WebSpawner.com Blog

One of the most powerful and time-tested methods of advertising is word of mouth… get customers to recommend your business to others and new customers will result. For online businesses, the equivalent of word of mouth recommendations would be the sharing of web site links (URL addresses), and the easier you can make it for your site’s visitors to share your URL address with others, the better. For this very purpose, your WebSpawner web site account includes an “E-mail a Friend” feature which you can activate to allow your site’s visitors to help promote your web site by sharing your address link. With today’s post we’ll go over how you can add this feature to your site in just minutes.

First, login to your Enhanced WebSpawner account (or if you don’t have one yet, you can create a WebSpawner web site in minutes… see this article for easy to follow instructions).

After you have logged in (or have completed creation of your new web site account), you should see the WebSpawner Member Menu for your account. Select your Start page (marked with an asterisk) under Step 1 and then click the Modify button under Step 2, as shown below:

Now you’ll be looking at the Modification form for your web page. Scroll down in the form until you see the E-mail a Friend step, and click the Yes button as shown:

Next, complete the Modification process by clicking the Continue button at the bottom of the Modification form, and then click the I Like It button at the test page preview.  After completing these easy steps, your Enhanced web site will contain an “E-mail this page to a friend” link like this example:

That’s all there is to it… the color of the link on your web site will depend on the color selections you have already made, and will be color-coordinated to match.

When a viewer of your web site clicks the “E-mail this page to a friend” link they will see a short form like the one following below… the viewer can complete the form with his or her e-mail address, a friend’s e-mail address, and a personal message before sending the announcement.

After the viewer sends the announcement, the viewer’s friend will receive an e-mail message like the sample below, containing a clickable link to your web site:

In this manner, viewers who find your web site’s content worthy of sharing with friends can quickly and easily do just that, helping to promote your web site for you. While this will probably not generate as much traffic for you as getting your web site listed in search engines, referrals from friends can bring your site additional traffic at absolutely no cost of time or money to you.

Time really flies… it seems like 2009 just arrived a few days ago, yet January has already passed and the first few days of February are gone too. But even if you procrastinated about making New Year’s resolutions for improving your web site, there is still plenty of time to further develop your site and its reach in 2009; following are ten ideas you can use to get started:

1. Help them find you online - Just as people use a phone directory to look up an unknown number, the vast majority of internet users use a search engine to find sites of interest to visit. Don’t be an unlisted address; get your site listed in search engines and help new visitors find your web site online.
2. Help them find you on your street - If your site advertises your walk-in business, there is no better way to help people find your location than adding a Google map to your site. If you show them the way, the customers will come!
3. Content, content, content - Add unique and relevant content to your web site regularly to bring in new visitors and keep old ones returning. Remember, you can add as many pages as you like to your WebSpawner Enhanced web site at no additional cost, so add a page or three today and provide more for your visitors to read.
4. Cash, cash, cash - Offer goods or services online and turn your web site into supplemental income, or take it to another level and just quit the 9 to 5 and work from home. Set up your site to accept PayPal online payments, and start making money with your site today.
5. A picture’s worth a thousand words - Add new images to share the places you’ve been, the moments you enjoyed, or the items you have for sale. Add an Image Gallery to your site today (your Enhanced web site account allows for as many Galleries as you like).
6. A moving picture is worth even more - Get out that camcorder and create videos to share the fun or provide information, then add your videos to your site (it takes a little time but is easier than you might think).
7. Be the master of your own domain - Have your web site online at an address of your choosing; set up your own domain name (www.mysuperfantasticwebsite.com or whatever you choose) and have it connected to your site.
8. Get the word out - Keep in touch with your site’s viewers and let them know when you’ve added new content, and keep them coming back to visit regularly… set up a group mailing list and send an occasional newsletter.
9. Ask them what they think - Add an Opinion Poll to your site and ask for your viewer’s opinions about your site’s content, their favorite interests, or what they would like to see added to your site to make it more useful to them.
10. Have some fun every day, and do some work every day - You want your site’s visitors to stick around for a while and come back to visit again… provide viewers with a little entertainment by adding a game or two to your site. And, by regularly adding new content you can encourage visitors to return as well as improving your site’s positioning in search engine results. Spend a little time every day working on your site (or at least a few times a week if daily isn’t possible with your schedule). Sites that are updated frequently tend to climb in search result positioning, while static sites that are rarely or never updated tend to drop in position or be removed from search engine listings altogether.

By starting now, you can have a vastly improved web site by the time 2010 rolls around… but it’s less than 11 months away, so don’t delay any longer! Do something to improve your site today and every day.

One of the many features included in your WebSpawner Enhanced web site account is a Links page, which you can use to create your own categorized directory of links to other sites that you think will be of interest or value to your site’s visitors. Viewers of your site may also submit links for their own sites to your Links page; this is referred to as Free For All Linking, which allows sites to share viewer traffic with each other. Today we will cover how to manage your Links page.

To turn on the Links page option for your web site:

• Login to your WebSpawner account with your Username and Password.
• Select your Start page under Step 1 in the Member Menu and click the Modify button under Step 2.
• Scroll down in the Modification form until you reach the Free For All Links step as shown below, and click the Yes button:

• Click Continue at the bottom of the Modification form, then click I Like It at the test page preview.

After you have completed these steps, your web site will contain a Links button which, when clicked, will open your Links page.

The Links page is color-coordinated with your site, matching the Background, Text, and Link colors which you selected for your Start page. The Links page has 10 different categories: Business, Computers, Education, Entertainment, Government, Health, Internet, Miscellaneous, Personal, and Recreation.

At the bottom of the Links page is a form where you (or a viewer of your site) can add a new link. To add a link, enter a Website Title and the complete Website URL address, along with an Email Address and Description of the site. Select a Category using the pull-down menu and then click the Post My Link button as shown in the sample below:

The new link will immediately be added to your Links page, as shown in this example:

You can repeat these steps to add links as you wish to each category. Viewers of your site will take the same steps if they submit their link to your Links page; however, you will be able to remove any links that you do not wish to keep.

In the Member Menu of your WebSpawner account, there are tools which you can use to manage your Links page. To access these tools, click the Free-For-All Links Page icon which appears under the Add-Ons tab as shown below:

The FFA Links Page Edit window will appear, which has three function buttons at the top:

• Click the Edit Links button if you wish to remove an undesirable link.  All links will appear, with a Delete button next to each one. Simply click the Delete button next to the link you wish to remove, as shown in the example below, to immediately remove that link from your Links page:

• Click the Emailer button to create a form-letter message which will be automatically emailed to each viewer who subsequently adds a link to your Links page. Enter Your Email Address, a Subject line, and Your Email Message body in the fields, then click the Update button as shown in the example below:

• Click the Options button to adjust additional options for your Links page. You can enter text for the Headline to appear at the top of your Links page. Use the pull-down menu to select a Maximum number of links for each category of either 25 or 50. The other pull-down menu allows you to select whether to Display the user-provided Link Descriptions… if you choose Yes both the Title and Description for each link will appear on your Links page; if you choose NO only the Title of each link will be shown. When you are finished, click the Update button to save your changes to your Links page, as shown below:

When you are finished making changes in the FFA Links Page Edit window, click Close Window to return to the Member Menu.

You should check your Links page often so that you can remove any undesirable links that may have been added by viewers. Each link should also be checked from time to time to make sure that it is not a “dead link” to a site which no longer exists. Keep your Links page cleaned up regularly, and it will be a useful resource to help the viewers of your web site find other valuable sites online.

“Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” may sound like something out of a science-fiction blockbuster, but in reality, they are nicknames for the two largest online shopping days of the year. Black Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving, when shopping malls and online retailers across the globe offer special deals in hopes of drawing in hordes of turkey-filled holiday shoppers. And Cyber Monday, which is the Monday following Thanksgiving, was so dubbed due to massive internet shopping traffic which has occurred in recent years.

If you use your web site to sell products online, you don’t want to miss out on the potential rush of customers to be had in the coming days. By offering your gift items for sale on the internet, you allow buyers to shop from the comfort of home in their pajamas rather than having to go to the malls and brave crowds of mad holiday shoppers.

But what can you do at this point, only a day or two before the two biggest online shopping days of the year, to grab a portion of the online shopping frenzy to boost your web site’s traffic and increase your sales?

The quickest and easiest online promotion to launch is banner advertising. Offer a deal they just can’t refuse on your banner ad, and watch the orders come in. Marketing gurus call a deal like this a “loss leader” which is a very competitively-priced special offer in order to get customers in the door (or to your web site), where they will likely buy additional items as well.

By promoting your web site with banner ad displays on the WebSpawner.com site and network of over 4.6 million user web sites, you can put your banner in front of internet shoppers from all over the world at prices starting at only a HALF A PENNY per viewer! Purchase a campaign with a larger number of displays and reduce the price even more.

Best of all, a banner campaign is very affordable: you can put your banner ad in front of a thousand viewers for pricing starting at ONLY FIVE DOLLARS. No, really… just five bucks!

Want more exposure? Order more displays and SAVE $5, $10, $25 or more… even AS MUCH AS $150 IN SAVINGS on a large displays campaign that will put your banner in front of viewers for weeks. Any viewer who clicks your banner will automatically be taken to your web site.

Don’t have a banner ad to display? No worries; for a small fee, our designers can create an ad for you, to your instructions. Just select the option on the order form and answer a few simple questions to give our designers the info they need to create a custom banner ad just for you.

Take advantage of the thousands of daily visits to the WebSpawner network and you can increase the web traffic to YOUR WebSpawner web site. Login to your account now and click the orange Promote Your Site tab in the Member Menu of your account; then click the Banner Ad Displays icon for a secure online order form, and follow the simple instructions provided to place your order.

Don’t miss out on the biggest shopping season of the year. Help direct internet traffic to YOUR web site to make it a success!