05.12.07
Posted in Internet marketing at 1:34 pm by Ron
Internet marketing must be the most written-about and hyped-up subject on the internet. There are hundreds of self-styled gurus who will sell you information about how to market on the Internet - in many cases at greatly inflated prices. A few even know what they’re talking about. But think hard before you lay out hard-earned cash on get-rich-quick systems. They don’t exist. They’re cons!
At Shed 18 we’re dedicated to the art and skill of building websites, but necessarily we are involved with marketing, as we sell a range of software concerned with websites; building, maintaining and promoting. You may have the best website ever, but it’s not much use if nobody visits it.
So we subscribe to a number of marketing newsletters, from a cross-section of internet marketers, and have learned to pick out the good from the bad and downright misleading. Often the best is free. We’ve seldom paid cash for marketing information and when we’ve done so, with the promise that we can resell the item and make a fortune, we’ve not done so as we’ve thought the ’secret knowledge’ not worth passing on.
So what should you be looking for? General advice on internet marketing is the same as marketing in the High Street; an appealing shopfront (webpage), interesting stock, good prices, value for money, customer satisfaction, clever advertising, budgeting and so on. These principles have never changed and never date. Words written in 1900 are still true today. In fact some entrepreneurs have rehashed public domain books of that era. If you need this sort of information we suggest you try your local bookstore, online bookstore or your local library to get a hard copy.
What’s left that you need to know? Information specific to the Internet such as:-
*how and when to use autoresponders,
*how to accept payments online,
*the best ways to advertise,
*about affiliate marketing,
*trading in online actions.
things like those. But if you’re patient you’ll find excellent ebooks on these subjects that are given away free.
We would suggest that you ignore offers for general information about how to make a fortune by applying ’secret’ methods. These are always very appealing, have a sales page a mile long, loads of bonuses and are written by skilled copywriters who’s job is to fool you. You have to be aware that there are associations of marketers who sell each other’s work for a commission and provide recommendations on demand, even if they’ve never used the product. It’s a world of ‘caveat emptor’, buyer beware.
Many ingenious arguments are put forward as reasons why you have to buy the product now and many dubious methods are used to try to force a sale. One of the daftest in our opinion is the ‘dime sale’ where a product is put on the market and its price goes up, say, every hour by 20 cents. Another is the time limited sale, where a product is put on the market for, say, 5 days or until 200 have been sold. Yet another is the OTO, or One Time Offer, where you’re offered something once only.
These schemes, and many others, are intended to get you to buy NOW or you’ll lose the opportunity. Don’t be caught. Make your own considered decision as to whether the product is what you want at the right price. We’re always looking for good deals but mostly in software which is often good value. Modern hosting companies offer plenty of capacity. There’s no need to take offers down except as a marketing ploy. The same product will be recycled, renamed and offered again in a few weeks.
If you do decide to buy, consider the price. In our experience these gems of knowledge can cost many times that of a hard copy book sold in a bookshop. Some entrepreneurs offer massive packets of audio-video presentations bundled with ebooks and offers of free club membership at vastly inflated prices. I’ve seen them up to $1000.
That’s our rant about Internet marketing Gurus, so how do we at Shed 18 differ? For starters we have a range of reasonably priced, easy to use software that is on offer 24/7, always at the same price, with no time limit. Just like in a High Street Store. And we try to add a piece of software each month. Sometimes we may withdraw software or replace it with something else, and we reserve the right to alter the prices but that’s not likely. No gimmicks, no gimmicky bonuses; our software can stand on its own!
We try to give good information and provide free ebooks etc. as a thank you for those who subscribe to our newsletter. This is written fresh and published about every two weeks, unlike some that we subscribe to that appear in our inboxes 2 or 3 times a week, sometimes every day, even twice a day. We must unsubscribe from some that offer little value and are no more than advertising spam.
There are some excellent people dispensing marketing information and making a good living doing so. You can learn a lot from these people and they’re often generous with really useful information. Search for Internet Marketing on Google and sign up to a few free newsletters.
And don’t forget Shed 18 News. If you sign up for our newsletter you’ll get some useful free software plus free entry to the Member’s Zone. Why not do it now?
http://www.shed18.com/subscribe.html
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03.30.07
Posted in website building at 6:50 pm by Ron
“Introducing Profit Site Pro, the easy-peasy way to build websites.”
Here at Shed 18 we like to promote website building, but a big problem until recent years has been learning and using HTML, the language that web pages are written in. HTML, compared to other computer languages, is not difficult to learn and needs no special software. But learning HTML well enough to author web pages takes time and writing it is tedious. .
Then came what is known as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, so called because you simply put in text and graphics similarly to a word processing program and it is converted automatically into HTML.
Probably the best-known and, some would say, the best is Dreamweaver. But it is expensive and the learning curve is long and steep. I use an older version of Dreamweaver but it’s taken me a few years to be able to use it with any confidence and I still probably don’t use half its features.
There are other, cheaper programs that do a similar job but are still moderately expensive and still need quite a bit of work to use properly. They don’t allow the same freedom of expression as Dreamweaver.
Yet other web authoring programs are tied to hosting companies. You are free to use them as long as you contribute to the hosting companies. Such programs usually have good support from the hosting company.
Then there are HTML aids, that need knowledge of HTML but take a lot of the drudgery out of coding.
“Profit Site Pro”
But we offer what I believe to be the best (and cheapest) solution, “Profit Site Pro”. This costs only $37 and is about the best all-round solution we know. It does everything except providing the actual content. The name, “Profit Site Pro” suggests a commercial website and this is, indeed, the original intention of the program but it can easily be used for a hobby site or any other kind of website.
As with all software, don’t take our word for it, look around before buying. But we really like this program; it has us excited. You don’t need to know a thing about HTML to use Profit Site Pro, but if you are so inclined you could use it to help you with learning HTML. But it’s your choice.
References
A website made with Profit Site Pro
The Profit Site Pro sales page (includes lots more info)
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03.14.07
Posted in website building, Internet marketing, website software at 10:53 pm by Ron
In the last few days we’ve rehashed the site, consolidating the Premier software on to one page.
From the point of building a website we still believe that ProfitSitePro offers the best allround alternative, allowing almost instant creation of an outline website of three pages and an advanced WYSIWYG editor. Too many features to even begin to discuss here.
But our newest software is a little miracle. Starting with a few short articles in plain text this program, Article Site Power Kit makes complete website, including Adsense and Amazon ads if you want. It’s fantastic and has to be tried to believe it.
But just this month there’s an upgrade;
Article Site Power Kit PRO VERSION that adds new features. It works like this. You buy Article Site, then if you wish to upgrade, PRO VERSION is available at a low extra cost. The choice is yours.
Unlike many vendors, our sales pages aren’t full of exaggerated claims and false testimonials. They offer, as far as possible, a true indication of what the program does, with helpful notes. In fact we always recommend that, when you buy the product that you print out the sales page to ensure that you miss no features. There are often extra programs that might be overlooked. Also there are no hidden prices.
We’re always ready to support our products and there’s a cast-iron money-back guarantee.
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03.01.07
Posted in website building at 10:49 pm by Ron
I have been building websites for a few years now. My first website was built the hard way; hand coding. I bought a small book entitled ” Teach Yourself HTML” that had just over 200 pages and was about 5″ x 8″. I learned how to write web pages in Notepad, using HTML code and how to display these webpages in a browser.
Today I use an older version of Dreamweaver, arguably the best website builder there is, but it has probably been harder to learn Dreamweaver than I found learning HTML. Of course, it’s been worthwhile because I can make a web page from scratch far more quickly than by hand coding. But now I’ve found a method that needs no knowledge of HTML and has a very short and easy learning curve; but more of that later.
Building a new website is, for me, an enjoyable experience that starts with a rough handdrawn layout on paper. My aim is always to produce an uncluttered page with an easy to understand navigation system. But I confess that the final product often bears little resemblance to the rough draft.
“Color schemes”
A major decision is choosing the color scheme. Personally I like to see a light color scheme; I hate those dark brown or black backgrounds, but I accept that it might be OK for some themes. Whatever the background color the text must be contrasting. My own preference is for a white background with black text; color can be added with the Header, side panels and graphics.
Designing a web page is akin to making a painting. The website presents itself as blocks of color, even the text, and a good layout is all-important. If text is on the page it must be easy to read and not dodge about as I’ve seen in some web pages, so that continuity is lost. Most websites have advertising panels on them and these, if carefully positioned can enhance, rather than spoil the look of the page. Headlines and sub-headers are necessary to help the reader and keep her interested.
“Page loading times”
Building web pages allows the author to combine technical and artistic skills to produce a product that will be seen and hopefully appreciated by many. I have already written about the artistic side but a very important technical consideration is how quickly the page will load. Some page layouts load more quickly than others and great consideration must be given, in particular, to the file sizes of graphics. People won’t wait long for a web page to load.
Web pages are, of course, displayed by your browser and different browsers may display your web pages slightly differently. There’s much talk from the Gurus about trying your web pages in umpteen different browsers to make sure that they are OK in each. I check my web pages in Internet Explorer 6 (I’ve heard that IE7 needs debugging) and Firefox. Sometimes in Netscape. That’s all! If my pages look bad in somebody’s browser from the 20th century that’s his problem, not mine; the major browsers are free.
“Profit Site Pro”
I said way back that I have found an easy way to build websites, with no knowledge of coding and a short learning curve. It is a program called “Profit Site Pro”. As it’s name implies it was designed to build websites that can be used for selling, but if you’re not interested in that don’t let it put you off. It’s just as easy to build hobby sites, family sites etc.
Here is a website that was made very soon after downloading the program. The longest job was writing the text and preparing other content, but there was no escaping that. Profit Site Pro does the techie stuff, leaving you free to exercise your artistic talents. The program comes with full instructions and a couple of extra programs that are also easy and fun to use.
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12.29.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:09 pm by Ron
Why did we name our website “Shed 18″? The simple answer is “Why not”? it’s a weird name, but so is Google and Yahoo and they’re doing OK. Also it trips off the tongue easily and is great for adding sub-domains.
In the Uk, at least, a “shed” is the trade’s name for a sales outlet to the public on an industrial estate, so the name has some relevance as we sell good quality software from the site.
The main theme of Shed 18 is in building and maintaining websites, so you’ll get discussions and reports on subjects such as HTML, Javascript, CSS, Graphics, Audio, Video and all those other gimmicks that go to make up a modern website. But if you’re a newbie to website building, remember that all those flashing banners and winking lights don’t make up for a lack of good, solid content.
People are looking for information and solutions to their problems; so whether your website is run for family or club, a charity or for business the key is to make it useful, informative and above all interesting.
There’s information on website building all over the Internet so what makes Shed 18 different? We always try to put a new slant on things and still vividly remember building our first website (the hard way) and the thrill and pleasure in seeing it for the first time on a computer screen. So we try hard to explain those ultra-basic things that so many of the experts gloss over.
But time and the internet waits for no man and there are always new challenges. Starting this Wordpress Blog has been my latest and I can’t say it’s been as easy as I’d expected, mainly because of lack of time due to other commitments. WordPress is a great program and has a heap of facilities that take some time to get to grips with. There’s all the information and documented help you could ever need; you just need to be a speed reader!
Please subscribe to our free newsletter that we publish once a week to keep in touch. In return we offer some useful free software and free entry into the Member’s Zone, where you’ll find insider reports and great deals plus free downloads.
You can subscribe here
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