx.com
oodle.com
thefreeadforum.com
uscity.net
usfreeads.com