13 Ways to Earn Money Fast

July 31st, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, High Profit No Comments » 112 views

Everybody needs a quick infusion of cash from time to time. These ideas bring in money fast, and many can also be done at flexible times, so it’s easier to arrange child care with a friend or family member for free.

  1. Have a garage sale. By using a few easy tricks, like posting fliers at grocery stores and Laundromats, making signs that can be seen from nearby busy streets and displaying your items in a department-store style, you can increase the amount your sale brings in. Find out how to earn more with Garage Sale 101 tips.
  2. Sell on eBay. Books, CDs, unused sports or exercise equipment, clothing, novelty items — people buy all kinds of things. Even if you’re selling several small items, the money can add up. Just make sure the buyer, not you, pays the cost of shipping.
  3. Put clothes on consignment. This is an especially good way to get rid of clothing like fancy dresses (think old prom gowns and cocktail dresses you’ll never wear again), but anything in good condition can be put on consignment. You share the money from the sale with the consignment shop, but it’s an easy way to squeeze some money out of clothes that would otherwise just take up closet space.
  4. Perform household services. You can earn some money informally by letting friends, family, church members and others in your community know that you’re available to clean their houses or apartments, or to take in ironing. If you find you have a knack and stamina for cleaning quickly and thoroughly, you can turn this into a regular, reliable way to earn extra money every month.
  5. Have a bake sale. Do you make killera chocolate chip cookies? chocolate chip cookies? Are yummy breakfast burritos your specialty? If so, why not bring in your items once a week to your job and sell them to coworkers and other businesspeople in the vicinity? If you don’t have a job, what about a friend’s workplace, a community center or a nursing home? Put the word out beforehand and gauge the response as you go, so you don’t end up with a lot of leftover food. By talking up your home-baked goodies and arriving at the same time every day or every week, you may find that people start to anticipate your arrival. You can start a cottage industry along the lines of Mary’s Monday Cookie Break when you come around to hawk your wares.
  6. Sell homegrown fruits and vegetables. You don’t have to have a farm to produce delicious, organic produce. By presenting your goods in an appealing way (save the plastic or cardboard produce containers from the grocery store and tie them with a distinctive ribbon or desktop-printed label), you give them niche appeal, and you can sell them much the same way as baked items, listed above.
  7. Have a family car wash. Enlist your spouse, your kids and their friends on a Saturday to hold a car wash. Talk to local merchants who have parking lots and ask them to donate the space, or set up an assembly line on your street. By naming the event (”The Annual Jones Family Car Wash”) and highlighting an upbeat family goal (”We use this car wash to pay for the kids’ extracurricular school activities”), you give people a reason to join your cause.
  8. Do gardening services. Mowing lawns is a perennial summer job for kids. If you have a mower, encourage your children to launch a business—or do it yourself. In addition, you can also weed or haul gardening rubbish to the dump (often garbage services won’t remove it).
  9. Provide man-with-van services. Or, in this case, woman with van (or truck). This service is great for people who need to move a single piece of furniture or for young people who don’t have a lot of stuff. If you’re able to do moves on your own or with a helper like a friend or spouse, you can position yourself as a mother’s helper (a woman living alone might feel more comfortable having another woman moving something into or out of her home). If you don’t have a lot of physical strength, your husband and a cousin, uncle or son can do the heavy lifting and you can take care of scheduling and follow-up. A small classified ad in the local paper is an economical way to advertise.
  10. Get a paper route. While we often think of paper delivery as a job for a boy on a bike, all kinds of people pick up extra cash this way. Because papers are delivered in the morning, it’s possible to complete a route before the regular workday starts, or before your kids are up. (Just make sure you catch up on your sleep by going to bed early at night!)
  11. Dog walk and pet sit. Owners are always looking for reliable pet-care services. Plus, if you stay home with your kids during the day, a regular dog-walking gig is a great way to get everyone out of the house for some fresh air and earn extra money. Put the word out at pounds, the ASPCA, the local veterinarian’s and dog runs. Be prepared to provide references from anyone you’ve ever sat for before. Learn how you can also turn pet sitting into a home business.
  12. Babysit. To provide regular child care in your home, you’ll often need to be accredited and registered with the state. But occasional babysitting in your home or someone else’s is more straightforward. You might already babysit for friends for free, but by reaching out in your community you can find parents whom you would feel comfortable charging a reasonable fee — such as those belonging to common churches, PTAs or playgroups. Depending on your schedule, you can position yourself as a last-minute resource, a Saturday sitter while Mom does errands, a date-night sitter and so on.
  13. Rent out a room. This option might take longer than some of the others listed here, but it can provide steady income for a set period of time, or even indefinitely. It might require that your kids share a bedroom or that you give up a family room in the house, so everyone in the family should be prepared for the changes. And of course care should be taken to pick carefully to ensure you get a trustworthy boarder. This is an especially good option if you live near a university or technical college. Eighteen- to 22-year-olds will more likely be fine renting a room with kitchen privileges than older people, and you’ll be able to rent on a semester basis.

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Real make money with Affiliate Marketing ?

July 31st, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, High Profit No Comments » 52 views

With all the hassle about the recession, job layoffs etc. more and more people look into either making some additional income or even becoming completely financially independent. Online affiliate marketing is a good way to start your own business without the expenses and troubles associated with starting a traditional brick-and-mortar business. But before you start, you need to know a few things.

  • Don’t think that affiliate marketing is easy or that it will not require any time investment and effort on your part. Don’t trust the “gurus” talking about only spending 15 minutes a day - they may be at that stage but if you’re only starting, you will need to put a lot of effort into it to make it work.
  • Don’t put all your eggs into the same basket - even though it may take more time and effort, try at least a couple of affiliate programs to see which one will work better for you.
  • Start by promoting the offers you are genuinely interested in - be prepared that you will have to write and talk about these offers and of course it is much easier to talk about the stuff you know and like.
  • Take other people’s feedback about a product’s conversion rates with a grain of salt - you can promote the same product but you cannot copy their sites, get the same traffic they are getting and so on hence results will vary. On the other hand, DO listen to what people say about their marketing methods, tips and tricks where it applies to your product and your market niche - these tips can be very helpful and save you a lot of your own trial and error.
  • DO learn at least a bit about SEO and PPC - these are the main methods you will use for promoting your sites and products.
  • Keep track of what you are doing and analyze the results - this will help you fine tune your affiliate business.
  • Every product will most likely convert sooner or later - it’s a numbers game, a conversion depends on the traffic - how much of it you get and how targeted it is. However, you need to define for yourself what is the acceptable time and effort investment for the commission you would be getting. Some sites and/or products may convert at a rate of 1:10, others may convert at a rate of 1:50,000 - but if that 1:50,000 converting product brings you a commission of $10,000 you may still be interested in pursuing it.
  • When starting with any new product, research your market. See how much competition you got, see what they do, what works and what doesn’t.
  • Besides putting your effort into promoting the products, you can also build yourself a passive income source by building your affiliate downline - here are my downline building tips along with a list of affiliate programs I know of that have a downline option and pay you for sales made by affiliates you have recruited.

And remember - whatever you do, be persistant and determined to succeed. Don’t give up and then it’s sure to work for you!

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Article Marketing and Making Money Online

July 28th, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Internet Marketing, Tips No Comments » 81 views

Internet marketing has been around for awhile. Article marketing on the other hand is on the rise in being the most effective tool to gain much profitability over theinternet marketing arena. Though this has been used a lot of times in the affiliate marketing, article marketing works differently. People do not just submit articles with the goal in mind of getting quality traffic to a specific website but as well as to acquire required or valid back links from these sites as well.

Making money through the internet has been one of the most common goal and the most frequent entered search in various search engines more specifically Google. There are a lot of ways on how to earn extra bucks through the internet. People are on the look to search and explore for the most innovative and effective ways of making money through the internet. The reason behind this is the fact that the profitability and the possibility of success of internet business are very promising. With the significant profitability ofinternet marketing, there are a lot of possibilities to explore!

The convenience of setting up your own online business is lucrative enough for a lot of investors wishing to make a fortune through the internet. However, it is not quite easy to just wake up and start making the money online. The success of yourinternet marketing may take some creativity, time and sheer hard work to start making online wealth for your business.

Article marketing can be one of the best tools to achieve a more profitable status for your site. Internet marketing is all about traffic generation. People would want to read things over the internet. The best approach of keeping them sticky and would make them come back to your site on a regular basis, you must provide ample articles with much quality, information and creativity. People would want to read what is hot and in. They look for viable information on how to do things, do it yourself tips as well as simple guidelines for specific activities or situations. It is all about the information you include in your website. Keep in mind that the goal is to get the attention of blog readers and start making up stick to what you have for your blog. It is always the best choice of topics that would make your readers a lot more curious on the articles you post.

Article writing is not just about posting an article. You need to invest on your writing skills and creativity. There is a need to proofread your articles before you post them to avoid errors in grammar and spelling.

Writing articles for your site is a viable option as an internet marketing approach. This can really stand out among those who would want to earn some bucks. The internet is all about content of blogs , thus you might lunch a site or blog today. The best method is attracting traffic through posting articles saturated with information and substance.

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Making Good Money through Effective Affiliate Marketing

July 28th, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Internet Marketing No Comments » 49 views

Affiliate Marketing has offered quite an opportunity for making money online. All you basically need is a good site with good traffic. All things become easy after having the site, in on time you’ll be earning money. What’s basically essential here is the agreement between the seller and the buyer and the owner of the site or web portal. The website owner or commonly called as ‘affiliate’ promotes the merchant’s products through a stated link that brings customers to the merchant’s site. Visitors and potential customers coming to the affiliate website can notice the visible link, thru this; some traffic is then directed to that online shop. Each time a sale is generated through the affiliated website,the affiliate earns a commission.

This way, more sales are generated, and more money the affiliate earns.

Here are the benefits when it comes to Affiliate Marketing:

Basically, Affiliate programs offer various benefits for website owners as well as merchants. They tend to offer a win-win situation as well as profitable for both parties. And here are some of those notables advantages:

  1. Earn From Home: Its basically a great thing that you can earn just by sitting at home, the best part is that you don’t have the need to leave the comforts of your home.
  2. It’s Hassle Free: Basically, good money can be simply earned from home. And there’s no more transport hustles included in it.
  3. No Investment needed: Investment upfront and production costs are no longer involved.
  4. No Risk: Considering that there are no risks involved, it’s one the safest ways to earn out there.
  5. No Contracts: Any long-term bond or contract is not needed and if ever you think the product is not selling, you’re free to choose another merchant or site to endorse.
  6. No Experience Required: You’re not required to be an expert in the fields of marketing and selling. Anyone can simply become an affiliate marketer.
  7. Join for Free: There’s no sign up fee, and you can join easily and instantly.

There are also benefits for marketers. There’s no need to hire emplyees, commission is only given on actual sales, and compared to traditional marketing options its much more faster and convenient.

Next is the choosing of your most appropriate program.

There are basically three programs to choose from:

  1. Cost-Per-Sale Program: Often called pay-per-sale affiliate program and is quite simple. Each time a product is sold through affiliate’s advertising, a commission is given intothe affiliate’s bank account.
  2. Pay-Per-Click Program: Also known as cost-per-click affiliate program. Each time a visitor visits the merchant’s website from the affiliate’s website, the affiliate earns a commission. Here, the commission depends mainly on the site’s visits and not the actual sales.
  3. Pay-Per-Lead Program: Or cost-per-lead affiliate program. Here the affiliate gets commission each time a visitor engages in some activity on the merchant’s website, like surveys or downloads.

Web affiliates offer great money making opportunities given that you select a good program. An important thing is the product or service you are endorsing should be relevant to your site. Good commission is another crucial thing. It is vital to check for the reputation of the marketer. It’s recommended that you read the document of terms and conditions as it contains certain undesirable hidden clauses. By keeping simple tips in mind, you find thataffiliate marketing program just for you in no time.

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Article Marketing – Effective Sales Improvement

July 28th, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Internet Marketing, Marketing Ideas No Comments » 181 views

Article marketing is probably one of the most effective ways in promoting a business. It’s a cost-effective way to publicize your site, and promote products and services online. It’s also the best and most powerful ways to drive targeted traffic to your site and make sales through Article Marketing.

The goal of small business web site article marketing is to increase sales and build customer base. By including article marketing to your many-sided marketing and sales plan, you can accomplish success in marketing your book. This is how article marketing can aid in promoting your business, it’s your choice.

Try to understand the ways in making your article effective so people can find your website. Set the right mood when it comes to article writing.

Article Marketing is a good alternative especially if you are on a tight budget. Its ability to send your website continuous targeted website traffic is something that you should be considered carefully if plan on using this method of online promotion. The types of articles that help develop a steady flow of new clients are the ones that are submitted to article directories, these help increase your exposure on search engines and in turn delivers even more traffic to your business site.

Take note, article marketing is still one of the best ways in driving web traffic to your site in a viral manner as more and more publishers publish your articles on their sites. Effective articles are the ones passed around the internet and appear on several sites and in ezines.

To get the most out of your article marketing efforts, take note you’re primary aim in writing are your viewers and search engines on second. Another benefit is that it helps your visibility on search engines. When done correctly, article marketing combines the benefits of public relations, positioning and search engine visibility.

Writing and submitting small business marketing articles to article directories on the internet have several benefits. Try to Research and make a list of free article directories you can find so you can simply pass your articles to the sites on your list when you’ve finished writing.

Take note of keywords and phrases, this is essential when you want your articles to be top on the search engines. Try visiting article directories, use the term “article directories” in Google to find plenty, and do a search on these directories to see what information other writers are submitting. The main benefit in writing articles and submitting them to directories is that it establishes you as an expert in your field.

The first benefit of writing and submitting articles online is that it helps to build your reputation and credibility as an expert. Next benefit is that onlinemarketing articles , is that they aid in developing reputation on your particular field or industry. Third benefit is that it helps to generate more links and traffic to your site.

By writing original industry specific small business marketing articles a company or individual can position themselves as experts in their particular field. This includes article publishing and niche marketing. Remember, Article Marketing is not an ad, so rush on writing about how great your product or service is but rather use information that can be useful to readers.

Writing articles may seem an easy thing to do, but you must remember that it’s also easy for someone else to do this as well. When writing your article, lay it out in your ‘key points’ so that readers will find it easy to understand. This way, you make things easy for both you and your readers.

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Social Media in Affiliate Marketing

July 25th, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Internet Business, Internet Marketing No Comments » 446 views

Web 2.0 has seen an emergence of a plethora of affiliates and social media websites. With the people understanding the nuances of affiliate marketing programs, the importance of social media is quite a big consideration.

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Promoting your affiliate system

  • The obvious question for affiliates marketers is – how do we promote our affiliate programs to generate more revenue? The answer lays in Social Media circles. Social Media has outgrown almost every possible source of digital advertising and promotion in today’s world. The fact that has helped social media experts is that consumers have turned a blind eye towards traditional forms of advertising.
  • Social media helps in creating the much required monetizing buzz for the affiliates to be successful. Successful affiliates have been implementing social media strategies from the initial days when the term was not even coined. It is the ability to create a buzz about a new product or a service in the market by a commission generating option that competes for one’s time, money and attention. Affiliates have used social media in its traditional forms such as the news groups, bulletin boards and emails. With the new trends such as PPC, SMO, etc. the chances of generating significant revenues have grown leaps and bounds.

Selecting the correct strategy

The key consideration lies in selecting the right social media strategy to boost your affiliate websites. It is thus advisable to select and implement the right strategy which sounds more significant to your work instead of playing trial and error with everything that can be implemented. Affiliates should thus focus more on the trusted channels of social media such as blogging, social bookmarking and social networks. The outreach can be extended to locating the niche audience in forums, communities, facebook pages and groups, etc.

Few reasons why affiliates should use social media for promotion include:

  • The monopoly of merchants and their restrictions to discontinue using certain sites and advertising channels compels one to look for social media to do the job in a better and cheaper way.
  • With a plethora of affiliates in the same competitive arena which focus more on the traditional means, it is always a smart option to choose social media as it brings in an added freshness in the approach.
  • Google is playing the spoil-sport by introducing PPC and SEO squeezes which has various restrictions and are not in the interest of affiliate marketing community. Social media herein comes handy and acts as an answer to the strict laws and regulations being laid down by Google.
  • The traditional methods have started sounding suspecting because of its monotonous nature. Consumers always look out for something new and Social Media has the potential to deliver and come up to the customer’s expectations. Today people spend a lo of time on Facebook, Twitter and other similar networks. Tapping them at places where they love to be would fetch better results.
  • Social media is dirt cheap to dirty your hands with. With time, one can learn the basics of the game. The simplicity of social media measures such as blogging, tweeting and creating fan pages allows you to get get going within minutes.
  • Social media doesn’t need you to be a journalist or a big shot in the internet space. Efficient practices can help you do wonders with your affiliate programmes.

Innovation is the key in social media strategies. If the innovation is right and it strikes the right chord, the affiliate rewards are more than one’s expectations.

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Common Affiliate marketing mistakes

July 25th, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Internet Marketing No Comments » 50 views

Affiliate Marketing in simple terms can be defined as an act in which a website drives traffic to another with online marketing efforts to generate a lead, sell a product or get a membership.

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Affiliate marketing has taken a high for the past few years and is a major source of income for a plethora of webmasters. Various websites have their affiliate programs running and they usually pay off a decent commission per sale.

However, just as every game has a few rules, Affiliate marketers should adhere to a few of them as well. We shall check out a few mistakes which an entry level affiliate marker usually makes;

  • Not dedicating yourself to one before starting another – Many Affiliate marketers tend to start affiliating for several different websites to make easy money from each of them. But this is not an advisable practice especially when you are a beginner. You should try to first learn the basics of Affiliate Marketing and concentrate and grow your business. In order to understand what Affiliate marketing can offer you should first dedicate yourself to one program before starting another.
  • Not concentrating on the pre-sale – An Affiliate marketer’s job is not to just sell the product but to concentrate on the pre-sale activity as well. Providing too much information on your website about your client will leave your client nothing to describe about his product. Alongside, providing too little information about your client’s product would end up visitor leaving the page without a deal. An Affiliates job is to describe the client’s product in such a manner that he feels inquisitive to click on your client’s link.
  • Not using the product – Whenever you are selling a product you should be confident about it. “People buy from people you and not from the company”. You should have at least tried the product before you to sell it; this would give you a higher degree of confidence while selling the same.
  • Not understanding pay-per-click – One should have a sound understanding of the pay per click if you want to become a successful Affiliate marketer. Pay per click advertisers use search engines to place their ads, but they pay only when the user finds their ad compelling and clicks on the ads to visit the advertisers web page. By using keywords, each advertiser can actually customize his/her pay per click advertising for a specific market of potential clients.
  • Not choosing the right product for you - Very often Affiliate marketers choose the highest paying program which may not be right for them. While choosing the right program 3 things should be kept in mind: Time, Payout and Usability. Before deciding an affiliate program, it is important to understand how much time you will dedicate on it to make yourself successful.
  • Not believing in yourself – If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right! You may feel a bit of apprehension in the beginning but later on once you understand the basics of Affiliate marketing and master them, you will become more confident and you could make it a successful business. Your excitement needs to translate confidence in yourself.
  • Not committing yourself for affiliate marketing program – There are many affiliate programs out there out of which some are very popular and some are not . You need to do a lot of research in finding out the best one’s for you. You need to be committed and focused towards building your affiliate program.

Affiliate marketing is all about building a strong consumer base, finding the niche products and their prospective consumers and marketing the product efficiently over the web. Let’s hope these pointers do some good for you as an affiliate marketer.

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Affiliates - How To Use Banner Ads

July 25th, 2010 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Internet Marketing No Comments » 40 views

One mistake lots of bloggers make all the time is that they promote affiliate products the same way they promote AdSense or other ad programs – by displaying banners in their sidebar. Although this isn’t the best way to make affiliate commissions, some banners do produce great results.

Just by looking at a banner, it’s impossible for you to gauge it’s effectiveness. Some banners seem polished and cool, but deliver a poor marketing message. Other banners seem dull but have compelling text or a good call-to-action.

The only way to be sure is to track your banners. Measure every impression and every click. Divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and you get what the industry calls a “Click Through Rate”.

So I don’t waste my time figuring out why a banner doesn’t produce much clicks, especially if it’s an affiliate banner that I have no editorial control over. I just delete the low-performing banners and replace them with new ones.

How much CTR you should aim for is really up to you, your niche market and the layout of your blog. Are you banners in the right places? Or are you hiding them in the footer where they just gather impression, but no one actually looks at them?

At the end of the day, the lesson here is that you need to track your banners, which most bloggers don’t do anyway. Where you get the tools you need to become a better affiliate blogger. Some affiliate networks – like Commission Junction – actually reveal the performance of each ad. That makes it easy for you to only use banners that work. However, almost all other networks like ClickBank, PayDotCom etc don’t track affiliate banners.

With Themeslib.com you can easily add, rotate, track and remove banners ads on your blog. You just need to set-up your banner “blocks” once, and all changes you make are real time after that. In fact, you don’t need to install WordPress plugins or other third party scripts that may break and malfunction every time you upgrade your WordPress blog.

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Get $1036 in 12-hours From Writing A Single Article

September 18th, 2008 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, Marketing Guides, Tips No Comments » 233 views

Would it be worth it to master a technique that places the power of generating a flood of consistent, highly targeted and rabid traffic squarely in your hands?

As an online marketing professional, your time is valuable, and you need to focus on what works, that’s exactly why this technique is so powerful.

To be truthful, the $1036 in 12-hours is an accomplishment I can happily say is not abnormal these days - what is nice about this example is that it was a Sunday (typically my slowest day for sales) while I was gone the entire day to a local festival here in my hometown of Ottawa, Canada.

Let me say, I do tend to still work for a few hours on the weekends, but this Sunday, I didn’t even check my mail until the kids were fast asleep at 8:30 PM, exhausted by a combination of rides, music, jugglers, magicians and an unending diet of junk food - ahhhh…summer!

My inbox was filled with orders for my own products and over $500 in affiliate sales - after about an hour of answering my mail, I decided on an early rest and hit the sack.

Today, I decided to check my statistics to find out where the sales came from (tracking really IS important), only to find that an article I wrote last week and was picked up by a high traffic site (from a generic article directory) generated most of the sales.

What’s important to understand is that this is NOT a one-time occurrence. I’ve had this happen many times over the last year. In fact, if I had to identify one single technique that has consistently increased my traffic by over 15% for the last 12 months (I mean every month), it is simply writing an article a week.

To repeat, I invested maximum 20-minutes, and NO greenback writing these articles. The return on investment is in the 1000%+ range….a pretty nice technique don’t you think.

But remember, this information only gives you the formula for generating an ongoing stampede of traffic and sales, it does not write the articles for you.

Like any successful system - it requires a solid formula that works with action to feed the formula.

Turn Your Ideas Into Profitable Information Products People Will Buy Online. Discover The Exact Formula For Turning Your Knowledge Into Highly Profitable Infoproducts To Sell Online In This Complimentary Course: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ebook/

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How to Switch Hosting Providers During Your Search Engine Campaign

September 1st, 2008 Sara DaiVy Posted in Affiliate networks, How to, Internet Business, Internet Marketing, SEO No Comments » 149 views

Search engine placement is a science and, like any scientific project a proper search engine campaign requires a controlled environment. Even in the best of circumstances an SEO has a myriad of variables to consider that may have a positive or negative effect on a search engine marketing campaign. For accurate research to take place, a controlled environment must be entirely free of any web site instability. A common cause of instability is the down-time that arises when a web site is inappropriately transferred to a new Web Hosting Provider (WHP).

Has your site ever been unavailable to the Internet because you were switching web hosting providers? This type of instability is entirely unnecessary and can be prevented with some basic technical expertise.

If you have had an online presence for a few years now you may have dealt with more than one hosting company as your web hosting needs grew or you simply decided to switch providers. With the number of hosting providers growing in leaps and bounds (host switching seems to be happening more and more as site owners actually change on a bi-annual basis while searching for the ultimate combination of service and price). Since many of these web sites may be in the midst of a search engine campaign it becomes very important to avoid down-time as a web site is transferred from server to server.

What NOT to do…
When less technical small businesses switch to a different WHP/ISP (Web Hosting Provider/Internet Service Provider) it is common to simply pay for a new account elsewhere, immediately shut-down the old hosting account, ‘move’ the company domain and once the domain is moved, upload a copy of their site and continue operations. The problem with this method is that while the domain is being switched to reflect the new hosting provider, the web site will not be available. Even once the domain is switched the problem continues because the web site has yet to be uploaded to the new hosting provider.

FACT: Domains often take between 12 and 24hrs to switch and problems can arise when installing a new web site, a site owner may experience up to 3 days of down-time if a switch is done in this manner. Should a search engine spider visit your site within this time you will likely lose any positive search engine placements you had previously achieved.

How to do it RIGHT…

Switching hosting providers can appear completely seamless to your web site visitors and search engines if it is done properly. If you deem it necessary to switch hosting providers it is important that you upload and test your web site on the new hosting company BEFORE formally initiating the change over. Any hosting provider that is worth 2 cents will provide you with a temporary access URL (or some option) to ftp into and test your web site. Testing is especially important if your site utilizes specific programming which may not be enabled or installed on the hosting package you purchased.

Once your new hosting account is completely configured (along with email setup and configuration) it is now possible to begin the transfer of your domain to its new home. During the transfer, parts of the world will still be pointing to your old host web site while the new domain settings are propagated across the Internet, while other areas will see the site at its new location. As long as the content is exactly the same at both web locations the switch will be seamless and your search engine listings will be left intact. In other words, during a transfer you must keep both web sites operating at peak efficiency (if possible).

The above instructions will need various levels of customization depending on the technology utilized within your web site. A database-driven site for example; if you were to follow the directions above you would find that you now have two separate databases being utilized since two different web sites are being run at once. This is not an ideal situation since inventory or affiliate click-throughs would be recorded on one system and not in the other. In such a case, it would be important to setup an S-Tunnel or secure (encrypted) synchronization link between the two databases so that they would update each other ‘as one’. This way while the new domain information is being propagated you will not lose any important information if one database were to receive new data. This is a complicated process and requires the experience of a professional server administrator. StepForth’s technical advisor, Thomas Bourree of itMeta.com had this to say about advanced server transfers:

“Moving from one hosting provider to another can end up being a company’s worst nightmare if it isn’t handled professionally. There are a lot of things to consider, especially when dealing with database powered websites, which if handled improperly can cause data loss during the switch. For complex systems it’s crucial that you contract the services of a good administration company to handle your switch to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible.”

In short, server down-time during a hosting transfer is not a situation that any companies need experience. Taking basic precautions during a server switch will maintain the necessary stability in your search engine marketing campaign as well as providing a stable online presence for your repeat traffic.

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