If you are thinking of building a website that will have high traffic, is image intensive, distributes products and is built on the WordPress framework, then you should pay attention right about now. All of the above is going to be putting some serious strain on your hosting server, whether it is a dedicated server or a simple shared environment (such as Hostgator or BlueHost , etc). As such, a really neat trick (and one that many of the big players have been using for quite some time) is to make use of of Amazon S3! What’s that you say, ” Don’t they sell books and stuff?”, well yes they do! But they have also got some unbelievable infrastructure that is available for anyone to use at extremely low cost!

All you need to do is sign-up for an Amazon S3 account (its free) and then go ahead and download this brilliant plug-in called WordPress Total Cache which will speed up and optimize your WordPress site’s performance while also turning into into a Content Delivery Network (CDN) all on auto pilot!!! Instead of only having your (more than likely) tiny web server doing all the work in serving your web pages to the world, you will have the might of millions (if no billions) of dollars of investment in IT infrastructure at your disposal. Thus allowing your website to perform well in circumstances where it normally would have crashed!

So what’s the fuss? Why should you go to the effort?

1. It’s actually not such an effort to install a plug-in and type in a couple API keys (the plug-in basically walks you through the setup)
2. It’s will save you money in the long run (especially if you plan on selling online)
3. It adds professionalism to your endeavor by making your site faster
4. It allows you to scale your business at low cost (for more cost information check here)

Well, that just about all I have time for, but please feel free to let me know if anyone needs more information or some help with this as it is well worth the effort, I guarantee it!

1) Get involved and stay committed

Do something without expecting anything in return. This means you need to get involved in the community and share your experience and skills. In the long run you will reap the benefits of some serious goodwill, and who knows…maybe one day you might need a favour or help and I guarantee that there will be people ready and willing to help.  Another thing to keep in mind is that once you start something, see it through to the finish. People will respect you for it.

2) Cultivate your reputation on an individual basis

You need to be approachable and show an interest in people. Everyone is a potential client and should therefore be treated with respect. Respond to people’s queries as soon as possible and never ever say no. If you can’t do something, find someone who can. Make friends with people and learn about their needs, it is much easier to provide a service to someone when you know exactly what they are looking for.

3) Choose your projects wisely

It’s always great to try and push the boundaries of your capabilities, but make sure that you take on projects that you are able to complete and that are of the highest quality. There is no better way to build a great reputation than to deliver something that exceeds the client’s expectations.

4) If you make a mistake, make it right as soon as possible

We are all human and are bound to make mistakes every now and then, but its how we deal with those mistakes that make all the difference. A client will be very forgiving if you make a mistake and then go out of your way to fix it or make up for it. But if you don’t, you will have lost that customer for good. Even worse still, you would have severely tarnished your reputation, because as we all know, bad news travels way faster than good news.

So, my advice would be to take great care when dealing with people, you never know how your business could be affected by one simple encounter.I really hope you find this information useful.

Feel free to share it with others or bookmark it on sites like StumbleUpon, etc. Also, I would love to hear some opinions or views in the comments…maybe you have something to add?<-->

1.  Choose the right hosting company

Anyone who knows anything about e-business will tell you that a hosting company can often be a deciding factor in the life of your business. Obviously, if your website crashes or is vulnerable to attack it could spell disaster for your newly started business. If your host cannot guarantee up time of at least 99%, if not 100%, then you should not even look at them as an option.  Also, the amount of bandwidth included in your hosting package should be considered very carefully. This is where planning on your part will come in. You should think big and budget for plenty of growth in your business. This means that as your website grows, your bandwidth usage will grow and you should be ready for this. Make sure that you aren’t stuck in a situation where you have to pay exorbitant prices for additional bandwidth. I personally recommend IPower for hosting.

2.  Get a blog

It doesn’t matter what you sell or what service you provide, a blog can be an extremely powerful marketing tool for your business. By blogging, you are “spreading the news” about your business as well as providing good quality information to your readers (hopefully), which leads them to becoming return visitors, thereby increasing the likelihood of them becoming customers in the future.  Obviously if you are primarily a blogger then you would have to ask what blogging platform you should use. The answer to this question is simple… Word Press.

3.  Build a good reputation

I cannot stress this point enough. There are millions of other e-businesses and blogs out there and in order to be successful, you must make sure that you differentiate yourself. The best way to accomplish this is to make sure that everything you do adds to your reputation. Always be honest, sincere and trustworthy, and make sure that you treat your customers or readers with the utmost respect.

4.  Write good content

There is no substitute for good content. Whether you are writing a blog or building an e-commerce website, what you write and how you write it can make a huge impact on whether a visitor will return to your website or not. By having well-written and relevant content, you send a message that you are here to stay, thereby giving confidence to potential customers.

5.  Collaborate and share ideas

A good way to build good quality traffic for your website or blog is to comment on blogs in similar niches as your own.  Give your point of view and share your ideas with others and you will see that by building these relationships with others you will create a network of return visitors and customers.

6. Syndicate your content

This is one of the great benefits of blogging and the Word Press platform. The ability to easily syndicate your content on many other websites, thereby increasing your exposure and driving free traffic to your website is invaluable. Services such as Blog Rush, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Digg, and many others can be powerful allies in building a successful online presence.

I hope you have found this information interesting and useful, obviously the strategies outlined above are not the only ones available to you, there are many more that I haven’t mentioned. If you have found a strategy that worked really well for you, why not let me know with a comment below? Also, if you enjoyed this article please feel to add it to any one of the social networking website below (the little icons).

As you may know, I offer consulting services for anyone who is interested in starting their own e-business or blog, as well as for anyone who is looking to take their blog or e-business to the next level. Now, it seems there has been some confusion over this… I currently don’t charge for my services because my main focus at the moment is on building my online brand and growing my businesses, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t help you at the same time!

So, with that said, I would like to encourage you to contact me if you need any help or advice regarding setting up your e-business or blog. I’m not going to do it for you, but I’m pretty sure that I can help you avoid all the early mistakes that people make when embarking on a venture like this.

Ok, now that you know a little more about what I do, feel free to drop me a mail through my contact page and I promise I will get back to you ASAP 

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So…are you using website tracking software correctly? Let me know…

I have decided to describe a few of the most popular packages in use today. These software options are used by millions of stores around the world. When considering a shopping cart (as they are commonly called) you need to consider the language (code) that they are written in as well as the database which it supports. This is very important because it will influence which hosting provider you select to host your website.

osCommerce

This is an open source software package, it is totally free to use and modify. It comes with a number of useful features that are quite easy to use and configure. The site can have an almost unlimited number of products which can be organized into categories. You can also set various discount and promotions. The site allows you to accept most popular payments methods (PayPal, credit cards, cheques,etc). 

Zen Cart

This is an e-commerce solution that has been developed by a number shop owners, programmers, designers and fanatics who have a lot of experience with e-commerce stores. It is a free open source solution with a user-friendly design.

CS-Cart

This is a high quality paid software solution that costs $195 but comes with a 1 month technical assistance package. It is written in PHP and MySql. Installation is very easy with an automated setup. The admin area is very user friendly and easy to understand. The cart has been integrated with more than 35 popular payment gateways such as PayPal, 2CheckOut, GoogleCheckOut, WorldPay, etc. It includes 5 professional templates.It has also an advanced Order management tool, Affilate add-on, Product configurator, Feature comparison and Gift Registry modules.

CubeCart

This is an eCommerce package written in PHP & MySQL. You can setup a powerful online store as long as you have hosting supporting PHP and one MySQL database. CubeCart is very powerful and easy to connect to various payment gateways.

Virtuemart (formerly known as php-Shop)

This is an independent open-source shopping cart solution. However, it is better known as an e-commerce component for Mambo or Joomla! CMS.

Those are just a few of the options available to you. If you haven’t read the first part in this series please see Part 1.

Useful link:

Opening a Web Shop with E-Commerce Software.

For those who don’t know, hosting is an absolutely vital part of your e-commerce success. It is extremely difficult to get your business online if you don’t have an adequate hosting company. Many large online businesses host their own websites, but for a small startup, this is out of the question. Your host will handle all the necessary technical issues that relate to keeping your site on the internet.

Choosing a hosting company can be daunting task, especially if you have no understanding or no interest in understanding the ins and outs of this technology. So, where do you begin? Firstly let me say that you have a couple of options, you can host locally or internationally, you can also host on a Linux server or you can host on a windows server.

Hosting locally has many benefits, some of which I’m sure you guessed. Let me list a few of these advantages: Local support, faster loading websites for local users and no downtime related to the international link being down. The major disadvantage for local hosting, however, is simply the cost of bandwidth. Once your site begins growing and gets more and more traffic, it’s going to be using more and more bandwidth and you are going to be charged heavily for that bandwidth.

Hosting internationally can work out a lot cheaper, but there are also some difficulties. As mentioned above, when the international connection goes down you site will be unavailable to local users. Your site will load quite a lot slower than a locally hosted site. Overall it’s a good idea to do a lot of research into exactly what your needs will be.

In terms of choosing whether or not to host on a Linux server or a Windows server you need to consider your e-commerce software needs which will be discussed in a future post of this series. In short, most e-commerce software has certain requirements and most often can only be hosted on a Linux server.

Useful links:

WordPress on Speed: 17 Tweaks to Accelerate your WP

Top 50 Guides for Beginning Web Developers

If you have a dream to be financially independent and really want it bad enough… then to my mind there is nothing standing in your way to making that dream a reality. One of the main purposes of my blog is to help you to reach that dream. I’m passionate about helping others to become successful and I believe that business is not always about competition. We can collaborate to create new vale for ourselves as well as others.

The internet is the perfect medium to achieve your financial goals because of the pure scope that can be achieved! You can create a global business that has the potential to reach millions of people and you can do that in minutes. Now, that doesn’t mean that your success is going to be immediate! It is going to take time and some seriously hard work… That to me is the biggest misconception that people have about the internet. Let me just say this right now…get rich quick doesn’t exist!

With that said, if you focus on filling a need and providing value in everything you do, whether it is value for yourself (enjoying what you do) or value for the client (providing a great product or service), you will succeed! Why? Because people are smart….they can tell when you are sincere and not out to just make a quick buck.

I hope that these few words of advice are helpful and that maybe you become motivated to get up and go start something…Change the world!

(Image by Vladimir)